1937
1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940
New Moscow show trials begin January 23 as Josef Stalin purges the Communist Party and Soviet Army of alleged Trotskyites (see 1936). Grigori L. Pyatakov, 47, is executed January 31; Karl Bernardovich Radek, 52, condemned to serve 10 years in prison; Marshal Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevski, 44, convicted of treason by a military tribunal and executed June 12 along with seven other generals; hundreds of others are liquidated or sent to the gulag (labor camps) of Siberia and elsewhere. Fully 7,000 will be sent to the gulag, 35,000 others dismissed from the armed forces on suspicion of disloyalty.
Malaga falls to Gen. Franco February 8 as Spain's civil war continues, with more than 10,000 Germans and from 50,000 to 75,000 Italians supporting Franco (see 1936). He commands several thousand insurgents against the Republican Army, whose efforts enjoy the support of an International Brigade of Russians, Britons, other Europeans, and Americans. The insurgents advance with Italian aid, but the road from Madrid to Valencia remains intact. Loyalists defeat Italian troops March 18 at Brihuega, capturing large stores of equipment. Benito Mussolini began the year by concluding a "gentlemen's agreement" with Britain, each party agreeing to maintain the independence and integrity of Spain and respect each other's interests and rights in the Mediterranean; an Italian-Yugoslav treaty signed March 25 guarantees existing frontiers and maintenance of the status quo in the Adriatic.
German Junker and Heinkel bombers of the Nazi Condor Legion annihilate the defenseless Basque town of Guernica on the afternoon of April 26, dropping explosives and thousands of aluminum incendiary projectiles for more than 3 hours while Heinkel fighters strafe civilians who have fled into the fields. The incident produces outrage worldwide.
Congress amends the Neutrality Act of 1935 May 1 to stiffen the embargo against shipment of arms, ammunition, and implements of war to any nation at war, including civil war, and bar U.S. vessels from carrying such material (see 1939).
President Roosevelt sends Wisconsin-born Washington, D.C. lawyer Joseph E. (Edward) Davies as his ambassador to Moscow. Now 60, Davies attended the Versailles Peace Conference with Woodrow Wilson in 1919, divorced his wife 2 years ago to marry General Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, and will urge amending U.S. Neutrality Acts to discourage European powers from starting a second world war.
Four German warships bombard Almeria May 31 in reprisal for a Loyalist air attack on the Deutschland. Gen. Mola dies in a plane crash June 3, Bilboa falls to the insurgents June 18 after weeks of heavy fighting and aerial bombing, Basque resistance collapses, and Gijon falls October 21 as Franco breaks resistance in the Asturias. The Spanish government moves from Valencia to Barcelona October 28. Franco announces a naval blockade of the entire Spanish coast November 28, but a Loyalist counter-offensive begins December 5, and Teruel falls to the Loyalists December 19.
Britain's Hawker Aircraft begins production of the single-seat Hurricane monoplane fighter plane. First flown 2 years ago, it is the first Royal Air Force plane able to exceed 300 miles per hour in level flight and can actually reach a speed of 330 miles per hour and an altitude of 36,000 feet (see 1940).
The Bren gun that goes into production in England is adapted from a Czech light machine gun made at Brno. Easy to clean, load, and operate, its barrel can be changed quickly when it overheats. The gun weighs 19 pounds, can fire 520 rounds per minute, and has an effective range of about 2,000 feet (see Sten gun, 1940).
Former British foreign secretary and 1925 Nobel Peace Prize winner Sir (Joseph) Austen Chamberlain dies at London March 16 at age 73. Parliament votes in March to double the annual salary of Britain's prime minister from £5,000 to £10,000 and to pay him a pension upon retirement. The lord chancellor has been receiving £5,000 with another £5,000 for acting as speaker of the House of Lords.
Britain's prime minister Stanley Baldwin retires May 28 at age 69 and is succeeded by his chancellor of the exchequer (Arthur) Neville Chamberlain, 58-year-old son of the late Austen Chamberlain, who attempts to appease Adolf Hitler, a policy whose many supporters include Edward F. L. (Frederick Lindley) Wood, 56, earl of Halifax, who served as viceroy to India from 1925 to 1929. Former Canadian prime minister Sir Robert Borden dies at Ottawa June 10 at age 82; former British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald at sea en route to South America November 8 at age 71.
France's premier Léon Blum resigns in June after a conservative majority in the Senate refuses to grant him the emergency-decree powers that he has sought to deal with the nation's financial problems; left-wingers have denounced him for refusing to intervene in the Spanish civil war, right-wingers for trying to establish state control over finance and private industry. Former premier Camille Chautemps heads a new modified Popular Front ministry that will continue until March of next year (see 1938).
Former Czech president Tomas Masaryk dies at Lány September 13 at age 86; former German general and erstwhile Hitler supporter Erich F. W. Ludendorff at Tutzing December 20 at age 72.
Italy joins the German-Japanese anti-Comintern pact November 6 and withdraws from the League of Nations December 11.
Former U.S. secretary of state Elihu Root dies at New York February 7 at age 91; former U.S. Navy admiral and fleet commander Henry D. Wiley at Palm Beach, Fla., May 20 at age 76; former U.S. diplomat Frank B. Kellogg at St. Paul, Minn., December 21 on the eve of his 81st birthday.
A Kurd assassinates Iraq's 47-year-old military dictator Gen. Bakr Sidqi at Mosul August 11 following conclusion of a nonaggression pact signed in July by Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian, and Afghan diplomats (see 1936). British diplomat Sir Percy Cox has died at Melchbourne, Bedfordshire, February 20 at age 72, having overseen the transition of Iraq from a provisional, largely military regime to a national government headed by the late Faisal I (see 1939).
Japanese forces invade China July 7 as the new prime minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye, 46, embarks on an undeclared war that will continue until 1945. A scion of the ancient Fujiwara family, Konoye is a onetime liberal who has come to favor increased armament and centralized government control. The Japanese attack Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing (Peking), the city falls to the Japanese July 28, and Tianjin (Tientsin) falls July 29 as Gen. Otozo Yamada, 55, directs the invading army. Kyoto-born military intelligence veteran Gen. Naruhiko Higashikuni, 49, has commanded the 5th infantry brigade since 1934 and is named chief of military aviation; a member of the royal family, he will head Japan's Home Defense Headquarters beginning in 1939. Chinese patriot Sun Yaxing, 26, sells his jewelry business and uses the proceeds to found the Chinese Youths National Salvation Association. Japanese authorities on Taiwan force the people there to celebrate the Imperial Army's victories; in the next 8 years they will draft 200,000 Taiwanese into the army, and 40,000 of them will die. The Japanese Army uses poison gas August 13 against Chinese troops at the outbreak of the Wasung-Shanghai campaign. It has earlier used gas more than 1,100 times in 14 provinces (see biological weapons [Unit 731], 1936). U.S. women and children living in Shanghai are evacuated August 15 while Japanese forces prepare to launch an attack on the city. Nationalists and communists join forces to repel the invaders, communist military leader Ye Ting is given command of the New 4th Army in October (now 40, he has spent 5 years in the Soviet Union and western Europe), but the Japanese take Shanghai November 8 and stage a victory parade down the city's main shopping street December 3; a Chinese assassination team led by Sun Yaxing throws a bomb that disrupts the parade, and Sun hides Browning automatics, Mauser machine pistols, and Mills hand grenades in the attic of his former jewelry store to prepare for future terrorist activities (but see 1938). The Japanese advance on Nanjing (Nanking), take that city by storm December 13, and take Hangzhou (Hangchow) December 24 (see 1938).
The Panay incident heightens tensions between Japan and the Western powers. Japanese bombers attack British and U.S. ships near Nanjing December 12 on orders from Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, 37, who commands Imperial Army troops in central China, but Washington accepts Japan's explanations, and events in Europe distract London and Washington from the aggression in China.
President Roosevelt proposes a reorganization of the U.S. judiciary February 7 and explains his idea to the public on radio March 9 in one of his "fireside chats." The "nine old men" on the Supreme Court have frustrated FDR by blocking so many New Deal initiatives that the president asks for a law that would empower him to appoint an additional justice for every current justice over the age of 70. FDR's Texas-born vice-president John Nance Garner opposes the "court-packing scheme," as do many other Democrats, and the proposal's only effect is to increase criticism of Roosevelt.
Dominican troops and police massacre Haitian workers living near their border in October as long-simmering enmities erupt into violence (see Trujillo, 1930). The economy of the Dominican Republic depends on Haitian labor; somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000 are killed in a 36-hour bloodbath; the outside world pays little attention, but the atrocity creates a furor on the island. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull has said of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo that he "may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch." Trujillo will let a puppet president replace him next year. The new government will agree to pay $3.4 million in compensation to relatives of those killed, but only a fraction of this will actually be paid. The despotic Trujillo will be enriching himself to the tune of $200,000 per month by 1939, and he will return as president in 1943 (see 1954).
Brazil's president Getulio Vargas proclaims a new constitution November 10 after 7 years in office, closes the Congress, and begins nearly 15 years of a dictatorship he says is not fascist but will have all the hallmarks of fascism. Socialist newspaperman Alexandre Barbosa Lima, 40, opposed the Vargas coup in 1930 but will support him with nationalist fervor in his columns.
Germany's Buchenwald (Beech Forest) concentration camp opens July 16 on a plateau overlooking Weimar (see Dachau, 1933). The first inmates are mostly political prisoners of every religious belief, but most of the 238,980 inmates that will ultimately be sent to Buchenwald will be Jews, and 56,545 will die in the camp's gas chambers. The Flossenbürg concentration camp is established in Bavaria's Upper Palatinate, where it will become a major center of forced labor, with 30,000 to 40,000 worker prisoners housed in the main camp and 15 satellite camps. Beginning in 1942 it will serve also as a transit camp for Jews who are to be sent by train to camps in Poland.
Germany evicts Jews from trade and industry, orders them to wear yellow badges displaying the six-pointed "star of David," and bars them from all parks, places of entertainment, health resorts, and public institutions (see Nuremberg laws, 1935; Kristallnacht, 1938).
Romania forbids Jews to own land and bars them from the professions at year's end under legislation put through by the newly installed prime minister Octavian Goga, 56, who takes office despite the fact that his National Christian Party gained only 10 percent of the votes in the election.
The Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching founded 6 years ago by Jessie Daniel Ames begins naming sheriffs who permit unruly mobs to take away their prisoners, accusing the lawmen of contributing to the crime of lynching.
Spanish women observe the 27th International Women's Day March 8 by demonstrating against the rebel forces of Gen. Francisco Franco, who has obtained support from the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy.
U.S. authorities in the Philippines grant women there the right to vote on the same basis as men.
Britain liberalizes her divorce laws July 23, but a new Irish constitution takes effect December 29 with a provision banning divorce and denouncing the idea of working mothers.
A German court at Waldenberg rules November 29 that the state may take children away from mothers and fathers who refuse to teach them Nazi ideology.
Japanese troops rape and murder more than 20,000 Chinese women in their march into Nanjing (Nanking) beginning December 13, assaulting many of them in schools and nurseries. Fathers are forced to rape their daughters and sons their mothers while other family members watch. The Imperial Army authorizes the recruiting of "comfort-girl" battalions of Chinese and Korean girls and women, forced into sexual slavery to gratify the needs of its soldiers (see 1941; 1991). At least 200,000 noncombatants (the estimate by Japanese authorities; 300,000 by Chinese reports) are systematically executed over the course of 6 weeks at Nanjing, whose population numbered fewer than 650,000 before the approach of the Japanese. A secret message sent under the seal of Prince Asaka, uncle of Emperor Hirohito, has said, "Kill all captives," and Gen. Iwane Matsui has ordered the outrage, in which he and his lieutenant general Hisao Tani have personally participated; by early next year soldiers will have systematically raped thousands of women ranging in age from 7 to 70, used machine guns to kill an estimated 50,000 people trying to flee across the Yangzi (Yangtze), and competed to see who could kill most efficiently; this grisly atrocity ("the rape of Nanking"), combined with merciless bombing of the Chinese cities and use of germ warfare, rouses world opinion against Japan (see 1938). Japan's Ministry of Education will delete textbook references to the massacre for decades, and right-wing extremists will deny that it ever happened.
Oil baron-philanthropist John D. Rockefeller dies at Ormond Beach, Fla., May 23 at age 97, leaving an estate of just $26.4 million, most of it in U.S. Treasury notes (he has long since given away most of his vast fortune); social welfare worker Elizabeth S. Haldane dies at Auchterarder, Perth, December 24 at age 75, having persuaded the late Andrew Carnegie's United Kingdom Trust to rescue the financially troubled Sadler's Wells Theater and Ballet.
"I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished," President Roosevelt says in his second inaugural address January 20. The inauguration date has been moved from March 4 under terms of the Twentieth Amendment.
General Motors recognizes the United Automobile Workers (UAW) as sole bargaining agent for workers in all GM plants February 11 (see 1936). GM takes the action to end the union's 44-day sit-down strike at Flint, but 4,470 other strikes idle plants nationwide, and most are sit-down strikes.
United States Steel Co. permits unionization of its workers March 2 to avoid a strike (see 1936). Myron C. Taylor spent $16 million 5 years ago in direct relief to workers as partial compensation for their reduced time and wages; he has been Big Steel's CEO since 1932 and now breaks with the nonunion policy established by the company after the Homestead Strike of 1892, signing a contract March 17 with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee of the CIO (see 1936). Benjamin F. Fairless of Carnegie-Illinois Steel signs the contract, as do the heads of four other United States Steel subsidiaries; it establishes a $5 daily minimum wage, a 40-hour week, paid vacations, seniority rights, and grievance procedures. Union organizers meet with resistance from "little steel" firms that include Bethlehem with 82,000 workers, Republic with 53,000, Youngstown Sheet and Tube with 27,000, and National, American Rolling Mills (Armco), and Inland with a combined total of some 38,000.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the principle of a minimum wage for women March 29; its 5-to-4 ruling in the case of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish reverses some earlier decisions (see 1923), but Justices Butler, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Van Devanter dissent from Chief Justice Hughes's majority opinion. President Roosevelt has sent a special message to Congress February 5 proposing legislation that would "pack" the Supreme Court with six additional justices if the existing "nine old men" continued to frustrate New Deal efforts to lighten the economic burden on most Americans, but Justice Roberts has shifted his position and votes to uphold the Washington State law.
The Supreme Court upholds the National Labor Relations Act of 1934 in a series of 5-to-4 decisions beginning April 12 with NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Steel. The Court essentially ratifies what some right-wing critics call the New Deal's "welfare state" and initiates a centralism that will come to have bipartisan support.
Jones & Laughlin Steel workers walk off the job at Aliquippa, Pa., on the night of May 12. Company chairman Horace E. Lewis has delayed complying with the Supreme Court order of April 12 but has finally agreed to allow an election in 10 days or 2 weeks and to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) if a majority of workers vote for it, but the SWOC fears a trap and has called for a strike, which ends in 40 hours after Pennsylvania's governor George Earle shows support for the workers.
"Unionism, not Fordism," say thousands of flyers printed up by the UAW May 26 (see 1935). Local 174 head Walter P. Reuther asks the local's Women's Auxiliary to distribute the flyers to workers at the River Rouge plant, and he invites the media, clergymen, and local government officials to witness the event in hopes of averting violence, but Henry Ford has said, "We'll never recognize the United Auto Workers Union or any other union" (see 1932). Ford employs a "service department," headed by Harry H. Bennett, 45, whose 600 goons are armed with guns and blackjacks to bar union organizers, Reuther shows up in his Sunday suit with gold watch and chain along with three other organizers, they pose for news photographers on the overpass connecting the Ford plant with a streetcar stop, and one of Bennett's men says, "This is private property. Get the hell out of here!" Reuther and the other three are savagely beaten in what will be remembered as the "Battle of the Overpass." Bennett's men smash most of the journalists' cameras, but Detroit News photographer James Fitzgerald manages to escape with his camera, his pictures of the bruised and bleeding organizers appear not only in his paper but also in Time magazine, and much of the nation learns for the first time of Ford's brutal methods (see 1938).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the unemployment provisions of the 1935 Social Security Act May 24, ruling 7 to 2 in the case of Helvering v. Davis (Justices Butler and McReynolds dissent).
Republic Steel workers strike and picket, singing "Solidarity Forever" and "I Dreamt I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" (see 1915). Republic's Indiana-born $130,000-a-year boss Tom M. (Mercer) Girdler, 41, says he would rather go back to hoeing potatoes and cultivating his apple trees than give in to union organizers. On May 30 he has Chicago police attack the demonstrators; four are killed, three others mortally wounded, and 84 injured in the Memorial Day massacre as police fire on unarmed strikers and brutally assault wives and children. The CIO claims a membership of 3½ million by September with more than 500,000 in the United Steel Workers Union as other incidents of police repression accompanied by further deaths and injuries follow the violence at Republic Steel.
Longshoreman union leader Harry Bridges leads his Pacific Coast division out of International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) in June (see 1934); he reconstitutes it as the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Association (ILWU), affiliating it with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) (see Hawaiian sugar and pineapple workers, 1944).
The U.S. economic recovery that has progressed for 4 years falters beginning in midyear. Business activity suffers a sharp drop; Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average falls from its post-1929 high of 194.40.
The New York Federal Reserve Bank reduces its discount rate to 1 percent in August; it will remain at that level until January 1948.
"I am the law," says Jersey City, N.J., mayor Frank Hague when questioned in a legislative investigation as to his right to forbid picketing and distribution of labor circulars on the city's streets. Now 61, Hague has been mayor for 20 years and will remain mayor for another 10.
Amalgamated Clothing Workers president Sidney Hillman obtains a settlement with the Clothing Manufacturers Association and establishes a bargaining pattern that will be used throughout the industry (see 1918). Hillman has organized all but a handful of men's clothing workers (see Office of Production Management, 1941).
The Folklore of Capitalism by Laramie, Wyo.-born Yale Law School professor Thurman (Wesley) Arnold, 46, shows how antitrust laws have actually promoted the growth of industrial monopolies in the United States "by deflecting the attack on them into purely moral and ceremonial channels." Arnold will be appointed assistant U.S. attorney general next year and in the next 5 years will file more than 200 suits alleging conspiracies in restraint of trade.
Former secretary of the treasury Andrew W. Mellon dies at Southampton, L.I., August 26 at age 82 (see art, 1938); former secretary of the treasury Ogden L. Mills dies of a coronary thrombosis at his New York home October 11 at age 53, having stoutly opposed New Deal policies.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman James M. Landis resigns and at age 38 becomes the youngest dean of the Harvard Law School in its history, replacing Roscoe Pound. He supports President Roosevelt's "court-packing" plan and is succeeded as SEC chairman by William O. Douglas, who will serve until 1939.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes November 24 at 113.69 but rebounds somewhat to close December 31 at 120.85, down from 179.90 at the end of 1936.
The Miller-Tydings Act passed by Congress August 17 allows manufacturers to fix resale prices of brand-name merchandise in states where legislatures have authorized price-fixing contracts. Designed to prevent predatory pricing and ruinous price wars, the new fair trade law has been devised as an exception to the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890 and permits a manufacturer to determine the minimum price at which his products may be sold at retail outlets.
Boston department-store magnate and social reformer Edward A. Filene dies of pneumonia at the American Hospital in Paris September 26 at age 77. His personal assistant Lillian Schoedler has driven him across Europe in her roadster, returns his ashes to Boston aboard the Ile de France, helps to scatter them in the Charles River, and inherits the Back Bay brownstone at 12 Otis Place that Filene acquired in 1920.
Standard Oil of New Jersey drills the first offshore Louisiana oil wells.
Electrical engineer-inventor Elihu Thomson dies at his Swampscott, Mass., home March 13 at age 83.
Bonneville Dam is dedicated September 28 on the Columbia River in Oregon (see Boulder Dam, 1936). Before pressing a button that starts the first generator President Roosevelt says, "Truly, in the construction of this dam we have had our eyes on the future of the nation. Its cost will be returned to the people of the United States many times over in the improvement of navigation and transportation, the cheapening of electric power, and the distribution of this power to hundreds of small communities within a great radius." Henry Kaiser has masterminded construction of the new $51 million hydroelectric installation, which rises 197 feet, is 2,690 feet across, and will be completed in 1943 (see Kaiser, 1931; 1941).
Private utility companies file 18 lawsuits against the Tennessee Valley Authority November 15 and demand the TVA's dissolution (see 1936; congressional hearings, 1938).
Locks on the new Bonneville Dam will permit ships to ascend 188 miles up the Columbia River.
Soviet Russia opens the 80-mile Moscow-Volga Ship Canal to give Moscow access to the Volga (see Stalin Ship Canal, 1933).
Hong Kong's C. Y. Tung shipping line is founded by Chinese shipowner Chao-Yung Tung, 25, whose father-in-law has a monopoly on much of the Chinese coastal shipping trade and was himself made vice president last year of the Tianjin (Tientsin) Ship Owners Association. Tung has moved to Hong Kong at the outbreak of hostilities with Japan and will build a fleet rivaling those of the Greek ship owners Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos.
The container ship has its genesis as North Carolina trucker Malcom (Purcell) McLean hauls a load of cotton bales to Hoboken, N.J., and has to wait nearly a whole day before stevedores on the docks can get to his truck, remove every crate, put it in a sling, hoist it up, and then lower it into the hold of a freighter. This "break-bulk" method of shipping is slow, labor intensive, dangerous, and to McLean's mind rather stupid. Now 23, McLean is a farmer's son who began hauling empty tobacco barrels in an old trailer when still a teenager; he started a trucking company 3 years ago with two of his six siblings. By 1940 they will have 30 trucks, and by 1955 there will be more than 1,700, but no shipowner will listen to his idea (see 1955).
The French Line's 2-year-old S.S. Normandie is refitted with four-bladed propellers and crosses the Atlantic in 3 days, 22 hours, and 7 minutes, winning the Blue Riband from the S.S. Europa (but see 1942).
Former White Star Line chairman (Joseph) Bruce Ismay dies at London October 17 at age 74, having lived under a cloud since his escape from the sinking R.M.S. Titanic in 1912 (his obituary in the Times makes no mention of the Titanic).
Air Canada has its beginnings in Trans-Canada Air Lines, established by the parliament at Ottawa April 10 with Canadian National Railways president Samuel J. (James) Hungerford, 64, as its president. Its first scheduled route is between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, it will have a monopoly on Canada's domestic air transport until 1959, and it will grow to have a worldwide presence. Headquartered at Montreal, it will change its name to Air Canada January 1, 1965.
US Airways has its beginnings in a Washington, D.C.-based airmail service founded under the name All American Aviation by chemical company heir Richard du Pont, whose planes pick up mail "on the fly" in small Northeastern communities, using a system of hooks and ropes. The company will begin carrying passengers in 1949, rename itself Allegheny Airlines in 1953, and become USAir in 1979.
Germany retires her 9-year-old Graf Zeppelin after 144 ocean crossings that have carried more than 13,000 passengers. The 1-year-old Hindenburg carries 50 passengers in private cabins and 47 in crew, she moves noiselessly at 78 miles per hour, but she is filled with hydrogen gas that explodes on her arrival at Lakehurst, N.J., May 6, bursting into flames that kill 36 people, 13 of them passengers, a disaster that ends the brief era of transatlantic travel by rigid airship (see Pan Am, 1939). The Germans will send Hugo Eckener to America next year in an effort to buy safe helium gas, but the Americans will refuse to sell.
Amelia Earhart disappears July 2 on a Pacific flight from New Guinea to Howland Island (see 1928). Now 38, she has been attempting a round-the-world flight in a twin-engined Lockheed Electra with Frederick J. Noonan as her copilot. No trace of the plane will be found.
Soviet test pilot Valery P. Chkalov and three companions arrive at Vancouver June 20 in their ANT-25 monoplane, having flown nonstop over the North Pole from Moscow in 62 hours, 17 minutes (see 1936). They have covered 11,50 kilometers (5,400 miles) that included 3,100 miles over ice fields, they visit President Roosevelt at Washington, and return home from New York on the Normandie. His countrymen hail Chkalov as the "Russian Lindbergh" (see 1939).
Montreal inaugurates trolleybus service March 29, becoming the first Canadian city to have such buses. It had horsedrawn tramways from 1861 to 1894, an electric tramway beginning in 1892, gasoline-powered buses beginning in 1919 (see Métro, 1966).
The Golden Gate Bridge opens May 27 across San Francisco Bay to link San Francisco with Marin County. Painted a bright orange, the new 4,200-foot (1,280-meter) span has giant 780-foot towers to hold its mile-and-a-half-long main cables, each containing 27,000 pencil-thin wires. Engineer Joseph B. Strauss, now 67, has pushed through the project, a huge safety net that he has hung from the bridge has saved 19 construction workers from falling into the rough sea at the entrance to San Francisco Bay, but 12 men have been killed 1 week before the opening of the bridge that will remain the world's longest suspension bridge for 27 years (see Verrazano Bridge, 1964).
The Lincoln Tunnel between Manhattan and Weehawken, N.J., opens to traffic under the Hudson River December 22. More than 1,790,000 50¢ tolls will be collected in the 8,000-foot tunnel's first year of operation, a second tube will open in December 1940, and within 60 years the tunnel will be collecting some 20 million tolls per year.
General Motors introduces an automatic transmission for automobiles under the name Hydra-Matic Drive as optional equipment for 1938 Oldsmobiles. Similar transmissions have been used on London buses for 12 years and will be employed increasingly on U.S. passenger cars, first as optional equipment, then as standard.
Pierce-Arrow ceases production. The company will be sold at auction in May of next year.
Auburn Automobile Co. introduces the sleek Cord Model 812 with a forward-looking design, but Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg motorcars pass into history as E. L. Cord returns from his Surrey estate and sells his motorcar holdings. Cord moved to England to escape kidnap threats against his children.
Toyota Motor Co. is founded at Nagoya by Kiichiro Toyoda as an adjunct to the family's loom works. The Toyota Model AA sedan introduced in prototype 2 years ago by Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, whose Sakichi Toyoda received £100,000 from a Lancashire firm in 1929 for rights to produce his advanced loom in England. Toyoda used the money to develop a motorcar design and put his son Kiichiro in charge of the venture. An engineer sent by Kiichiro to the Packard works at Detroit as a tourist acquired enough information to set up an assembly line. Kiichiro's cousin Eiji, now 23, joined the company last year and works on a prototype of its first production model, a six-cylinder sedan with styling much like that of the Chrysler Airflow introduced early in 1934 (see 1950). Japan produces only 26,000 motorcars this year, Germany only 331,000 as those countries gear up for war production. The United States produces 4.8 million automobiles as the economic recession continues, depressing demand.
Mexico nationalizes her railroads in June.
Nylon is patented by E. I. du Pont, whose chronically depressed chemist W. H. Carothers swallows cyanide in a Philadelphia hotel room April 29 at age 41, just 19 days after filing for the patent, which he has assigned to Du Pont (see 1935). The first completely man-made fiber, nylon is used for the first time in Dr. West's Miracle-Tuft toothbrushes, whose DuPont Prolon bristles are more sanitary than traditional hog bristles; nylon will find wide use not only in clothing but also as a substitute for canvas in sailboat sails, sisal in ships' hawsers, etc. (see stockings, 1940; Terylene-Dacron, 1941).
Germany's 74-year-old Bayer AG achieves advances in polyurethane chemistry (see 1936).
York, Pa.-born Bell Laboratories research mathematician George R. (Robert) Stibitz, 33, pioneers modern computer technology (see Bush's analog computer, 1930). He experiments in November with relays (metallic devices used to regulate telephone circuits). When an electric current is passed through a relay, it can assume either an open or closed position; wondering if relays can be used to perform simple mathematical functions, Stibitz borrows some from the Bell stockroom, takes them home, and assembles a simple computing system on his kitchen table, using the relays, a dry cell, flashlight bulbs, and metal strips cut from a tobacco can. Designating a lighted bulb to represent the binary digit 1 and an unlighted bulb the digit 0, he creates a device that can use binary mathematics to add and subtract decimals. His K (for Kitchen)-model computer does not impress his superiors but they will soon change their minds (see 1939).
Austrian-born Columbia University physicist Isidor (Isaac) Rabi, 39, uses the university's molecular-beam laboratory to discover a magnetic resonance method for observing the spectra of atoms and molecules in the radio-frequency range. Rabi's method will make it possible to deduce the mechanical and magnetic properties of atomic nuclei (see 1938).
Italian physicists Emilio (Gino) Segrè, 32, and Enrico Fermi produce the first laboratory-made element (see 1934). The two discovered "slow" neutrons 2 years ago and now bombard molybdenum with deuterons and neutrons to produce an element with the atomic number 43 that probably does not exist in nature but will be called technetium (see nuclear fission, 1938; McMillan, 1940).
Physicist Maurice Goldhaber at Cambridge University performs slow-neutron scattering studies that will prove essential to the development of the first nuclear reactors (see Goldhaber, 1934). He and James Chadwick have used their nuclear photoelectric effect discovery to disintegrate the nuclei of boron, lithium, and nitrogen; Goldhaber has shown that photographic emulsions can be useful in recording the tracks of particles formed in nuclear reactions (see byrillium, 1940).
Berlin-born physicist Erwin Wilhelm Müller, 26, invents a field emission microscope that enables scientists to photograph individual atoms. Müller will emigrate to America in 1951, become a professor at Pennsylvania State University, and invent a field ion microscope in 1956.
Soviet physicists Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm, 42, and Ilya Mikhaylovich Frank, 29, find the explanation for Cherenkov radiation (see 1934).
Wheaton, Ill.-born astronomer Grote Reber, 25, builds the world's first radio telescope in his backyard. He will be the world's only radio astronomer until 1945, mapping high-frequency sources (see Lovell, 1946).
German-born Sheffield University biochemist Hans (Adolf) Krebs, 37, demonstrates the existence of a cycle of chemical reactions that are involved in the breakdown of sugars, fats, and proteins into carbon dioxide, water, and energy-rich compounds (it will be called the citric acid cycle, or Krebs cycle).
Organic chemist Henry E. Armstrong dies at his native Lewisham, Kent, July 13 at age 89; zoologist Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, at Tring, Buckinghamshire, August 27 at age 69; biologist Richard von Hertwig at Munich October 3 at age 87; physicist Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, at Cambridge October 19 at age 66; plant physiologist Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose at Calcutta November 23 at age 78 (he was knighted in 1917).
Barcelona physician Josep Trueta y Raspall, 40, introduces a closed-plaster method of treating compound fractures, using principles developed by Lincoln, Neb., physician H. (Hiram) Winnett Orr, 60, to save fracture victims in the Spanish civil war and reduce the need for amputation.
Diabetics are treated successfully for the first time with zinc protamine insulin, which reduces the need for diet therapy (see 1924; 1942).
Pharmacologist Daniele Bovet of 1936 sulfanilamide fame discovers the first antihistamines. Bovet will also pioneer the use of curare—employed by South American tribes to poison arrows—as a muscle relaxant in surgery.
U.S. consumers demand that Congress regulate the drug industry after 107 people have died, many of them children, following treatment for sore throats and other ills with an elixir of the antibacterial drug sulfanilamide (see 1936). Responding to an apparent need for a liquid form of sulfanilamide, chief chemist and pharmacist Harold Cole Watkins of the 58-year-old Bristol, Tenn.-based S.E. Massengill Co. has mixed the drug with extract of raspberry and dissolved it in the highly toxic solvent diethylene glycol, known more commonly as antifreeze; 240 gallons of Elixir Sulfanalimide have gone out to pharmacies. The American Medical Association has received complaints from physicians who have seen patients in severe and unrelenting abdominal pain, urine cessation, nausea, vomiting, stupor, and convulsions. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dispatches nearly all of its 239 investigators to track down any unused portions of the medicine. They eventually find 234 gallons and one pint of the 240-gallon total (the rest having been consumed), Massengill denies any responsibility (it has violated no existing law), but Watkins commits suicide and the company is charged on a misbranding technicality (see Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, 1938).
The Neurotic Personality of Our Time by German-born U.S. psychoanalyst Karen Horney (née Danielson), 52, attacks Freudian anti-feminism. Horney blames the industrial civilization of America for the anxieties that plague modern men, women, and children.
The world's first blood bank opens March 15 at Chicago's Cook County Hospital under the direction of the hospital's Budapest-born director of therapeutics Bernard M. Fantus, 62, who has based the idea on blood depots set up for wounded soldiers in the Great War (see Vaughan, 1939; New York, 1940).
Sphygmomanometer inventor Scipione Riva-Rocci dies at Rapallo March 15 at age 73, having seen his instrument become the standard device for measuring blood pressure; psychiatrist Alfred Adler dies at Aberdeen, Scotland, May 28 at age 67; neurosurgeon-neurophysiologist Harvey W. Cushing at New Haven, Conn., October 7 at age 70, having found on a visit to Pavia in 1901 that Scipione Riva-Rocci's sphygmomanometer could reduce mortality from anesthesia, especially during intercranial surgery, and helped bring the instrument to worldwide attention; biologist George Nuttall dies at London December 16 at age 75.
Albanian Muslims rebel in mid-May against the dictatorial rule of Zog I, who has issued a decree that forbids the veiling of women.
Gestapo officers arrest Lutheran pastor (Friedrich Gustav Emil) Martin Niemoeller, 45, at Berlin on charges of sedition and abuse of the pulpit. A U-boat commander in the Mediterranean during the Great War, Niemoeller was suspended from preaching 3 years ago but has continued to speak out against the Nazis and is now sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. "First they came for the communists," he will later write, "but I was not a communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the socialists and the trade unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
China's 26-year-old Tsinghua University and 18-year-old Nankai University relocate to Kunming in July after suffering damage from Japanese bombing attacks and join with Bejing (Peking) University to form the Southwest Associated University (Chang Sha Temporary University).
The Autonomous University of Puebla is founded in central Mexico.
Queens College is founded at Flushing, N.Y.
St. John's College is founded at Annapolis, Md., where former University of Virginia professor Stringfellow Barr, 40, and University of Chicago administrator Scott Buchanan, 42, take over the King William's School founded in 1696 and begin a Great Books program that revives the principles of a classical education. St. John's will open a Santa Fe, N.M., campus to supplement the one at Annapolis.
Pepperdine University has its beginnings in the Pepperdine College founded at Los Angeles with a gift from Western Auto Supply magnate George Pepperdine, who has amassed a fortune of $10 million (see transportation, 1909). Now 51, Pepperdine will lose his money and testify in 1950 that his personal assets are no more than $1.
A digital revolution in communications begins with the discovery of pulse-code modulation (PCM) by English engineer Alec H. (Harley) Reeves, 35, while working at the Paris laboratory of International Telephone & Telegraph Co. (ITT). Based on Boolean algebra (see science, 1854), his system transforms voice signals into electronic pulses—ones and zeros—and sends them along standard telephone lines for reconstruction into analog signals at the receiving end. The signals can be transmitted in a continuous modulating wave over long distances with scarcely any interference or distortion, but although Reeves will obtain French patents next year, British patents in 1939, and U.S. patents in 1942, PCM will not be used in telephone transmission until 1962 following development of integrated circuits that make it practical.
The emergency three-digit telephone number 999 comes into use in Britain to summon police, fire-fighting, or ambulance aid. Britain's example will be followed by countries in Europe, the Far East, and South America (see New York, 1968).
Bell Telephone Laboratories introduces the Model 302 French phone designed by New York-born industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, 33, who has worked for Bell since 1930.
Wireless radio inventor (and Nobel physicist) Guglielmo Marconi dies at Rome July 20 at age 63.
Xerography has its beginnings in a discovery that will revolutionize duplication of papers in offices, schools, and libraries. Photostats are costly, carbon copies often blurred, and few can be made at one time, but Seattle-born New York pre-law student Chester (Floyd) Carlson, 31, has observed the demand for multiple copies of patent specifications and other documents while working in the patent department of a New York electronics firm, and he sees possibilities in a dry-copying process based on principles of photoconductivity and electrostatics. Taking a sulfur-coated zinc plate, he gives it an electrostatic charge by rubbing it with a handkerchief in the dark, places over it a transparent celluloid ruler, and then exposes the zinc plate to light for a few seconds, neutralizing the charge except where the markings of the ruler have blocked the light. Dusting lycopodium powder over the plate and blowing away the excess, Carlson is left with a perfect image of the ruler (see 1938).
Cardiff-born journalist Hugh (née Hubert) (Kinsman) Cudlipp, 24, becomes editor of the Sunday Pictorial (later the Sunday Mirror) and boosts circulation by printing photographs of topless women, a practice that other British tabloids will imitate.
The adventure strip "Prince Valiant" debuts February 13 in William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Created and drawn for the King Features Syndicate by Hal Foster of "Tarzan" fame, the series based on Arthurian legends of knights in armor will run for more than 60 years, far outliving its creator.
William Randolph Hearst merges his evening New York Journal with his morning New York American to create the New York Journal-American, an afternoon paper (see 1895; 1966).
Newsweek magazine begins publication at New York to compete with Henry Luce's Time (see 1933). Real estate heir Vincent Astor, 42, and railroad heir W. Averell Harriman, 45, merge their news weekly Today with T. J. C. Martyn's 4-year-old News-Week, and bring in as editor former assistant secretary of state Raymond Moley, installing McGraw-Hill president Malcolm Muir as publisher (see 1961).
Look magazine begins publication at Des Moines to compete with Henry Luce's LIFE. Des Moines Register and Tribune publisher Gardner "Mike" Cowles Jr. launches the biweekly picture magazine that will continue until 1971. (His brother John, 38, moves to Minneapolis to manage the Minneapolis Star that he and Mike persuaded their Iowa banker-father to purchase last year.) Gardner will move Look to New York in 1941.
Marie Claire magazine begins publication at Paris under the direction industrialist Jean Prouvost, now 53. It will grow by the end of the century to have American and Japanese editions (Hearst Corp. will publish the U.S. edition) with some 15 million readers worldwide for its fashion and beauty articles.
Woman's Day appears in October as the A&P launches a 3¢ monthly women's service magazine for distribution in A&P stores. The food chain will sell the magazine to Fawcett Publications in 1958.
Former Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer dies at Syncote, Pa., October 22 at age 70, having retired in January.
Nonfiction: Spanish Testament by Hungarian-born French journalist Arthur Koestler, 32, who fell into fascist hands at the fall of Malaga while covering the Spanish civil war for the London News Chronicle, was condemned to death as a spy and tortured, and gained release after British authorities brought pressure (an abridged version will appear under the title Dialogue with Death in 1942); Personality: A Psychological Intepretation by Indiana-born Harvard psychologist Gordon W. (Willard) Allport, 39; Structure of Social Action by Colorado-born Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons, 34; Apes, Men, and Morons by anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton; Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge by All Souls Church, Oxford, historian A. L. (Alfred Leslie) Rowse, 33; As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (memoir) by Oliver St. John Gogarty, now 59, who was represented in James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses as Buck Mulligan; Four Hundred Million Customers by U.S. businessman Carl Crow, 54, is about the potential in trade with China.
Fiction: The Hobbit by Oxford philologist J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien, 45; The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, who examines the conditions of the unemployed in the north of England; The Snow Country (Yukiguni) by Yasunari Kawabata; Coming from the Fair by Norah Hoult; Mouchette (Nouvelle Histoire deMouchette) by Georges Bernanos; Mad Love (L'amour fou) by André Breton; Ferdydurke by Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz, 33; Bread and Wine (Pane e vino) by Ignazio Silone; TheCitadel by A. J. Cronin; The Young Desire It by Australian novelist Seaforth Kenneth Mackenzie (originally Kenneth Mackenzie), 24; ToHave and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway; Of Miceand Men by John Steinbeck; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (who wrote it in 7 weeks in Haiti, where she studied voodoo practices on a Guggenheim grant); The Late George Apley: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir by Wilmington, Del.-born Massachusetts novelist John P. (Phillips) Marquand, 43, who is best known for his Mr. Moto detective stories in the Saturday EveningPost, which serialized his new novel last year; The Education ofH*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n by Polish-born humorist sociologist Leonard Q. Ross (Leo Calvin Rosten), 29, who came to America as an infant and finds poignant humor in the efforts of New York immigrants to gain education in the city's free adult education classes; They Came Like Swallows by Illinois-born New Yorker magazine editor-novelist William (Keepers) Maxwell, 29; Remembering Laughter by Iowa-born novelist Wallace (Earle) Stegner, 28; Noon Wine by Katherine Ann Porter; The Anointed by Nebraska-born journalist-turned-novelist Clyde Brion Davis, 43; Daughters and Sons by Ivy Compton-Burnett; Coronation Summer by English novelist Angela (Margaret) Thirkell (née Mackail), 45, who will write more than 30 novels about the descendants of characters in Anthony Trollope's 19th-century "Barsetshire" novels; The Wind Changes by English journalist-novelist Olivia Manning, 26; Buckskin Brigades by Nebraska-born writer L. Ron (Lafayette Ronald) Hubbard, 26, who has been grinding out 100,000 words per month for the pulp fiction magazines and will continue to write under such names as Winchester Remington Colt, Elron, Tom Esterbrook, Michael Keith, René Lafayette, Ken Martin, and B. A. Northrup; Hamlet, Revenge! by Scottish scholar-novelist-mystery writer Michael Innes (John Innes Mackintosh Stewart), 31; Busman's Holiday by Dorothy Sayers; Murder in Hospital by English physician-novelist Josephine Bell (Doris Bell Ball, née Collier), 39, whose physician husband died 2 years ago. Her doctor-detective David Wintringham will appear in dozens of mysteries; Dark Frontier and Uncommon Danger by London advertising agency director-suspense novelist Eric Ambler, 28, whose second book is published in the United States as Background to Danger.
Science-fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft dies of intestinal cancer at his native Providence, R.I., March 13 at age 46; novelist Edith Wharton at St. Brice-sous-forêt, near Paris, August 11 at age 75; suspense novelist H. C. McNeile at Pulborough, Sussex, August 14 at age 48 (his friend Gerard Fairlie will carry on the Bulldog Drummond stories); humorist Don Marquis dies of complications from a stroke at Forest Hills, N.Y., December 29 at age 59.
Poetry: Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot includes "Chamber Music," "Pomes Penyeach," and "Ecce Puer;" The Cantos (V) by Ezra Pound; The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens; A Good Time Was Had by All by Stevie Smith.
Juvenile: And to Think That I Saw It on MulberryStreet by Springfield, Mass.-born New York writer-illustrator Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), 33, who attended Oxford after graduation from Dartmouth in 1925, went to work in 1927 for Judge magazine, and has been producing "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" drawings for Standard Oil Company's Flit brand insecticide. More than 40 publishers have rejected his book, which does not have a moral, but a friend at Vanguard Press has agreed to publish it and it enjoys moderate success; Choo Choo: The Story of a Little Engine Who Ran Away by Newton Centre, Mass.-born writer-illustrator Virginia Lee Burton, 28; A Child's Story of the World from the Earliest Days to Our Own Time (five books) by Donald Culross Peattie; We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome.
Painting: Guernica by Pablo Picasso, who has been commissioned to produce a mural for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the Paris World's Fair. After 6 months of doing nothing, Picasso has worked in a 6-week burst of outraged energy to complete a cubist canvas nearly 26 feet long filled with bedlam and terror that expresses the painter's horror at the brutal aerial bombing of innocent villagers; Weeping Woman by Picasso; Revolution of the Viaducts by Paul Klee, who fled with his family to his native Bern in 1933, contracted measles in 1935, and has been suffering from the painful skin disease scleroderma; Still Life with Old Shoe by Joan Miró; Woman with a Mandolin by Georges Braque; The Pleasure Principle and Not to Be Reproduced (La Reproduction Interdite) by René Magritte; The Mountain by Balthus; Smelt Brook Falls by Marsden Hartley; Echo of a Scream by David Alfaro Siqueiros; Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky by Frida Kahlo. H. O. Tanner dies at Paris May 25 at age 77.
Sculpture: Stringed Figure #1 (wood) by Henry Moore; Tower of Mothers (bronze) by Käthe Kollwitz.
London's Tate Gallery opens a Duveen Gallery endowed by local art dealer Joseph Duveen, Baron Duveen of Milbank. Now 68, Duveen also presents a new gallery at the British Museum to house the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon that have been on display since 1816 (see 1803). Notorious for his efforts to clean up old masters for sale to millionaires, Duveen has the marbles scoured clean with steel wool, carborundum, hammers, and copper chisels to lighten them and make them more pleasing to modern esthetics (Greeks will charge that the cleaning has damaged the works).
An exhibition of "degenerate art" opens at Munich.
Agfacolor film in 35-millimeter cartridges is introduced by A. G. Fur Analin (Agfa) and by Ansco (see Kodachrome, 1935; 1936). The fastest film made is Eastman Kodak's black-and-white Super-X with a Weston rating of 32 (see Weston exposure meter, 1931; ASA ratings, 1947).
Popular Photography magazine begins publication at Chicago in May with photography enthusiast Bernard G. Davis as editor.
Photographs: Changing New York by Maine-born photographer Berenice Abbott, 39, records scenes of the city where she has taught at the New School for Social Research while photographing artistic and social circles (text by Elizabeth McCausland). Abbott returned to the United States in 1929 after studying sculpture at Paris, where she photographed well-known artists and writers.
Halftone inventor Frederic E. Ives dies at Philadelphia May 27 at age 81. His later inventions have included the halftone photogravure printing process, the photochromoscope (a color-photography process that employs three negatives), and contributions to the development of color cinematography.
Theater: The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus 1/8 at Maxine Elliott's Theater, New York, with Orson Welles in a Federal Theater Project revival of the 1588 Christopher Marlowe play directed by Welles with incidental music by New York-born composer Paul (Frederick) Bowles, 26, 128 perfs. Project manager Hallie Flanagan comes under attack from right-wing congressmen; Rep. J. [John] Parnell Thomas (originally Feeney), 41, (R. N.J.) asks her in a hearing on Capitol Hill whether Christopher Marlowe was a communist; High Tor by Maxwell Anderson 1/9 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Burgess Meredith, Peggy Ashcroft, 171 perfs.; Behind Red Lights by Samuel Shipman 1/13 at New York's Mansfield Theater, with a 39-member cast that includes Richard Taber, 354 perfs.; The Masque of Kings by Maxwell Anderson 2/8 at New York's Shubert Theater with Dudley Digges, Henry Hull, Margo, 89 perfs.; Yes, My Darling Daughter by U.S. playwright Mark Reed 2/9 at The Playhouse, New York, with Peggy Conklin, Lucile Watson, 405 perfs.; Traveler Without Luggage (Le voyageur sans baggage) by Jean Anouilh 2/16 at the Théâtre de Mathurius, Paris; "Having Wonderful Time" by Austrian-born playwright Arthur Kober, 36, 2/20 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Katherine Locke, Jules Garfield, Cornel Wilde, 132 perfs.; Power by Arthur Arent 2/23 at New York's Ritz Theater, with a cast that includes Jersey City-born actor Norman Lloyd, 22, in a Federal Theater Project production that creates controversy by favoring the new Tennessee Valley Authority over private utilities, 118 perfs. (the Living Newspaper production opens at Seattle's Metropolitan Theater 7/6 at a time when the municipally owned City Light Co. and the privately owned Puget Sound Power & Light are stringing power lines along the same streets, audiences pay 25¢ and 40¢ for tickets, the five scheduled performances sell out, but Hallie Flanagan draws fire for having spread what opponents call propaganda); The Ascent of F6 by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood 2/26 at London's Mercury Theatre, with Ransom William Devlin, Raf de la Torre, Norman Claridge, Peter Ashmore, 42 perfs.; The Defeat (Nederlaget) by Nordahl Grieg 3/25 at Oslo's National Theater (ostensibly about the Paris Commune of 1870, it has been inspired by the setbacks of Spain's Republican Army); Electra (Electre) by Jean Genet 5/13 at the Théâtre de l'Athenée, Paris; Room Service by John Murray and Allen Boretz 5/19 at New York's Cort Theater, with Sam Levine, Eddie Albert, Philip Loeb, Boston-born actress Betty Field, 19, 500 perfs.; The Revolt of the Beavers 5/20 at New York's Adelphi Theater in a production by the Children's Unit of the WPA's Federal Theatre Project (some attack it as "communist" propaganda); Susan and God by Rachel Crothers 10/7 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Gertrude Lawrence, Paul McGrath, Vera Allen, Lowell, Mass.-born actress Nancy Kelly, 16, 288 perfs.; Golden Boy by Clifford Odets 11/23 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Luther Adler as the prizefighter-violinist Joe Bopnaparte, Jules Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, Sanford Meisner, Roman Bohnen, Gary, Ind.-born Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich), 18, Elia Kazan, Morris Carnovsky, Cleveland-born actor Howard Da Silva (originally Silverblatt), 28, New York-born Martin Ritt, 23, directed by Harold Clurman, 250 perfs.; Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 11/23 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Philadelphia-born actor Broderick Crawford, 25, as Lennie, Will Geer as Slim, Claire Luce, scenic design by Donald Oenslager, 207 perfs. (director George S. Kaufman has polished Steinbeck's efforts to present his story on the stage while Steinbeck gathers material for his novel The Grapes of Wrath).
Playwright Samuel Shipman dies at his native New York February 9 at age 52; playwright-poet John Drinkwater of a heart attack at London March 25 at age 54; actor Frank Kingdon at Englewood, N.J., April 9 at age 81; actor William H. Gillette at Hartford, Conn., April 29 at age 83; playwright Sir James M. Barrie at London June 19 at age 77; theater manager Annie Horniman at Shere, Surrey, August 6 at age 76; actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson at St. Margaret's Bay, near Dover, November 6 at age 84; Mrs. Leslie Carter at Santa Monica, Calif., November 13 at age 75; Alma Tell at San Francisco December 29 at age 39.
Radio: The Guiding Light 1/25 on NBC stations features the Rev. John Rutledge (co-authored by soap-opera writer-actress Irna Phillips, now 35, who pioneered the genre in 1930 on Chicago's WGN, it will move to CBS radio in 1947, air on CBS until 1956, and go on TV in 1952 with Phillips still running the show); Our Gal Sunday by Chicago advertising agency writers Frank and Anne (Ashenhurst) Hummert 3/29: "the story of an orphan girl named Sunday from the little town of Silver Creek, Colorado, who in young womanhood married England's richest, most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthorpe—the story that asks the question, Can this girl from a mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?" (to 1959); The Road to Life by Irna Phillips 9/13 on CBS stations (by 1943 Phillips will have five serials on the air and be earning $250,000 per year, with six assistants to crank out daily continuity); Stella Dallas 10/25 on NBC's Red Network, with Anne Elstner in the title role that she will play for 18 years (to 1955).
The American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA) founded July 30 is an AFL affiliate representing radio performers; it will later become the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).
Films: Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous with Spencer Tracy, Freddie Bartholomew; William Dieterle's The Life of Emile Zola with Paul Muni, Morris Carnovsky, now 29; Sidney Franklin's The Good Earth with Vienna-born actress Luise Rainer, 25, Paul Muni; Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion with Erich von Stroheim, Jean Gabin; Marcel Pagnol's Harvest with Gabriel Gabrio, Orane Demazis, Fernandel; Frank Capra's Lost Horizon with Ronald Colman, Sam Jaffe, Thomas Mitchell; Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko with Jean Gabin; Gregory La Cava's Stage Door with Katharine Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou, Celeron, N.Y.-born comedienne Lucille (Desirée) Ball, 26, Ginger Rogers; Mervyn LeRoy's They Won't Forget with Claude Rains, 17-year-old Idaho-born ingénue Lana Turner (Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner, renamed Lana by director LeRoy). Also: Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth with Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Chicago-born actor Ralph (Rexford) Bellamy, 33; Sam Wood's A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers; William K. Howard's Fire Over England with Flora Robson (as Queen Elizabeth) and Laurence Olivier; Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night with Charles Boyer, Jean Arthur; John Ford's The Hurricane with New Orleans-born actress Dorothy Lamour (Dorothy Kaumeyer), 22, Jon Hall, Raymond Massey; Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow with Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi; Lloyd Bacon's Marked Woman with Lowell, Mass.-born actress Bette (originally Ruth Elizabeth) Davis, 29, Humphrey Bogart; John Cromwell's The Prisoner of Zenda with Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, New York-born actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., 27; Basil Dean's The Show Goes On with Cyril Ritchard, Gracie Fields; William Wellman's A Star Is Born with Fredric March, Janet Gaynor; Norman Z. McLeod's Topper with New York-born actress Constance (Campbell) Bennett, 33 (Joan's sister), Cary Grant, Roland Young; Herbert Wilcox's Victoria the Great with Anna Neagle, now 33, Viennese-born actor Anton Walbrook (originally Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrueck), 36; Monte Banks's We're Going to Be Rich with Gracie Fields, Victor McLaglen, Brian Donlevy; Pare Lorentz's documentary The River.
Director Richard Boleslawski dies suddenly at Los Angeles January 17 at age 47; actress Jean Harlow of uremic poisoning at Hollywood June 7 at age 26.
George B. Seitz's A Family Affair with Brooklyn, N.Y.-born actor Mickey Rooney (Joe Yule Jr.) as Andy Hardy, Lionel Barrymore as Judge James Hardy is the first of a series that will continue off and on for 21 years, with Lewis Stone as Judge Hardy, Fay Holden as Mrs. Hardy, and girlfriends who will include Ann Rutherford, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Esther Williams, Kathryn Grayson, and Donna Reed (now 17, Rooney called himself Mickey McGuire until stopped by cartoonist Fontaine Fox, who had copyrighted that name for his "Toonerville Trolley" comic strip, published since 1917).
Warner Brothers releases the first Bugs Bunny cartoon (see 1910; Disney, 1928). Porky's Hare Hunt features the voice of San Francisco-born announcer Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc, 29, who creates the voices of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and others who will include Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, and Speedy Gonzales. It takes 125 people to make one 6½-minute cartoon, but audiences are delighted with Bugs Bunny's "What's up, Doc?" ( a line credited to animator Tex Avery) and "That's all, folks."
The Thalberg Memorial Award inaugurated by the 10-year-old Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honors the late M-G-M producer Irving Grant Thalberg (see 1936).
Hollywood musicals: Mark Sandrich's Shall We Dance with Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, songs that include "They Can't Take That Away from Me," "They All Laughed," "Slap That Bass," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," and the title song; Henry Koster's One Hundred Men and a Girl with Deanna Durbin, Leopold Stokowski, Adolphe Menjou, score by Charles Previn.
Stage musicals: The Eternal Road 1/7 at New York's Manhattan Opera House with Sam Jaffe, 11-year-old Sidney Lumet, 8-year old Dick Van Patten, Lotte Lenya, music by Lenya's husband, Kurt Weill, based on Hebraic melodies learned from his cantor father, book by Franz Werfel, whose biblical drama is directed by Austrian-born Max Reinhardt (originally Goldmann), now 63 (Weill, a non-practicing Jew, has written the music outside Paris), 152 perfs. (the house sells out every performance, but set designer Norman Bel Geddes has removed 300 choice seats to make room for a larger stage and the show loses $7,000 per performance); Babes in Arms 4/14 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Ray Heatherton, Alfred Drake, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Johnny One Note," "I Wish I Were in Love Again," "Where or When," 289 perfs.; The Cradle Will Rock 6/16 at New York's Venice Theater, with Howard Da Silva, Will Geer, Philadelphia-born singer-composer Marc Blitzstein, 32, a 28-piece orchestra, a 44-member chorus, music by Blitzstein to a simplistic book based on labor-management issues, direction by Orson Welles, production by John Houseman, songs that include "Croon Spoon," "Honolulu," "I'm Checkin' Home Now," "Nickel Under the Foot." The show has been sponsored by the Federal Theater Project, which has grown since its inception late in 1935 to have more than 11,000 workers and 22 producing centers, reaching an audience of 150,000 per week. Cradle was supposed to open at Maxine Elliott's Theater in West 38th Street, but the FTP sent word June 12 that budget cuts and a reorganization dictated a postponement (after 14,000 tickets had been sold), Welles and Houseman immediately quit to start the Mercury Theater, Archibald MacLeish has found a theatrical agent who has offered a vacant theater 21 blocks uptown for $100. The audience, cast, and crew make their way north to Seventh Avenue and 59th Street, lighting director Abe Feder sets up a spotlight, conductor Lehman Engel strikes up the orchestra, and because Actors Equity has barred them from singing on stage the singers perform from the audience, continuing for 108 sold-out performances before going on tour; I'd Rather Be Right 11/2 at New York's Alvin Theater, with George M. Cohan as President Roosevelt, book by George S. Kaufman, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Have You Met Miss Jones?" 290 perfs.; Pins and Needles 11/27 at New York's Labor Stage Theater, with a book by playwright Arthur Arent, Marc Blitzstein, Emanuel Eisenberg, Charles Friedman, and David Gregory, music and lyrics by Harold Rome, songs that include "Nobody Makes a Pass at Me," 1,108 perfs. (the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union [ILGWU] sponsors the production and no cast member receives more than $55 per week, nearly twice what Federal Theater Project actors earn); Hooray for What! 12/1 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with Ed Wynn, Jack Whiting, Vivian Vance, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, 200 perfs.; Hide and Seek 12/6 at the London Hippodrome, with Cicely Courtneidge, Bobby Howes, songs by Vivian Ellis; Me and My Gal 12/16 at London's Victoria Palace Theatre, with comedian Lupino (originally Henry) Lane, now 45, as the Cockney from Lambeth who turns out to be 17th baron and 8th viscount of Hareford, book and lyrics by English playwright L. Arthur Rose, 50, and Douglas Furber, music by Noel Gay, now 39, songs that include "The Lambeth Walk," 1,646 perfs.; Between the Devil 12/22 at New York's Imperial Theater, with Jack Buchanan, Evelyn Laye, music by Arthur Schwartz, lyrics by Howard Dietz, songs that include "By Myself," 93 perfs.
Ballet: Les Patineurs (The Skaters) 2/16 at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, with English ballerina Margot Fonteyn (originally Margaret Hookham), 27, music by Meyerbeer, choreography by Frederick Ashton; Francesca da Rimini 7/15 at London's Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, with Lubov Tchernicheva, music by Tchaikovsky, choreography by David Lichine, 36.
Opera: Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in February singing the title role in the 1884 Massenet opera Manon (she will remain with the Met until April 1952); The Man Without a Country 5/12 at the Metropolitan Opera with St. Louis-born soprano Helen Traubel, 38, making her Met debut in the role of Mary Rutledge, music by conductor-composer Walter Damrosch, now 75; Lulu 6/2 at Zürich's Municipal Theater, with music by the late Alban Berg; Croatian soprano Zinka Milanov (née Kunc), 31, her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/17 singing the role of Leonora in the 1862 Verdi opera La Forza del Destino (she will be a Met regular until 1966).
First performances: Voice in the Wilderness (La Voix dans le desert) Symphonic Poem for Orchestra and 'Cello Obbligato by Ernest Bloch 1/21 at Los Angeles; Concertino by Walter Piston 6/20 in a CBS radio broadcast from New York; Variations for String Orchestra on a Theme by Frank Bridge by English composer Benjamin Britten, 23, in August at Salzburg. Britten has been a student of Bridge since age 12 and has had his own work performed since 1934; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor by the 19th-century German composer Robert Schumann (who wrote it in 1853) 11/26 at Berlin's Deutsches Opernhaus; Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich 11/21 at Leningrad. Many in the audience break into tears during the sorrowful third movement, critics hail the symphony as a model of Soviet music, and Shostakovich regains his ideological good standing (his friend and supporter Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky has been shot in June for having participated in a non-existent conspiracy, the NKVD has rounded up Tukhachevsky's friends for questioning, but Shostakovich discovers that his interrogator has been arrested and no one else is interested in his case); A Boy Was Born by Benjamin Britten 12/21 in a BBC broadcast.
Music Since 1900 by Russian-born U.S. musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, 43, is an encyclopedic history of classical music.
Composer George Gershwin dies of a brain tumor at Hollywood, Calif., July 11 at age 38; Albert Roussel at Royan, France, August 23 at age 68; Maurice Ravel at Paris December 28 at age 52.
The National Broadcasting Co. starts the NBC Symphony with Arturo Toscanini as conductor. Now 70, Toscanini has been replaced as conductor of the New York Philharmonic after 8 years but will conduct the NBC Symphony until his retirement in 1954.
Brooklyn, N.Y.-born publishing industry graphic artist, amateur violinist, and radio hobbyist Avery Fisher, 31, founds Philharmonic Radio Co. with a $354 investment to market improvements he has made in audio design. He rents a small loft in New York's West 21st Street, buys RCA Photophone amplifiers that are being used in movie theaters, adds Western Electric speakers, an FM tuner, and a turntable, and creates some of the world's first component systems. He will sell the company, found Fisher Radio, and by the early 1960s will account for 50 percent of U.S. high-fidelity component sales. Along with Herman Hosner Scott, Paul Klipsch, Frank McIntosh, and others, Fisher will break new ground in raising the quality of musical sound reproduction (see 1969).
Popular songs: "Y'a d'la Joie" ("There's Joy") by Paris songwriter Charles Trenet, 24 (Maurice Chevalier makes the song a hit, encouraging Trenet to become a solo performer); "Donkey Serenade" by Hollywood songwriter Robert Wright, 23, and his Brooklyn, N.Y.-born collaborator George Forrest (originally George Forrest Chichester, Jr.), 22; "Nice Work If You Can Get It" and "A Foggy Day in London Town" by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin (for the film A Damsel in Distress); "In the Still of the Night" and "Rosalie" by Cole Porter (for the film Rosalie); "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" by Irving Berlin (for the film On the Avenue); "That Old Feeling" by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Lew Brown (for the film Vogues of 1938); "Too Marvelous for Words" by Richard Whiting, lyrics by Johnny Mercer (for the film Ready, Willing, and Able); "Good Morning" by Sam Coslow (for the film Mountain Music); "Once in a While" by Michael Edwards, lyrics by Bud Green; "The Nearness of You" by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Ned Washington; "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place" by Russ Morgan, lyrics by Dick Howard and Bob Ellsworth; "The Joint Is Jumpin'" by Fats Waller, lyrics by Andy Razaf; "(Up) The Lazy River" by Hoagy Carmichael and Sidney Arodin; "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön (Means I Love You)" by Sholom Secunda from a 1933 Yiddish musical, English lyrics by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chapin; "September in the Rain" by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (for the Hollywood musical Stars Over Broadway); "Me and the Devil Blues" and "Hell Hound on My Trail" by Robert Johnson; "The Dipsy Doodle" by bandleader Larry Clinton; "Moon of Manakoora" by Alfred Newman, lyrics by Frank Loesser (for the film The Hurricane); "Sweet Leilani" by Harry Owen and "Blue Hawaii" by Leo Robin, lyrics by Ralph Rainger (for the film Waikiki Wedding); "Harbour Lights" by Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams (Will Grosz).
The Andrews Sisters have their first big hit recording with "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön"; Patsy Montana records "Sweet Violence."
War Admiral wins the Kentucky Derby and goes on to win the Triple Crown despite the challenge of Seabiscuit. London-born horse breeder Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, 25, received the 600-acre Sagamore farm as a 21st birthday gift from his mother and has pitted War Admiral against Seabiscuit at Baltimore's Pimlico race track. The Bay Dancer son of Man o' War breaks the record for a mile and a half as he wins the Belmont Stakes (see 1938).
Joe Louis gains the world heavyweight title June 22 by knocking out James J. Braddock in the eighth round of a title bout at Chicago. Alabama-born Joseph Louis Barrow, 23, is the youngest fighter ever to win the championship and will hold it for exactly 12 years—longer than any other man; but while he will have grossed an estimated $4.23 million by the time he retires undefeated in 1949, the Brown Bomber will never be a millionaire.
Former bareknuckle heavyweight boxer Jake Kilrain dies at Quincy, Mass., December 22 at age 78.
Texas-born professional golfer (John) Byron Nelson, 25, wins the Masters Tournament to begin a series of victories that will not be equaled in this century. He turned pro in 1932, having begun as a