1937

1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January 1 - Anastasio Somoza becomes President of Nicaragua
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 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 31 - Ohio River floods
January 31 - 31 people executed in the Soviet Union for "Trotskyism"

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 11 - A sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognises the United Automobile Workers Union
February 16 - Wallace H. Carothers receives a patent for nylon.
February 19 - During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former Imperial residence) in Addis Ababa Ahmed, 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 Arrowbile; the League of Nations Non-Intervention Committee ban on foreign national "volunteers" in the Spanish Civil War.

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 2006.
March 10 - The Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge of pope Pius XI is published in Nazi Germany
March 18 - The New London School explosion kills three hundred.
March 26 - In Crystal City, Texas spinach growers erect a statue of the cartoon character Popeye.
March 26 - William Henry Hastie becomes the first African-American appointed to federal judgeship.
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 17 - Release of the animated short Porky's Duck Hunt, directed by Tex Avery for the Merrie Melodies series, featuring the debut of Daffy Duck.
April 26 - Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe.
April 26 - In his report of the Falangist attack on Guernica, British journalist George Steer reports that he had found German bomb casing; that means that Luftwaffe planes were connected with the attack

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 arrive 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 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 - 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.

June 8 - First total solar eclipse to exceed 7 minutes of totality in over 800 years; visible in the Pacific and Peru.
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 Leon 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 1 - Gestapo arrests priest Martin Niemöller.
July 1 - 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.
July 21 - Eamon de Valera elected president of Eire
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 6 - Falangist artillery bombards Madrid.

September 5 - Spanish Civil War: The fall of Llanes.
September 16 - birth of Keith Bosley, broadcaster (retired), poet and translator.
September 21 - George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. of London published the first edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.
September 25 - Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Pingxingguan.
October 1 - Marijuana Tax Act in USA.
October 3 - Japanese troops advance toward Nanking.
October 5 - Roosevelt "Quarantine the Aggressors" speech at Chicago
October 21 - The whole Spanish northern seaboard in the Falangists' hands.
October 21 - 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 5 Spanish Civil War - Massacre of Republican supporters in Piedrafita de Babia, near León. Possibly 35,000 executed.
November 5 - 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 9 - Japanese troops take Shanghai.

December 3 - The Dandy, the world's longest running comic, was first published.
December 12 - Panay incident
December 12 - Mae West's risque performance on the NBC Chase & Sanborn Hour results in her being banned from radio.
December 13 - Battle of Nanjing ends and the Nanjing Massacre begins. Japanese troops would slaughter over 250,000 civilians and prisoners over three months.
December 21 - Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated cartoon, opens and becomes a smash hit.
December 25 - Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio for the first time, beginning his successful 17-year tenure with that orchestra. 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.
December - The Marijuana Tax Act is signed, ending the US hemp industry just as it was about to benefit from a mechanised brake and compete with cotton and wood pulp.