1927

1927 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1927; MCMXXVII
Ab urbe condita	2680
Armenian calendar	1376; ԹՎ ՌՅՀԶ
Assyrian calendar	6677
Bahá'í calendar	83–84
Balinese saka calendar	1848–1849
Bengali calendar	1334
Berber calendar	2877
British Regnal year	17 Geo. 5 – 18 Geo. 5
Buddhist calendar	2471
Burmese calendar	1289
Byzantine calendar	7435–7436
Chinese calendar	丙寅年 (Fire Tiger); 4623 or 4563; — to —; 丁卯年 (Fire Rabbit); 4624 or 4564
Coptic calendar	1643–1644
Discordian calendar	3093
Ethiopian calendar	1919–1920
Hebrew calendar	5687–5688
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1983–1984
- Shaka Samvat	1848–1849
- Kali Yuga	5027–5028
Holocene calendar	11927
Igbo calendar	927–928
Iranian calendar	1305–1306
Islamic calendar	1345–1346
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 2; (昭和２年)
Javanese calendar	1857–1858
Juche calendar	16
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4260
Minguo calendar	ROC 16; 民國16年
Nanakshahi calendar	459
Thai solar calendar	2469–2470
Tibetan calendar	阳火虎年; (male Fire-Tiger); 2053 or 1672 or 900; — to —; 阴火兔年; (female Fire-Rabbit); 2054 or 1673 or 901

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century ; 20th century ; 21st century ;
Decades:	1900s ; 1910s ; 1920s ; 1930s ; 1940s ;
Years:	1924 ; 1925 ; 1926 ; 1927 ; 1928 ; 1929 ; 1930 ;

Last updated February 16, 2019

1927 ( MCMXXVII ) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar , the 1927th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 927th year of the 2nd millennium , the 27th year of the 20th century , and the 8th year of the 1920s decade.

Roman numerals Numbers in the Roman numeral system

The numeric system represented by Roman numerals originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers in this system are represented by combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet. Roman numerals, as used today, employ seven symbols, each with a fixed integer value, as follows:

A common year is a calendar year with 365 days, as distinguished from a leap year, which has 366. More generally, a common year is one without intercalation. The Gregorian calendar,, employs both common years and leap years to keep the calendar aligned with the tropical year, which does not contain an exact number of days.

A common year starting on Saturday is any non-leap year that begins on Saturday, 1 January, and ends on Saturday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is B. The most recent year of such kind was 2011 and the next one will be 2022 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 2017 and 2023 in the obsolete Julian calendar, see below for more. Any common year that starts on Wednesday, Friday or Saturday has only one Friday the 13th; The only Friday the 13th in this common year occurs in May. Leap years starting on Friday share this characteristic.

Events

January

January 1
- The Cristero War erupts in Mexico, when Catholic rebels attack the government, which had placed heavy restrictions on the Catholic Church.
- The British Broadcasting Company becomes the British Broadcasting Corporation, when it is granted a Royal Charter of incorporation. John Reith becomes the first Director-General.
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with approximately 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide as of 2016. As the world's "oldest continuously functioning international institution", it has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilisation. The church is headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope. Its central administration, the Holy See, is in the Vatican City, an enclave within the city of Rome in Italy.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total, 16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, was a Scottish broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. In 1922 he was employed by the BBC as its general manager; in 1923 he became its managing director and in 1927 he was employed as the Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation created under a Royal Charter. His concept of broadcasting as a way of educating the masses marked for a long time the BBC and similar organisations around the world. An engineer by trade, and standing at 6'6" tall, he was a larger than life figure who was a pioneer in his field.
January 7
- The first transatlantic telephone call is made via radio from New York City to London.
- The Harlem Globetrotters play their first ever road game in Hinckley, Illinois.^{[ citation needed ]}
The Harlem Globetrotters are an exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, and comedy in their style of play. Over the years they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 123 countries and territories. The team's signature song is Brother Bones' whistled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown". Their mascot is an anthropomorphized globe named Globie. The team plays over 450 live events worldwide each year. The team is currently owned by Herschend Family Entertainment. The executive offices for the team are located in suburban Atlanta.
Hinckley is a village in Squaw Grove Township, DeKalb County, Illinois, United States. The population was 2,070 at the 2010 census, up from 1,994 in 2000.
January 9
- A military rebellion is crushed in Lisbon, Portugal.
- A fire at the Laurier Palace movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, kills 78 children.
Lisbon is the capital and the largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 505,526 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km². Its urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits with a population of around 2.8 million people, being the 11th-most populous urban area in the European Union. About 3 million people live in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. It is mainland Europe's westernmost capital city and the only one along the Atlantic coast. Lisbon lies in the western Iberian Peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean and the River Tagus. The westernmost areas of its metro area form the westernmost point of Continental Europe, which is known as Cabo da Roca, located in the Sintra Mountains.
The Laurier Palace Theatre fire, sometimes known as the Saddest fire or the Laurier Palace Theatre crush, was a fire that occurred in a movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on Sunday, January 9, 1927. 78 people died in the ensuing mayhem. The theatre was located at 3215 Saint Catherine Street East, just east of Dézéry St.
January 10 – Fritz Lang's futuristic film Metropolis is released in Germany.
January 11 – Louis B. Mayer, head of film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), announces the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at a banquet in Los Angeles, California.
January 15 – Teddy Wakelam gives the first sports commentary on BBC Radio.
January 19 – Great Britain sends troops to China, to protect foreign nationals from spreading anti-foreign riots in central China.
January 24 – U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua by orders of President Calvin Coolidge, intervening in the Nicaraguan Civil War, and remaining in the country until 1933.
January 30 – Right-wing veterans and the Republikanischer Schutzbund clash in Schattendorf, Austria, with two fatalities resulting (see also July 15).

January 1 is the first day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 364 days remaining until the end of the year. This day is known as New Year's Day since the day marks the beginning of the year. It is also the first day of the first quarter of the year and the first half of the year.

The Cristero War or Cristero Rebellion (1926–29), also known as La Cristiada[la kɾisˈtjaða], was a widespread struggle in central-western Mexico in response to the imposition of secularist, anti-Catholic and anti-clerical articles of the 1917 Mexican Constitution. The rebellion was instigated by an executive decree of President Plutarco Elías Calles to enforce Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130 of the 1917 Constitution. Calles sought to eliminate the power of the Catholic Church and organizations affiliated with it as an institution, and also suppress popular religious celebration in local communities. The massive, popular rural uprising was tacitly supported by the Church hierarchy and was aided by urban Catholic support. US Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow brokered negotiations between the Calles government and the Church. The government made some concessions, the Church withdrew its support for the Cristero fighters and the conflict ended in 1929. It can be seen as a major event in the struggle between Church and State dating back to the 19th century with the War of Reform, but it can also be interpreted as the last major peasant uprising in Mexico following the end of the military phase of the Mexican Revolution in 1920.

Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost 2,000,000 square kilometres (770,000 sq mi), the nation is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent state in the world. With an estimated population of over 120 million people, the country is the eleventh most populous state and the most populous Spanish-speaking state in the world, while being the second most populous nation in Latin America after Brazil. Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and Mexico City, a special federal entity that is also the capital city and its most populous city. Other metropolises in the state include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana and León.

February

February – Werner Heisenberg formulates his famous uncertainty principle, while employed as a lecturer at Niels Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics, at the University of Copenhagen.
February 12 – The first British troops land in Shanghai.
February 14 – A magnitude 6.1 earthquake, with a maximum MSK intensity of VII–VIII (Very strong – Damaging), kills 50 in Yugoslavia.^[1]
February 19
- A general strike in Shanghai protests the presence of British troops.
- In the United States, the silent romantic comedy film It starring Clara Bow, is released, popularising the concept of the "It girl".
February 23 – The U.S. Federal Radio Commission (later renamed the Federal Communications Commission) begins to regulate the use of radio frequencies.

February is the second and shortest month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendar with 28 days in common years and 29 days in leap years, with the quadrennial 29th day being called the leap day. It is the first of five months to have a length of less than 31 days, and the only month to have a length of less than 30 days, with the other seven months having 31 days. This year February has 28 days.

Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, this matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. He is known for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the creation of quantum mechanics".

In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, known as complementary variables or canonically conjugate variables such as position x and momentum p, can be known.

March

March 4 – A diamond rush in South Africa includes trained athletes, who have been hired by major companies to stake claims.
March 6 – In Britain, 1,000 people a week die from an influenza epidemic.
March 7 – 1927 Kita Tango earthquake: A 7.0 M_w  earthquake kills at least 2,925 in the Toyooka and Mineyama areas of western Honshu, in Japan.
March 10 – Albania mobilizes in case of an attack by Yugoslavia.
March 11
- In New York City, the Roxy Theatre is opened by Samuel Roxy Rothafel.
- The first armored car robbery is committed by the Flatheads Gang, near Pittsburgh.
March 14 – Pan American World Airways is founded by Juan T. Trippe.
March 24 – Nanking Incident: After six foreigners have been killed in Nanking, and it appears that Kuomintang and Communist Party of China forces will overrun the foreign consulates, warships of the U.S. Navy and the British Royal Navy fire shells and shot to disperse the crowds.^[2]
March 29 – Henry Segrave breaks the land speed record, driving the Sunbeam 1000 hp at Daytona Beach, Florida.^[3]

April

April 1 – The U.S. Bureau of Prohibition is founded (under the Department of the Treasury).
April 5 – In Britain, the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 forbids strikes of support.
April 7 – Bell Telephone Co. transmits an image of Herbert Hoover (then the Secretary of Commerce), which becomes the first successful long distance demonstration of television.
April 12
- The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 renames the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The change acknowledges that the Irish Free State is no longer part of the Kingdom.
- April 12 Incident (Shanghai Massacre): Kuomintang troops kill a number of communist-supporting workers in Shanghai. The 1st United Front between the Nationalists and Communist ends, and the Civil War lasting until 1949 begins.
April 14 – The first Volvo automobile rolls off the production line in Gothenburg, Sweden.
April 18 – The Kuomintang (Nationalist Chinese) set up a government in Nanking, China.
April 21 – A banking crisis hits Japan.
April 22 – May 5 – The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 strikes 700,000 people, in the greatest natural disaster in American history through this time.
April 23 – Cardiff City wins the FA Cup, beating Arsenal 1-0; as of 2017, this remains the only time a team from outside England has won the competition.
April 27
- The Carabineros de Chile (Chilean national police force and gendarmery) are created.
- João Ribeiro de Barros becomes the first non-European to make a transatlantic flight, flying from Genoa, Italy, to Fernando de Noronha, Brazil.

May

May – Philo Farnsworth of the United States transmits his first experimental electronic television motion pictures, as opposed to the electromechanical TV systems that others have used before.
May 9 – The Australian Parliament convenes for the first time in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Previously, the Parliament had met in Melbourne, Victoria.
May 11 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , the "Academy" in "Academy Awards", is founded.
May 12 – British police officers raid the office of the Soviet trade delegation in London.
May 13 – King George V proclaims the change of his title, from King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
May 17 – U.S. Army aviation pioneer Major Harold Geiger dies in the crash of his Airco DH.4 airplane, at Olmsted Field, Pennsylvania.
May 18 – Bath School disaster: A series of violent attacks results in 45 deaths, mostly of school children, in Bath Township, Michigan.
May 20 – By the Treaty of Jeddah, the United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd, the future Saudi Arabia.
May 20 – 21 – Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo, nonstop transatlantic airplane flight, from New York City to Paris, France, in his single-engined aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis .
May 22 – The 7.6 M_w  Gulang earthquake affects Gansu in northwest China with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), leaving over 40,000 dead.
May 23 – Nearly 600 members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers view a live demonstration of television at the Bell Telephone Building in New York City, just over a year after John Logie Baird of Scotland had first demonstrated an electromechanical television system to the members of the Royal Society in London.
May 24 – The United Kingdom cuts its diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, due to revelations of espionage and underground agitation.

June

June – The volcanic island of Anak Krakatau begins to form in the Sunda Strait of Indonesia.
June 4 – Yugoslavia severs diplomatic relations with Albania.
June 4 – 6 – Clarence Chamberlin and Charles Albert Levine take off from Roosevelt Field, New York, and fly to Eisleben, Germany, in the Wright-Bellanca WB-2 Columbia aircraft Miss Columbia, two weeks after Charles Lindbergh's historic solo flight.
June 7 – Pyotr Voykov, the Soviet ambassador to Poland, is murdered.
June 9 – The Soviet Union executes 20 for alleged espionage.
June 13
- Léon Daudet, the leader of the French monarchists, is arrested in France.
- A ticker tape parade is held for aviator Charles Lindbergh, down Fifth Avenue in New York City.
June 28 – Spanish airline Iberia is established.
June 29 – Solar eclipse of June 29, 1927: A total eclipse of the sun takes place over Wales, northern England, southern Scotland, Norway, northern Sweden, northmost Finland, and the northmost extremes of Russia.
June 29 – July 1 – Commander Richard E. Byrd, Bernt Balchen, George Noville, and Bert Acosta take off from Roosevelt Field, New York, in the Fokker Trimotor airplane America, and cross the Atlantic to the coast of France, having to ditch there because of bad weather; all four men survive the emergency landing.

July

July 1 – The Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration (FDIA) is established as a United States federal agency.
July 10 – Kevin O'Higgins, Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State and Minister for Justice, is assassinated by the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army in Dublin.
July 11 – The 1927 Jericho earthquake strikes Palestine, killing around 300 people. The effects are especially severe in Nablus, but damage and fatalities are also reported in many areas of Palestine and Transjordan, such as Amman, Salt, Jordan, and Lydda.
July 13 (Wednesday, Tamuz 13, 5687): 12:30 – Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn is freed from the imprisonment which began on June 15 (Wednesday, Sivan 15, 5687) at 02:15 in exile, in the Russian town of Kostroma.
July 15 – July Revolt of 1927: After police in Vienna fire on an angry crowd, 85 protesters (mostly members of the Social Democratic Party of Austria) and 5 policemen are left dead; more than 600 people are injured.
July 24 – The Menin Gate is dedicated as a war memorial at Ypres, Belgium.

August

August 1 – The Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army is formed, during the Nanchang Uprising.
August 2
- U.S. President Calvin Coolidge announces, "I do not choose to run for president in 1928."
- American electrical engineer Harold Stephen Black invents the negative-feedback amplifier.
August 7 – The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
August 10 – The Mount Rushmore Park is rededicated. President Calvin Coolidge promises national funding for the proposed carving of the presidential figures.
August 22 – 200 people demonstrate in Hyde Park, London, against the death sentencing of Italian immigrant anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.
August 23 – Sacco and Vanzetti are executed.
August 24 – August 25 – The Hurricane hits the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, causing massive damage and at least 56 deaths.
August 26 – Paul R. Redfern leaves Brunswick, Georgia, flying his Stinson Detroiter "Port of Brunswick", to attempt a solo nonstop flight to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He later crashes in the Venezuelan jungle, but the crash site is never found.

September

September – The Autumn Harvest Uprising occurs in China.
September 7
- The University of Minas Gerais is founded in Brazil.
- The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Farnsworth.
September 18 – The Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System (later known as CBS ) is formed, and goes on the air with 47 radio stations.
September 25 – A treaty signed by the League of Nations Slavery Commission abolishes all types of slavery.
September 27 – The East St. Louis Tornado kills 79 and injures 550, the 2nd costliest and at least 24th deadliest tornado in U.S. history.

October

October – The Fifth Solvay Conference, held in the latter half of the month, establishes the acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation.
October 4 – Carving of the sculptures at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota begins.
October 6 – The Jazz Singer , starring Al Jolson, premieres at the Warner Theater in New York City. Although not the first sound film, and containing very little recorded speech, it is the first to become a box-office hit, popularizing "talkies" (although silent films continue to be made for some time).^[4]
October 8 – The "Murderers' Row" team of the New York Yankees complete a four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series baseball championship in the United States.
October 9 – The Mexican government crushes a rebellion in Veracruz.
October 18 – The first flight of Pan American Airways takes off from Key West, Florida, bound for Havana, Cuba.
October 25 – The Italian ocean liner Principessa Mafalda capsizes off Porto Seguro, Brazil; at least 314 people are killed.
October 27
- Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands opens the Meuse-Waal Canal in Nijmegen, Holland.
- At 5:50 a.m. a ground fault gives way, causing the mine and part of the town of Worthington to collapse into a large chasm located in Ontario. Nobody is injured in the incident, as the area has been evacuated the night before after a mine foreman noticed abnormal rock shifts in the mine.

November

November 1 – İsmet İnönü forms a new government in Turkey (the 5th government).
November 3 – 4 – Floods devastating Vermont cause the "worst natural disaster in the state's history".^[5]
November 4 – Frank Heath and his horse Gypsy Queen return to Washington, D.C., having completed a two-year journey of 11,356 miles to all 48 of the states (of this time).
November 12
- Mahatma Gandhi makes his first and last visit to Ceylon.
- Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with undisputed control of the Soviet Union.
- The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic, as the first vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River, linking New Jersey with New York City.
November 14 – Pittsburgh gasometer explosion: Three Equitable Gas storage tanks in the North Side of Pittsburgh explode, killing 26 people and causing damage estimated between $4.0 million and $5.0 million.
November 21 – The Colorado state police open fire on 500 rowdy but unarmed miners during a strike, killing 6.

December

December – The Communist Party Congress condemns all deviation from the general party line in the USSR.
December 1 – Chiang Kai-shek marries Soong Mei-ling in Shanghai.
December 2 – Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile in the United States.
December 3 – Putting Pants on Philip , the first Laurel and Hardy film, is released.
December 14 – Iraq gains independence from the United Kingdom.
December 15 – Marion Parker, 12, is kidnapped in Los Angeles. Her dismembered body is found on December 19, prompting the largest manhunt to date on the West Coast for her killer, William Edward Hickman, who is arrested on December 22 in Oregon.
December 17 – United States Navy submarine S-4 is accidentally rammed and sunk by United States Coast Guard cutter John Paulding off Provincetown, Massachusetts, killing everyone aboard despite several unsuccessful attempts to raise the submarine.
December 19 – Three members of the revolutionary movement for Indian independence – Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil, Thakur Roshan Singh and Ashfaqulla Khan – are executed by the British Raj. Rajendra Nath Lahiri has been executed two days before.
December 20 – Letalski center Maribor is established in Maribor; it will be the oldest surviving operating major flying club in the Balkans.
December 27 – Kern and Hammerstein's musical play, Show Boat , based on Edna Ferber's novel, opens on Broadway and then goes on to become the first great classic of the American musical theater.
December 29 – Eruption of the Perboewatan and Danan undersea volcanoes near Krakatoa, create the foundation for the Anak Krakatau Island.^[6]
December 30 – The first Asian commuter metro line, the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, opens in Japan.

Date unknown

The Voluntary Committee of Lawyers is founded, to bring about the Repeal of Prohibition in the United States.
World population reaches 2,000,000,000.