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1937

Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events of 1937

January

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

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.
Mother Frances Hospital opens one day early in Tyler, Texas in response to the New London School explosion.

March 26

In Crystal City, Texas, spinach growers erect a statue of the cartoon character Popeye.
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

First total solar eclipse to exceed 7 minutes of totality in over 800 years; visible in the Pacific and Peru.
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

Gestapo arrests priest Martin Niemöller.
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

Marijuana Tax Act in USA.
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

The whole Spanish northern seaboard in the Falangists' hands.
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

Spanish Civil War - Massacre of Republican supporters in Piedrafita de Babia, near León. Possibly 35,000 executed.
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

Panay incident.
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.

Undated

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.
The Italian psychiatrist Amarro Fiamberti is the first to document a transorbital approach to the brain, becoming the basis for the controversial medical procedure of transorbital lobotomy.