1927

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.

Events

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 M_w  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 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 20: 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 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 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 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.
- 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.