March 1927

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March 2, 1927: Babe Ruth signs for record salary
March 26, 1927: Chiang Kai-shek captures Shanghai
March 2, 1927: Coolidge and family move into U.S. presidential residence

The following events occurred in March 1927:

March 1, 1927 (Tuesday)

  • U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and his family spent their final night in the White House, which was set for six months of repairs on the roof and the upper floor. The following day, the family took up residence at the Patterson Mansion on 15 Dupont Circle, owned by Mrs. Ellinor Schlesinger. President Coolidge continued to use the executive offices at the White House.[1]
  • An explosion at a coal mine in Cwm, Wales, a coal mine explosion killed 52 miners.[2]
  • Born:
  • Died: George Polley, 28, American daredevil who climbed skyscrapers from the outside under the billing "The Human Fly". Polley, who had risked death on numerous occasions, died in Richmond, Virginia, during an operation at Memorial Hospital for a brain tumor.[3]

March 2, 1927 (Wednesday)

  • Babe Ruth signed a new contract with the New York Yankees, calling for a then-record salary of $70,000 per year.[4] The next best paid Yankee player was Herb Pennock, at $17,500 Wayne Stewart,[5]
  • The discovery, by teenagers Frank Horton Jr. and Leonard Taylor, of high grade gold ore in Nevada, set off a modern-day gold rush that attracted thousands of prospectors to the area.[6] The town of Weepah, Nevada sprang up near Tonopah. Within three months, the rush was over, and the Weepah was almost totally deserted by August.[7]

March 3, 1927 (Thursday)

March 4, 1927 (Friday)

  • In South Africa, near Potchefstroom, the government permitted a race for the staking of claims for diamond mining at the Grasfontein farm. With the firing of a gun as a signal, 25,000 "peggers" (prospectors) "ran nearly three miles over hummocky broken ground, then set to work feverishly to stake as much of the best territory as possible".[11]
  • Born: Dick Savitt, American tennis player, in Bayonne, New Jersey; Wimbledon and Australian Open champion, 1951
  • Died: Ira Remsen, 81, American chemist, who in 1879 discovered saccharin by accident

March 5, 1927 (Saturday)

March 6, 1927 (Sunday)

March 7, 1927 (Monday)

  • At 6:28 pm local time, an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter magnitude scale struck on Japan's Tango Peninsula in the Kyoto Prefecture. The tremors and subsequent fires killed 3,020 people, and destroyed the cities of Toyooka and Kinosaki in the Hyōgo Prefecture.[15]
  • In the case of Nixon v. Herndon, the United States Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a Texas law that barred African-American voters from participating in primary elections,[16] rendering similar laws in other states void. The victory was short-lived, as Texas passed a new law that gave political parties the right to set their own rules for participation in a party primary election. Such laws were not held unconstitutional until the April 1, 1946 ruling in Primus v. King.[17]

March 8, 1927 (Tuesday)

March 9, 1927 (Wednesday)

  • Signed on September 23, 1926, the 1926 Slavery Convention, officially the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, entered into force.[20]
  • A neutrality pact was signed between Latvia and the Soviet Union, but was not ratified. A subsequent, and weaker, non-aggression pact was finally signed on February 5, 1932. The Republic of Latvia was incorporated into Soviet Union in 1940.[21]
  • American balloonist Hawthorne C. Gray set an unofficial altitude record of 8,230 meters (27,000 feet) over Belleville, Illinois, but passed out in the thin air, regaining consciousness only after the balloon descended on its own. Gray would reach 12,945 meters on May 4, a record that would fail because he parachuted from the craft (at 3,830 m) landing. On November 4, he reached 12,192 meters but did not survive the trip.[22]
  • Adolf Hitler made his first public speech after the Bavarian government lifted a two-year ban against his participation in political events.[23]

March 10, 1927 (Thursday)

March 11, 1927 (Friday)

March 12, 1927 (Saturday)

  • The Kreta Ayer Incident in Singapore turned much of the Chinese community in the British colony against the colonial administration. Demonstrators, observing the anniversary of the death of Sun Yat-sen, were fired upon by police after stopping in front of a precinct station at Kreta Ayer, and six people were killed.[27]
  • Outside the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, and assassination attempt was made against Soviet Politburo member Nikolai Bukharin. The Soviets claimed that the failed crime had been the work of British intelligence agents, and a group of "counterrevolutionaries" were executed on June 9, 1927. In 1938, Bukharin himself was accused of plotting against the government and was executed.[28]
  • The adventure film The Beloved Rogue starring John Barrymore was released.
  • Born: Emmett Leith, co-inventor of the hologram, in Ann Arbor (d. 2005)

March 13, 1927 (Sunday)

March 14, 1927 (Monday)

March 15, 1927 (Tuesday)

  • Shōwa financial crisis: In Tokyo, the large Watanabe Bank failed a day after Finance Minister Naoharu Kataoka mistakenly said in a speech that the struggling bank had "at last collapsed" and depositors made a bank run, withdrawing their cash. Two other banks collapsed by the end of the week and by March 24, twelve banks had crashed and more would follow.[31]
  • Born: Carl Smith, American country musician, in Maynardville, Tennessee (d. 2010)

March 16, 1927 (Wednesday)

March 17, 1927 (Thursday)

  • As the Teapot Dome scandal continued to unravel, Harry F. Sinclair, owner of Mammoth Oil Company (later Sinclair Oil), was convicted by a jury of contempt of Congress. The multimilloniare eventually served a six-month prison term in 1930.[33] On the same day, President Coolidge issued an executive order returning administration of all naval petroleum reserves from the U.S. Department of Interior to the U.S. Department of the Navy.[34]
  • More than one-hundred people died when the Chinese ship Chongfu was wrecked in the Yangtze River near Luzhou in the Sichuan Province.[35]
HMAS Australia

March 18, 1927 (Friday)

  • In the Northern Expedition: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces arrived at the defensive line protecting the city of Shanghai. Instead of defending against the enemy, the garrison commander collaborated with the Nationalists, as well as handing over the plans for city's defense. Though offered a position with Chiang's forces, the officer who betrayed his commander declined to work further with them. One author wrote later, "Stupidly, he went home to Shandong, where he was executed[37]
  • A tornado leveled the town of Green Forest, Arkansas, killing 16 people and injuring more than 50. In all, 26 people were killed in the storm.[38]
  • Born: George Plimpton, American sportswriter (Paper Lion), in New York City (d. 2003)

March 19, 1927 (Saturday)

  • Balto, the Siberian husky who would later become the subject of an animated 1995 film (Amblin Entertainment), was given a parade and a hero's welcome in Cleveland, along with six of his canine teammates (Fox, Sye, Billy, Tillie, Moctoc and Alaska Slim). Businessman George Kimble had rescued the animals, two years after the 1925 serum run to Nome, after finding that they were being neglected. Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic (W. W. Norton & Company, 2005) p253;[39]
  • Born:

March 20, 1927 (Sunday)

  • In Mahad, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar began a crusade for the end of discrimination against the Dalit caste in India, known commonly as "Untouchables".[40]
  • Albert Snyder, a 44-year-old art editor for the magazine Boating, was brutally murdered at his home on 222nd Street in Queens, New York, and his wife, Ruth Snyder, was discovered bound and gagged. A few days later, police arrested Ruth and her lover, Judd Gray, for Albert's murder. After their trial and conviction, Mrs. Snyder and Mr. Gray would both be executed on January 12, 1928.[41]
  • Born: John Joubert, British composer, in Cape Town, South Africa

March 21, 1927 (Monday)

March 22, 1927 (Tuesday)

March 23, 1927 (Wednesday)

  • Nanking Incident: After the troops supporting Shanghai's warlords retreated to Nanking, Nationalist troops pursued, and attacks on foreigners began. Six foreign residents, including Professor John E. Williams of Nanjing University, were killed.[45]
  • Died: Paul César Helleu, 67, French painter

March 24, 1927 (Thursday)

March 25, 1927 (Friday)

  • The Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Navy. After taking part in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Akagi was damaged and sunk six months later at the Battle of Midway.[48]
  • Nanking Incident: After a day of shelling Nanking, the United States and Britain agreed to a one-day ceasefire in return for the Kuomintang allowing the hundreds of foreigners in the city to be safely evacuated.[49] Six foreigners, three of them British, had been killed by Chinese forces. Chinese histories estimate that there were more than 2,000 Chinese casualties from the bombardment.[50] The French Communist newspaper Communite reported that 7,000 Chinese had been killed in the bombardment of Nanjing, while the U.S. State Department placed the total number of deaths and injuries "at less than 100".[51]
  • Born:

March 26, 1927 (Saturday)

  • Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, Commander in Chief of the Cantonese armies, captured Shanghai "without firing a shot", and arrived at the city on the gunboat Zhongshan, after sailing from Hankou. At the French Concession, Chiang met with local political and business leaders, who pledged their financial support if he would end his alliance with the Communists who had helped him gain control of the city.[52]

March 27, 1927 (Sunday)

Josepho and the Photomaton booth
  • Anatol Josepho, a 31-year-old Russian who had arrived in the United States penniless in 1925, became a millionaire with the sale of the rights to his invention, the photo booth, to the newly organized Photomaton Corporation.[53]
  • Henry Ford, at the time the world's wealthiest man, was hospitalized after he struck a tree. The auto magnate had been driving his coupe it was run off the road by a larger Studebaker on Michigan Avenue in Detroit. Reports of the crash were kept from the press for several days[54] and the matter was later investigated as "an attempted assassination",[55] but the case was later dropped.[56] Researcher Jim Morris concluded that the accident was the motivating reason for the inclusion of safety glass in all Ford automobiles thereafter.[57]
  • Born:
  • Died:

March 28, 1927 (Monday)

  • The Majestic Theatre opened in New York with the production Rufus LeMaire's Affairs. The Broadway theatre would premiere numerous successful plays and musicals, including Carousel, South Pacific, The Music Man, Camelot, The Wiz, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which has played at the Majestic since 1988.[58]
  • Died: Alfred Klausmeyer, 66, co-founder and operator of the Anchor Buggy Company, which had been the world's largest manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages from 1887 until 1915.[59]

March 29, 1927 (Tuesday)

March 30, 1927 (Wednesday)

  • Shōwa financial crisis: Following the worst financial panic in that nation's history, Japan's Diet passed an emergency banking law, the Ginko Ho, immediately increasing the amount of capital that banks were required to keep in reserve. As a result, the number of banks decreased over the next five years from 1,417 to 680[62] and Japan's five largest banks (Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda and Dai-Ichi) doubled their share of the nation's deposits, from 17% to 31%.[63]
  • Coal mine explosions in Pennsylvania and Illinois killed five and eight miners respectively, but hundreds more were rescued the next day after being trapped underground. At Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, it appeared that nearly 500 miners had been trapped, but all but five came out the next day.[64] An explosion the same day near Ledford, Illinois trapped 300 men, but all but 8 were saved.[65]
  • Died: Ladislas Lazaro, 54, U.S. Congressman (D-La.) since 1913

March 31, 1927 (Thursday)

  • At midnight, members of the United Mine Workers of America began a strike of American bituminous coal mines after the expiration of their 1924 contract with union mines, with 200,000 miners across the United States walking off of their jobs.[66] Coal mining continued with strikebreakers, and the strike came to an end on July 18, 1928.[67]
  • Vladimir K. Zworykin received British Patent No. 255,057 for an all cathode ray television system. U.S. Patent No. 1,691,324 was issued on November 13, 1928.[68]
  • Born:

References

  1. "Coolidges Move to New Residence", Milwaukee Sentinel, March 3, 1927, p1
  2. "Fifty-two Miners Believed Killed in Wales Explosion", Miami Daily News, March 1, 1927, p1
  3. "Illness Fatal to Human Fly— Richmond Man Succumbs After Frequently Courting Death", Baltimore Sun, March 3, 1927, p9
  4. "'Bambino' Agrees To Sign Contact", Pittsburgh Press, March 2, 1927, p1
  5. Babe Ruth: A Biography (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006) p81
  6. "Flivvers Lead in Gold Rush", Miami Daily News, March 5, 1927, p1
  7. Mary Ellen Glass and Al Glass, Touring Nevada: A Historic and Scenic Guide (University of Nevada Press, 1983), p205; GhostTowns.com
  8. "500 DEAD IN MADAGASCAR CYCLONE", Miami Daily News, March 5, 1927, p1; Pierre Van Den Boogaerde, Shipwrecks of Madagascar (AEG Publishing Group, 2008) p263
  9. Peter Lacovara, The Pyramids, the Sphinx, Tombs and Temples of Giza (Bunker Hill Publishing, Inc., 2004), p52
  10. "British Auto Racer Killed" , Miami Daily News, March 3, 1927, p1; Bluebird-Electric.net
  11. "25,000 Diamond Diggers at Work", Miami Daily News, March 5, 1927, p1
  12. Notre Dame 2008-09 Media Guide; "Notre Dame Irish Lose Two Games In Two Years", Massillon (OH) Evening Independent, March 10, 1927, p11; ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia: The Complete History of the Men's Game (Random House, Inc., 2009) p240
  13. Motoera website; Vincent Curcio, Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius (Oxford University Press US, 2001) p352
  14. Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian: and other essays on religion and related subjects (Simon and Schuster, 1957) p3
  15. "Japan's Dead and Injured in Quake May Total 5,000", Miami Daily News, March 8, 1927, p1; Yoshitaro Takenobu, ed. , The Japan Year Book 1929 (1930) p33; USGS Historic Earthquakes Archived 2013-01-14 at the Wayback Machine
  16. "Supreme Court Upholds Right of Negro Vote", Miami Daily News, March 7, 1927, p1
  17. Steven F. Lawson, Black ballots: voting rights in the South, 1944-1969 (Lexington Books, 1999) p28
  18. "Snapshots in Time", Skiing Heritage Journal June 2007 p16
  19. "Good-bye, Kenny Rogers, Hello, Wagoneers", by Nick Tosches, Texas Monthly October 1988 p118
  20. Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, Human rights worldwide: a reference handbook (ABC-CLIO, 2006) p124
  21. Valdis O. Lumans, Latvia in World War II (Fordham University Press, 2006) p36
  22. Davis, Jeffrey R.; Johnson, Robert; Stepanek, Jan; Fogarty, Jennifer A. (2008). Fundamentals of Aerospace Medicine. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-7817-7466-6.
  23. Douglas G. Morris, Justice imperiled: the anti-Nazi lawyer Max Hirschberg in Weimar Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2005) p244
  24. Gleason L. Archer, Big Business and Radio (1939, reprinted by READ Books, 2007) p17
  25. Fran Capo and Scott Bruce, It Happened in Pennsylvania (Globe Pequot, 2005) p82; "Bandits Dynamite Armored Pay Car and Take $104,250", New York Times, March 12, 1927, p1
  26. Richard Alleman, New York: The Movie Lover's Guide (Random House, Inc., 2005) p133
  27. C.F. Yong and R.B. McKenna, The Kuomintang movement in British Malaya, 1912-1949 (Singapore University Press, 1990) p88
  28. Bruce A. Elleman, Moscow and the Emergence of Communist Power in China, 1925-30 (Taylor & Francis, 2009) p111
  29. Awadhesh Coomar Sinha, Himalayan kingdom Bhutan: tradition, transition, and transformation (Indus Publishing, 2001) p77
  30. David Ewen, Music for the Millions - the Encyclopedia of Musical Masterpieces (READ BOOKS, 2007) p561
  31. Norio Tamaki, Japanese banking: a history, 1859-1959 (Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp 150-151
  32. Gareth Griffith, Socialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of Bernard Shaw (CRC Press, 2002) p112
  33. Gerald S. Greenberg, Historical encyclopedia of US independent counsel investigations (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000) p316
  34. Fiftieth Annual Report of the Director of the Geological Survey (Government Printing Office, 1929) p70
  35. "100 Chinese Die In Wrecked Ship", Miami Daily News, March 18, 1927, p1
  36. Royal Australian Navy webpage for HMAS Australia (II)
  37. Jonathan Fenby, Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (Carroll & Graf, 2003) p142
  38. "Toll of 26 Lives Taken in Storms in South, Miami Daily News, March 19, 1927, p1
  39. "No More Mushing For Balto", Oakland Tribune, March 31, 1927, p20
  40. Narendra Jadhav, Untouchables: My Family's Triumphant Escape from India's Caste System (University of California Press, 2007) pp37-39
  41. Landis MacKellar, The "double indemnity" Murder: Ruth Snyder, Judd Gray, and New York's Crime of the Century (Syracuse University Press, 2006) p3; "Art Editor Found Slain in Home and House Ransacked", Montreal Gazette, March 21, 1927, p2
  42. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (W. W. Norton & Company, 1991) p353; Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary : A Biography; translated by Peter Rand and Lawrence R. Sullivan (PublicAffairs, 2007) p55
  43. Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 1995) p328
  44. "Peasants Going To Church Drown", Miami Daily News, March 23, 1927, p1
  45. "Nanjing (Nanking) Incident, China, (1927)", in The War of 1898, and U.S. Interventions, 1898-1934: An Encyclopedia (Taylor & Francis, 1994) p356; "MANY AMERICANS KILLED, WOUNDED IN ATTACK OF CHINESE AT NANKING" Miami Daily News, March 24, 1927, p1
  46. John Van Antwerp MacMurray, How the peace was lost: the 1935 memorandum, Developments affecting American Policy in the Far East(Hoover Press, 1992) p93
  47. "U.S. and British Warships Shell Cantonese Army", Miami Daily News, March 24, 1927, p1; "Warship's Shells Come Just In Time to Avoid Massacre, Refugees from Nanking Say", Miami Daily News, March 27, 1927, p1
  48. Paul E. Fontenoy, Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated History of Their Impact (ABC-CLIO, 2006) p212
  49. "ALLIES DELAY BOMBARDING OF NANKING FOR DAY AS FOREIGNERS BEGIN LEAVING", Miami Daily News, March 24, 1927, p1
  50. Arnold Xiangze Jiang, The United States and China (University of Chicago Press, 1988) p83
  51. "Communist Paper Reports 7,000 Killed at Nanking", Miami News, March 29, 1927, p2
  52. Frederic E. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937 (University of California Press, 1996) p123; Zhaojin Ji, A History of Modern Shanghai Banking (M.E. Sharpe, 2003) p157
  53. "Photo-in-slot Inventor Will Endow Genius", Miami Daily News, March 28, 1927, p15
  54. "Henry Ford Slightly Injured in Automobile Collision", Miami Daily News, March 30, 1927, p1
  55. "FORD ASSAILANT HUNTED SECRETLY", Miami Daily News, March 31, 1927, p1
  56. "Ford Accident Case Dropped By Officials", Miami Daily News, April 3, 1927, p17
  57. Peter Winnewisser, The Legendary Model A Ford: The Ultimate History of One of America's Great Automobiles. (Krause Publications, 2006) p11
  58. Louis Botto, At this theatre: 100 years of Broadway shows, stories and stars (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002) p249-250
  59. Rebecca Goodman, Barrett J. Brunsman, This Day in Ohio History (Emmis Books, 2005) p316
  60. "Segrave Smashes World Records; Speedster Sets Mark of 203.841 in Daytona Test", Miami Daily News, March 29, 1927, p1 MDN 3-29-27 Bluebird-Electric.net
  61. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Unsolved Mysteries of the Arctic (Ayer Publishing, 1972) p330-332
  62. Takafusa Nakamura and Kōnosuke Odaka, eds., Economic history of Japan, 1914-1955 : a dual structure (Oxford University Press, 2003) p154
  63. Kent E. Calder, Strategic Capitalism: Private Business and Public Purpose in Japanese Industrial Finance (Princeton University Press, 1995) p28
  64. "500 MEN ENTOMBED BY MINE BLAST", Miami Daily News, March 30, 1927, p1; "350 Escape Death in Mine Explosion;", New York Times, March 31, 1927, p24
  65. "8 Killed, 300 Escape From Illinois Blast", Berkeley (CA) Daily Gazette, March 30, 1927, p1
  66. "45,000 MINERS STRIKE HERE", Pittsburgh Press, April 1, 1927, p1
  67. Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: The T.U.E.L., 1925-1929 (International Publishers Co, 1991) pp23-29
  68. Albert Abramson, Zworykin: Pioneer of Television (University of Illinois Press, 1995) p70, 227
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