January •
January 1 – The British Broadcasting
Company becomes the
British Broadcasting Corporation, when its
royal charter of incorporation takes effect.
John Reith becomes the first Director-General. •
January 7 • The first transatlantic telephone call is made
via radio from New York City, United States, to London, United Kingdom. • The
Harlem Globetrotters exhibition
basketball team play their first ever road game in
Hinckley, Illinois. •
January 9 – The
Laurier Palace Theatre fire at a movie theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, kills 78 children. •
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 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.
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 7 – An attempted military coup in
Lisbon, Portugal, is successfully put down. •
February 12 – British troops land in
Shanghai as a result of UK government concerns about the safety of residents in the British settlement. •
February 14 – A magnitude 6.1 earthquake, with a maximum
MSK intensity of VII–VIII (Very strong – Damaging), kills 50 in
Yugoslavia. •
February 19 • A
general strike takes place in Shanghai in protest against 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.
March •
March 4 – A
diamond rush in South Africa includes trained athletes, who have been hired by major companies to stake claims. •
March 7 –
1927 Kita Tango earthquake: A 7.0 earthquake kills at least 2,925 in the
Toyooka and
Mineyama areas of western
Honshu, in Japan. •
March 11 – In New York City, the
Roxy Theatre is opened by
Samuel Roxy Rothafel. •
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
Chinese Communist Party forces will overrun the foreign consulates, warships of the
U.S. Navy and the British
Royal Navy fire shells and shoot to disperse the crowds. •
March 29 –
Henry Segrave breaks the land speed record, driving the
Sunbeam 1000 hp at Daytona Beach, Florida.
April •
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 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; it is the only time a team from outside England has won the competition. •
April 27 • The
Carabineros de Chile (
Chilean national police force and
gendarmerie) 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 : Solo flight New York to Paris •
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, which will create the
Academy Awards, is founded in the United States. •
May 12 – British police officers raid the office of the
Soviet trade delegation in London. •
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 by a school official results in 45 deaths, mostly of children, in
Bath Township, Michigan, United States. •
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
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 system to 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 9 – The Soviet Union executes 20 people for alleged
espionage in retaliation for the assassination two days earlier of
Pyotr Voykov, the Soviet ambassador to Poland, at the railway station in
Warsaw. Voykov had been shot by 19-year-old Boris Kowerda, an exiled Russian, in retaliation for having signed the death warrants in 1918 for
Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial Family. •
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 –
Timothy Coughlan,
Bill Gannon and
Archie Doyle, members of the anti-
Treaty Irish Republican Army, shoot dead
Kevin O'Higgins,
Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State and
Minister for Justice, as O'Higgins is walking to Mass in
Dublin. •
July 11 – The
1927 Jericho earthquake strikes
Palestine, killing around 300 people; it is the largest ever recorded in this part of the Middle East. 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 – 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 in the United States. 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 sentences on Italian American anarchists
Sacco and Vanzetti. Other protests are held across the world at this time. •
August 24–
25 – The
1927 Nova Scotia hurricane hits the
Atlantic Provinces of Canada, causing massive damage and at least 56 deaths. •
August 26 –
Paul 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 first fully electronic television system is achieved by
Philo Farnsworth. •
September 18 – The Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System (later known as
CBS) is formed in the United States, 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 29 – The
East St. Louis Tornado kills 79 people and injures 550, the 2nd costliest and at least 24th deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
October •
October –
Niels Bohr presents his theoretical principle of
complementarity at the
Fifth Solvay Conference on Physics. •
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). •
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.
November •
November 1 –
İsmet İnönü forms a new government in
Turkey (the 5th government). •
November 3–
4 –
Great Vermont Flood of 1927: Floods devastating Vermont cause the "worst natural disaster in the state's history". •
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 the U.S. (of this time). •
November 12 •
Mahatma Gandhi makes his only 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
Columbine Mine massacre: 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 11 – Gamma Sigma Fraternity becomes the first high school fraternity to become international with Alpha Zeta chapter in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. •
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 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. • Australian
cricketer
Bill Ponsford makes 437 runs to break his own world record for the highest
first-class cricket score at
Melbourne Cricket Ground. •
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 had 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 Anak Krakatau Island. •
December 30 – The first Asian
commuter metro line, the
Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, opens in
Japan. ==Births==