FDR inaugurated to second term
On January 20, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated for the second time as president, beginning the second of four terms in the office. His first inauguration, in 1933,…
Also Within This Year in History:
1937
Around the world, 1937 brought conflict, disaster and innovation. Wars in Spain and Asia highlighted growing tensions ahead of WWII. Stalin’s Great Purge killed and imprisoned millions. A killer typhoon, dirigible disaster and mysterious aviator disappearance grabbed global headlines. The majestic Golden Gate Bridge debuted, while engineers built the first jet engine. As Depression endured, Americans paid $26 to rent an average house and 10 cents for a gallon of gas. Top diversions included swing music, Tolkien’s hobbit and Disney’s dwarves.
On January 20, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated for the second time as president, beginning the second of four terms in the office. His first inauguration, in 1933,…
On February 5, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt announces a plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it more efficient. Critics immediately charged…
John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men, the story of the bond between two migrant workers, is published. He adapted the book into a three‑act play, which was produced the…
Nearly 300 students in Texas are killed by an explosion of natural gas at their school on March 18, 1937. The Consolidated School of New London, Texas, sat in the…
During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force—the Luftwaffe—on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. Although the independence‑minded Basque region opposed General…
The airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany, bursts into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 passengers and…
Madeleine Albright, America’s first female secretary of state, is born Marie Jana Korbelova on May 15, 1937, in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). The daughter of Czech diplomat Josef Korbel,…
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological and artistic achievement, opens to the public after five years of construction. On opening day—“Pedestrian Day”—some 200,000 bridge walkers marveled at the…
On May 28, 1937, the government of Germany—then under the control of Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party—forms a new state‑owned automobile company, then known as Gesellschaft zur…
In France, the Duke of Windsor—formerly King Edward VIII of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—marries Wallis Warfield Simpson, a divorced American socialite for whom he abdicated the British throne in December 1936.…
On June 7, 1937, Hollywood is shocked to learn of the sudden and tragic death of the actress Jean Harlow, who succumbs to uremic poisoning (now better known as acute…
On July 2, 1937, the Lockheed aircraft carrying American aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Frederick Noonan is reported missing near Howland Island in the Pacific. The pair were attempting to…
On August 10, 1937, the United States Patent Office recognizes the electric guitar—the instrument that revolutionized jazz, blues and country music and made the later rise of rock and roll…
Legendary blues singer Bessie Smith is buried near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 4, 1937. Some 7,000 mourners attended her funeral. Smith had been killed a few days before when the…
During the battle for Nanking in the Sino‑Japanese War, the U.S. gunboat Panay is attacked and sunk by Japanese warplanes in Chinese waters. The American vessel, neutral in the Chinese‑Japanese…
During the Sino‑Japanese War, Nanking, the capital of China, falls to Japanese forces, and the Chinese government flees to Hankow, further inland along the Yangtze River. To break the spirit…