1937
The year is 1937, the year in which Donna Marie Schwab was Born in Pasadena, California.
1937 IBM Card Sorter 1937 Packard 6
Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting
on Friday of the Gregorian calendar.
Events of 1937
January
January 19: Howard Hughes sets record.
January 19: Howard Hughes sets record.
* January 1 - Anastasio Somoza García becomes President of Nicaragua.
* January 3 - First science fiction convention in Leeds, England.
* January 11 - The first issue of LOOK magazine goes on sale in the United States.
* January 19 - Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles
to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
* January 20 - Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes swears in Franklin D. Roosevelt
for a second term. This is the first time Inauguration Day in the United States
occurred on that date. It has occurred on January 20 ever since.
* January 23 - In Moscow, 17 leading Communists go on trial accused of participating
in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate
its leaders.
* January 26 - Michigan celebrates its Centennial Anniversary of statehood.
* January 31 - Ohio River floods
* January 31 - 31 people executed in the Soviet Union for alleged Trotskyism
February
* February 5 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge
the Supreme Court of the United States.
* February 8 - Falangist troops take Málaga
* February 8-February 27, Battle of Jarama
* February 11 - A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United
Automobile Workers Union
* February 16 - Wallace H. Carothers receives a patent for nylon.
* February 19 - Airliner VH-UHH, Stinson, goes down over Lamington National
Park, Bound for Sydney, killing five.
* February 19 - During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former
Imperial residence) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two Eritrean nationalists attempt
to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades. The Italian security
guard fire into the crowd of Ethiopian onlookers, and over the passing weeks
indiscriminately slaughter native Ethiopians in reprisal.
* February 21 - Initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman's
Aerobile; the League of Nations Non-Intervention Committee ban on foreign nationals
fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
March
* March - The first issue of the comic book Detective Comics is published
in the United States. Twenty-seven issues later, Detective Comics would introduce
Batman. The comic would go on to become the longest continually-published comic
magazine in American history; it is still published as of 2008.
* March 10 - The Encyclical Mit brennender Sorge of pope Pius XI is published
in Nazi Germany
* March 17 - Atherton Report released. Private investigator Edwin Atherton's
report detailing vice and police corruption in San Francisco.
* March 18
o In the worst school disaster in American history in terms of lives lost, the
New London School in New London, Texas suffers a catastrophic natural gas explosion,
killing in excess of three hundred students and teachers.
o Mother Frances Hospital opens one day early in Tyler, Texas in response to
the New London School explosion.
* March 26
o In Crystal City, Texas, spinach growers erect a statue of the cartoon character
Popeye.
o William Henry Hastie becomes the first African-American appointed to federal
judgeship.
April
* April 1 - Aden becomes a British crown colony.
* April 9 - The Kamikaze arrives at Croydon Airport in London - it is the first
Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe.
* April 12 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules the National Labor
Relations Act is constitutional in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel.
* April 17 - Release of the animated short Porky's Duck Hunt, directed by Tex
Avery for the Looney Tunes series, featuring the debut of Daffy Duck.
* April 20 - 17 students die and 50 are injured in Kilingi-Nõmme, Estonia,
after a cinefilm takes fire in an elementary school.
* April 26 - Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain is bombed. In his report of
the Falangist attack on Guernica, British journalist George Steer reports that
he had found German bomb casings, connecting Luftwaffe planes with the attack.
May
* May - Dáil Éireann passes the Executive Authority (Consequential
Provisions) Act, 1937, which retrospectively abolishes the office of Governor-General
of the Irish Free State. The abolition is retrospectively dated to December
1936.
* May 1 - General strike in Paris, France
* May 6 - In United States, the German airship Hindenburg bursts into flame
when mooring to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
* May 7 - Spanish Civil War: The German Condor Legion Fighter Group, equipped
with Heinkel He 51 biplanes, arrives in Spain to assist Francisco Franco's forces.
* May 12 - Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth takes place at Westminster
Abbey, London.
* May 13 - Canadian writer Roch Carrier is born in Sainte-Justine, Quebec.
* May 21 - a Soviet station becomes the first scientific research settlement
to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean.
* May 21 - As one of the reprisals for the attempted assassination of Italian
viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, a detachment of Italian troops massacre the entire
community of Debre Libanos. 297 monks and 23 laymen are killed.
* May 27 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic
creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County. The next day,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington, DC signaling
the start of vehicle traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge.
* May 28 - Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
June
* June 3 - Wallis Simpson and the former Edward VIII of the United Kingdom
marry.
* June 8
o First total solar eclipse to exceed 7 minutes of totality in over 800 years;
visible in the Pacific and Peru.
o Premiere of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana
* June 14 - Pennsylvania becomes the first (and only) of the United States to
celebrate Flag Day officially as a state holiday.
* June 21 - Coalition government of Léon Blum resigns in France.
* June/July - Dáil Éireann debates and passes the draft new constitution
of Éire, to be called Bunreacht na hÉireann. The new constitution
is then submitted for public approval by plebiscite.
July
* July 1
o Gestapo arrests priest Martin Niemöller.
o In a referendum the people of the Irish Free State accept the new Constitution
by 685,105 votes to 527,945.
* July 2 - Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear over New Guinea
during Earhart's attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.
* July 5 - Highest recorded temperature in Canada, at Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan:
45°C.
* July 7 - Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Lugou Bridge - Japanese forces invade
China. Often seen as the beginning of World War II in Asia
* July 11 - Composer George Gershwin dies of a brain tumor at age 38.
* July 20 - The Geibeltbad Pirna is opened.
* July 21 - Eamon de Valera elected president of Éire (Ireland)
* July 22 - New Deal: The United States Senate votes down President Franklin
D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United
States.
* July 24 - Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro
Boys."
* July 28 - IRA attempts bombing assassination against King George VI in Belfast.
August
* August 5 - Soviet Union commences one of the largest campaigns of the Great
Purge, to "eliminate anti-Soviet element". Within the following year,
at least 724,000 people were killed on order of troikas, many of them chosen
for shooting by their ethnicity.
* August 6 - Falangist artillery bombards Madrid.
* August 26 - Sino-Japanese War - Japanese aircraft attack the car carrying
the ambassador of Great Britain during a raid on Shanghai.
September
* September 2 - The Great Hong Kong Typhoon of 1937 killed an estimated 11,000
persons.
* September 5 - Spanish Civil War: The fall of Llanes.
* September 7 - CBS broadcasts a two-and-a-half hour memorial concert nationwide
on radio in memory of George Gershwin, live from the Hollywood Bowl. Many celebrities
appear, including Oscar Levant, Fred Astaire, Otto Klemperer, Lily Pons, and
members of the original cast of Porgy and Bess. The concert is recorded and
released complete years later in what is excellent sound for its time, on CD.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is the featured orchestra.
* September 21 - George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. of London publishes the first
edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.
* September 25 - Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Pingxingguan.
* September 26 - Street and Smith Publications launches a half-hour radio program
, The Shadow, with Orson Welles in the title role.
* September 27 - The last Bali tiger dies.
October
* October 1
o Marijuana Tax Act in USA.
o U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Hugo Black, in a nationwide radio broadcast,
refutes allegations of past involvement in the Ku Klux Klan.
* October 3 - Japanese troops advance toward Nanking.
* October 5 - Roosevelt gives his famous "Quarantine Speech" in Chicago.
* October 13 - Germany, in a note to Brussels, guaranteed the inviolability
and integrity of Belgium so long as the latter abstained from military action
against Germany.
* October 15 - Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not is first published.
* October 21
o The whole Spanish northern seaboard in the Falangists' hands.
o Roberto Ortiz elected president of Argentina.
* October 27 - Spanish Civil War - Republican forces in Gijon, Spain, set fire
to petrol reserves before they retreat before the advancing Falangists.
November
* November 5
o Spanish Civil War - Massacre of Republican supporters in Piedrafita de Babia,
near León. Possibly 35,000 executed.
o World War II: In the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting
and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people.
* November 6 - Italy joins Anti-Comintern Pact.
* November 9 - Japanese troops take Shanghai.
* November 10 - Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas announces the Estado
Novo - New State -, thence becoming dictator of Brazil until 1945.
* November 11 - Kogushi sulfur mine collapse, western Gunma, Japan, killing
at least 245 people.
December
* December 4 - The Dandy, the world's longest running comic strip, is first
published.
* December 11 - Italy withdraws from the League of Nations.
* December 12
o Panay incident.
o Mae West makes a risque guest appearance on the NBC Chase and Sanborn Hour
that eventually results in her being banned from radio.
* December 13 - Battle of Nanjing ends and the Nanjing Massacre begins. Japanese
troops would slaughter over 300,000 civilians and prisoners over three months.
* December 21 - Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length
animated cartoon with sound, opens and becomes a smash hit.
* December 25 - At the age of seventy, legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini
conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio for the first time, beginning his
successful 17-year tenure with that orchestra. This first concert consists of
music by Vivaldi, Mozart, and Brahms. Millions tune in to listen, including
U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
* December 29 - New Irish Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann comes into
force. The Irish Free State becomes Éire. Eamon de Valera becomes the
first Taoiseach (prime minister) of the new state. A Presidential Commission
(made up the Irish Chief Justice, the Speaker of Dáil Éireann
and the President of the High Court) assumes the powers of the new presidency
of Ireland pending the election of the first president in June 1938.
Also in 1937
* New Irish constitution bans divorce.
* The National House Builders Registration Council (now the NHBC) was formed
in the United Kingdom.
* Jimmie Angel lands his plane on top of Devil's Mountain however the plane
gets damaged and he has to trek through the rainforest for help.
* Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is published.
Ongoing
* Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
* Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
* Harlem Renaissance (1920-1940).[1]
* Great Depression (1929-1940).[2]