Timeline 1926 - 1927
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1926 Jan 3,
Joan Walsh Anglund author, was born: Bedtime Book, Crocus in the
Snow; illustrator of children’s books.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1926 Jan 3, George Martin
record producer, arranger, keyboard player, was born: group: The
Beatles; AIR Studios; inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
[3-15-99].
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1926 Jan 8, Soupy Sales
(d.2009), comedian (Soupy Sales Show), was born in Franklinton,
North Carolina, as Milton Supman.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soupy_Sales)
1926 Jan 8, Bao Dai (1913-1997)
began serving as king of Annam under French ‘protection’. During
this period, Annam was a protectorate within French Indochina,
covering the central two-thirds of the present-day Vietnam. His rule
ended on Aug 25, 1945.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bao_Dai)
1926 Jan 12, U.S. coal talks
broke down, leaving both sides bitter as the strike dragged on into
its fifth month.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1926 Jan 17, George Burns
married Gracie Allen.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1926 Jan 27, US Senate agreed
to join the World Court.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1926 Jan 29, Violette Neatley
Anderson became the first African-American woman admitted to
practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1926 Jan 31, Jean Simmons,
actress (Thorn Birds, Guys and Dolls), was born in London, England.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1926 Jan 31, Nahdlatul Ulama
(NU) was established by Wahab Chasbullah with support from Hasyim
Asy'ari, the most respected Muslim scholar in East Java. By 2010 NU
was one of the largest independent Islamic organizations in the
world.
(Econ, 1/9/10,
p.85)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulema)
1926 Jan, In a letter to then
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the senior Guggenheim
announced the establishment of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the
Promotion of Aeronautics.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1926 Jan, Walt and Roy Disney
moved to their new studio at 2719 Hyperion in Los Angeles.
(www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/disnehis/disn1926.htm)
1926 Jan, Abdul Aziz was
declared King of Hejaz (later Saudi Arabia) and the Sultan of Nejd
and its Dependencies.
(www.rogersstudy.co.uk/hejaz/al_nahda/al_nahda.html)
1926 Feb 1, Land at Broadway
& Wall Street sold at a record $7 per sq. inch.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1926 Feb 5, Arthur Ochs
Sulzberger, longtime New York Times publisher, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1926 Feb 6, Mussolini warned
Germany to stop agitation in Tyrol.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1926 Feb 7, Negro History Week,
originated by Carter G. Woodson, was observed for the first time.
The 2nd week in February was declared Negro History Week. Woodson
established Negro History week on Feb 19. It later developed into
Black History Month. In 1999 the African American Timeline was
created for BHM at wanonline.com/blackhistory/1999/tl/html.
(USAT, 2/14/97, p.15A)(HN, 2/7/99)(SFC, 2/1/00,
p.E1)
1926 Feb 8, Neal Cassaday,
writer, counterculture proponent, was born.
(HN, 2/8/01)
1926 Feb 8, Sean O'Casey's
"Plough & Stars" opened at Abbey Theater Dublin.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1926 Feb 8, German Reichstag
decided to apply for League of Nations membership.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1926 Feb 9, Teaching theory of
evolution was forbidden in Atlanta, Georgia, schools.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1926 Feb 11, Paul Bocuse,
French chef (Legion of Honor), was born.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1926 Feb 11, The Mexican
government nationalized all church property. Plutarco Elias Calles,
founder of the modern Mexican political system, tried to suppress
the Church. This fomented the Cristiada, 3 years of rebellion and
outright war.
(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(HN, 2/11/97)
1926 Feb 15, Contract air mail
service began in the US.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1926 Feb 17, An avalanche
buried 75 in Sap Gulch, Bingham, Utah, and 40 died.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1926 Feb 19, Dr. Lane of
Princeton estimated the earth’s age at one billion years.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1926 Feb 22, Pope Pius rejected
Mussolini’s offer of aid to the Vatican.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1926 Feb 23, President Calvin
Coolidge opposed a large air force, believing it would be a menace
to world peace.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1926 Feb 25, Poland demanded a
permanent seat on the League Council.
(HN, 2/25/98)
1926 Feb 26, Dark Street in the
Bronx was renamed Lustre Street.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1926 Feb 28, Svetlana
Alliluyeva, daughter of Josef Stalin, author (My Life), was born.
(HN, 2/28/98)(MC, 2/28/02)
1926 Mar 3, James Merrill,
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (Divine Comedies), was born.
(HN, 3/3/01)
1926 Mar 3, International
Greyhound Racing Association formed in Miami, FL.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1926 Mar 4, De Geer government
in Netherlands took office.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1926 Mar 6, Alan Greenspan,
economist, presidential advisor, was born.
(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.E1)
1926 Mar 7, The first
successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation took place,
between New York City and London. AT&T began trans-Atlantic
telephone service via two-way radio this year.
(AP, 3/7/98)(WSJ, 10/26/00, p.A12)
1926 Mar 11, Ralph David
Abernathy, civil rights leader, was born.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1926 Mar 12, E.W. Scripps
(b.1854), founder of Scripps-Howard newspaper chain and the UP wire
service, died on his yacht off the coast of Liberia.
(www.ketupa.net/scripps.htm)
1926 Mar 16, Rocket science
pioneer Robert H. Goddard successfully tested the first
liquid-fueled rocket, in Auburn, Mass. It went 184' (56 meters).
(HN, 3/16/98)(AP, 3/15/07)
1926 Mar 24, Dario Fo, Italian
actor and playwright, was born in Leggiuno Sangiano on the banks of
Lake Maggiore. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997.
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.A15)(HN, 3/24/01)
1926 Mar 26, ACD de Graeff was
appointed Governor-General of Dutch East-Indies.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1926 Mar 26, The 1st
lip-reading tournament was held in America.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1926 Mar 26, U.S. oil companies
bought 190,000 tons of kerosene from Russia for $3.2 million.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1926 Mar 30, Feliks E.
Dzerzjinski (48), Lithuanian organizer (KGB), died. Felix
Dzerzhinsky was the founder of the communist secret police, the
Cheka.
(MC, 3/30/02)(WSJ, 10/15/02, p.D6)
1926 Mar 31, Sydney Chaplin,
son of Charlie, actor (Adding Machine, Psycho Sisters), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1926 Mar 31, John Fowles
(d.2005), English novelist, was born. His work included “The
Collector” (1963) and “The French Lieutenant's Woman” (1969).
(HN, 3/31/01)(SFC, 11/8/05, p.B5)
1926 Mar, A nationwide poll on
prohibition showed that people favored a modification of the
Volstead Act by a margin of 9 to 1.
(SFC, 3/16/01, WBb p.4)
1926 Apr 2, Riots took place
between Moslems and Hindus in Calcutta.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1926 Apr 3, Virgil Grissom
(d.1967), Lt. Col. USAF, astronaut (Mercury 4, Gemini 3), was born
in Mitchell, Ind. He was the Mercury and Gemini astronaut who was
killed in a fire while preparing for the first Apollo flight.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/grissom.html
(MC, 4/3/02)
1926 Apr 3, 1st performance of
Jean Sibelius' 7th Symphony in C.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1926 Apr 3, Robert Goddard
launched his 2nd flight of a liquid-fueled rocket.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1926 Apr 3, Italy established
corps of force in order to break powerful unions.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1926 Apr 5, Roger Corman,
producer, director (Little Shop of Horrors), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1926 Apr 5, The 1st issue of
Amazing Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback, went on sale. He
called the science fiction stories “scientifiction.”
(ON, 11/05, p.11)
1926 Apr 7, In San Luis Obispo,
Ca., lightning sparked a 5-day oil fire killing 2 people. Over 6
million barrels of oil were burned. Final damages were estimated at
$15 million.
(SFC, 4/7/09, p.D8)
1926 Apr 7, Mussolini's Irish
wife broke his Italian nose.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1926 Apr 9, Hugh Hefner,
publisher of Playboy Magazine, was born in Chicago.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hefner)
1926 Apr 11, Gervase de Peyer,
clarinetist, was born.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1926 Apr 16, The new Book of
the Month Club sent out its 1st selection: "Lolly Willows or
The Loving Huntsman" by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It went to nearly
5,000 members who had joined the Club, which had just been
established in New York City.
(http://tinyurl.com/gmvh6)
1926 Apr 21, Elizabeth
Alexandra Mary Windsor II, queen of England, was born.
(HN, 4/21/98)
1926 Apr 22, James Stirling,
Scottish D-day-parachutist, architect, knight, was born.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1926 Apr 23, J.P. Donlevey,
American-born Irish writer (The Ginger Man), was born.
(HN, 4/23/01)
1926 Apr 25, Puccini's opera
Turandot premiered at La Scala in Milan with Arturo Toscanini
conducting.
(HN, 4/25/01)
1926 Apr 25, In Iran (Persia),
Reza Kahn was crowned Shah and chose the name "Pehlevi".
(HN, 4/25/98)
1926 Apr 28, Harper Lee,
American novelist, was born. Her 1960 book, "To Kill a Mockingbird"
won a Pulitzer.
(HN, 4/28/99)(SSFC, 6/25/06, p.M3)
1926 May 1, Satchel Paige made
his pitching debut in Negro Southern League.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1926 May 2, US military
"intervened" in Nicaragua. [see May 3]
(MC, 5/2/02)
1926 May 3, A Pulitzer prize
was awarded to Sinclair Lewis (Arrowsmith).
(MC, 5/3/02)
1926 May 3, U.S. marines
landed in Nicaragua and remained until 1933.
(HN, 5/3/98)
1926 May 3, There was a British
general strike and 3 million workers supported the miners. The
strike lasted 9 days.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike)
1926 May 3, Napoleon V
Bonaparte (63), French pretender to the throne, died.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1926 May 5, Sinclair Lewis
refused his Pulitzer Prize for "Arrowsmith."
(MC, 5/5/02)
1926 May 6, Marguerite Piazza,
operatic soprano (Young Broadway), was born in New Orleans, LA.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1926 May 9, Americans Richard
Byrd and Floyd Bennett made the first flight over the North Pole.
[see 1888-1957, Byrd] Two teams of aviators competed to be the first
to fly over the North Pole. American Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd
and pilot Floyd Bennett claimed victory when they circled the North
Pole. But even today experts suspect that faulty navigation caused
Byrd to miss the North Pole. Later archivists determined that Byrd
was probably 150 miles short of the pole. His tri-motor Fokker
monoplane named Josephine Ford probably came within 2.25 degrees of
the pole.
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(TMC, 1994, p.1926)(SFC, 5/9/96,
p.A-13)(HN, 5/9/98)(HNPD, 5/13/99)
1926 May 9, Joseph Malaby Dent
(b.1849), British bookbinder turned publisher, died. He began
Everyman’s Library in 1906, a collection of low cost classic books.
Random House and Knopf debuted a revived line in 1991.
(WSJ, 1/9/07,
p.D4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Dent)
1926 May 11, Norwegian explorer
Roald Amundsen launched the dirigible Norge on a planned flight, not
merely over the pole, but all the way across the Arctic to Alaska.
Byrd and Bennett in Josephine Ford briefly accompanied Norge in a
gesture of goodwill.
(HNPD, 5/13/99)
1926 May 12, Dmitri
Shostakovitch's 1st Symphony premiered in Leningrad.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1926 May 12, Italian Col.
Umberto Nobile of the Italian army piloted his Norge dirigible over
the North Pole with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1926 May 15, Anthony Shaffer,
English playwright (Sleuth), twin brother of Peter Shaffer, was
born.
(HN, 5/15/01)
1926 May 15, Peter Shaffer,
English playwright (Equus, Amadeus), twin brother of Anthony
Shaffer, was born.
(HN, 5/15/01)
1926 May 16, In Ireland Eamon
de Valera founded the Fianna Fail party. It emerged from a split
among those in the Sinn Fein Party, who had rejected the Anglo-Irish
Treaty of 1921.
(www.ucd.ie/archives/html/collections/fiannafail.htm)
1926 May 17, Chiang Kai-shek
was made supreme war lord and "generalissimo" in Canton.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1926 May 18, Evangelist Aimee
Semple McPherson vanished while visiting a beach in Venice, Calif.;
she reappeared a month later, claiming to have been kidnapped.
(AP, 5/18/97)
1926 May 19, French air force
bombed Damascus, Syria. The French launched a major military
campaign in Syria to suppress a revolt by the Druze, which began in
1925 under the leadership of Sultan al-Atrash. A large French force
sent against them was defeated and the revolt spread into the Druze
portions of Lebanon. When the insurgents gained a foothold in
Damascus, the French bombarded the city.
(HNQ, 5/25/99)(MC, 5/19/02)
1926 May 20, Thomas Edison said
Americans prefer silent movies over talkies.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1926 May 21, Robert Creeley,
poet, was born.
(HN, 5/21/01)
1926 May 24, Paavo Nurmi ran
world record 3000 meters in 8:25.4.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1926 May 25, Miles Davis,
American jazz trumpeter, was born in Alton, IL. He is considered the
prophet of the "cool" school. His albums included The Birth of Cool
and Miles Ahead.
(HN, 5/25/99)(SC, 5/25/02)
1926 May 25, Kitty Kallen,
rocker, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1926 May 25, M von der
Grün, writer, was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1926 May 25, Symon Petlyura
(47), leader of Ukraine (pogroms), was assassinated.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1926 May 28, The US Customs
Court was created by congress.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1926 May 29, Charles Denner,
actor (And Now My Love), was born in Tarnow, Poland.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1926 May 30, Christine
Jorgensen, pioneer transsexual, was born.
(MC, 5/30/02)
1926 May 31, Portuguese
president Bernardino Machedo resigned after coup.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1927 May, Grace Fryer
(1893-1933) and 4 other former dial painters filed suit in the New
Jersey Supreme Court against U.S. Radium for medical expenses and
pain. They were dubbed the “Radium Girls” and their case was
championed by journalist Walter Lippman. The case was settled out of
court in 2008.
(AH, 10/07, p.34)
1926 May, In Japan Mount
Tokachidake erupted and left 144 people dead.
(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.A17)
1926 Jun 1, Ignacy Mocicki was
elected president of Poland.
(DTnet, 6/1/97)
1926 Jun 1, Actress Marilyn
Monroe (d.Aug 5, 1962), (born as Norma Jean Mortenson, later Norma
Jean Baker), was born in Los Angeles. "I don't mind living in a
man's world as long as I can be a woman in it."
(AP, 6/1/97)(AP, 8/5/99)(HN, 6/1/01)
1926 Jun 1, Andy Griffith,
actor, was born within one hour of Marilyn Monroe.
(SFC, 11/28/98, p.E4)
1926 Jun 2, Milo O'Shea, actor
(Barbarella, Romeo & Juliet), was born.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1926 Jun 3, Allen Ginsberg
(d.1997), poet, was born in Newark, New Jersey.
(SFC, 4/16/97, p.E3)
1926 Jun 3, Colleen Dewhurst,
actress (Maggie-Blue & Grey), was born in Montreal, Canada.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1926 Jun 5, David Wagoner, poet
and novelist (The Escape Artist), was born.
(HN, 6/5/01)
1926 Jun 7, Dick Williams,
choral director (Andy Williams Show), was born in Wall Lake, Iowa.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1926 Jun 11, Carlisle Floyd,
composer (Slow Dusk), was born in Latta, SC.
(Internet)
1926 Jun 12, Brazil quit the
League of Nations in protest over plans to admit Germany.
(HN, 6/12/98)
1926 Jun 17, Spain threatened
to quit the League of Nations if Germany was allowed to join.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1926 Jun 19, The first black
musician, DeFord Bailey, appeared on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry
show. 40 years later, Charley Pride, the most successful black
country performer ever, achieved a similar feat.
(DT, 6/19/97)
1926 Jun 19, The opera “King
Roger,” composed by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937),
premiered in Warsaw.
(Econ, 8/23/08,
p.73)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Roger)
1926 Jun 26, A memorial to the
first U.S. troops in France was unveiled at St. Nazaire.
(HN, 6/26/98)
1926 Jun 27, Frank O'Hara
(d.1966), American poet, was born in Baltimore. In 1998 David Lehman
published "The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School
of Poets."
(WSJ, 9/18/98, p.W8)(HN, 6/27/01)
1926 Jun 28, Mel Brooks,
comedian, actor, and director, was born. His films included "The
Producers" and "Blazing Saddles."
(HN, 6/28/99)
1926 Jun 29, Fascists in Rome
added an hour to the work day in an economic efficiency measure.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1926 Jun 30, Paul Berg, Nobel
Prize-winning biochemist, was born.
(HN, 6/30/01)
1926 Jul 2, Medgar Evers,
American civil rights leader in Mississippi, was born. He was
murdered in front of his house by Byron DeLa Beckwith.
(HN, 7/2/99)
1926 Jul 2, Lee Allen
Pittsburg, tenor sax (Walkin' With Mr. Lee), was born in Kansas.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1926 Jul 2, The U.S. Army Air
Corps was created by Congress. The Distinguish Flying Cross was
authorized.
(AP, 7/2/97)(HN, 7/2/98)(SC, 7/2/02)
1926 Jul 2, Emile Coue (b.1857
as Émile Coué de Châtaigneraie ), French
psychologist and pharmacist, died. He introduced a method of
psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic
autosuggestion. Working as an apothecary at Troyes from 1882 to
1910, Coué discovered what later came to be known as the
placebo effect. He became known for reassuring his clients by
praising each remedy's efficiency and leaving a small positive
notice with each given medication.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9)
1926 Jul 4, The NSDAP (Nazi)
party formed in Weimar.
(Maggio, 98)
1926 Jul 8, Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross, author, physician, educator, was born.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1926 Jul 9, Mathilde Krim,
geneticist, founder of the AIDS foundation, was born.
(HN, 7/9/01)
1926 Jul 9, Chiang Kai-shek was
appointed to national-revolutionary supreme commander.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1926 Jul 12, Gertrude Bell
(b.1868), British archeologist and intelligence officer, died in
Baghdad. From 1900 to 1913 she journeyed some 20,000 miles from
Istanbul to the Syrian desert and on to Iraq. In 2006 Georgina
Howell authored ”Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of
Gertrude Bell.”
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.79)(http://tinyurl.com/p59fy)
1926 Jul 14, Frank Figgins
found a spear point embedded into the matrix of rock containing
10,000 year-old bones of ancient bison in eastern New Mexico. The
site had been initially found by cowboy George McJunkin in 1908. The
finding established the existence of what came to be called the
Folsom culture.
(NH, 2/97, p.20)
1926 Jul 16, National
Geographic took the 1st natural-color undersea photos.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1926 Jul 21, Norman Jewison,
director (Moonstruck, ...and Justice For All), was born.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1926 Jul 26, Philippines
government asked the US to plebiscite for independence.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1926 Jul 31, In California
Highway 140, the "All-Year Highway, to Yosemite opened.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.39)
1926 Aug 3, Tony Bennett,
singer, was born in Queens, NY.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1926 Aug 5, Houdini stayed in a
coffin under water for 1 hr.
(MC, 8/5/02)
1926 Aug 6, Gertrude "Trudy"
Ederle (1905-2003), American Olympic gold medalist, became the first
woman to swim the English Channel. Before setting out from Cap
Griz-Nez, France, at 7:09 a.m., Ederle coated her body with layers
of lard and petroleum jelly to insulate her from the cold waters. On
that day, the sea was so rough that steamship crossings had been
cancelled, but Ederle swam on in spite of being buffeted by waves
and plagued by seasickness. She reached Dover at 9:40 p.m., after
swimming the Channel in 14 hours and 39 minutes. This time broke the
existing world record of 21 hours and 45 minutes set by British Navy
Captain Matthew Webb in 1875. Ederle died Nov 30, 2003. [see Sep
11,1951]
(AP, 8/6/97)(HNQ, 7/31/98)(HNPD, 8/30/98)(SFC,
12/1/03, p.A23)
1926 Aug 6, Warner Bros.
premiered its "Vitaphone" sound-on-disc movie system in New York
with a showing of "Don Juan" featuring music and sound effects.
(AP, 8/6/08)
1926 Aug 7, Stan Freberg,
satirist, ad executive, cartoon voice (Bertie), was born in LA,
Calif.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1926 Aug 7, The United States
declared non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War.
(HN, 8/7/98)
1926 Aug 10, Marie-Claire
Alain, French organist, composer, was born.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1926 Aug 11, Claus Von Bulow,
accused of murdering his wife, was born.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1926 Aug 12, John Derek, actor,
director (10, Annapolis Story), was born in LA, Calif.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1926 Aug 13, Fidel Castro,
revolutionary leader, president, was born in Biran, Cuba.
(USAT, 8/29/97, p.8A)(HN, 8/13/98)(WSJ, 8/5/06,
p.A9)
1926 Aug 20, There was an
uprising against Reza Shah Pahlavi in Persia.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1926 Aug 23, The death of
silent film actor Rudolph Valentino caused a worldwide frenzy among
his fans. Valentino, who appeared in only 14 major films during his
brief seven-year movie career, was idolized by countless women as
the "Great Lover" of the 1920s. Born in 1895 in Castellaneta, Italy,
Rodolfo di Valentina D’Antonguolla came to America in 1913 and
worked as a gardener, dishwasher and vaudeville dancer until he
moved to Hollywood and obtained his first important film role in
1921. In films like 1921’s The Sheik, Valentino mesmerized female
fans with his sex appeal and exotic good looks. In New York for the
1926 premiere of Son of the Sheik, the 31-year-old Valentino became
ill on August 15 and died of peritonitis on August 23. Valentino’s
death caused worldwide hysteria, with several women reportedly
committing suicide and riots breaking out in New York as thousands
of fans tried to view the body. In 2003 Emily Leider authored "Dark
Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino."
(AP, 8/23/97)(HN, 8/23/98)(HNPD, 8/29/98)(SFC,
6/16/03, p.D1)
1926 Aug 25, Pavlos
Kountouriotis became president of Greece.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWpavlos.htm)
1926 Aug 25, Thomas Moran
(b.1837), English-born American painter, died. His paintings of
Yellowstone helped persuade Congress to designate it a national
park. Moran painted "The Valley of the Cuernavaca." The painting was
stolen around 1975 from the National Museum of American Art in
Washington DC. It was recovered in 1995 at an auction house not far
from the museum. Moran was best known for works on the Grand Canyon
and Yellowstone National Park. Steven Good in Denver compiled a
catalogue raisonne on Moran and verified the above work.
(WSJ, 5/11/95, p. A-14)(SFC,10/15/97, p.D3)
1926 Sep 8, The League of
Nations Assembly voted unanimously to admit Germany.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1926 Sep 9, The National
Broadcasting Co. (NBC) was incorporated by the Radio Corporation of
America, which had originated as Marconi Wireless.
(AP, 9/9/08)(SFC, 8/2/99, p.B3)
1926 Aug 6, American Olympic
gold medalist Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle became the 1st woman to swim
the English Channel. Before setting out from Cap Griz-Nez, France,
at 7:09 a.m., Ederle coated her body with layers of lard and
petroleum jelly to insulate her from the cold waters. On that day,
the sea was so rough that steamship crossings had been cancelled,
but Ederle swam on in spite of being buffeted by waves and plagued
by seasickness. She reached Dover at 9:40 p.m., August 6, after
swimming the Channel in 14 hours and 39 minutes. This time broke the
existing world record of 21 hours and 45 minutes set by British Navy
Captain Matthew Webb in 1875. [see Sep 11,1951]
(AP, 8/6/97)(HNQ, 7/31/98)(HNPD, 8/30/98)
1926 Sep 15, Bobby Short,
singer and pianist, was born.
(HN, 9/15/00)
1926 Sep 16, John Knowles,
writer, was born. His work included "A Separate Peace."
(HN, 9/16/00)
1926 Sep 18, A hurricane hit
South Florida killing about 400 people and leaving some 50,000
homeless.
(Econ, 12/20/08, p.116)
1926 Sep 21, San Francisco held
a benefit to raise money for victims of a Sep 17 Florida hurricane
that killed 374-600 people.
(SFC, 9/21/01, WB p.5)
1926 Sep 23, John Coltrane,
influential jazz saxophonist, was born..
(HN, 9/23/00)
1926 Sep 23, Gene Tunney
(1897-1978), an ex-marine, defeated Jack Dempsey for the World
Heavyweight Boxing championship in Philadelphia. Tunney defeated
Dempsey again in a 1927 rematch and retired undefeated in 1928. In
2006 Jack Cavanaugh authored “Tunney: Boxing’s Brainiest Champ and
His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey.”
(Smith., 5/95, p.12)(SFC, 10/19/99, p.A22)(WSJ,
11/17/06, p.W6)
1926 Sep 25, Henry Ford
announced 8 hour, 5 day work week.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(MC, 9/25/01)
1926 Sep 25, The Convention to
Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, an international treaty
created under the auspices of the League of Nations, was first
signed in Geneva to be effective March 9, 1927.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention)
1926 Oct 1, In California 5
gasoline distribution companies announced they would lower the price
of gasoline to 18 cents a gallon to compete with the Richfield Oil
Co., which cut its price to 19 cents.
(SFC, 9/28/01, WB p.6)
1926 Oct 3, The NY Yankees
defeated the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1st game of this years’
baseball World Series.
(SFC, 9/28/01, WB p.6)
1926 Oct 5, Gottfried Michael
Koenig, composer, was born.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1926 Oct 8, Cesar Milstein,
molecular biologist, was born.
(HN, 10/8/00)
1926 Oct 8, Physicist Julius
Lilienfield filed a US patent application titled "Method and
Apparatus for Controlling Electric Currents.” This proposed the use
of semiconductors for switching and amplification purposes. He was
awarded US patent 1,745,175 on Jan 28, 1930.
(Econ, 8/20/11,
p.72)(www.jmargolin.com/history/1745175.pdf)
1926 Oct 9, NBC (National
Broadcasting Corporation) formed. [see Sep 9]
(MC, 10/9/01)
1926 Oct 11, Walter Swanson,
Michael Petrovich and John Duane were murdered. Clarence "Buck"
Kelly was hanged at San Quentin Prison for the murders on May 12,
1928.
(SFC, 5/9/03, p.E5)
1926 Oct 13, Ray Brown
(d.2002), jazz bass player, was born in Pittsburgh.
(HN, 10/13/00)(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A21)
1926 Oct 14, Son Thomas, blues
guitarist and singer, was born.
(HN, 10/14/00)
1926 Oct 14, The book
"Winnie-the-Pooh" by Alan Alexander Milne (d.1956) was
released. Milne wrote this and other stories, centering the tales
around his little son, Christopher Robin, and Christopher's stuffed
animals, like the honey-loving Pooh Bear, Eeyore (the donkey),
Piglet and Tigger. The geography was based on real places in 14,000
acres of Ashdown Forest, in the northwest corner of East Sussex,
England.
(Hem., 8/96, p.107)(MC, 10/14/01)
1926 Oct 15, Evan Hunter, [Ed
McBain], American writer (Blackboard Jungle), was born.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1926 Oct 15, Karl Richter,
composer and conductor, was born.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1926 Oct 16, Mohammed Nadir
Khan began a coup in Afghanistan and 1200 were killed.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1926 Oct 16, A troop ship sank
in the Yangtze River killing 1,200.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1926 Oct 18, Chuck Berry, rock
‘n’ roll star, famous for Johnny B. Goode, was born.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1926 Oct 18, Klaus Kinski,
[Nikolas Naksynski], actor (Little Drummer Girl, Nosferatu), was
born in Poland.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1926 Oct 18, George C. Scott,
actor (Patton, Bible, Taps, Hardcore), was born in Wise, Va.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1926 Oct 18, Ntozake Shange
(Paulette Williams), poet, playwright and novelist, was born.
(HN, 10/18/01)
1926 Oct 18, Frankfurter
Zeitung published Lenin's (d.1924) political testament.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1926 Oct 19, John C. Garand
patented a semi-automatic rifle.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1926 Oct 19, Russian Politburo
threw out Leon Trotsky and his followers.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1926 Oct 20, A hurricane in
Cuba killed 600.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1926 Oct 24, Charlie Russell
(b.1864), Western artist, died in Great Falls, Montana. He produced
some 4,000 works of art including a 12-by-25 foot “Lewis and Clark
Meeting Indians at Ross’ Hole,” which was hung in Montana’s Capitol.
(Arch, 7/02, p.6)(www.globalgallery.com)(WSJ,
3/16/06, p.A1)
1926 Oct 25, Galina
Vishnevskaya, soprano (Madame Butterfly), was born in Leningrad.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1926 Oct 29, Jonathan Stewart
Vickers, tenor, was born in Prince Albert, Canada.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1926 Oct 31, Magician Harry
Houdini died in Detroit of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a
ruptured appendix.
(AP, 10/31/97)
1926 Nov 2, Air Commerce Act
was passed providing federal aid for airlines and airports.
(HN, 11/2/98)
1926
Nov 3, Annie Oakley (b.1860), US sharp shooting star, died at
Greenville, Ohio. Chief Sitting Bull nicknamed her “Little Miss Sure
Shot” when she was a member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
(www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/oakl-ann.htm)
1926 Nov 5, Webster Edgerly
(b.1852), head of the New Jersey-based Ralston Health movement and
co-founder of Ralston Purina, died.
(Arch, 5/04, p.35)
1926 Nov 7, Joan Sutherland,
operatic singer, was born in Sydney, Australia. She retired in 1990
and in 1998 published her autobiography.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A20)(HN, 11/7/98)(MC, 11/7/01)
1926 Nov 8, George Gershwin's
musical "Oh, Kay," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1956 Nov 10, Gene de Paul's and
John Meyer's musical "Li'l Abner," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1956 Nov 10, Billie Holiday
returned to the New York City stage at Carnegie Hall after a
three-year absence.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1926 Nov 11, Pres. Calvin
Coolidge dedicated the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., in
honor of those who died in WW I.
(SSFC, 11/12/06, p.G6)(http://tinyurl.com/wz55k)
1926 Nov 15, The National
Broadcasting Co. debuted with a radio network of 24 stations.
(AP, 11/15/97)
1926 Nov 17, George Sterling
(d.1926), California poet and critic, committed suicide by swallowed
cyanide in the locker room of the Bohemian Club on Taylor Street in
SF. His wife had committed suicide by poison in 1918.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sterling)(SFC, 11/16/01, WB
p.G4)
1926 Nov 19, Trotsky and
Zinoviev were expelled from Politburo in the USSR.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1926 Nov 21, In Lithuania
nationalistic students organized an illegal march to protest the
liberal government’s soft policy on communists and other perceived
provocateurs.
(DrEE, 10/12/96, p.3)
1926 Nov 23, Noel Coward's
"This Was a Man," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1926 Nov 25, Poul [William]
Anderson, American sci-fi author (7 Hugos, Mirkheim), was born.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1926 Nov 27, Restoration of
Williamsburg, Virginia, began.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1926 Nov 29, W. Somerset
Maugham's "Constant Wife" premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1926 Dec 3, British reports
claimed that German soldiers were being trained in the USSR.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1926 Dec 5, Sergei Eisenstein's
"Battleship Potemkin," debuted.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1926 Dec 5, Claude [Oscar]
Monet (b.1840), French painter (impressionist), died at Giverny,
where he’d painted since 1883. Monet was one of the original
proponents of Impressionism and--despite failing eyesight--painted
fervently until his death. He was born in Paris, but grew up
observing nature on the Normandy coast near Le Havre. While studying
under Charles Gleyre, Monet met fellow students Fridiric Bazille,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. They broke with their
teacher and his conventions of painting that included, among other
traditions, the painting of outdoor landscapes in a studio. Although
he began to experiment with "series" in the late 1870s, his
trademark method only appeared in earnest in the 1890s. This
involved a series of paintings of the same subject under different
lighting and weather conditions. Monet remained committed to
Impressionism long after many of his contemporaries had abandoned
the style. In 2006 over 1000 letters to Monet were auctioned.
(SSFC, 5/20/01, p.T8)(HNQ, 5/25/01)(SFC, 12/9/06,
p.E2)
1926 Dec 7, Victor Kermit Kiam
II CEO (Remington shavers), NFL owner (Patriots), was born.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1926 Dec 7, A gas refrigerator
was patented.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1926 Dec 10, Part 2 of Hitler's
Mein Kampf was published.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1926 Dec 11, Willie "Big Mama"
Thornton, blues singer, was born.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1926 Dec 14, Theo van
Rysselberghe (64), Belgian painter (pointillism), died.
(MC, 12/14/01)
1926 Dec17, The military
right-wing opposition executed a coup d’etat in Lithuania and a
dictatorship was established under Antanas Smetona, who remained
president until the country was annexed by the USSR in 1940.
(Compuserve, Online Encyclopedia)(DrEE, 10/5/96,
p.5)
1926 Dec 19, Former Lithuanian
Pres. Aleksandras Stulginskis served for a few hours as acting
president, the 5th president of Lithuania, following a coup that
returned Antanas Smetona (1874-1944) to office.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandras_Stulginskis)
1926 Dec 23, Robert Bly,
American poet, editor, translator (Loving a Woman in 2 Worlds), was
born.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1926 Dec 25, Hirohito became
emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito (Hirohito
was formally enthroned almost two years later). This marked the
beginning of the Showa Period (1926-1989).
(AP, 12/25/97)(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1926 Dec 29, Germany and Italy
signed an arbitration treaty.
(HN, 12/29/98)
1926 Dec 29, Rainer M. Rilke
(51), Austrian songwriter and writer (Wise Queen), died.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1926 Fidel Castro, leader of
Cuba, was born.
(SFEC, 10/13/96, p.A18)
1926 Karel Reisz (d.2002), film
director, was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. He fled Nazi
occupation in 1938. His film career began in Britain and moved on to
Hollywood where his work included "The French Lieutenant’s Woman."
(SFC, 11/28/02, p.A30)
1926 California poet Lew Welch
was born.
(SFC, 12/9/03, p.D1)
1926 Guy Pene du Bois painted
"Opera Box."
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1926 Otto Dix painted the
portrait "The Journalist Sylvia von Hardin."
(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A24)
1926 Alberto Giacometti began
his sculpture "Spoon Woman" -finished in 1927.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.62)
1926 Arshile Gorky began
painting "The Artist and His Mother." The painting took ten years
and was based on a photograph taken in Armenia in 1912, not long
before his mother died of starvation.
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1926 Charles Demuth
(1883-1935), American painter and illustrator, made a watercolor
still life.
(WUD, 1994, p.385)(SFEM, 6/29/97, p.4)
1926 Sargent Johnson
(1888-1967), African-American artist in SF, made his copper piece
"Mask of a Girl."
(SFEC, 4/12/98, DB p.43)
1926 Rene Magritte painted "The
Desert Catapult." The work exhibited the influence of de Chirico
with the shadow of an unseen figure in the picture.
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.B5)
1926 Matisse painted
"Odalisque." He produced more than 50 harem nudes between 1919 and
1929, a period where he spent winters by the seaside in Nice. (WSJ,
12/11/97, p.A21)
1926 Georgia O’Keeffe painted
"Abstraction."
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1926 The first "Dictionary of
American Biography" was published under the auspices of American
Council of Learned Societies. Only the dead were eligible for
inclusion and revisions were published periodically. A new effort
was proposed in 1986 and appeared in 1999 as the new "American
National Biography."
(WSJ, 5/5/99, p.A20)
1926 An educational textbook on
California was titled “Seeing California.” It featured Mr. Magic
Carpet showing students the wonders of the Golden State.
(SFC, 6/28/11, p.E1)
1926 Sir Arthur Stanley
Eddington wrote "The Internal Constitution of the Stars."
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.69)
1926 Sir Gerald Ellison
authored "The Perils of Amateur Strategy." It was about the
disastrous allied campaign at Gallipoli during World War I.
(AP, 11/18/06)
1926 H.W. Fowler wrote his
"Dictionary of Modern English Usage."
(WSJ, 12/2/96, p.A16)
1926 Sigmund Freud authored
"Inhibitions, Symptoms, Anxiety."
(WSJ, 5/5/06, p.A16)
1926 Sidney Kelly (d.2001 at
92), published his 1st Blue Book of Motor Car Values. It was based
on a list begun by his brother Leslie Kelly.
(SFC, 12/8/01, p.A23)
1926 Paul de Kruif authored
"Microbe Hunters."
(ON, 12/00, p.11)
1926 Nozaki Nobuchika, Japanese
scholar, authored “Explanatory Notes on Auspicious Designs,” a work
on the symbolism of Chinese art.
(WSJ, 11/22/06, p.D8)
1926 Arthur Schnitzler of
Austria authored his novel "Traumovelle." English versions were
called "Dream Story" or "Rhapsody." It was the basis for the 1999
Kubrick film "Eyes Wide Shut."
(SFC, 7/24/99, p.B1)
1926 Konstantin Stanislavsky of
the Moscow Art Theater authored "An Actor Prepares," which codified
his famous "Method" for actors.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.C4)
1926 Vladimir Vernadsky,
Russian geochemist, published his book: "The Biosphere." He picks up
the term from Swiss geologist Eduard Suess, who coined the term in
the 19th century in a monograph about the Alps.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.3,243)
1926 Hemingway published "The
Sun Also Rises."
(TMC, 1994, p.1926)
1926 Virginia Woolf, writer,
and Roger Fry, art critic, assembled the book "Victorian Photographs
of Famous Men and Fair Women," which featured the work of
photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.
(SFEM, 9/19/99, p.84)
1926 The play "Chicago" was
written. It was made into a film in 1942 and a musical in 1975.
(WSJ, 11/15/96, p.A14)
1926 Actress Mae West starred
in the Broadway play “Sex.” The comedy-drama "Sex" caused a scandal
and police closed it down in 1927 after 375 performances.
(WSJ, 11/18/06, p.P10)(SSFC, 4/15/01, DB
p.35)(SFC, 6/24/02, p.D2)
1926 Eva Le Gallienne
(1899-1996) founded the Le Gallienne Civic Repertory Theatre in
Greenwich Village and staged "The Master Builder" in the first
season.
(SFC, 10/16/96, E5)
1926 Eugene O’Neill wrote his
play "The Great God Brown." It was about a failed artist soured by
life and trapped in marriage.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A16)
1926 George Antheil composed
"Ballet Mecanique." It was originally meant to accompany an abstract
film by Man Rey, Fernand Leger, and Dudley Murphy, but the score was
twice as long as the film.
(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.37)
1926 Martha Graham (d.1991)
gave her 1st solo concert as a dancer and choreographer. She
continue to perform until 1970.
(WSJ, 6/4/02, p.D7)
1926 Bela Bartok composed a
Piano Sonata.
(SFEC, 10/13/96, BR p.4)
1926 Berg’s "Wozzeck" was
premiered at the Berlin State Opera.
(SFC, 10/19/96, A22)
1926 Alban Berg composed his
six-part "Lyric Suite." It was later deciphered as a love letter to
his mistress written in musical code.
(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)
1926 Irving Berlin wrote his
tune “Blue Skies.”
(MT, Fall/99, p.24)
1926 Leos Janacek (1854- 1928)
composed his opera "The Makropulos Case."
(WSJ, 1/3/96, p.A-7)(WSJ, 2/26/00, p.A20)
1926 Roy Turk wrote the hit
song "Are You Lonesome Tonight."
(WSJ, 2/2/00, p.W8)
1926 The SF Fairmont Hotel
opened a 6,000-square-foot penthouse suite as a private residence,
taking up the entire 8th floor. In 2007 it rented for $12,500 a
night.
(SSFC, 2/4/07, p.F1)
1926 Walter Gropius built the
Bauhaus is Dessau, Germany. It became a monument to the Int'l.
style.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.7)
1926 The Benbow Inn opened in
Benbow, Ca. It was built by architect Albert Farr, famous for his
Wolf House, the Jack London home in Glen Ellen.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, p.T6)
1926 The Yiddish Folk Theater
was built by L.N. Jaffe in New York’s Lower East Side.
(NH, 11/96, p.22)
1926 The paddle-wheeled Delta
Queen was built in California using a steel hull constructed in
Britain. She first ran between Sacramento and SF. During WW II she
was turned into a floating barracks for soldiers and as a ferry in
the SF Bay. After that she was towed through the Panama Canal and up
to her new home port in Cincinnati, Ohio, from where she made
excursions on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
(Econ, 7/19/08, p.43)
1926 The Los Angeles Central
Library was constructed.
(Hem., Nov. ‘95, p.77)
1926 The Antioch Bridge, a
21-foot wide span with a lift section for ships traveling up the San
Joaquin River to Stockton, was constructed. It was the Bay Area’s
first toll bridge.
(SFC, 2/2/98, p.A16)
1926 In Woodside, Ca.,
Architect George Washington Smith built a 17,000 square-foot Spanish
Colonial Revival home for copper baron Daniel C. Jackling. In 1984
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, bought the property. In
2004 Jobs was granted the right to tear the structure down if nobody
agrees to move it within a year. In 2007 the state Supreme Court
refused to let Jobs demolish the 30-room mansion.
(SFC, 12/15/04, p.B3)(SFC, 4/27/07, p.B3)
1926 On the SF, Ca., peninsula
Skyline Blvd. reached down to La Honda Road.
(Ind, 6/21/03, p.5A)
1926 San Mateo High School was
constructed at Poplar and Delaware. In 2001 it was deemed
seismically unfit and closed in May. Preservationists lost their
battle to save it and demolition began Dec 13, 2002.
(SFC, 5/19/01, p.A13)(SFC, 8/31/02, p.A19)(SFC,
12/14/02, p.A17)
1926 Oakland’s Bellevue social
club began in a 3-story Victorian on the shores of Lake Merritt as
the Women’s Athletic Club. In the 1950s working women and Jewish
women were allowed to join and membership opened to men in 1985. In
2006 it faced a declining membership and associated financial
problems.
(SFC, 9/29/06, p.B9)
1926 The Richmond Municipal
Natatorium, a swimming pool, was built in Richmond, Ca., and became
known as the Plunge. It closed in Aug, 2000, due to earthquake
damage. The facility planned to reopen in 2009 following a $7
million renovation.
(SFC, 6/17/03, p.D1)(SFC, 3/14/09, p.B1)
1926 The architectural firm of
Wurster, Bernardi and Emmons was founded by William Wurster.
Theodore Bernardi joined in 1934, and Donn Emmons joined in 1938.
(SFC, 9/3/97, p.A20)
1926 The Key System launched
the 276-foot Peralta ferry boat. It was the sister ship to the Yerba
Buena and ran between Oakland and SF.
(SFC, 12/26/98, p.A24)
1926 Edgar Wakefield McLellan
purchased 61 acres in South San Francisco along El Camino for his
floral business.
(Ind, 7/6/02, 5A)
1926 Mattie Chandler was
elected mayor of Richmond, Ca.
(SFC, 7/6/01, WBb p.8)
1926 James L. Flood, son of
"Bonanza King" James C. Flood, died and left an estate of $18
million. Constance Stearn (Constance May Flood), an alleged
illegitimate daughter, petitioned the court for a daughter’s share
in the estate. Her trial started Jul 20, 1931.
(SMMB)
1926 In San Francisco the
8-storey apartment building at 2298 Pacific St., designed by
architect Edward Eyestone Young, was completed.
(SSFC, 12/11/11, p.C3)
1926 In SF the 12-floor
apartment building at 2500 Steiner St., designed by Conrad Alfred
Meussdorffer, was erected at a cost of some $500,000.
(SFCM, 6/3/07, p.17)
1926 The SF Fairmont Hotel
opened a 6,000-square-foot penthouse suite as a private residence,
taking up the entire 8th floor. In 2007 it rented for $12,500 a
night.
(SSFC, 2/4/07, p.F1)
1926 In SF the 6-story Adam
Grant Building underwent extensive remodeling and expansion next
door to 130 Bush. It was home to a dry goods manufacturer and
wholesaler (Never Rip Overalls).
(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR p.4)
1926 In SF the 6-story Ben Hur
apartment building was built at the corner of Hyde and Ellis.
(SFC, 3/16/09, p.E10)
1926 In SF the 25-story
Hunter-Dulin building at 111 Sutter St., designed by NY architects
Schultze and Weaver, was built on the old site of the Lick Hotel. It
was the only Chateauesque/Romanesque design in the city. Fiction
detective Sam Spade had his office on the 6th floor.
(SSFM, 10/12/02, p.13)(SSFC, 7/10/11,
p.D2)(http://tinyurl.com/68rn88y)
1926 In SF the 13-story Castle
Apartments at 823-829 Geary St., designed by C.O. Clausen, were
built.
(SSFC, 8/28/11, p.C2)
1926 In SF the Alhambra Theatre
on Polk St. near Union opened.
(SFC, 2/12/98, p.E1)
1926 In SF the Balboa movie
theater was built in the Richmond District by Sam Levin.
(SFCM, 10/5/03, p.6)
1926 In SF the Harding Theater
was built on Alamo Square at Divisedero and Hayes. Developers in
2005 planned to raze it for condos and retail space. In 2008 a
developer planned to restore much of the interior for commercial or
entertainment purposes along with an adjacent 8-unit condo.
(SFC, 1/14/05, p.F1)(SFC, 8/29/08, p.B1)
1926 In SF the Roosevelt
Theater opened on 16th St. as a vaudeville house. The "Roosie" soon
became a movie theater and was later renamed the York.
(SFC, 5/29/00, p.A26)
1926 In San Francisco Mayor
Rolph dedicated the new $2 million Relief Home on the site of the
old facility. The main building at Laguna Honda was constructed. It
was designed by architect John Reid Jr., brother-in-law of SF Mayor
James Rolph. The new hospital was named the Laguna Honda Home in
place of the former Almshouse.
(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A17)(PI, 5/30/98, p.5A)(SFC,
8/26/08, p.B5)
1926 In SF the Royal Theater on
Polk St. changed from a nickelodeon to a movie house.
(SFC, 2/24/98, p.B5)
1926 In SF Henry Doelger built
25 homes on 39th Ave., his first year in business.
(GTP, 1973, p.108)
1926 In SF George Whitney
became general manager of Looff’s operations at the beach and the
park became Whitney’s Playland-at-the-Beach. By 1942 he owned
everything from Sutro Baths to Fulton St.
(SSFC, 7/3/05,
p.F6)(www.pdxhistory.com/html/playland.html)
1926 The President Hotel opened
in downtown Kansas City, Mo. It was the first hotel in the city that
could make its own ice. It re-opened in 2006 after being closed for
25 years.
(SSFC, 11/12/06, p.G6)
1926 Queen Marie of Romania
spoke at the dedication ceremony of the unfinished Maryhill Museum
in Washington state. Sam Hill, railroad magnate, built a replica of
Stonehenge as a monument to Klickitat County soldiers who lost their
lives in the World War on the premises. His nearby mansion later
became the Maryhill Museum of Art.
(AM, 9/01, p.10)
1926 The town of Hana on Maui
Island, Hawaii, was linked by road to the rest of Maui.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, p.T8)
1926 Ira Gershwin married
Leonore Strunsky.
(SFC, 12/4/96, p.E3)
1926 Monroe Boston Strause, the
Pie King, made the first chiffon pie.
(SFC,1/22/97, zz-1 p.2)
1926 The American Eugenics
Society was founded and supported the position that US upper classes
were justified in their positions of wealth and power because of
their genetic superiority.
(V.D.-H.K.p.399)
1926 The US Rockefeller
Foundation awarded $250,000 toward the creation of the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry in Germany.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.D6)
1926 The Book of the Month Club
was founded.
(SFEC, 7/12/98, Par p.13)
1926 Carter G. Woodson launched
Negro History Week.
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 37)
1926 Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
refused to accept the Pulitzer Prize for fiction he was awarded for
the novel "Arrowsmith," saying that awards made writers "safe,
polite, obedient and sterile."
(HNQ, 5/18/98)
1926 Johnny Miles (d.2003 at
97) of Canada won the Boston Marathon.
(BS, 6/26/03, 7A)
1926 Samuel Ryder of Lancashire
(d.1935), England, came up with the idea of biannual golf matches
between the English and Americans. He made a lot of money selling
penny-a-pack seeds. The Ryder Cup of golf is named after him.
(SFC, 9/26/98, p.E4)
1926 Abe Saperstein created the
Harlem Globetrotters, an all-black player basketball entertainment
team.
(SFC, 1/2/98, p.E3)
1926 Aristide Briand (d.1932),
11-time premier of France, won a Nobel Prize.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1926 Johannes Fibiger won a
Nobel Prize for supposedly finding the cause of cancer.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A17)
1926 Calvin Coolidge gave a
speech that included the oft quoted phrase: "The business of America
is business." The speech actually starts out: "After all, the chief
business of the American people is business... [and goes on to end
with] Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as
the chief end of existence... So long as wealth is made the means
and not the end, we need not greatly fear it."
(WSJ, 4/3/96, p.A23)
1926 The US sent marines to
Nicaragua to control a rebellion and stayed for seven years.
(TMC, 1994, p.1926)
1926 The US Railway Labor Act
was passed to protect vital transportation services against labor
actions.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, p.A1)
1926 A federal law was passed
that prohibited the commercial sale of bass gamefish.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, Z1 p.2)
1926 The Florida land bubble
burst following a severe hurricane. One Miami Beach business lot had
reportedly surged in value from $800 to $150,000.
(WSJ, 2/1/00, p.B1)
1926 In Chicago the Hawthorne
Arms Hotel, headquarters for Al Capone, was machine-gunned by rival
mobsters.
(SFC, 5/1/98, p.A13)
1926 A collection of US roads
from Chicago to Los Angeles were improved and formed what would be
designated as US 66. It was later replaced by 3 interstates, I-55 in
Illinois, I-44 in Missouri and Oklahoma, and I-40 to LA. Route 66
was decertified in 1985. In 2006 Arthur Krim authored “Route 66:
Iconography of the American Highway.”
(WSJ, 6/17/06, p.P8)
1926 The town of Monsanto was
founded in southeast Illinois by Monsanto Corp. as a tax and
regulation-free dumping location. The name was changed to Sauget in
the 1970s, after Leo Sauget, the first town president. The area was
later identified as one of the most polluted communities in the
region. In 1992 the rock band Uncle Tupelo produced the song “Sauget
Wind,” which included the verse They’re poisoning the air / For
personal wealth…”
(WSJ, 10/3/06, p.A1)
1926 The Aunt Jemima Mills Co.
was purchased by the Quaker Oats Company of Chicago.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima)
1926 U.S. Radium stopped
processing radium at its Orange, NJ, facility. In 1983 the EPA put
the 2-acre plant site on its Superfund national Priorities List.
In2006 the EPA declared the site clean and that concerns over
contaminated groundwater had been effectively addressed.
(AH, 10/07, p.37)
1926 Coxon Pottery of Wooster,
Ohio, began operations about this time and continued to 1930.
(SFC, 10/4/06, p.G2)
1926 Walter P. Chrysler renamed
Maxwell Chalmers to the Chrysler Corp.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1926 Frederic J. Fisher
(1878-1941) and his brother Charles (1880-1963), founders of the
Fisher Body Co., sold their operations to GM.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1926 Charles Stewart Mott
(1875-1973) established a family foundation that focused on social
enterprises around Flint, Mich. He had earlier sold the family’s
wheel and axle business to General Motors and become its largest
shareholder.
(SFC, 6/16/08,
p.B3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stewart_Mott)
1926 GM opened a plant in
Osaka, Japan.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1926 Firestone Tire and Rubber
Co. created the world's largest plantation at Harbel, Liberia, and
rubber became the backbone of the economy. Firestone had signed a
99-year concession agreement with the Liberian government in the
1920s to grow and export rubber.
(AP, 7/1/03)(NG, Feb, 04)(AP, 10/30/09)
1926 The Isotta Fraschini Tipo
8A S. Roadster by Fleetwood was commissioned by Rudolph Valentino.
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.D4)
1926 McKesson & Robbins was
purchased by Girard & Co., a NY drug company run by Frank Donald
Coster, for $1 million.
(WSJ, 6/30/99, p.B1)
1926 Montgomery Ward opened its
1st store in Plymouth, Indiana.
(WSJ, 12/29/00, p.A3)
1926 The Quaker Oats Co. bought
the R.T. Davis Milling Co. along with the Aunt Jemima recipes and
trademarks.
(SFC,10/22/97, Z1 p.7)
1926 RCA organized the National
Broadcasting Co.
(WSJ, 11/4/99, p.B6)
1926 The Steel Products Co. was
renamed Thompson Products, Inc., in honor of Charles E. Thompson.
(F, 10/7/96, p.68)
1926 Tinsley Laboratories, a
precision optics firm, was founded. In 1997 the company was acquired
by Silicon Valley Group.
(WSJ, 11/28/97, p.A8)
1926 Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories
was founded. [see Wyeth 1860]
(SFC, 1/21/98, p.B2)
1926 AT&T Bell Labs
scientists invented sound motion pictures.
(WSJ, 9/22/95, p.A-7)
1926 Drs. George R. Minot,
William P. Murphy and George H. Whipple cured pernicious anemia with
liver extract. They won the 1934 Nobel Prize in Medicine and
Physiology for this work.
(Smith., May. 1995, p.14)
1926 The first spring-driven,
pop-up toaster was introduced by Toastmaster.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 4/26/00, Z1 p.5)
1926 Werner Heisenberg, German
scientist, formulated his uncertainty principle. It stated that the
precision of a time measurement is limited by the precision of a
corresponding energy measurement. So the more accurately you try to
measure the position of a particle, the less accurately you can
measure its speed, and vice versa. This soon led Heisenberg, Erwin
Schrodinger and Paul Dirac to reformulate mechanics into a new
theory called quantum mechanics. The new field of quantum mechanics
described matter on the scale of subatomic particles.
(BHT, Hawking, p.55)(NH, 5/96, p.72)(Econ,
9/2/06, p.71)
1926 Erwin Schrodinger,
Austrian physicist, generalized the original de Broglie idea and
wrote down the wave-mechanical equation. He proved that the proper
vibration frequencies of the electron waves surrounding the proton
in a hydrogen atom coincide exactly with the energy levels as
calculated on the basis of Bohr’s theory, which, in turn, coincided
with the results of observation.
(SCTS, p.61)
1926 Karl Prindle (d.1998 at
95) helped develop a moisture-proof version of cellophane while
working for De Pont. He later invented the zip tape strip for
opening anything sealed with cellophane.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D7)
1926 Erik Rotheim of Norway
invented the aerosol can.
(SFEC, 1/17/99, Z1 p.1)
1926 Catharine Morris Cox,
American psychologist, led a study to estimate the IQs of eminent
people who live between 1450-1850. Her results were published in the
"Genetic Studies of Genius."
(SFEC, 10/31/99, Par p.6)
1926 F. Blom and O. La Farge
first described the great Olmec ceremonial center of La Venta in the
state of Tabasco, Mexico.
(RFH-MDHP, p.241)
1926 Luther Burbank, Santa Rosa
horticulturist, died at age 77.
(SSFM, 4/29/01, p.11)
1926 Mary Cassatt (b.1845),
artist, died in Paris.
(WSJ, 11/5/98, p.A20)
1926 Eugene V. Debs died. Debs
ran for president five separate times on the Socialist ticket from
1900 to 1920 twice earning close to a million votes. Debs an
engaging and effective orator was a lifelong labor organizer and
advocate. He became increasingly critical of traditional American
politics in the 1890s. In 1898, two years after campaigning for
Democratic-Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan,
Debs established the Socialist Party of America (although the name
was not officially adopted until 1901). He garnered a little over
86,000 votes in the 1900 election, but surged to some 400,000 in
1904. In 1912, he earned about 900,000 votes—almost 6% of the
popular vote. When he ran for the Socialists again in 1920
(having refused the nomination in 1916), he polled 915,000 votes,
which was only 3.4% of the popular vote by then. He was also in
prison, having been convicted of sedition under the 1917 Espionage
Act. Released by presidential pardon in 1921.
(HNQ, 11/1/00)
1926 Antoni Gaudi, eccentric
architect, died. His work included the Sagrada Familia Church with
its Torre del Nacimento (Tower of Birth) in Barcelona.
(WSJ, 7/21/00, p.W12)
1926 Rudolph Valentino died.
(TMC, 1994, p.1926)
1926 Albania and Italy signed
the First Treaty of Tirana, which guaranteed Zogu's political
position and Albania's boundaries.
(www, Albania, 1998)
1926 In Azerbaijan the region’s
1st Turkology Congress convened in Baku to discuss the alphabet
issue. They chose the Latin alphabet for all Turkic-speaking peoples
by a 101-7 vote.
(WSJ, 10/24/00, p.A12)
1926 The Bahamanian government
transferred designation of Columbus’ landfall to Watling Island and
renamed it San Salvador.
(NH, 10/96, p.23)
1926 Sir Montagu Norman,
governor of the Bank of England, got Britain back on the gold
standard with help by a loan organized by Benjamin Strong, head of
the US Federal Reserve of New York.
(Econ, 1/10/09, p.73)
1926 A general strike was
crushed by British authorities under PM Stanley Baldwin.
(SFC, 11/29/99, p.A26)
1926 In Britain Agatha
Christie, mystery writer, disappeared from her native Devon.
Scotland Yard undertook a massive search and found her registered at
the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. She had checked in as Nancy Neel,
the name of her husband’s mistress, and was thought to be suffering
from hysterical amnesia.
(SFEC,10/26/97, p.T5)
1926 Britain’s Imperial
Chemical Industries (ICI) was formed by the merger of four chemical
companies and was a pioneer in the plastics industry.
(Hem., 1/97, p.27)(http://tinyurl.com/3w5euy)
1926 In England Emma Alice
Smith disappeared as she cycled between her home and a nearby
railway station 83 years ago. She had worked as a servant in a large
house near her home in the village of Waldron, about 60 miles (100
kilometers) south of London. Her disappearance remained unsolved,
and her body missing, until 2007, when David Wright, the teenager's
great-nephew, came forward to tell police about a confession, a
long-held family secret. A confession by Emma Alice's sister, Lily,
(d.1995) said a gentleman, on his deathbed sometime in 1952 to 1953,
had confessed to killing her sister.
(AP, 2/4/09)
1926 Arthur Meighen changed to
the Conservative Party, and again served Canada as its 9th Prime
Minister.
(CFA, ‘96, p.81)
1926 Chiang Kai-shek and his
Nationalists tried to consolidate power in China.
(TMC, 1994, p.1926)
1926 Publicis, a Paris-based
advertising firm, was founded by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet.
(Econ, 12/10/11, p.71)
1926 J. Oswald of Freiburg,
Germany, patented a moving eye mechanism for use in clock cases
shaped like dogs, owls and turbaned women.
(SFC, 1/23/08, p.G4)
1926 Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), a
Muslim organization, was founded in Indonesia.
(Econ, 12/11/04, p.41)
1926 The Tnuva Central
Cooperative for the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Israel was
founded as a dairy cooperative. By 2006 it was Israel’s largest food
concern.
(WSJ, 10/4/06, p.A11)
1926 In Italy the primitive
sleigh technique was used to haul Mussolini’s celebrated Monolith,
from Carrara to the seaport for transport to Rome.
(SFEC,10/19/97, p.T5)
1926 In Mexico the evangelical
church "Light of the World" was founded by the father of Samuel
Joaquin Flores.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A8,10)
1926 In Peru the Museo
Arqueologico Rafael Larco Herrera was founded in Lima by
archeologist Rafael Larco Hoyle and named after his father.
(SFEM, 4/13/97, p.16)
1926 Ataturk introduced a civil
code in Turkey that ended the Muslim law allowing husbands to
divorce their wives unilaterally.
(Econ, 3/19/05, Survey p.10)
1926 A Turkish state code
designated the husband as head of the family. The wife had no legal
say in decisions concerning the home or children. Equal status was
attained in 2001 and made effective Jan 1, 2002.
(SFC, 11/23/01, p.A21)
1926 In Vietnam Ngo Van Chieu,
a government official, founded Cao Dai, a religion that mixed
elements of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam and other
religions. It was repressed by the communists after 1975. By 2008
restrictions were eased.
(Econ, 4/26/08, SR p.5)
1926-1930 W.L. Mackenzie King, Liberal Party,
again serves as the 10th Prime Minister of Canada.
(CFA, ‘96, p.81)
1926-1931 Joseph P. Kennedy spent these 5 years in
the film business. In 2009 Cari Beauchamp authored “Joseph Kennedy
Presents: His Hollywood Years.”
(WSJ, 2/6/09, p.A11)
1926-1935 Mark Sullivan wrote "Our Times," a six
volume history of the century’s first quarter. The book was edited
down to one volume by Dan Rather and associates in 1995 and released
by Scribner’s as "Our Times: America at the Birth of the 20th
Century."
(WSJ, 12/15/95, p.A-16)
1926-1940 Three million divorces were legalized in
the US.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.40)
1926-1982 Cynthia Propper Seton, American writer:
"In America, to look a couple of years younger than you actually are
is not only an achievement for which you are to be congratulated, it
is patriotic."
(AP, 6/17/99)
1927 Jan 7, Commercial
transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and
London.
(AP, 1/7/98)
1927 Jan 9, Fire in Laurier
Palace cinema in Montreal killed 78 children.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1927 Jan 12, U.S. Secretary of
State Kellogg claimed that Mexican rebel Plutarco Calles was aiding
the communist plot in Nicaragua.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1927 Jan 13, A woman took a
seat on the NY Stock Exchange breaking the all-male tradition.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1927 Jan 14, Mary Livingstone
(born as Sadye Marks) married Jack Benny. She appeared as Mary
Livingstone on The Jack Benny Program (also called The Jack Benny
Show ) through its various sponsors on radio and then to
television--until 1965. Jack Benny, who cultivated a fake
personality of a miserly wiseacre, was always willing to be the
brunt of jokes and Mary supplied many of them. In fact, Benny
credited his wife with the biggest laugh of the long-running
comedy--bigger than the famous "Your money or your life"
routine--not with a joke, but with three simple words: "Oh, shut
up." They were married until his death in 1974. She wrote a memoir
about him in 1978.
(HNQ,
3/28/01)(www.accuracyproject.org/cbe-Benny,Jack.html)
1927 Jan 15, The Dumbarton
Bridge (drawbridge) opened carrying the first auto traffic across
the San Francisco bay.
(HN, 1/15/99)(Ind, 5/23/00,14A)
1927 Jan 17, Eartha Kitt
(d.2008), American singer and actress (Catwoman-Batman), was born in
South Carolina.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eartha_Kitt)
1927 Jan 17, Juliette Gordon
Low (b.1860), founder of the Girl Scouts (1912), died in Savannah,
Georgia. In 2012 Stacy A. Cordery authored “Juliette Gordon Low: The
Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts.”
(SSFC, 3/18/12,
p.F4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliette_Gordon_Low)
1927 Jan 19, British government
decided to send troops to China.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1927 Jan 24, British
expeditionary force of 12,000 was sent to China to protect
concessions at Shanghai.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1927 Jan 30, Olof Palme, PM of
Sweden (1969-76, 1982-86), was born in Stockholm.
(MC, 1/30/02)
1927 Jan, Abdul Aziz became
King of Hejaz, Nejd and its Dependencies (later Saudi Arabia).
(www.rogersstudy.co.uk/hejaz/al_nahda/al_nahda.html)
1927 Feb 2, Stan Getz, jazz
saxophonist, was born in Philadelphia.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.C4)
1927 Feb 8, Stanley Baker,
actor (Concrete Jungle, Zorro, Zulu), was born in Ferndale, Wales.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1927 Feb 10, (Mary Violet)
Leontyne Price, opera singer, was born.
(HN, 2/10/01)
1927 Feb 17, A fierce storm hit
the Pacific Coast and the death toll reached 24 with some 3,000 left
homeless.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.G8)
1927 Feb 18, The U.S. and
Canada established diplomatic relations independently of Great
Britain.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1927 Feb 20, Sidney Poitier,
American actor, was born. He became the first African American to
win an Oscar for his role in "Lilies in the Field."
(HN, 2/20/99)
1927 Feb 20, Roy Cohn, lawyer,
"grand inquisitor" (for Sen Joseph McCarthy), was born.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1927 Feb 20, Golfers in SC were
arrested for violating Sabbath.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1927 Feb 21, Erma Bombeck,
author and humorist, was born. She became an American syndicated
columnist whose column "At Wit's End" humorously dealt with life as
a wife and mother. Her work included "The Grass is Always Greener
Over the Septic Tank."
(HN, 2/21/01)
1927 Feb 21, Hubert de
Givenchy, fashion designer, was born in Beauvais, France.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1927 Feb 21, Franz Lehar's
opera "Zarewitsch," premiered.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1927 Feb 23, President Coolidge
signed the Radio Act, a bill creating the Federal Radio Commission,
forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Commerce
Secretary Herbert Hoover established the Federal Radio Commission to
prevent interference among radio signals by allocating broadcast
spectrum.
(WSJ, 11/3/97, p.A20)(AP, 2/23/98)(Econ, 8/14/04,
p.61)
1927 Feb 27, For the 2nd Sunday
in a row golfers in SC were arrested for violating Sabbath.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1927 Mar 1, Harry Belafonte,
calypso singer (Buck and the Preacher), was born in Harlem, NYC.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1927 Mar 1, Robert Heron Bork,
judge, nominated for supreme court, was born.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1927 Mar 1, Edward R. Bohner
began serving as prohibition administrator for Northern California
under National Prohibition Commissioner J.M. Doran. Bohner resigned
June 18, 1929.
(SFC, 6/18/04, p.F2)
1927 Mar 1, Bank of Italy
became a National Bank. California’s laws prohibiting branch banking
changed and A.P. Giannini consolidated his banking properties into
the Bank of America of California.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)(SC, 3/1/02)
1927 Mar 2, Babe Ruth (24)
signed a 3-year contract with the New York Yankees for a guarantee
of $70,000 a year, thus becoming baseball’s highest paid player.
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)(SFC, 10/13/99, p.E7)
1927 Mar 3, Nicolas Freeling,
crime writer, was born.
(HN, 3/3/01)
1927 Mar 5, Some 1,000 US
marines landed in China to "protect American property."
(MC, 3/5/02)
1927 Mar 6, Leroy Gordon Cooper
Jr. (d.2004), USAF astronaut (Mer 9, Gem 5), was born in Shawnee,
Okla.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.B7)
1927 Mar 6, Norman Treigle,
bass-baritone (Mefistofele), was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1927 Mar 7, A Texas law that
banned Negroes from voting was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1927 Mar 7, Earthquake
measuring 8 on Richter scale struck Tango, Japan.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1927 Mar 10, Albania mobilized
under the threat of Serbia, Croatia & Slovenes.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1927 Mar 10, Prussia (Bavaria)
lifted its Nazi ban, Hitler was allowed to speak in public.
(HN, 3/10/98)(MC, 3/10/02)
1927 Mar 11, The 1st armored
commercial car hold-up in US took place in Pittsburgh.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1927 Mar 12, Yehudi Menuhin
(11) made his Carnegie Hall debut playing the Beethoven Violin
Concerto with the New York Symphony led by Fritz Busch.
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A9)
1927 Mar 16, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan (d.2003), later NY Senator (1976-2000) and scholar, was
born in Tulsa, Okla.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A1)
1927 Mar 19, Bloody battles
between Communists & Nazis took place in Berlin.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1927 Mar 21, Kuomintang Army
conquered Shanghai as British marines fled.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1927 Mar 22, Federico Garcia
Lorca's "El Maleficio," premiered in Madrid.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1927 Mar 23, Captain Hawthorne
Gray set a new balloon record soaring to 28,510 feet.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1927 Mar 24, Chinese Communists
seized Nanking and broke with Chiang Kai-shek over the Nationalist
goals.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1927 Mar 26, Alfred Hugenberg
purchased German film company UFA.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1927 Mar 26, Gaumont-British
Film Corporation formed.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1927 Mar 27, Mstislav Leopold
Rostropovich, cellist, conductor, was born in Baku, Azerbaijan,
USSR.
(MC, 3/27/02)(Internet)
1927 Mar 28, Karl Prohaska
(57), composer, died.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1927 Mar 31, Cesar Chavez
(d.1993), California union leader of agricultural workers (United
Farm Workers), was born in Yuma, Az.
(SFEC,10/19/97, p.C3)(SFC, 3/29/00, p.A3)(MC,
3/31/02)
1927 Mar 31, William Daniels,
actor (Dr Mark Craig-St Elsewhere, 1776), was born in Brooklyn, NY.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1927 Mar, J.W. Dunne
(1875-1949), Irish engineer and author, published his essay “An
Experiment with Time” on the subjects of precognition and the human
experience of time. His theory suggested that in reality all time is
eternally present, that is, that past, present and future are all
happening together in some way. Human consciousness, however,
experiences this simultaneity in linear form. It was very widely
read, and his ideas were later promoted by several other authors, in
particular by J. B. Priestley. Other books by J. W. Dunne are The
Serial Universe, The New Immortality, and Nothing Dies.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_with_Time)
1927
Apr 1, The first automatic record changer was introduced by
His Master's Voice.
(OTD)
1927 Apr 5, Johnny Weissmuller
set records in 100 and 200 m. free style.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1927 Apr 6, Gerry Mulligan,
jazz saxophonist, was born.
(HN, 4/6/01)
1927 Apr 7, Secretary of
Commerce Herbert Hoover was on hand for the first inter-city (DC to
Manhattan) transmission by telephone of video imagery. Hoover’s
image and voice were transmitted across telephone lines.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927_in_television)(AH, 4/07, p.14)
1927 Apr 9, In SF the new
Princess Apartments at Turk and Hyde offered a Kelvinator electric
refrigerator in every apartment. They were run from a central unit
in the basement.
(SFC, 4/5/02, p.G2)
1927 Apr 12, The British
Cabinet came out in favor of women voting rights.
(HN, 4/12/98)
1927 Apr 12, Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek began a counter revolution in Shanghai.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1927 Apr 15, Babe Ruth hit his
1st of 60 HRs of season off A's Howard Ehmke.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1927 Apr 15, Francesco Gaeta
(47), Italian poet (Di Giacomo), died.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1927 Apr 16, Joseph Alois
Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI (2005), was born in Marktl am
Inn, Bavaria, Germany.
(WSJ, 11/25/06, p.A10)
1927 Apr 19, Rudolf Friml's
"Vagabond King" opened in London.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1927 Apr 19, In China, Hankow
communists declared war on Chaing Kai-shek.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1927 Apr 20, Alex Muller, Nobel
Prize-winning physicist, was born.
(HN, 4/20/01)
1927 Apr 21, Robert Brustein,
dean, Yale School of Drama, was born in NYC.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1927 Apr 26, US Navy officers
Cmdr. Noel Davis and Lt. Stanton Wooster were killed when their
aircraft crashed near New York while trying to take off with a huge
load of fuel for a final test flight prior to an attempt to cross
the Atlantic.
(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 Apr 27, Coretta Scott
King, civil rights activist, wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., was
born.
(HN, 4/27/98)
1927 Apr 27, Actress Mae West
was released from jail after 10 days. She and the entire cast and
producers of her Broadway play “Sex” had been thrown in jail. The
1926 Mae West comedy-drama "Sex" caused a scandal and police closed
it down after 375 performances.
(WSJ, 11/18/06, p.P10)(SSFC, 4/15/01, DB
p.35)(SFC, 6/24/02, p.D2)
1927 Apr 29, Construction of
the Spirit of St Louis was completed. B.F. Mahoney was the ‘mystery
man’ behind the Ryan Aeronautical Company that built Lindbergh’s
Spirit of St. Louis. Engineer Donald Hall designed the $10,580 plane
to carry 400 gallons of fuel.
(HN, 4/29/98)(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 Apr 29, With concern that
Mississippi flood waters could overflow the city of New Orleans the
levee at Caernarvon, Louisiana, was dynamited downstream of the
city, with the intention of increasing the speed of the river as it
passed New Orleans and hence reducing the height of the anticipated
flood wave.
(www.rms.com/publications/1927_MississippiFlood.pdf)
1927 Apr 30, Princess Juliana
got a seat in Dutch Council of State.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1927 May 1, Adolf Hitler held
the first Nazi meeting in Berlin.
(HN, 5/1/98)
1927 May 4,
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was incorporated.
[see May 11] Louis B. Mayer, Mayer and three of his guests – actor
Conrad Nagel, director Fred Niblo and producer Fred Beetson, had
initiated discussions for the organization earlier in the year.
(http://www.oscars.org/academy/history-organization/history.html)(AP,
5/4/97)
1927 May 4, The first balloon
flight over 40,000 feet was made.
(HN, 5/4/98)
1927 May 5, Dmitri
Shostakovitch' 1st Symphony, premiered in Berlin.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1927 May 8, French pilots
Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli took off from Paris in their
airplane named L’Oiseau Blanc (the White Bird), in an attempt to
cross the Atlantic. Pilots and plane vanished during the flight.
(ON, 2/08, p.2)
1927 May 11, An official
organizational banquet was held for the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences at the Biltmore Hotel. Of the 300 guests, 230
joined the Academy, paying $100 each. [see May 4] Douglas Fairbanks
served as the first president.
(http://www.oscars.org/academy/history-organization/history.html)(PCh,
1992, p.783)
1927 May 11, Henry Martyn
Robert (90), (Robert's Rules of Order), died.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1927 May 13, Clive Barnes,
drama critic (NY Times, NY Post), was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1927 May 13, Herbert Ross,
director, choreographer (Footloose), was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1927 May 13, "Black Friday" on
Berlin Stock Exchange.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1927 May 16, US Supreme Court
ruled that bootleggers must pay income tax.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1927 May 18, Impresario Sid
Grauman opened his Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA.
(SFC, 11/5/98, p.E6)(SC, 5/18/02)
1927 May 18, The Ritz Hotel
opened in Boston.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1927 May 18, A schoolhouse in
Bath, Mich., was blown up with explosives planted by local farmer
Andrew Kehoe, who then set off a dynamite-laden automobile; the
attacks killed 38 children and six adults, including Kehoe, who had
earlier killed his wife.
(AP, 5/18/07)
1927 May 18, "Slide Lake" in
Gros Ventre, WY, collapsed.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1927 May 10, US aviator Charles
Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974) picked up his plane, “The Spirit of
St. Louis,” in San Diego and flew it to St. Louis. The next day he
continued to New York using railroad maps that he picked up in a
drugstore for 50 cents each. The plane was powered by an air-cooled
Whirlwind engine built by Ryan Aeronautical Company. Charles Fayette
Taylor (1895-1996) worked on the engine design team. Taylor later
authored "The Internal Combustion Engine in Theory and Practice."
(WUD, 1994, p.832)(SFC, 6/23/96, Z1 p.2)(SFC,
6/30/96, p.B6)(ON, 2/08, p.2)
1927 May 20, Charles Lindbergh
(25) took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, NY, at 7:40 AM
aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on his historic solo flight to
France. The Minnesota native had decided to compete for a $25,000
prize, offered in 1919 by Raymond Orteig, NY hotel owner, to the
first pilot to complete the feat. The Spirit of St. Louis, was
capable of flying 4,000 miles on 425 gallons of fuel. His greatest
problems on the 33-hour, 30-minute flight were staying awake and
keeping ice from forming on the airplane’s wings.
(AP, 5/20/97)(HN, 5/20/98)(HNPD, 5/21/00)(USAW,
5/19/02, p.26)(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 May 20, Saudi Arabia
became independent of Great Britain with the Treaty of Jedda.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1927 May 21, Charles Lindbergh
(Lucky Lindy) landed in Le Bourget Field in Paris after a 33.5-hour
nonstop, first solo flight from Roosevelt Field on New York’s Long
Island. In 1953 Lindbergh authored his memoir “The Spirit of St.
Louis.”
(F, 10/7/96, p.68)(AP, 5/21/97)(SFC, 10/20/99,
p.C10)(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 May 21, Dedication
ceremonies were held for the Carquinez Bridge over the Sacramento
River between Crocket and Vallejo, Ca. It had opened for traffic on
May 21. The cantilever bridge was built by American Toll Bridge Co.
A 2nd was added in 1958. The bridge was scheduled for demolition in
2004.
(www.cocohistory.com/photos-bridges.html#GTPhoto3)(SFC, 6/24/02,
p.B3)(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.A25)
1927 May 22, Peter Mathiessen,
writer, was born.
(HN, 5/22/01)
1927 cMay 22, Harlem dancer
Shorty Snowden, during a dance marathon, named his dance step the
Lindy Hop following the headlines "Lindy Hops the Atlantic."
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.W15)
1927 May 24, The final levee
breach of the 1927 flood occurred at McCrea, Louisiana, on the east
bank of the Atchafalaya levee. The flood along the Mississippi
killed some 500 people and displaced thousands. The levee system
broke in 145 places and caused 27,000 square miles of flooding in
Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
In 1997 the book "Rising Tide" by John M. Barry described the
catastrophe. It was also the subject of the Randy Newman song
"Louisiana 1927."
(www.rms.com/publications/1927_MississippiFlood.pdf)(WSJ, 2/6/97,
p.A12)(SFC, 11/28/03, p.C7)(SSFC, 9/4/05, p.A7)(WSJ, 11/2/05,
p.A2)(Econ, 5/21/11, p.30)
1927 May 25, Robert Ludlum, spy
novelist (Bourne Identity), was born in NYC.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1927 May 25, Henry Ford stopped
production of the Model T car and began the Model A.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1927 May 26, Jacques Bergerac,
actor (Gigi, Les Girls, Thunder in Sun), was born in France.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1927 May 26, Ford Motor Company
manufactured its 15 millionth Model T automobile.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1927 May 27, The cargo steamer
Indiana Harbor ran aground on the northern California Humboldt
coast. Radio operator Joseph E. Croney remained at his post for 72
hours while the ship was pounded.
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.E3)
1927 May 27, An earthquake in
China’s Qinghai (Xining) Province left some 200,000 dead.
(www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/eq/faq/world.htm)
1927 May 29, Dick Hillenius,
Dutch biologist, writer, was born.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1927 Jun 1, The Delta King
steamboat made its maiden voyage from SF to Sacramento, Ca. Its
twin, the Delta Queen, followed the next day. The 81-mile trip took
nearly all night. Stan Garvey later authored "The King and Queen of
the River." The last Sacramento River voyages were made in 1940. In
1969 Tom Horton (1940-2006), a columnist for the Sacramento Union,
led a band of civic pirates to bring the languishing boat back from
Stockton to Sacramento, where it was transformed to a waterfront
hotel, theater and restaurant.
(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.A18)
1927 Jun 2, Phillip Burton,
historian (Vanishing Eagles), was born.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1927 Jun 5, Johnny Weissmuller
set his 100-yard & 200-yard free-style swim record.
(MC, 6/5/02)
1927 Jun 8, Jerry Stiller,
comedian (Frank Constanza-Seinfeld), was born in Brooklyn, NY.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1927 Jun 11, Charles Lindbergh
became the first man to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The medal was commissioned for any person who "while serving in the
armed services, distinguished himself by heroism or extraordinary
achievement while participating in aerial flight."
(HNQ, 4/12/00)
1927 Jun 13, Charles Lindbergh
received the first American Distinguished Flying Cross President
from Pres. Calvin Coolidge and was treated to a ticker tape parade
in New York City to celebrate his successful crossing of the
Atlantic completed May 21, 1927.
(AP, 6/13/97)(HN, 6/13/98)
1927 Jun 14, President Porfirio
Diaz of Nicaragua signed a treaty with the U.S. allowing American
intervention in his country.
(HN, 6/14/98)
1927 Jun 21, Carl Stokes, the
first black mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, was born.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1927 Jun 23, Bob Fosse,
choreographer and director, was born. He won Tonies for "Pippin" and
"Damn Yankees," and an Oscar for "Cabaret."
(HN, 6/23/99)
1927 Jun 26, Direct commercial
radio service between the Philippines and the US was inaugurated
with a message from Manila to SF.
(SFC, 6/21/02, p.G2)
1927 Jun 27, Robert Casey,
actor (Henry-Aldrich Family Show), was born in Rochester, NY.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1927 Jun 27, Bob Keeshan,
American television actor, was born. He is best known as "Captain
Kangaroo," the longest running children's show, and Clarabelle on
the "Howdy Doody Show."
(HN, 6/27/99)
1927 Jun 27, The U.S. Marines
adopted the English bulldog as their mascot.
(HN, 6/27/98)
1927 Jun 30, James Goldman,
author, playwright (Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid), was born.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1927 Jun, Clarence Birdseye,
after years of experimentation, received a patent for packing fish,
meat or vegetables into waxed cardboard containers, then
flash-freezing them under pressure--reducing freezing time from 18
hours to 90 minutes. He was working in the Arctic as a U.S.
government naturalist when he observed that ice, wind and extreme
cold froze just-caught fish so quickly that, when cooked and eaten,
the taste and texture was scarcely different from fresh fish.
Birdseye realized the secret was to freeze foods quickly so that ice
crystals could not form and damage the food's cell structure.,
Birdseye
(HNPD, 12/9/98)
1927 Jun, Oil was discovered
near Kirkuk, Iraq, the 1st commercial find in any Arab country. BP
was a shareholder in the Iraqi Petroleum Company when it started
drilling Iraq's first oil well at Baba Gurgur just north of the
oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
(SSFC, 4/13/03, p.E1)(AP, 10/17/09)
1927 Jul 2, Brock Peters,
actor, singer (Carmen Jones, To Kill a Mockingbird), was born.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1927 Jul 4, Neil Simon,
American playwright, who wrote "The Odd Couple," was born.
(HN, 7/4/98)
1927 Jul 6, Bill Haley, rock
‘n’ roll pioneer, singer of "Rock Around the Clock," was born.
(HN, 7/6/98)
1927 Jul 6, Janet Leigh
(d.2004, film star, was born as Jeanette Helen Morrison in Merced,
Ca. MGM named her Janet Leigh.
(SFC, 10/5/04, p.A2)
1927 Jul 7, Doc Severinson,
[Carl], bandleader, trumpeter (Tonight), was born in Arlington, Or.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1927 Jul 7, Christopher Stone
became the first British ‘disc jockey’ when he played records for
the BBC.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1927 Jul 10, David Dinkins,
first African-American mayor of New York City, was born.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1927 Jul 11, Theodore H.
Maiman, physicist, was born.
(HN, 7/11/01)
1927 Jul 14, John William
Chancellor, news anchor (NBC, VOA), was born in Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1927 Jul 14, The Ahwahnee Hotel
in Yosemite Valley opened. It was designed by Gilbert Stanley
Underwood of Los Angeles.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.39)
1927 Jul 16, Augusto Sandino
began a 5-year war against the US occupation of Nicaragua.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1927 Jul 18, Ty Cobb hit safely
for the 4,000th time in his career.
(AP, 7/18/97)
1927 Jul 18, Vasily Polenov
(b.1844), Russian painter, died.
(http://tinyurl.com/737kp)
1927 Jul 19, Jan Myrdal,
Swedish writer, journalist (Albania Defiant), was born.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1927 Jul 24, In Ypres, Belgium,
the Menin Gate was unveiled. it built to honor the soldiers who died
at the Ypres Salient front during WWI. The gate is inscribed with
the names of 54,896 soldiers who died but have no graves.
(SSFC, 11/7/10,
p.M2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menin_Gate)
1927 Jul 25, Midge Decter,
writer and editor, was born.
(HN, 7/25/02)
1927 Jul 28, John Ashbery,
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (Self-Portrait in a Convict's Mirror),
was born.
(HN, 7/28/01)
1927 Jul 28, Baruch Blumberg,
physician, medical researcher, was born.
(HN, 7/28/01)
1927 Jul 29, Bellevue Hospital
in NY installed the 1st iron lung.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1927 Aug 1, In Bristol,
Tennessee, the Carter Family (A.P., wife Sara, and cousin Maybelle)
came down from the mountains of Virginia and began recording their
country style "hillbilly" music for Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking
Machine Co. Jimmy Rogers (1898-1933) came from Mississippi to
record. In 2002 Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg authored "Will
You Miss me When I’m Gone: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in
American Music."
(Hem., 4/97, p.68)(WSJ, 8/1/02, p.A1)(SSFC,
8/4/02, p.M3)
1927 Aug 2, Four years after
becoming president, Calvin Coolidge issued a written statement to
reporters: "I do not choose to run for President in 1928."
(AP, 8/2/08)
1927 Aug 3, Gordon Scott, actor
(Tarzan & the Trappers), was born in Portland, Oregon.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1927 Aug 3, Members of the West
Virginia Univ. Botanical Expedition on a trip to Peters Mountain in
Virginia, found wildflowers that were related to the Kankakee
mallow, and named it the Peters Mountain mallow. [see 1872]
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.57-58)
1927 Aug 4, Eugène Atget
(b.1857) French photographer, died. He was noted for his photographs
documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris. An
inspiration for the surrealists and other artists, his work only
gained wide attention after his death.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Atget)
1927 Aug 6, Andy Warhol,
American pop artist, was born.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1927 Aug 6, A Massachusetts
high court heard the final plea from Sacco and Vanzetti, two
Italians convicted of murder.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1927 Aug 7, Edwin Edwards,
governor of Louisiana (1972-1980, 1984-1988, 1992-1996), was born.
(HN, 8/7/98)
1927 Aug 7, US Major General
Leonard Wood (b.1860) died in Boston, Mass. His military service
included commands in Cuba (1900-1902) and the Philippines 1905 and
1921-1927. In 1910, he was named Chief of Staff of the Army,
the only medical officer to ever hold the position. In 2005 Jack
McCallum authored the biography “Leonard Wood.”
(www.wood.army.mil/MGLeonardwood.htm)
1927 Aug 7, Maia Wojciechowska
(d.2002) was born in Warsaw. She moved to the US in 1942 and became
an acclaimed author of children’s books. Her work included the
memoir "Till the Break of Day: Memories, 1939-1942."
(SFC, 7/1/02, p.B5)
1927 Aug 7, The Peace Bridge
between the United States and Canada was dedicated during ceremonies
attended by the Prince of Wales, Canadian PM William Lyon Mackenzie
King and US Vice President Charles Dawes.
(AP, 8/7/07)
1927 Aug 9, Robert Shaw, actor
and writer, was born in England.
(HN, 8/9/00)(MC, 8/9/02)
1927 Aug 10, Pres. Calvin
Coolidge took part in the formal dedication of Mount Rushmore.
Gutzon Borglum began work and the Mount Rushmore project was
completed in 1941. When South Dakota officials invited Gutzon
Borglum (1867-1941) to design a sculpture on the face of the Black
Hills, he declared, "American history shall march along that
skyline." Bor-glum’s son Lincoln (d.1986) led the completion of the
project created by some 400 workers.
(www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/texte/mount_rushmore.htm)(SSFC, 9/9/07,
p.C4)(ON, 2/11, p.10)
1927 Aug 11, Raymond Leppard,
conductor (St Louis Symphony Orch), was born in London, England.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1927 Aug 12, Ralph Waite, actor
(John-Waltons, Roots), was born in White Plains, NY.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1927 Aug 17, Robert Moore,
actor (Marshall-Diana), was born in Detroit, Mich.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1927 Aug 18, Rosalynn Smith
Carter, 1st lady (1977-1981), was born in Plains, Georgia.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1927 Aug 21, The 4th
Pan-African Congress met in NYC.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1927 Aug 23, Italian-born
anarchist immigrants Nicola Sacco (right) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
convicted of murder in 1921, were executed in Boston in spite of
worldwide protests. On April 15, 1920, a paymaster and his guard at
a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts, were killed in a
robbery. In the national climate of suspicion of anarchists,
communists and foreigners in general, Sacco and Vanzetti, two
admitted radicals, were arrested for the crime and convicted on
flimsy circumstantial evidence in a trial presided over by the
openly prejudiced Judge Webster Thayer. For six years, the two
gained support as they attempted to obtain a new trial, but their
request was denied even after a convicted killer confessed to the
1920 murders. In April 1927, Judge Thayer sentenced Sacco and
Vanzetti to die in the electric chair. In 1977 Sacco and Vanzetti
were vindicated when Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
established a memorial in the victims’ honor. In 2007 Bruce Watson
authored “Sacco & Vanzetti.”
(TMC, 1994, p.1927)(AP, 8/23/97)(HNPD,
8/23/98)(HN, 8/23/98)(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P8)
1927 Aug 25, Althea Gibson
(d.2003), Wimbledon's 1st black tennis champion (1957), was born in
Silver, SC.
(HN, 8/25/98)(WSJ, 9/29/03, p.A1)
1927 Aug 29, Marion Williams,
gospel singer, was born.
(HN, 8/29/00)
1927 Aug 30, Geoffrey Beene,
dress designer (8 Coty Awards), was born in Louisiana.
(MC, 8/30/01)
1927 Sep 3, Hugh Sidey, news
correspondent and author of John F. Kennedy, President, was born.
(HN, 9/3/98)
1927 Sep 7, American television
pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth (21) succeeded in transmitting an image
through purely electronic means by using a device called an image
dissector. When Philo T. Farnsworth was 13, he envisioned a
contraption that would receive an image transmitted from a remote
location—the television. Farnsworth submitted a patent in January
1927, when he was 19, and began building and testing his invention
that summer. He used an "image dissector" (the first television
camera tube) to convert the image into a current, and an "image
oscillite" (picture tube) to receive it. On this day his tests bore
fruit. When the simple image of a straight line was placed between
the image dissector and a carbon arc lamp, it showed up clearly on
the receiver in another room. His first tele-electronic image was
transmitted on a glass slide in his SF lab at 202 Green St. The New
York World’s Fair showcased the television in April 1939, and soon
afterward, the first televisions went on sale to the public.
(AP, 9/7/97)(HNPD, 9/7/98)(SFEC, 8/18/96, BR p.3)
1927 Sep 8, A woman arrived in
SF from China and claimed to be Gen. Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, who
declared that he had divorced his legal wife in 1921 and freed 2
concubines this year.
(SFC, 9/20/02, p.E6)
1927 Sep 9, Elvin Jones
(d.2004), jazz drummer, was born in Pontiac, Mich.
(SFEC, 5/21/00, DB p.44)(SFC, 5/20/04, p.B8)
1927 Sep 10, Yma Sumac,
[Chavarri], 5 octave soprano (Omar Khayyam), was born in Ichocan,
Peru.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1927 Sep 12, Sigmund Romberg's
musical "My Maryland," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1927 Sep 14, Isadora Duncan
(born in San Francisco in 1878), modern dance pioneer, died in Nice,
France, when her scarf became entangled in a wheel of her sports
car. A 1968 film with Vanessa Redgrave portrayed her life.
(AP, 9/14/97)(WSJ, 2/20/98, p.A16)(SFC, 9/13/02,
p.E2)
1927 Sep 17, George Blanda, NFL
kicker and quarterback (Bears, Oilers, Raiders), was born in
Pennsylvania.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1927 Sep 18, The Columbia
Phonograph Broadcasting System (later CBS) made its debut with a
basic network of 16 radio stations.
(AP, 9/18/97)
1927 Sep 20, NY Yankee Babe
Ruth hit his record 60th HR of season off Tom Zachry. [see Sep 30]
(MC, 9/20/01)
1927 Sep 22, Tommy Lasorda,
manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team from 1975 to 1996,
was born.
(HN, 9/22/98)
1927 Sep 22, Gene Tunney
successfully defended his heavyweight boxing title against Jack
Dempsey in 10 rounds in the famous "long-count" fight in Chicago.
Referee Dave Barry stopped his count in the 7th round. Boxer Gene
Tunney was down; but Jack Dempsey, had not yet returned to his
corner. By the time the ref was able to resume counting, Tunney was
able to get to his feet. He got an extra 2 to 5 seconds....just what
he needed. Tunney won the fight and retained his world heavyweight
boxing championship.
(http://tinyurl.com/4uqu9o5)(AP, 9/22/97)
1927 Sep 22, Giannotto
Bastianelli, composer, died at 44.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1927 Sep 27, Red Rodney,
trumpeter, was born.
(HN, 9/27/00)
1927 Sep 30, W.S. Mervin,
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, was born.
(HN, 9/30/00)
1927 Sep 30, Babe Ruth hit his
60th homerun of the season off Tom Zachary in Yankee Stadium, New
York City, and broke his own major-league record.
(AP, 9/30/97)(HN, 9/30/98)
1927 Oct 1, Tom Bosley, actor
(Howard-Happy Days, Murder She Wrote), was born in Chicago.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1927 Oct 2, Svante Arrhenius
(b.1859), Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry
(1903), died in Uppsala. At the turn of the century, Svante
Arrhenius had calculated that emissions from human industry might
someday bring a global warming.
(http://tinyurl.com/lxu4w)(www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm)
1927 Oct 6, The era of
talking pictures arrived with the opening of "The Jazz Singer,"
starring Al Jolson singing and dancing in black-face. The movie
featured both silent and sound-synchronized scenes. When The Jazz
Singer, a musical about a Jewish cantor’s son who longs to sing on
Broadway, premiered in New York, silent movies became history and
the sound era began. The Jazz Singer is popularly believed to be the
first talking picture, but technically, 1926’s Don Juan, with its
use of a music track recorded on phonograph records synchronized to
the film, predated the landmark musical. Originally, Warner Brothers
Studio planned to record only the songs on disks while telling the
story in silent sequences. Star Al Jolson, however, ad-libbed
dialogue in two scenes and opened the talking-picture age with the
prophetic words, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain’t heard
nothin’ yet!" By 1930, silent movies were a thing of the past.
(AP, 10/6/97)(HNPD, 10/6/98)(HN, 10/6/98)
1927 Oct 6, Paul Badura-Skoda,
pianist (Mozart specialist), was born in Vienna, Austria.
(MC, 10/6/01)
1927 Oct 14, Roger Moore, actor
(Alaskans, Maverick, Saint, 007), was born in London, England.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1927 Oct 16, Günter Grass,
novelist, playwright, painter and sculptor, was born in Danzig,
Germany. He is best known for his first novel "The Tin Drum."
(HN, 10/1/00)(MC, 10/16/01)
1927 Oct 18, George Campbell
Scott (d.1999), later Hollywood actor, was born in Wise, Va. He grew
up in Detroit and graduated from Redford High School.
(SFC, 9/24/99, p.D2)
1927 Oct 19, Marjorie
Tallchief, US-Osage ballerina (Harkness Ballet), was born. In 1997
Maria Tallchief wrote her memoir: "Maria Tallchief: America’s Prima
Ballerina."
(WSJ, 4/17/97, p.A20)(MC, 10/19/01)
1927 Oct 20, Mikhail
Mikhaylovich Ivanov (78), composer, died.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1927 Oct 24, Renato de Grandis,
composer, was born.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1927 Oct 26, Gustav Schickedanz
(1895-1977) founded Quelle, a German mail-order business.
(WSJ, 7/17/06, p.C8)(http://tinyurl.com/p7ypb)
1927 Oct 27, Ruby Dee, actress
and civil rights activist who starred in the Broadway hit "South
Pacific" and the movie "A Raisin in the Sun," was born.
(HN, 10/27/98)
1927 Oct 27, Fox Movie-tone
news, the first sound news film, was released.
(HN, 10/27/98)
1927 Oct 28, Cleo Laine,
actress and singer (Flesh to a Tiger), was born in Middlesex,
England.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1927 Oct 28, Pan Am Airways
launched the first scheduled international flight. Pan Am was
founded this year as a mail carrier to Havana by Juan Terry Trippe.
In 2000 Barnaby Conrad III authored "Pan Am : An Aviation Legend."
(HN, 10/28/98)(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.30)
1927 Oct 28, Josip Broz (Tito)
began a 7 months jail sentence in Croatia.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1927 Oct 29, In Fresno, Ca.,
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig led an exhibition baseball game as part of
an 18-state tour to promote major league baseball.
(SFC, 1/17/03, p.D3)
1927 Oct 29, Russian
archaeologist Peter Kozloff uncovered the tomb of Genghis Khan in
the Gobi Desert. Subotai was one of Genghis Khan's ablest
lieutenants--and went on to distinguish himself after the khan's
death.
(HN, 10/29/98)
1927 Nov 2, In San Francisco
prohibition agents raided a brewery at 1407 San Bruno Ave. with
nearly 2,000 gallons of beer brewing in 4 500-gallon vats.
(SFC, 11/1/02, p.E7)
1927 Nov 3, Rodgers' &
Hart's musical "Connecticut Yankee," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1927 Nov 12, New York’s
underwater Holland Tunnel officially opened. It connected NY to New
Jersey. [see Nov 13]
(HN, 11/12/98)(MC, 11/12/01)
1927 Nov 12, Notre Dame's
Fighting Irish changed their blue jerseys for green.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1927 Nov 12, Canada was
admitted to the League of Nations.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1927 Nov 12, Josef Stalin
became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was
expelled from the Communist Party.
(AP, 11/12/97)
1927 Nov 13, The Holland Tunnel
opened to the public, linking New York City and New Jersey beneath
the Hudson River. [see Nov 12]
(TMC, 1994, p.1927)(AP, 11/13/97)
1927 Nov 16, Austin Norman
Palmer (b.1860), American developer of the Palmer method of script,
died.
(www.zanerian.com/Palmer.html)(WSJ, 1/24/09,
p.W8)
1927 Nov 17, A tornado hit
Washington DC.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1927 Nov 20, Karl Wilhelm Eugen
Stenhammer (56), composer, died.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1927 Nov 21, Picketing strikers
at the Columbine Mine in northern Colorado were fired on by state
police; six miners were killed.
(AP, 11/21/07)
1927 Nov 22, George Gershwin's
"Funny Face," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1927 Nov 22, 1st snowmobile
patent was granted to Carl Eliason in Sayner, Wisc.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1927 Nov 24, Alfredo Kraus,
tenor (La Scala), was born in Las Palmas, Canary Islands.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1927 Nov 24, In California
troops battled 1,200 inmates after Folsom prisoners revolted. On
Thanksgiving Day there was a prison break at Folsom. One prisoner
was shot in the ensuing uprising and five others were later hung.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)(HN, 11/24/98)
1927 Nov 29, Genevieve
Paddleford arrived as the 1st woman inmate at the new women’s
quarters at San Quentin Prison. She was serving 1 to 10 years for
stealing $600 worth of clothing.
(SFC, 11/29/02, p.E9)
1927 Nov 29, Vince Scully,
sportscaster (NBC Baseball Game of the Week), was born.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1927 Nov, On Thanksgiving Day
there was a prison break at California’s Folsom Prison. One prisoner
was shot in the ensuing uprising and five others were later hung.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)
1927 Nov, The US received 58
Japanese dolls sent by the Japanese government in exchange for
12,739 blue-eyed dolls sent by American children to the children of
Japan.
(SFC, 7/24/97, p.A17)
1927 Dec 2, Ford Motor Co.
unveiled its "Model A" automobile, the successor to its "Model T."
The Ford Rouge plant employed 70,000 men. A vehicle was assembled in
3 1/2 days and the price for a Model T dropped to $290 per vehicle,
down 65% from its original price. The Model A was introduced with a
revolutionary teaser campaign and the 1st one sold for $385.
Production for the Model T was shut down for almost 6 months to
retool for the Model A and compete with GM.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(AP, 12/2/97)(WSJ,
11/5/99, p.A1)(MC, 12/2/01)
1927 Dec 4, Duke Ellington
opened at the Cotton Club in Harlem.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1927 Dec 11, Nearly 400 world
leaders signed a letter to President Calvin Coolidge asking the U.S.
to join the World Court.
(HN, 12/11/98)
1927 Dec 12, Robert Norton
Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1927 Dec 12, Communists forces
seized Canton, China.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1927 Dec 14, China and Soviet
Union broke relations.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1927 Dec 14, Iraq gained
independence from Britain, but British troops remained.
(MC, 12/14/01)
1927 Dec 17, U.S. Secretary of
State Kellogg suggested a worldwide pact renouncing war.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1927 Dec 18, Ramsey Clark,
American attorney General (1967-69), was born.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1927 Dec 25, Mexican congress
opened land to foreign investors, reversing the 1917 ban enacted to
preserve the domestic economy.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1927 Dec 27, Stalin's faction
won All-Union Congress in USSR. Trotsky was expelled.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1927 Dec 27, The musical play
"Show Boat," with music by Jerome Kern and libretto by Oscar
Hammerstein the Second, opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York.
It was based on a novel by Edna Ferber that spanned life on the
Mississippi River from 1884-1927. The songs included "Ol’ Man
River."
(WSJ, 2/27/97, p.A15)(SFC, 5/15/97, p.E4)(AP,
12/27/97)(SFC, 1/10/98, p.E1)
1927 Dec 28, George Kaufman and
Moss Hart's "Royal Family," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1927 Dec, In Nashville, Ten.,
after harmonica wizard DeFord Bailey played his "Pan American
Blues," WSM Announcer Judge Hay got the idea to change the name of
the show from the "Barn Dance" to the "Grand Ole Opry."
(www.pbs.org/deford/timeline/index.html)
1927 Dec, The Yosemite annual
Christmas pageant at the Ahwahnee Hotel was begun by a Stanford
Univ. administrator and Ansel Adams. The pageant was set in England
at Bracebridge Hall at the time of King George III and based on
characters created by Washington Irving.
(SFC,10/18/97, p.A19)
1927 Dec, Harry Frommermann
place an ad for an audition in Berlin that led to the formation of
the "Comedian Harmonists." They rocketed to fame as concert
performers. Their act was banned in 1935 by the government because 3
of the performers were Jews (Fromermann, Collin and Cycowski). In
1997 a film based the group’s history was directed by Joseph
Vilsmaiar.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)(SFC, 8/17/02, p.D3)
1927 Dec, Leonid Kulik
(d.1942), Russian expert on meteorites, delivered his report to the
Russian Academy of Sciences on his 2nd trip to the Tunguska site in
Siberia regarding the 1908 meteorite explosion. He estimated that
the meteorite had weighed several thousand metric tons and convinced
the academy to sponsor another expedition in 1928.
(ON, 6/08, p.8)
1927 Poet John Ashbury was born
in Rochester, N.Y. In 1998 David Lehman published "The Last
Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets."
(WSJ, 9/18/98, p.W8)
1927 George Bellows painted the
boxing scene "Dempsey and Firpo."
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1927 Stuart Davis painted "Egg
Beater No. 1."
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1927 Charles Demuth painted "My
Egypt."
(WSJ, 2/6/00, p.A16)
1927 Elsie Driggs created her
painting "Pittsburgh."
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1927 George Grosz drew his
picture "Circe," a depiction of a deformed nude woman kissing a man
whose face looks like a pig's.
(WSJ, 3/9/99, p.A20)
1927 Tamara de Lempicka painted
"Jeune fille en vert."
(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.C2)
1927 Rene Magritte painted "The
Blood of the World" and "Swift Hope."
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.B1,5)
1927 Georgia O’Keeffe painted
"Red Poppy."
(SFEC, 8/10/97, p.T5)
1927 Yves Tanguy, surrealist
painter, had his 1st solo exhibit in Paris.
(WSJ, 8/30/01, p.A11)
1927 DuBose Heyward and his
wife Dorothy based a play called "Porgy" on his novel "Porgy."
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.12)
1927 Herbert Asbury wrote "The
Gangs of New York." The book established the Five Points district as
the mythic slum.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.46)(SFC, 7/29/98, p.A19)
1927 Willa Cather authored
“Death Comes for the Archbishop.” Bishop Jean Marie Latour, her
novel’s hero, was the fictional name for the French Bishop
Jean-Baptiste Lamy, dispatched as a priest by Rome in 1850 to bring
order and discipline to the New Mexican territory.
(WSJ, 9/13/06, p.D10)
1927 Max Ehrmann (1872-1945),
Indiana lawyer, wrote his poem “Desiderata” – “Be gentle with
yourself…”
(WSJ, 11/15/05,
p.D7)(www.businessballs.com/desideratapoem.htm)
1927 Ernest Hemingway published
his novel "Fiesta."
(SFC, 8/5/98, p.E3)
1927 Hermann Hesse published
"Steppenwolf," a novel about a writer who despises middle class and
Western values, but suffers from his feelings of emotional
isolation.
(iUniv. 7/2/00)
1927 D.H. Lawrence wrote his
story "The Man Who Died," in which Jesus becomes a lover of a
priestess of Isis.
(WSJ, 10/14/98, p.A20)
1927 Herman Lehmann authored
“Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879: The Story of the Captivity
and Life of a Texan Among the Indians.” He had been captured as a
boy and spent 6 years among the Apaches.
(AH, 6/07, p.64)
1927 Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
authored his novel “Elmer Gantry.” A 1960 film version starred Burt
Lancaster.
(WSJ, 12/28/07, p.W13)
1927 V.L. Parrington wrote
"Main Currents in American Thought." It is considered one of the
most important history books of the 30s.
(WSJ, 12/15/95, p.A-16)
1927 Margaret Sanger wrote
"What Every Boy and Girl Should Know."
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1927 Upton Sinclair published
his novel "Oil," based on the development of oil in southern
California.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.7)
1927 Clinton and Jeff Smith
authored “The Boy Captives: being the true story of the experiences
and hardships of Clinton L. Smith and Jeff D. Smith.”
(AH, 6/07,
p.64)(www.worldcat.org/isbn/082401734X)
1927 Thornton Wilder wrote "The
Bridge of San Luis Rey." It was set in Peru in the early 1700s when
a rope bridge broke that sent 5 people to their death.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
1927 William Hodge & Co.
published “The Trial of Herbert Rowse Armstrong” as part of its
Notable British Trial series. Armstrong was hanged in 1922, the only
solicitor ever executed in Britain, for murdering his wife with
weedkiller.
(WSJ, 6/9/07, p.P8)
1927 The "History of Colorado"
was published by Linderman and Co.
(HIR, 9/11/97, p.5A)
1927 Havergal Brian
(1876-1972), British composer, completed “The Gothic,” a symphony in
D minor. The work was begun in 1919.
(Econ, 7/30/11,
p.79)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havergal_Brian)
1927 Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
created his opera "Sly."
(WSJ, 4/17/02, p.D7)
1927 Tamara Geva, ballet
dancer, actress and former wife of George Balanchine, introduced his
choreography to NY by dancing 2 solos with the "Chauve-Souris"
touring revue.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A23)
1927 Dock Boggs, singer and
banjo player, released his "Country Blues" swamp music album. It
included the song "Old Rub Alcohol Blues."
(SFEM, 3/22/98, p.8)
1927 Bing Crosby came to
prominence with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra as a member of the
scat-singing Rhythm Boys trio.
(SSFC, 1/21/01, DB p.32)
1927 The Duke Ellington Band
recorded "Creole Love Song" and "Black and Tan Fantasie" on its
first Viktor record.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, p.C5)
1927 "Stardust" by Hoagy
Carmichael (1899-1981) was first waxed on the Gennett label in
Richmond, Ind. Mitchell Parish helped with the lyrics.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, BR p.5)(SFC, 5/2/02, p.D5)
1927 The Pacific Borax Co.
opened the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley as a luxury resort in
Death Valley.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, p.T5)
1927 In Louisville, Ky., the
main building of the Speed Museum was constructed. The Speed Museum
was founded by Hattie Bishop Speed as a memorial to her husband John
Breckinridge Speed.
(WSJ, 12/18/97, p.A20)
1927 The Cranford Rose Garden
was established in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden with a $15,000
donation from engineer Walter V. Cranford. His firm built many of
Brooklyn’s subway tunnels.
(WSJ, 6/21/06, p.D10)
1927 Le Corbusier proposed a
functional design for the new League of Nations center in Geneva.
The jury of traditional architects was shocked and disqualified the
design on the grounds that it was not rendered in India Ink, as
specified.
(V.D.-H.K.p.364)
1927 Marion Sims Wyeth designed
the Mar-a-Lago house for the E.F. Huttons in Palm Beach Fla. He
helped establish the Palm Beach Mediterranean style. Mrs. Hutton was
better known as the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.
(WSJ, 10/25/96, p.B10)
1927 The fundamentalist
Christian Bob Jones University in Cleveland, Tenn., was founded by
Bob Jones.
(SFC,11/13/97, p.A28)
1927 Las Vegas instituted the
90-day divorce to attract more visitors. The residential requirement
was later reduced by half.
(WSJ, 3/23/00, p.W12)
1927 The Ringling Brothers
Circus and Barnum and Bailey began to set up winter quarters in
Sarasota, Fla.
(WSJ, 4/1/99, p.A20)
1927 A.H. Compton won the Nobel
Prize in physics.
(SFC, 6/30/99, p.C2)
1927 Julius Wagner von Jauregg
won a Nobel Prize for allegedly proving that fevers cured mental
illness.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A17)
1927 Ernest Hemingway married
Pauline Pfeiffer, his 2nd wife of 4. They lived together in Paris
and Key West until 1940, and often visited Piggott, Ark.
(SFC, 7/28/00, p.C12)
1927 William Wrigley, gum
magnate, staged a swimming race between Catalina Island and the
California coast, which measured over 20 miles. George Young (17) of
Canada won.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W4)
1927 Babe Ruth hit his 60th
home run.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, Par p.8)
1927 The Supreme Court decision
of Buck vs. Bell supported a 1924 Virginia compulsory sterilization
bill and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes commented "three generations
of imbeciles are enough." Carrie Buck was sterilized by physicians
at the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-minded in
Lynchburg. In 2006 Harry Bruinius authored “Better For All the
World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s
Quest for Racial Purity.”
(NH, 7/02, p.12)(WSJ, 2/28/06, p.D8)
1927 The first living person to
be honored on a U.S. postal stamp was pioneering pilot Charles
Lindbergh. A 10-cent stamp was issued, showing Lindbergh's airplane,
the Spirit of St. Louis, in which he had made his historic flight
from New York to Paris.
(HNQ, 11/14/98)
1927 In Alabama and many other
states sheriffs and other county office holders were paid fixed fees
for services performed and were allowed to keep whatever was left
over. In 2008 all but 12 of Alabama’s 67 counties remained on the
fee system with a $1.75-a-day allowance for feeding prisoners. Some
sheriffs still profited with no accounting to auditors.
(SFC, 5/20/08, p.A4)
1927 The new California state
park bill gained the unanimous approval of the Legislature and was
signed into law by Governor C.C. Young (1927-1931).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Parks)
1927 The State Bar of
California was founded as an independent and nonpartisan
organization by the state Legislature.
(SFC, 6/6/96, p.A23)(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A14)
1927 The California Legislature
authorized the state attorney general to act on behalf of Indians to
sue the federal government for losses. It took 16 years to reach a
settlement.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.5)
1927 California’s laws
prohibiting branch banking changed and A.P. Giannini consolidated
his banking properties into the Bank of America of California.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)
1927 In California Harry Hill
shot and killed state Sen. Charles W. Lyon of Los Angeles inside the
state capitol building, for engaging in a relationship with
Marybelle Wallace. Hill, a Sacramento lobbyist, then shot and killed
himself. Wallace was Hill’s mistress and an employee of Sen. Lyon.
(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.A16)
1927 The Pasadena City Hall was
constructed to reflect the grace and style of the church of Santa
Maria della Salute in Venice, Italy.
(Hem., Dec. ‘95, p.100)
1927 Ben and Tawny MacMillan’s
General Store in Elk, California, was built.
(SFC, 9/1/96, T3)
1927 The SF Bay Area
mid-peninsula property along the broad valley of the West Union
Creek near Hwy. 280 south of San Francisco was purchased by an
official of the Spring Valley Water Company. The estate residence
was designed by architect Gardner Daily. A decade later the property
was purchased by the Herman and Mary Elena Phleger. The estate was
officially dedicated as part of the Golden Gate national Park in
April, 1995.
(Park, Spring/95)
1927 Carlton Morse created the
radio show "One Man's Family." It was set in Sea Cliff in San
Francisco and continued to 1959.
(SFEC, 12/27/98, BR p.3)
1927 In San Francisco the
Avenue Theater opened on San Bruno Avenue in the southeastern
Portola District.
(SSFC, 5/24/09, p.A2)
1927 Campion Hall at USF was
built.
(SFCM, 3/29/02, p.48)
1927 In San Francisco the
2-story, Olde English style house at 400 Castenada Ave. in Forest
Hills was built. It was designed by Harold Stoner.
(SSFC, 10/18/09, p.C2)
1927 The Hearst Fountain and
Music Concourse were constructed in Goldengate Park.
(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A7)
1927 In SF a 25-story high-rise
was completed at 111 Sutter, the city’s 4th tallest building. It was
designed for the Hunter-Dulin & Co. brokerage firm by Schultze
& Weaver of NYC.
(SFC, 12/29/05, p.B5)
1927 In SF the Russ Building, a
435-foot, 31-story skyscraper, was completed on Montgomery Street at
Bush and Pine. It was the tallest building in SF at this time.
(SFC, 7/17/97, p.A16)(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1
p.4)(SSFM, 10/12/02, p.13)
1927 In San Francisco a single
story building at 344 Kearny was built for the Harrigan Weidenmuller
Co., Realtors. In 2009 the Baroque storefront hosted a nail salon.
(SSFC, 11/1/09, p.C2)
1927 The Russian Orthodox Holy
Virgin parish was founded. In 1965 they established a Cathedral at
26th and Geary.
(SFC, 1/25/02, p.G6)
1927 In SF Julia and Michael
Archangel Disernia opened a pharmacy on the corner of Mission and
Precita. In 1998 their son closed the establishment.
(SFEC, 8/28/98, p.C7)
1927 In San Francisco the
Avenue Theater opened on San Bruno Avenue in the southeastern
Portola District.
(SSFC, 5/24/09, p.A2)
1927 The Biltmore Hotel was
built in Montecito, Ca.
(Via, 3-4/99, p.43)
1927 The Biltmore Four Seasons
Hotel in Santa Barbara, Ca., was built.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.T7)
1927 The Pickwick Hotel, a
Gothic Revival structure, opened in San Diego, Ca. It was later
renovated and re-opened as the Sofia Hotel.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.G4)
1927 The ferryboat Fresno began
transporting cars across the SF Bay.
(SFC, 4/28/05, p.B1)
1927 SF began receiving water
from the new Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.
(SFC, 1/4/97, p.A15)
1927 Alexander Roberts became
the 3rd president of the SF State Normal School.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, Z1 p.4)
1927 In Chicago Al Capone's
support allowed Big Bill Thompson to return to the mayor's office.
Pledging to clean up Chicago and remove the crooks, Thompson instead
turned his attention to the reformers, whom he considered the real
criminals.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hale_Thompson)
1927 In New Jersey Ruth Snyder
was tried and executed [1928] for the murder of her husband. She was
the first woman to die in the electric chair. Her story was the
basis for a 1928 play, "Machinal," by Sophie Treadwell.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, DB p.33)
1927 In the US financier J.P.
Morgan created the American Depository Receipt, (ADR), for
purchasing stock in foreign countries.
(WSJ, 6/27/96, p.R8)
1927 Walt Disney (1901-1966)
created the cartoon character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. He was a
precursor to Mickey Mouse.
(WSJ, 2/10/06, p.B1)
1927 GM created the first
automotive design staff under Harley J. Earl.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1927 Dorothy Gerber invented
commercial baby food when she tired of straining baby food at home
and asked her cannery owner husband to try it at the plant. The
Gerber baby logo came in 1928. Daniel F. Gerber strained peas for
his sick daughter and sold them by mail from Fremont, Mich.
(WSJ, 12/4/96, p.A1)(SFEC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.2)
1927 Central Leather Co.
underwent a restructure and changed its name back to US Leather.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R45)
1927 Oklahoma produced
278 million barrels of crude oil. By 2005 production dropped to 60.7
million.
(Econ, 7/29/06, p.33)
1927 The Porcelier
Manufacturing Co. worked in East Liverpool, Ohio and South
Greenberg, Pa. until 1954. It made vitrified china teapots, bowls,
cups, sugars, creamers and small electrical appliances. The items
are now collectibles.
(SFC, 9/4/96, Z1 p.5)
1927 Proctor and Gamble
acquired Lava Soap with its "secret ingredient" pumice. In 1996 it
was sold to Block Drug Co.
(SFC, 5/25/96, p.D1)
1927 Sears launched its
Craftsman and Kenmore brands.
(WSJ, 11/18/04, p.B1)
1927 Time magazine, founded by
Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, began its Man or Woman of the Year
feature and the first figure this year was Charles Lindbergh.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, Par p.2)(SFEM, 6/21/98, p.9)(WSJ,
1/11/00, p.B1)
1927 United Parcel Service,
founded by Jim Casey, began limited coast-to-coast service.
(Econ, 7/22/06,
p.20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Parcel_Service)
1927 Charles Spearman, a
British researcher, postulated 2 separate factors for success in IQ
tests: general intelligence and various specific abilities for
different tests.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.B3)
1927 Werner Heisenberg
formulated the Uncertainty Principle: It is impossible to measure
simultaneously both the precise momentum and position of a subatomic
particle.
(NG, May 1985, J. Boslough, p. 642)
1927 Lemaitre proposed his
theory of an expanding universe begun in the explosion of a primeval
atom, at Mt. Wilson observatory in California.
(V.D.-H.K.p.334)
1927 J.D. Figgins presented his
paper announcing proof (gathered in 1926) that man was present in
the New World at a time when animals of now extinct species were
living: The First Clear Evidence of Ancient Man in North America.
RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.132)
1927 John Hammes (1895-1953), a
Wisconsin architect, invented the sink-connected garbage disposal.
In 1938 he started the InSinkErator company, which later became a
part of Emerson Electric Corp.
(WSJ, 2/26/08,
p.B1)(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5202/is_1995/ai_n19122482)
1927 E.E. Perkins, a Nebraska
merchant of home remedies, invented Kool-Aid. [see 1914,1953]
(WSJ, 7/17/96, p.A1)(SFC, 4/9/96, z1 p.5)
1927 In Washington state the
210-foot Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha River came on line.
Fish passage facilities were required, but none were ever built. In
2011 it became part of a $324.7 million, 3-year dam-removal project.
(SFC, 5/30/11, p.A7)
1927 Pez candy originated in
Austria as a breath mint for cigarette smokers. The name came from
"pfefferminz," the word for peppermint in German. The line was
imported to the United States in 1952, when the company decided it
could do better with fruit candy dispensed by plastic toys.
(SFEC, 4/5/98,
p.C11)(http://money.cnn.com/2002/06/13/pf/q_pez/)
1927 In Australia a new law
prohibited hunters from killing koalas for their pelts.
(SFC, 7/29/00, p.E3)
1927 Henry Ford obtained a
Connecticut-sized land in the Brazilian jungle and began creating
his Fordlandia factory town for the creation of a rubber plantation
and processing facility to supply his factories with tires and
gaskets. A strike in 1930 wrecked Fordlandia. It was rebuilt and
struggled on for a decade until succumbing to leaf blight and
insects. In 2009 Greg Grandin authored “Fordlandia: The rise and
Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle city.”
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.F7)
1927 Britain passed laws
supporting British film making and forced cinemas to show a minimum
quota of British films.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.62)
1927 Elsie Wagg thought of
getting private gardeners to open up their gardens to visitors for a
small contribution to a nursing charity. By 2003 Britain's National
Garden Scheme had over 3,500 gardens open to visitors at least 1 day
a year.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.119)
1927 In China Mao Tse-tung led
a peasant uprising in Hunan Province.
(TMC, 1994, p.1927)
1927 Julien Benda (1867-1956),
French writer, authored “La Trahison des Clercs,” (Treason of the
Clerks). The title of the English translation was The Betrayal of
the Intellectuals. The book described the politicization of Western
intellectuals, above all their willingness to abandon the
disinterested search for truth.
(WSJ, 6/10/08,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julien_Benda)
1927 The La Samaritaine
department store in Paris was constructed. It replaced an earlier
building built in 1905.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.)
1927 French law set the
boundaries of the country’s Champagne region.
(WSJ, 8/12/05, p.B1)
1927 The French launched a
major military campaign in Syria to suppress a revolt by the Druze,
which began in 1925 under the leadership of Sultan al-Atrash. A
large French force sent against them was defeated and the revolt
spread into the Druze portions of Lebanon. When the insurgents
gained a foothold in Damascus, the French bombarded the city.
(HNQ, 5/25/99)
1927 Eugene Atget (b.1857),
French photographer, died.
(SFC, 8/18/01, p.B3)
1927 Prince John Kropotkin, son
of Russian Prince Alexei Kropotkin, was beaten to death on a Paris
street. Soviet agents were suspected.
(SFC, 7/5/04, p.B4)
1927 Carl Schmitt, a German
jurist, authored his paper "The Concept of the Political." He
proposed the doctrine of "decisionism" and defined the state’s
assertion of its sovereignty. "The specific political distinction to
which political claims can be reduced is that between friend and
enemy."
(WSJ, 10/19/01, p.W19)
1927 In Germany Hannes Meyer
succeeded Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus and continued to
1930.
(Econ, 11/14/09, p.104)
1927 In Germany the Frankfurt
Kitchen was the 1st mass-produced fitted kitchen and was installed
in thousands of Frankfurt flats.
(Econ, 4/8/06, p.84)
1927 Erno Laszlo (1891-1973)
opened the Laszlo Institute for Scientific Cosmetology in Budapest.
In 1939 he opened the Laszlo Institute on Fifth Ave in NYC.
(Econ, 11/29/03, p.18)
1927 In India the Musalman
Urdu-language newspaper began operating in Chennai. In 2008 the
handwritten newspaper was still operating with some 23,000
subscribers.
(WSJ, 9/16/08, p.A20)
1927 In India the Deonar
dumping ground opened in Bombay (later Mumbai).
(Econ, 2/28/09, SR p.8)
1927 In Japan Goto Shu’ichi
wrote "Japanese Archaeology."
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.35)
1927 The Japan Sumo Association
(JSA) was founded.
(Econ, 2/16/08, p.50)
1927 Chio Uno (1898-1996)
scandalized Japanese society by cutting her hair short. In 1935 she
wrote "Confessions of Love" based on the many love affairs of
painter Seiji Togo. She also wrote "Ohan" and in 1936 founded Style,
Japan’s first fashion magazine. She was awarded a title by the
emperor and named a "person of cultural merit" in 1990.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A21)
1927 Japan's Imperial
Aeronautics Association launched a competition for a non-stop flight
across the Pacific Ocean. The Ashi Shimbun newspaper offered a
$25,000 prize.
(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1927 Japan’s Nippon Trust Bank
and Mitsubishi Trust Bank were founded. They joined together in 2001
and in 2005 became part of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
(WSJ, 9/23/08, p.C1)
1927 In Puerto Rico’s last
execution farm worker Pascual Ramos was hanged for beheading his
boss with a machete. Puerto Rico’s death penalty was outlawed in
1929.
(AP, 1/25/05)
1927 In Romania the Legion of
the Archangel Michael was formed and later became the Iron Guard. It
was committed to the "Christian and racial" renovation. The Fascist
organization fed on anti-Semitism and mystical nationalism and was a
major social and political force in Romania between 1930 and 1941.
It was finally destroyed when in 1941 when it staged a revolt
against the government of General Ion Antonescu.
(HNQ, 11/27/01)
1927 Josef Stalin purged much
of the Tatar intelligentsia in the Crimea.
(SFC, 1/4/99, p.A8)
1927 Sergius, a Greek Orthodox
bishop, signed an agreement accepting the Soviet Union as a “civil
motherland.”
(Econ, 10/18/08, p.69)
1927 The monastery of Saint
Serafim Sarofsky in the village of Deveyevo, Russia, was liquidated.
The 266 year old complex was used to store lumber and vegetables
until 1991 when it was returned to the church.
(SFC, 5/18/96, p.A-11)
1927 Prince John Kropotkin, son
of Russian Prince Alexei Kropotkin, was beaten to death on a Paris
street. Soviet agents were suspected.
(SFC, 7/5/04, p.B4)
1927 In Senegal Sheikh Ahmadou
Bamba (Cheikh Amadou Bamba), Muslim brotherhood religious leader and
founder of the holy center of Touba, died. He inspired the Sufi
Muslim movement called the Mourides, the 2nd of two big movements.
The other older Muslim group was known as the Tidjanes.
(AP, 4/22/03)(Econ, 12/23/06, p.91)(AP, 12/29/07)
1927 In South Africa Alexkor
Ltd., a state-run diamond mining company, was set up in the town of
Alexander Bay as a work program for poor whites. The local Nama were
forced out after mineral rights were awarded to Alexkor Ltd. In 2007
the government agreed to restore the 330-square-mile northern
coastal strip to the tribe and pay $28 million compensation as well
as millions more in development funding.
(AP, 10/9/07)
1927-1928 King Abd al-Aziz crushed an uprising be
fanatical Islamist tribes of central Arabia.
(WSJ, 6/30/04, p.A7)
1927-1934 The Chicago Tribune published an edition
in Paris. In 1987 Waverley Root authored “The Paris Edition.”
(WSJ, 9/29/07, p.W8)
1927-1937 General Electric manufactured the
Monitor Tops style refrigerators with a design intended to last 25
years.
(WSJ, 9/20/02, p.A5)
1927-1949 The films of this period were covered in
the 1998 book: "You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet: The American Talking
Film, History and Memory," by Andrew Sarris.
(SFC, 4/8/98, p.E3)
1927-1957 The Mille Miglia automobile race was
run in Italy.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A13)
1927-1959 Carlton Morse created the radio show
"One Man's Family." It was set in Sea Cliff in San Francisco.
(SFEC, 12/27/98, BR p.3)
1927-1989 R.D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist: "We
live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we
begin to see the present only when it is disappearing."
(AP, 1/31/99)
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