Timeline December 1997

Events in December 1997 12

• 1964 – 1997 Chris Farley (1964-1997) Died 18 December 1997, aged 33 Chris Farley was an American comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member known for physical comedy sketches and films including Tommy Boy and Black Sheep. He died of a drug overdose in Chicago at age 33. His death drew comparisons to that of his idol John Belushi.
• 1995 – 1997 Return to Japan and Underground Returned to Japan in 1995, prompted by two events: the devastating Kobe earthquake in January and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in March. Feeling a moral obligation to engage with Japanese society, he interviewed survivors of the attack for Underground (1997), his first major work of non-fiction.
• 1997 1997: Jacques Villeneuve Williams Canadian Villeneuve, son of the legendary Gilles Villeneuve, won the title after Schumacher was disqualified from the championship for deliberately colliding with him at the final race at Jerez.
• 1997 Broadway Debut in Skylight Made his Broadway debut in David Hare's Skylight, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play.
• 1997 Tearing the Silence Published Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America, a nonfiction work based on interviews with over 200 German Americans born during or just after the Nazi era, exploring the shame and silence they inherited.
• 1997 Launch of the Prius Championed the launch of the Toyota Prius, the world's first mass-produced hybrid car. The Prius would become a symbol of the auto industry's push toward green technology and sell millions of units worldwide.
• 1997 The Toyota Prius goes on sale The engine starts sharing Toyota launches the Prius in Japan, pairing a petrol engine with an electric motor and a battery. Toyota loses money on every one for years. The significance is not the fuel saved but the precedent: for the first time a mass-market car treats the combustion engine as one component among several rather than the whole point of the vehicle.
• 1997 Toyota Prius — the hybrid revolution begins Toyota launches the Prius on 10 December 1997 in Japan — the world's first mass-produced hybrid electric vehicle. The Prius combines a 1.5-litre petrol engine with an electric motor and nickel-metal hydride battery, achieving fuel economy of 28km/l (66mpg) in city driving. It is technically extraordinary — Toyota's engineers solve enormous challenges in battery management, regenerative braking and power split device design. The Prius is initially sold only in Japan; its global launch in 2000 changes the automotive industry.
• 1997 Kyoto Protocol adopted International treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions Delegates at the UN Climate Change Conference in Kyoto, Japan adopted the Kyoto Protocol, committing industrialized nations to binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It was the first major international treaty to address climate change. The protocol would not enter into force until 2005.
• 1997 Tomorrow Never Dies — Pierce Brosnan Bond battles a megalomaniacal media mogul who manipulates news coverage to trigger a war between Britain and China. The villain is a barely-disguised Rupert Murdoch figure. Michelle Yeoh co-stars as Chinese agent Wai Lin in one of the franchise's strongest female roles. Budget: $110 million. Box office: $339.5 million.
• 1997 Titanic #1 film of 1997 — $2.19bn worldwide Directed by James Cameron, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. A love story set aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic. Won 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture.
• 1997 Jackie Brown The quiet one His only adaptation — of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch — and his most restrained film, built around Pam Grier and Robert Forster and a great deal of patience. It disappoints commercially against the expectations Pulp Fiction created and is now widely regarded as one of his best. Forster receives an Oscar nomination.