[natehale1971]

Twilight 2000: Countdown to Armageddon
by Richard A. Spake ©



1997: The Year in Review

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January 1997

January 1997. D

22 January 1997. Madeleline Albright becomes the first female US Secretary of State after confirmation by the United States Senate.


February 1997

February 1997. D

3 February - 1 August 1997. German Special Operations Division (Division Spezielle Operationen), Special Forces Command (Kommando Spezialkräfte) and Airmobile Operations Division (Division Luftbewegliche Operationen) are formed in response to the expansion of similar forces in the East German Armed Forces between 1995 and 1997.

5 February 1997. The so-called "Big Three" banks in the Swiss Confederation announces the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.

22 February 1997. In Roslin, Scotland, UK, a group of scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned was born in July 1996.


March 1997

March 1997. D

18 March 1997. The tail of a Russian An-24 charter plane breaks off while en-route to Turkey, causing the plane to crash. Killing all 50 onboard, resulting in the grounding of all An-24s.


April 1997

April 1997. D

6 April 1997. Pakistan tests medium-range ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting India.

22 April 1997. The end of a 126 day hostage crisis at the residence of the Japanese Ambassador in Lima, Peru, after government commandos storm and capture the building. Rescuing 71 hostages, one hostage died from a heart attack due to stress, 2 soldiers are killed by rebel fire and all 14 Tupac Amaru rebels are slain.



May 1997

May 1997. D

2 May 1997. Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland.

May 1997. United States Territorial Guard is established as a land based counterpart to the United States Coast Guard. Among the duties assigned to the US Territorial Guard include search and rescue, security at airports and border crossings, and border patrol enforcement. In Congress there is a movement to incorporate the United States Forestry Service into the newly created paramilitary uniformed service, while at the same time limiting their law enforcement powers to insure that it would not become a centralized federal police force.

12 May 1997 - 24 December 1998. German Special Operations Division (Division Spezielle Operationen), Special Forces Command (Kommando Spezialkräfte) and Airmobile Operations Division (Division Luftbewegliche Operationen) are formed in response to the expansion of similar forces in the East German Armed Forces that had occurred between 1995 and 1997.

May 1997 - August 1999. The 'luxury industries' that are allowed to be imported into the Eastern Bloc: Starbucks Coffee Shop and Café, Victoria's Secret lingerie, Levi Strauss, Barnes and Noble booksellers, Pepsi, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken


June 1997

June 1997. D

30 June 1997. Bloomsbury Publishing publishes "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" by J.K. Rowling.

July 1997

July 1997. D

June 1997. Thanks to the increase in the trade of western style fashions to the Eastern Bloc with the free trade of luxury goods, the Polish city of Gdańsk has become the fashion capitol of the Eastern Bloc as Polish clothing designers and garment manufacturers’ start their own revolution in fashion. Polish clothing styles become part of the youth counter-culture throughout the Western world.

July 1997. Thanks to the micro-capitalism projects that had been allowed by Soviet Premier Danilov that legalized the underground cottage industries, the economic growth of the East European Communist Bloc states had allowed the East Europeans to enjoy many luxuries that where very similar to those that had been enjoyed by those who live in the West. Unfortunately, many of the hardline communists within the government see these policies as being an counter-revolutionary and totally against Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist ideals. These hardliners gravitate around Defense Minister Nikolai Ivanovich Tukhachevsky.

July 1997. The Mediterranean Alliance expands with the admission of the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic.
17 July 1997. In Saint Petersburg, Nicholas II of Russia and his family are buried at St. Catherine Chapel, 80 years after he and his family were killed by the Bolsheviks.


August 1997

August 1997. D

31 August 1997. Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, is taken to a hospital after a car accident shortly after midnight in the Pont de I’Alma road tunnel in Paris. She is pronounced dead at 0400 local time.


September 1997

September 1997. D

4 September 1997. Google Inc. is founded in Menlo Park, CA, USA by Stanford University PhD candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

7 September 1997. The F-22 Raptor makes its first test flight.


October 1997

October 1997. D

October 1997 - October 1999. The construction of a series of ‘Houses of the Dead’ located on the sites of those concentration camps that would not be reconstructed and turned into Holocaust Memorial Museums is finally completed. Each of these structures will contain the names of the victims of the Holocaust that had died at these sites. Other ‘houses of the dead’ were also be built on sites to commemorate those who had stood up in defiance to the Nazi regime, and had been murdered for this by the Nazi regime.


November 1997

November 1997. D

December 1997

December 1997. D