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August 1937

The following events occurred in August 1937:

August 1, 1937 (Sunday)

August 2, 1937 (Monday)

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 off of the coast of Panama.
  • The explosion of a gasoline depot in Turkey, between Bairakli and Burnova, killed 24 oil workers.
  • The 20th biennial World Zionist Congress opened in Zürich, Switzerland.
  • 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.
  • 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

August 4, 1937 (Wednesday)

  • In British India, a team of climbers led by Frank Smythe became the first people to reach the top of the high Himalayan mountain Deoban.
  • The Bolivarian National Guard of Venezuela, named for South American hero Simon Bolivar was founded as a national police force by Venezuela's President Eleazar López Contreras.
  • In Little Rock, Arkansas, the newly formed Society for the Booing of Commercial Advertisements in Motion Picture Theatres made its debut, booing loudly when corporate advertising appeared on the movie screen. Similar "booing clubs" soon began springing up elsewhere. In the 1930s and '40s movie houses experimented with running ads for commercial products alongside movie trailers, but many theatregoers resented the practice because, unlike the radio where ads were recognized as necessary, movies were not free.
  • Born:
  • Paul Abels, American Methodist minister and the first the openly gay cleric of a church in a major Christian denomination (as pastor of New York's Washington Square Methodist Episcopal Church from 1973 to 1984; in Yellow Springs, Ohio (d. 1992 from complications of AIDS)
  • Angie Ferro, Filipino film, TV and stage actress; in Baleno, Masbate (d. 2023)
  • David Bedford, English composer and musician; in Hendon, London (d. 2011)
  • Died:
  • K.P. Jayaswal, 55, Indian historian and lawyer
  • Hans Reck, 51, German volcanologist and paleontologist, died of a heart attack while on an expedition to Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique).

August 5, 1937 (Thursday)

  • Japanese Emperor Hirohito ratified a directive removing the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war, a decision that would be followed by the execution or death by illness of all but 56 Chinese POWs taken during the war by Japan against China, as well as brutal treatment of Allied prisoners during World War II.
  • The Soviet Union's secret police, the NKVD, began carrying out the repression of Ingrian Finns and other speakers of the Finnish language within its borders as part of its campaign against ethnic Finnish residents. During the first month of the operation ordered by NKVD Order No. 00447, 728 people were arrested, and in 1938, there would be 5,340 placed in prison. Before the NKVD operation was terminated on August 10, 1938, at least 8,000 Finns, and perhaps as many as 25,000 would die or simply disappear.
  • Born: Herb Brooks, American Olympic ice hockey player and coach; in Saint Paul, Minnesota (d. 2003, automobile accident)
  • Died: José Canals, 22, Spanish Olympic cross-country skier, was killed in action in the Spanish Civil War.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Born: Barbara Windsor, English actress; in Shoreditch, London (d. 2020)

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."
  • World War I veteran Harold Wobber, 47, became the first person definitively known to have committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.
  • 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
  • Born:
  • Rosemary Smith, Irish rally car driver; in Dublin (d. 2023)
  • Magic Slim (stage name for Morris Holt), blues singer and guitarist and inductee to the Blues Hall of Fame; in Torrance, Mississippi (d. 2013)
  • Died:
  • Eddie Gerard, 47, Canadian ice hockey player and manager, died of throat cancer. 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
  • 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 cliff along with his passenger, secretary Marion Lonabaugh.
  • Takeo Wakabayashi, 29, Japanese footballer who played for the Japan national team, died from lung disease.

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."
  • 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. According to records kept by the NKVD, there were 20,761 executions until the Butovo range closed on October 19, 1938.
  • Born:
  • Dustin Hoffman, American actor and director; in Los Angeles
  • Jorge Cafrune, popular Argentine folk singer; in El Carmen, Jujuy Province (killed in pedestrian accident, 1978)
  • 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.

August 9, 1937 (Monday)

August 10, 1937 (Tuesday)

August 11, 1937 (Wednesday)

August 12, 1937 (Thursday)

August 13, 1937 (Friday)

August 14, 1937 (Saturday)

  • In the Battle of Shanghai, over 1,200 Chinese civilians were killed and 1,400 injured when a bomber from China missed its target while attempting to attack Japanese ships in Shanghai harbor, and dropped bombs on the Great World amusement arcade.
  • At the Battle of Jianqiao in China, Chinese pilots flying Model 68 Hawk III airplanes successfully defended Hangzhou from a Japanese attack, intercepting and shooting down four Japanese Mitsubishi G3M warplanes, without losing any of its own aircraft. August 14 would continue to be celebrated as Air Force Day in Taiwan more than 85 years later.
  • The Battle of Santander began in Spain as Nationalist rebels, assisted by Italian and German officers, attacked the stronghold of the "Army of the North" of the Republic. The Santander fell after 12 days and after three weeks, the Republican forces of the 14th and 15th Army Corps lost 60,000 of their men.
  • Born:
  • Winston Lord, U.S. government official who served as the president of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1977 to 1985, and as the U.S. Ambassador to China from 1985 to 1989; in New York City.
  • Joe Horlen, U.S. baseball pitcher who had the best earned run average in the American League in 1967, and the only baseball player to win the Pony League World Series (1952), the College World Series (1959 for Oklahoma State) and the 1972 World Series (for the Oakland A's); in San Antonio, Texas. (d. 2022)
  • Died:
  • H. C. McNeile, MC, 48, British popular author who went by the pen name "Sapper" and was known for creating the series of mystery stories and the character "Bulldog Drummond", died from cancer at his home in West Chiltington, West Sussex.
  • Karl Pauker, 44, Soviet NKVD officer and former chief of Joseph Stalin's bodyguard team, was executed without a trial as part of the Great Purge.
  • Ivan Zaporozhets, 42, former Soviet NKVD officer accused of the assassination of Sergei Kirov, was executed after a confession under torture of having been part of a right-wing conspiracy against the government.
  • Semyon Firin, 39, Soviet Gulag forced labor camp director at the (Dmitlag), was executed by shooting on charges of "participating in an Operational-Chekist coup to prepare a palace revolution".
  • Leopold Averbakh, 34, Soviet literary critic, was executed along with Semyon Firin.

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. The British ships and evacuated over 2,000 British women and children from Shanghai to Wusong for transfer to Hong Kong.
  • 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. 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.
  • 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. 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. 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 had led 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.
  • Born:
  • Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald, English Roman Catholic archbishop and envoy for the Vatican in mediation of disputes in Christian and Muslim relations in the Middle East; in Walsall, Staffordshire
  • George Beall VIII, U.S. federal prosecutor who brought charges and an indictment that forced U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew to resign in 1973; in Frostburg, Maryland (d.2017)
  • Spiros Focás, Greek film and TV actor known for Messalina; in Patras (d.2023)
  • Alan B. Miller, U.S. businessman known for founding (in 1979) Universal Health Services, provider of hospital and healthcare services in the U.S. and the UK; in Brooklyn
  • Diego Seguí, Cuban-born baseball player who played in the U.S. (where he had the best ERA in the American League in 1970, in Mexico and in Venezuela (where he was inducted to the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame; in Holguín (d. 2025)
  • 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)

  • The Valsadornín Hoard, with of silver and copper coins used in the Roman Empire in the 3rd century, was discovered 1,760 years after it had been buried in the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis (now the Province of Palencia in Spain) near the town of . The treasure was spotted by brother and sister Tomás and Eusebia Roldán of the village of as they were walking along the road and found the remains of the container that had been unearthed by heavy rains.
  • Nazi Germany restricted Jewish booksellers to only selling books by Jewish authors to Jewish customers.
  • Portugal severed diplomatic relations with Czechoslovakia over a broken armaments contract. Czechoslovakia broke the contract because it suspected Portugal of funneling the arms to the Nationalists in Spain.
  • Born:
  • Henry Caldera, blind Sri Lankan singer and songwriter; in Maradana, British Ceylon (d.2006)
  • Alexander Vampilov, Soviet Russian playwright known for Farewell in June; in Kutulik, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (drowned 1972)
  • Died:
  • Ikki Kita, 54, Japanese author and philosopher, was executed for his participation on February 26, 1936, in an attempted coup d'état.
  • Ivan Kataev, 35, Soviet Russian novelist and journalist, was executed the same day after he was convicted on charges of participation in an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary terrorist organization.
  • Alexander Hotovitzky, 65, Russian Orthodox priest, was executed in prison in the Soviet Union.
  • Ferdinand Faivre, 76, French sculptor

August 20, 1937 (Friday)

  • In Shanghai, an anti-aircraft shell landed on the deck of the heavy cruiser and exploded, killing one American sailor and wounding 18.
  • 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.
  • The Australian Institute of Librarians was founded at a meeting of 55 librarians from across the nation at Albert Hall in Canberra.
  • 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”. He would be executed on January 23, 1938.
  • Born:
  • Jim Bowen, English comedian and television personality known for hosting the ITV game show Bullseye; in Heswall (d. 2018)
  • Jean-Louis Petit, French composer, conductor and organist
  • Andrei Konchalovsky (pen name for Andrei Sergeyevich Mikhailkov), Soviet Russian film and theater director, known for Tango & Cash in the U.S. and Siberiade in the Soviet Union; in Moscow

August 21, 1937 (Saturday)

August 22, 1937 (Sunday)

August 23, 1937 (Monday)

August 24, 1937 (Tuesday)

  • In one the few instances of a U.S. national monument being discontinued, the Lewis and Clark Caverns, given protective status by the federal government on May 11, 1908, was dropped from the National Park Service. Ownership was transferred on April 22, 1938, to the state of Montana, which made the caverns Montana's first state park.
  • King Farouk of Egypt announced his engagement to a commoner, Safinaz Zulficar, who would take the name of Queen Farida upon their marriage on January 20, 1938.
  • Fifteen days after his discovery of a different supernova, astronomer Fritz Zwicky became the first person on earth to observe the supernova (SN 1937C) in the Magellanic spiral galaxy IC 4182 (visible within the constellation Canes Venatici. Based on the estimated idstance in light years, the event had happened at least 11 million years earlier.
  • The Santoña Agreement was signed at Guriezo between politicians of Spain's Basque Nationalist Party, who were fighting to defend the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, and Italy's Corpo Truppe Volontarie forces who were fighting for the Nationalists led by Francisco Franco. Under the agreement, the Basque units of the Spanish Republican Army (with more than 22,000 soldiers) surrendered to the Nationalists. Franco canceled the agreement the next day and ordered the soldiers held a prisoners of war at the .
  • The Spanish Republic launched the Zaragoza Offensive, starting with the two-week Battle of Belchite. While the Republic was successful at Belchite, the Zaragoza offensive would fail to stop the nationalist advance.

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.
  • 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.
  • The Soviet Union's security police, the NKVD, began the "Polish Operation" (Pol'skaya operatsiya), a 15-month campaign to arrest, imprison and eliminate more than 110,000 Soviet Union residents of Polish ancestry, one-fifth of that Soviet minority group. While some found refuge in neighboring Poland, the NKVD tallied the execution of 111,091 members of the Polish minority in carrying our NKVD Order No. 00485 ("On the liquidation of the Polish diversionist and espionage groups and POW units") signed by NKVD Director Nikolai Yezhov on August 11, 1937, after approval by the Communist Party Politburo on August 9.
  • In Nazi Germany, the gauleiter and Oberpräsident of East Prussia, Erich Koch, began a campaign to revise 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. As examples, "Szitkehmen" became Judendorf ("Jewish village"), "Pablindszen" became Zollteich ("customs pond"), and "Gollubien" became Unterfelde ("underfields").

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.
  • 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 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.
  • "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.
  • Born:
  • Alice Coltrane, American jazz musician and Hindu spiritual leader; in Detroit, Michigan (d. 2007)
  • J. D. Crowe, American bluegrass musician and banjo player; in Lexington, Kentucky (d.2021)
  • Vladimir Ionesyan, Soviet Armenian axe murderer who committed five random killings over a period of less than three weeks in 1964; in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union (executed, 1964)

August 28, 1937 (Saturday)

  • 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. The photo was published and the newsreel shown in theaters worldwide, and stirred outrage against Japan. 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.
  • The Vatican recognized Francoist Spain and sent an apostolic delegate.
  • 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.
  • Died: Owen Burns, 67, American entrepreneur and land developer who purchased and developed the majority of the land now in Sarasota, Florida

August 29, 1937 (Sunday)

August 30, 1937 (Monday)

  • The Royal Italian Navy submarine Iride, on a mission to attack Spanish Nationalist ships during the Spanish Civil War, fired a torpedo at the British Royal Navy destroyer . The British ship avoided the torpedo with a sharp turn to starboard and for the next nine hours, Havock was joined by the destroyers , and , and the cruiser in dropping depth charges. Though all ships escaped the battle unscathed, Iride surfaced long enough to be identified, leading to the Nyon Conference the following month.
  • Joe Louis retained boxing's World Heavyweight Championship with a 15-round decision over Tommy Farr at Yankee Stadium.
  • The Russian freighter Timiryazev was torpedoed and sunk near Dellys by two Royal Italian Navy destroyers, Turbine and Ostro. All 30 crew were rescued by a fishing boat.
  • The Brazilian company Ultragaz, the South American nation's largest distributor of liquefied petroleum gas, was founded by Austrian-born Brazilian businessman, as Empresa Brasileira de Gáz a Domicílio.
  • Eberhard von Stohrer was appointed the new German ambassador to the Spanish Nationalist government.
  • Born:
  • Roy de Silva (stage name for Chathurartha Devadithya Gardiyawasam Lindamulage Roy Aloysius Felix de Silva), Sri Lankan film director known for the Re Daniel Dawal Migel comedy film series and the Cheriyo film series; in Yatawatta, British Ceylon (d.2018)
  • Bruce McLaren, New Zealand endurance car driver, 1966 winner of Formula One World Constructors' Championship titles 24 Hours of Le Mans; in Auckland (killed in a crash, 1970)
  • Mpinga Kasenda, Prime Minister of Zaire from 1977 to 1978, and its foreign minister from 1993 to 1994 (killed in airplane crash, 1994).
  • Died: Adele Sandrock, 74, Dutch-born German stage and film actress

August 31, 1937 (Tuesday)

References