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August 1937

Month of 1937 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

August 1937
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The following events occurred in August 1937:

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August 28, 1937: Bloody Saturday

August 1, 1937 (Sunday)

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August 2, 1937 (Monday)

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August 3, 1937 (Tuesday)

  • All 14 people aboard a Pan American-Grace Airways seaplane were killed when the Sikorsky S-43 plunged into the ocean 20 miles (32 km) off of the coast of Panama.[12][13]
  • The explosion of a gasoline depot in Turkey, between Bairakli and Burnova, killed 24 oil workers.[14]
  • The 20th biennial World Zionist Congress opened in Zürich, Switzerland.[15]
  • Generalissimo Francisco Franco informed Italy that he had intelligence that the Soviets were shipping arms to the Republic. Franco urged Italian action to stop the transports.[16]
  • Born: Steven Berkoff (stage name for Leslie Steven Berks), English stage and film actor known for his roles as a villain in Beverly Hills Cop, Octopussy, Rambo: First Blood Part II and War and Remembrance; in Stepney, London[17]

August 4, 1937 (Wednesday)

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August 5, 1937 (Thursday)

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August 6, 1937 (Friday)

  • The National Cancer Institute was established in the United States as a division of the United States Public Health Service agency by legislation signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt.[30]
  • The first recorded smoking-related airline accident occurred when all six people aboard when an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Prague crashed near Herina. The accident was traced to one of the three passengers lighting a cigarette in the toilet, igniting accumulated fumes from aviation fuel.[31]
  • The Soviet Union and the United States agreed to extend their trade pact for one additional year. The Soviets agreed to spend $40,000,000 in purchases from the U.S., which in turn continued its most favored nation status for the Soviet Union.[32][33]
  • Born: Barbara Windsor, English actress; in Shoreditch, London (d. 2020)
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August 7, 1937 (Saturday)

  • The Japanese began to evacuate their concession at Hankou, citing "the steadily growing tension and a desire to prevent an incident likely to aggravate the general situation."[34]
  • World War I veteran Harold Wobber, 47, became the first person definitively known to have committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.[35]
  • Marcian Germanovich, Soviet corps commander, was arrested two months after being dismissed from the Red Army, apparently because of his association with General Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who had been executed on June 12. Germanovich would be shot in prison on September 20[36]
  • Born:
  • Rosemary Smith, Irish rally car driver; in Dublin (d. 2023)[37]"Rosemary Smith: Pioneer of world motorsport". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2025-04-27.
  • Magic Slim (stage name for Morris Holt), blues singer and guitarist and inductee to the Blues Hall of Fame; in Torrance, Mississippi (d. 2013)[38]
  • Died:
    • Eddie Gerard, 47, Canadian ice hockey player and manager, died of throat cancer.[39] He would be one of the original inductee to the Hockey Hall of Fame on its founding in 1945.
    • Henri Lebasque, 71, French post-Impressionist painter[40]
    • Howard E. Dorsey, 33, American hydraulic engineer who had been sworn into office five weeks earlier, was killed when he lost control of his automobile and ran over a 1,600 feet (490 m) cliff along with his passenger, secretary Marion Lonabaugh.[41]
    • Takeo Wakabayashi, 29, Japanese footballer who played for the Japan national team, died from lung disease.[citation needed]
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August 8, 1937 (Sunday)

  • A contingent of 3,000 Japanese soldiers conspicuously entered Beijing (at the time referred to in the Western press as "Peiping"), capital of the Republic of China without resistance. Japanese warplanes dropped propaganda leaflets on the populace proclaiming that the "Japanese army has driven out your wicked rulers and their wicked armies and will keep them out."[42]
  • The Butovo firing range began operations as an execution site for political prisoners who had been arrested by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, as the first 91 prisoners were transported there from Moscow and shot.[43] According to records kept by the NKVD, there were 20,761 executions until the Butovo range closed on October 19, 1938.[44]
  • Born:
  • Died:
    • Jimmie Guthrie, 40, Scottish motorcycle racer, was killed competing in the German motorcycle Grand Prix.
    • Edmund Pearson, 57, author of "true crime" nonfiction books, died from bronchial pneumonia.
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August 9, 1937 (Monday)

August 10, 1937 (Tuesday)

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Claude Shannon, author of groundbreaking theory
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August 11, 1937 (Wednesday)

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August 12, 1937 (Thursday)

August 13, 1937 (Friday)

August 14, 1937 (Saturday)

August 15, 1937 (Sunday)

August 16, 1937 (Monday)

August 17, 1937 (Tuesday)

  • The Japanese invasion of Shanghai became a takeover of the Chinese port, as the Japanese military commandeered the 19-story Broadway Mansions luxury apartments at 11:00 in the morning and ordered all non-Japanese residents to leave.[105] The British ships HMS Falmouth and Duncan evacuated over 2,000 British women and children from Shanghai to Wusong for transfer to Hong Kong.[106]
  • The U.S. Senate confirmed Hugo Black for the United States Supreme Court by a 63–16 vote despite his controversial past involvement with the Ku Klux Klan.[107] Black would serve on the Supreme Court until his retirement in 1971.
  • Jamil Al Midfai returned to office as Prime Minister of Iraq when Premier Hikmat Sulayman resigned, six days after the assassination of General Bakr Sidqi.[108]
  • Matvei Berman, director of the gulag, the Soviet Union's network of forced labor prison camps since 1932, was removed from office and replaced by his deputy, Israel Pliner.[109] Berman was temporarily transferred to the job as People's Commissar of Posts and Telecommunications but would be arrested on December 23, 1938, sent to the Lubyanka prison and executed.
  • Red Army General Konstantin Rokossovsky was arrested and imprisoned on charges of espionage during the Great Purge of Soviet officials by Joseph Stalin.[110] Unlike many of the people arrested during the Great Purge, General Rokossovsky avoided execution and would be restored to his command in 1940, becoming a Marshal of the Soviet Union and later being Defense Minister of Poland and that nation's Deputy Prime Minister.
  • Former Soviet Finance Minister Hryhoriy Hrynko, who had been fired on July 22, was arrested and charged with being part of the "anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist bloc". After his deputy and successor, Vlas Chubar, reported that Hrynko's administration hadled to a collapse of state finances, Hrynko would be executed on March 15, 1938. Chubar himself was arrested four months later and would be executed on February 26, 1939.[111]
  • Born:
  • Died: Yen Hai-Wen, 21, of the Republic of China Air Force parachuted out of his fighter plane during a bombing mission against Japanese Command Headquarters at Shanghai, shot at several Japanese soldiers with his pistol to avoid capture, and then shouted "The Chinese Air Force never surrenders!" before using his last bullet to kill himself. The Japanese military was so impressed by his courage that, despite the fact that Yen was an enemy combatant, had him buried with full military honors and erected a monument to him.

August 18, 1937 (Wednesday)

August 19, 1937 (Thursday)

August 20, 1937 (Friday)

  • In Shanghai, an anti-aircraft shell landed on the deck of the heavy cruiser USS Augusta and exploded, killing one American sailor and wounding 18.[128]
  • Dixie Bibb Graves, the wife of Alabama Governor Bibb Graves, was appointed by her husband as one of the state's U.S. senators, in order to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Hugo Black, who had been confirmed as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. While other women had been appointed as U.S. Senators to fill a vacancy caused by the death in office of a husband, Mrs. Graves was the fourth woman to serve as a United States Senator and the first appointee whose husband was still alive. She served the remainder of Black's term until a special election could be held on January 4.[129][130]
  • The Australian Institute of Librarians was founded at a meeting of 55 librarians from across the nation at Albert Hall in Canberra.[131]
  • Vatslaw Lastowski, the former Prime Minister of the Belarusian Democratic Republic prior to its annexation into the USSR as the Byelorussian SSR was arrested on charges of being “an agent of the Polish intelligence service and participant of the national-fascist organisation”.[132] He would be executed on January 23, 1938.
  • Born:

August 21, 1937 (Saturday)

August 22, 1937 (Sunday)

August 23, 1937 (Monday)

August 24, 1937 (Tuesday)

August 25, 1937 (Wednesday)

  • The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the largest labor union of black workers in North America, entered into a historic contract with the Pullman Company, raising the wages of porters and maids, setting limits on required labor to 240 hours per month, providing time-and-a-half hourly overtime pay once a worker had worked 260 hours in a calendar month, and paying for the costs of uniforms for all porters who had worked for at least 10 years.[151]
  • The National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran, now the largest library in the Middle East with more than 15,000,000 items in its collections, was established in Tehran, capital of the Imperial State of Iran.[152]
  • In Nazi Germany, the gauleiter and Oberpräsident of East Prussia, Erich Koch, began a campaign to rename more than 1,500 place names of non-German origin, ordering a commission within the Prussian Ministry of Science, Education and People's Education to prepare a list of locations and their recommendations for a German-sounding name. The changes were required to take place on July 16, 1938.[153] As examples, "Szitkehmen" became Judendorf ("Jewish village"), "Pablindszen" became Zollteich ("customs pond"), and "Gollubien" became Unterfelde ("underfields").[153]

August 26, 1937 (Thursday)

August 27, 1937 (Friday)

  • The Kwantung Army occupied Zhangjiakou, capital of China's Chahar Province. After Chahar became a Japanese-dominated "autonomous province" for the remainder of the war, Zhangjiakou would become part of the Heibei province.[156]
  • Two employees of the 20th Century Fox studios— prop man Philo Goodfriend and camera grip Harry Harsha— were killed, and two others injured when a 1,500 pounds (680 kg) platform, used for filming "magic carpet" scenes in the comedy film Ali Baba Goes to Town, fell when one of the piano wires holding it up. Harsha and two other workmen, J. B. Bowman and Nick De Genner were on the platform, while Goodfriend was crushed on the studio floor. Harsha died the next day.[157]
  • "El Salón México", a symphony composed by Aaron Copland with four melodies drawn from Mexican folk music, was given its first performance as the Mexico Symphony Orchestra premiered the peace with Carlos Chávez as conductor.[158]
  • Born:

August 28, 1937 (Saturday)

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The baby receiving treatment after the Bloody Saturday photograph was taken
  • H. S. Wong (Wong Ha-sheng) took the famous Bloody Saturday newsreel and photograph, showing a baby crying in the bombed-out ruins of a Shanghai railway station after it was destroyed by Japanese bombers.[162] The photo was published and the newsreel shown in theaters worldwide, and stirred outrage against Japan.[163] Although Wong was subsequently accused of staging the photograph, other pictures taken by him showed the baby being treated by a boy scout at the scene. Wong never learned the name or gender of the baby, or whether the child had survived the injury.
  • Toyota Motor Corporation, the largest automobile manufacturer in the world, was incorporated by Kiichiro Toyoda in Japan. Automobile manufacturing had started in 1933 by the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd., which had been created by Kiichiro's father, Sakichi Toyoda, for the production of his invention, an automatic loom for the purpose of weaving cloth, and the first Toyota vehicle, the Toyota G1 truck, had been introduced on November 21, 1935.[164][165]
  • The Vatican recognized Francoist Spain and sent an apostolic delegate.[166][167]
  • English athlete Sydney Wooderson set a new world record at Motspur Park by running one mile in 4 minutes 6.6 seconds, breaking the record of 4:06.8 set by Glenn Cunningham in 1934.[168][169]
  • Died: Owen Burns, 67, American entrepreneur and land developer who purchased and developed the majority of the land now in Sarasota, Florida[170][171]

August 29, 1937 (Sunday)

August 30, 1937 (Monday)

August 31, 1937 (Tuesday)

References

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