November 14, 1927: Leon Trotsky (above), Grigory Zinoviev and Adolph Joffe expelled by the Soviet Communist PartyNovember 7, 1927: Pope Pius XI rules that marriages performed in airplanes and balloons are validNovember 16, 1927: Adolph Joffe commits suicide after expulsion
The first communist government in China was proclaimed by Peng Pai, encompassing the counties of Haifeng and Lufeng near Hong Kong. The "Haifeng Soviet of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers" was created three weeks later, but Nationalist Chinese troops recaptured the area four months later.[1]
The first currency for the British Mandate in Palestine, the "Palestine pound", was introduced. After the creation of Israel and the independence of Jordan, and a redemption offer, the Palestine pound ceased to be legal tender after 1952.[2]
Died:
Florence Mills, 32, African-American performer, died of complications from an appendectomy.[3]
Karl Plauth, 31, aircraft designer and World War One ace who had downed 17 planes for Germany, was killed in a flying accident when the Junkers A 32 he was piloting failed to pull up after he made a loop.[4]
Rainfall began in Vermont, continuing into the next day, claiming its first victims.[7] Described as the "worst natural disaster in the state's history".[8] The final death toll was 132 people, of which 114 were in Vermont.[9]
Forty people were killed at the Sydney Harbour when the steamer Tahiti struck the passenger ferry Greycliffe.[10]
A cyclone struck the town of Nellore, 98 miles (158 km) northwest of Madras in India, killing almost 300 people.[13]
Legalized and state regulated prostitution in Germany, known as the "Bremen System", was abolished.[14]
November 4, 1927: Hawthorne C. Gray prior to altitude record attempt
United States Army Air Corps Captain Hawthorne C. Gray, 38, who had reached a record altitude of 42,470 feet (12,940 meters) in a balloon on May 4, attempted to set an official record. Because his timer failed, he ran out of bottled oxygen while at an altitude of 40,000 feet (12,000 m), lost consciousness, and died. His body and the balloon were found in a tree near Sparta, Tennessee, the next day.[15][16]
The Saturday Evening Post published the article "The Seeing Eye", written by Dorothy Harrison Eustis, introducing Americans to the news from Germany about dogs trained to assist blind veterans. Morris Frank, a 20-year-old blind man in Nashville, wrote back to Eustis, who was inspired to train the first American seeing eye dog in the United States. Frank began using the dog the following April, and training of dogs began in the U.S. in February 1929.[17]
A three-story building in Shanghai collapsed during a meeting of female textile workers who were gathering to form a labor union. Reportedly, the women had just elected officers when the third floor collapsed, bringing down the building.[18]
Alfredo Jauregui, one of several persons convicted of the assassination in 1917 of Bolivian President José Manuel Pando, was executed by firing squad. He had been chosen, by lottery, to serve as lone conspirator to receive the death penalty.[19]
The Ikhwan Revolt began in Saudi Arabia when a party of Berber tribesmen, the Ikhwan attacked and killed foreign construction workers and policemen who had been working on a police post in Busaiya.[20]
The Italian Army became the first to make a mass drop of paratroopers, as soldiers bailed out of airplanes near Milan, to landing at Cinisello Balsamo.[21]
The last anti-government protests (until 1991) in the Soviet Union took place on the tenth anniversary of the Communist victory in Russia, when the annual parade was joined by another group of marchers demonstrating against First Secretary Joseph Stalin. Government police broke up the protests, and Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev were condemned for organizing an opposition.[22][23]
Pope Pius XI, answering the request of an American Roman Catholic bishop, gave his blessing for marriages performed in airplanes. A spokesman for the Vatican quoted the Pope as saying, "Provided other ecclesiastical formalities are complied with, there is no reason to prohibit these marriages."[24]
Born: Hiroshi Yamauchi, Japanese entrepreneur who became president of Nintendo, a playing card manufacturing company, and transformed it into a multibillion-dollar creator of video games; in Kyoto (d. 2013)
The membership of the Simon Commission, chaired by Sir John Simon to review India's fitness for self-government, was announced, and, as one Indian author would later note, "in an incredible act of racial arrogance the British government had decided that all seven would be whites", on the recommendation of the Viceroy, Lord Irwin. In addition to Simon were Viscount Burnham, Lord Strathcona, Edward Cadogan, Clement Attlee, Vernon Hartshorn and Colonel George Lane-Fox.[25]
After having been banned from public speaking since his attempted "Beer Hall Putsch", German politician Adolf Hitler was allowed to speak at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich.[26]
An uprising broke out in Lithuania at the city of Taurage, led by citizens dissatisfied with the regime of President Antanas Smetona. Ultimately, 209 people would be convicted of charges arising from the insurrection, and eleven executed.[27]
General Motors declared the largest dividend in history up to that time, paying a total of $3.75 per share on each of its 17,400,000 shares for a total of $65,250,000 to its investors. The money paid represented the regular quarterly dividend of $1.25, plus an additional $2.50."[28]
The gunboat USS Panay and the submarine USS Argonaut were both launched. The Panay would be attacked and sunk by Japanese aircraft on December 12, 1937, slightly less than four years before America's entry into World War II, while the Argonaut would be sunk by the Japanese in 1943.
Born:Sabah, Lebanese singer and actress; as Jeanette Gergi Feghali in Beirut (d. 2014)
France and Yugoslavia signed a treaty of amity and arbitration. Although it had no military significance, the Franco-Yugoslavian treaty angered the Italian government, which signed a defense treaty with Albania on November 22.[29]
The Holland Tunnel, running underneath the Hudson River between Jersey City, New Jersey, and Canal Street in Manhattan, was opened at 5:00 pm to the public. Over the next two hours, 20,000 people walked through it before it was opened to traffic at midnight. President Coolidge pressed a button that rang a large brass bell at the entrance. At midnight, pedestrians were permanently barred from the tunnel, and cars began driving through from Jersey City.[31][32]
Born:Yutaka Taniyama, Japanese mathematician who postulated the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture ("every elliptic curve defined over the rational field is a factor of the Jacobian of a modular function field"), referred to as the modularity theorem; in Kisai, Saitama Prefecture (committed suicide, 1958)
Died: Father Margarito Flores García, 28, was executed by a firing squad as part of the anti-clerical persecution of Mexican President Plutarco Calles. Flores would be canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 2000.
Mindogon Mgboundoulou, father of 6-year-old Jean-Bédel Bokassa, was beaten to death after releasing persons being detained by the Compagnie Forestière de la Sangha-Oubangi. Bokassa's mother, Marie Yokowo, killed herself a week later. "[I]t would be no exaggeration to say that [Bokassa] learned the art of violence at an early age from some of its most seasoned practitioners", one author would note later. Bokassa would oversee the murder of thousands of his countrymen as leader of the Central African Republic.[33]
An attempt was made on the life of Mexican presidential candidate, General Álvaro Obregón, by a group of Cristeros, Christian clerics who had been persecuted by the government. Two bombs were thrown at his car, and he was slightly cut by glass from the windshield. Father Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez would later be executed for the crime.[34]
Twenty-six people in Pittsburgh were killed and 465 injured in the explosion of a natural gas storage tank. Operated by the Equitable Gas Company, the five million cubic foot gasometer, located on Reedsdale Street and Sproat Alley on Pittsburgh's North Side, erupted at 8:45 in the morning. The blast collapsed an adjacent factory building onto the 140 employees of the Pittsburgh Clay Pot Company.[35][36]
The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party voted to expel both Trotsky and Zinoviev from membership, along with 81 of their associates. The resolution became effective on December 2, when the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU purged 93 other Party members associated with the "Trotsky-Zinoviev faction".[23]
Show Boat, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and P. G. Wodehouse, was given its first pre-Broadway tryout, at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. It would open on Broadway on December 27. Because the production ran too long, 90 minutes would be cut. Legend has it that the most famous number in Show Boat, the song "Ol' Man River", was almost removed.[37]
The most regular outbursting comet, 29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann, was discovered by astronomers Arno Wachmann and Arnold Schwassmann.[38]
The USS Saratoga, the second United States Navy aircraft carrier, was commissioned. After World War II, the decommissioned Saratoga would be among ships sunk in an atomic test on July 25, 1946.[39]
Died:
Adolph Joffe, 44, Soviet diplomat, committed suicide four days after the expulsion of his ally, Leon Trotsky, from the Communist Party.
Theodore "Tiger" Flowers, 32, former middleweight boxing champion, died from complications of minor surgery for a growth above his eye. Four days earlier, he had knocked out Leo Gates in four rounds in a bout in New York.[40]
President Coolidge declared in a speech to the Union League of Philadelphia that America was "entering upon a new era of prosperity". Less than two years later, the stock market would crash.[41][42][43]
The Mexican Supreme Court voided enforcement of a 1925 law that had abrogated a 1923 agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that had allowed drilling for oil.[44][45]
Died:Moulay Youssef, 45, Sultan of Morocco since 1912, died of uremia.[46] General Mougin, French Director of the Moroccan military, supported Prince Idris, Youssef's eldest son, as the successor, while the Grand Vizier, Mohammed El Mokri, supported Youssef's youngest son, Sidi Mohammed, who won out and was crowned Mohammed V.[47]
U.S. President Coolidge commuted the prison sentence of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who had been convicted of defrauding contributors in raising funds for his "Back to Africa" movement. After his release, Garvey, a native of Jamaica, was deported from the U.S. on board the ship SS Saramacca.[48]
Humphrey Bogart and fellow actor Helen Menken were divorced, 18 months after their May 20, 1926, marriage, after she alleged cruelty and at least two occasions of battery. However, the two re-established their friendship even after Bogart remarried.[49]
The first Phillips 66 service station was opened, inaugurating the chain of gasoline and auto repair centers at Wichita, Kansas. The very first filling station had been opened in 1907, in Seattle, for Standard Oil Company.[50]
Fifty years after its founding in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Ogden College signed an agreement with Western State Normal School and Teachers College, closing the college and turning the campus over to what would become Western Kentucky University. The original 20-year lease was extended and will now run until 2059. The college's name survives as the "Ogden College of Science and Engineering" on the WKU campus.[51]
The Cap Arcona made her maiden voyage, departing Hamburg to Argentina. The German luxury liner would later be the prison for thousands of concentration camp inmates, who would die when that ship and others were bombed by the Royal Air Force on May 3, 1945.[52]
Forty-five members of the national militia of Liberia were drowned in the sinking of the steamship J. J. Dossen, which was bringing them back to Monrovia after they had participated in a parade in Caldwell.[53]
Born:
Ed W. Freeman, American soldier who was the inspiration for the film We Were Soldiers; in Neely, Mississippi. Freeman would wait 36 years to receive the Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Vietnam War on November 14, 1965. (d. 2008)
The Colorado state police opened fire with machine guns on 500 unarmed coal miners at the Columbine Mine Rocky Mountain Fuel Company in Lafayette, Colorado, during a strike, killing five of them. The incident was referred to as the "Columbine Massacre" prior to the 1999 high school shooting in Littleton, Colorado.[54]
The Soviet government passed a proposal by Joseph Stalin to make it a capital crime to leave the U.S.S.R. and to refuse to return. In addition to the confiscation of a violator's property, a person convicted of "placing oneself outside the law" of the U.S.S.R. was subject to execution "24 hours after confirmation of his identity". The law was used to carry out assassinations of anyone harmful to the regime, no matter where they lived.[55]
Actress Edith Luckett Robbins filed a petition for divorce against her husband, Kenneth Robbins, for desertion. The divorce was granted by a court in Trenton, New Jersey, in February. Edith then married Dr. Loyal Davis, who adopted her daughter, Ann Frances Robbins, who would take on the name Nancy Davis, later Nancy Reagan.[56]
Born::
Georgia Frontiere, majority owner of the NFL's St. Louis Rams, who moved the team to her hometown from Los Angeles in 1995; as Violet Frances Irwin in St. Louis (d. 2008)
Italy and Albania signed a mutual defense treaty, popularly called the Second Pact of Tirana, which "gave Italy de facto control over Albania as a protectorate".[57] Italy would conquer the Balkan nation in 1939, installing its monarch as King Viktor Emanueli.
Detroit's National Hockey League team played its first game in Detroit, and its first home game in the United States, after spending its first year playing across the border in Windsor, Ontario. The Detroit Cougars defeated the Ottawa Senators, and after changing their name to the Falcons, would become the Detroit Red Wings in 1932.[58]
The Alvin Theater opened on Broadway, with George Gershwin's musical Funny Face as its first presentation. The name was not based on anyone named Alvin, but was an amalgam of the names of producers Alex Aarons and Vinton Freedley.[59]
Died:St. Pedro Esqueda Ramirez, 40, one of the Cristeros martyrs who was executed by the Mexican government.
U.S. Army pilot Rusty Rowell located the secret mountain base of El Chipote, used by Sandinista rebels for raids against the Nicaraguan National Guard, and American troops occupying Nicaragua.[60]
Miguel Agustín Pro, 36, Mexican Jesuit priest who became one of the most famous of 20th Century Catholic martyrs upon his execution on charges of conspiracy
The fourth annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day ParadeinNew York City included a new feature — a large balloon of a popular cartoon character — that would become a tradition in the parades from 1933 onward. The first balloon, designed and constructed by Tony Sarg, was an image of Felix the Cat. It was about 15 feet (4.6 m) tall, was filled with air rather than helium, and was displayed on the back of a truck.[61][62] Newspaper accounts at the time noted the day before the parade that Sarg, "renowned for his humorous and fantastic creations for children" would have an "animated puppet show which will appear on one of the nine floats in the pageant" without mention of the animation, in addition to "an enormous smoke-breathing dinosaur, sixty feet in length, attended by a bodyguard of prehistoric cavemen", and a "spectacular Robinson Crusoe-Desert Island float" preceded by "an entire forest", "lions, tigers, monkeys, giraffes and occasional cannibals" and the feature that "For the first time in the history of Broadway, trees will actually move along the street."[63]
Construction worker Philo Anderson of Beaver, Utah, became entangled in rope while lowering a section of pipe on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He fell 300 feet (91 m) to his death.[64]
On Thanksgiving Day at California's Folsom Prison, the maximum security inmates were watching a holiday program at the cell house, when the group overwhelmed the eight guards and attempted an escape. As luck would have it, the assistant turnkey had transferred the keys to the prison to another employee shortly before the outbreak. Two guards and seven prisoners died in a riot that involved one-third of the 1,200 inmates, before 300 members of the California National Guard arrived to assist 200 civil officers, bringing with them tanks and machine guns. The group released their hostages unharmed upon surrendering the next morning.[65]
In the most anticipated game of the 1927 college football season, a crowd of 123,000[69] turned out at Soldier Field in Chicago to watch Notre Dame (6–1–1) play against the USC (7–0–1). Notre Dame won 7–6, on the strength of a blocked extra point attempt, to hand the Trojans their first loss.[70]
Maria Kutschera, a 22-year-old tutor, married her widowed employer, former Austro-Hungarian Navy Captain Georg von Trapp, and became stepmother to his seven children. Together, they formed the Trapp Family Singers, and their story became the inspiration for the Broadway musical, and later the film, The Sound of Music.[71]
China's first professional music educational institution, the National College of Music, was created. Based in Shanghai, the school had Cai Yuanpei as its first president, and Xiao Youmei as its first dean of studies. Under the Communist regime, the college received its current name as the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.[72]
The Pittsburgh Pirates traded Kiki Cuyler to the Chicago Cubs for Sparky Adams and Pete Scott.[73] Although the Pirates made the deal to get rid of Cuyler due to his clashes with management and ownership, this is remembered as one of the worst trades in Pirates history since Adams and Scott were gone from the team within two years, while Cuyler had six more seasons in which he hit over .300 on his way to enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame.[74]
Amānullāh Khān, King of Afghanistan, became the first Afghan monarch to depart his kingdom to travel abroad. His tour of Europe lasted until his return on June 1, 1928.[76]
Born:Vin Scully, American baseball broadcaster known as "The Voice of the Dodgers"; in the Bronx (d. 2022)
The Soviet Union's proposal for a General and Complete Disarmament" presented by the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations.[77]
Born:Robert Guillaume, American TV actor who played the title role in Benson, and who appeared in the film The Lion King as the voice of the wise mandrill, Rafiki; as Robert P. Williams, in St. Louis (d. 2017)
^Hung-yok Ip, Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921–1949: Leaders, Heroes and Sophisticates (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005) p. 52
^Rosa Valdivieso, West Bank and Gaza: Economic Performance, Prospects, and Policies (International Monetary Fund, 2001) p. 122
^"Florence Mills Dies of Appendicitis", New York Times, November 2, 1927
^Greg VanWyngarden and Harry Dempsey, Fokker D.VII Aces of World War I, Part 2 (Osprey Publishing, 2004) p.13
^Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin's Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Cornell University Press, 2003) p. 33
^Naomi E. Pasachoff, A Student's Guide to T. S. Eliot (Enslow Publishers, Inc., 2008) p. 78
^"Vermont in Grip of Floods; 3 Drowned", Milwaukee Sentinel, November 4, 1927, p. 1; "Hundreds Feared Dead in New England Flood", Milwaukee Sentinel, November 5, 1927, pp. 1–2
^"Flood Deaths Reach 132 as Aid is Rushed", November 8, 1927, p. 1
^John Miller, Australia's Greatest Disasters: The Tragedies that Have Defined the Nation (Exisle Publishing, 2007) p. 23; "Appalling Harbour Catastrophe- Heavy Loss of Life", The Sydney Mail, November 9, 1927, p. 24
^Robin Gibbs Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer, eds., The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder (HarperCollins, 2009) p. 130
^
Geoffrey Block, Richard Rodgers (Yale University Press, 2003) p. 48
^"300 Reported Dead In Indian Cyclone". Milwaukee Sentinel. November 5, 1927. p. 1.
^Trentmann, Frank (2000). Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History. Berghahn Books. p. 270.
^Steve Swanbeck, The Seeing Eye (Arcadia Publishing, 2002) p. 7
^"Building Falls; 135 Chinese Die", Milwaukee Sentinel, November 6, 1927, p. 1
^"Chosen by Lot, Then Slayer Is Executed", November 6, 1927, p. 1
^Clive Leatherdale, Britain and Saudi Arabia, 1925–1939: the Imperial Oasis (Frank Cass & Co., 1983) p. 95
^Gene Eric Salecker, Blossoming Silk Against the Rising Sun: U.S. and Japanese Paratroopers at War in the Pacific in World War II (Stackpole Books, 2010) p xi
^Roman Brackman, The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life (Taylor & Francis, 2003) p. 178
^ abLeonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960) p. 310
^"Marriages in Air Approved by Pope", November 8, 1927, p. 1
^Mihir Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution: A Life of Subhas Chandra Bose (Grice Chapman Publishing, 2004) p. 84; Benjamin Zachariah, Nehru (Routledge, 2004) p. 61
^Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Indiana University Press, 1992) p. 447
^Sarunas Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything in Lithuania's History (Rodopi, 2010) p. 33
^$65,250,000 Dividend by General Motors Biggest in History", New York Times, November 11, 1927
^H. James Burgwyn, Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918–1940 (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997) pp. 41–42
^Introduction to European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 2010 edition), p. ii
^Angus K. Gillespie, Crossing Under the Hudson: The Story of the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels (Rutgers University Press, 2011) pp. 49–52; Dan McNichol, The Roads That Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System (Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2005) p. 195;
^"Unites Manhattan and Jersey City - $48,000,000 Vehicular Tunnel Opens Today", Providence Evening Tribune, November 12, 1927, p. 1
^Brian Titley, Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002) p. 7
^Letizia Argenteri, Tina Modotti: Between Art and Revolution (Yale University Press, 2003) p. 84
^"Mexico Declares Oil-Law Clauses Void". Los Angeles Times. November 18, 1927. p. 1.
^Haber, Stephen H.; et al. (2003). The Politics of Property Rights: Political Instability, Credible Commitments, and Economic Growth in Mexico, 1876–1929. Cambridge University Press.
^"Sultan Dies at Fez, Morocco". Los Angeles Times. November 18, 1927.
^Pennell, C. R. (2000). Morocco since 1830: A History. NYU Press. p. 208.
^Wintz, Cary D. (1996). African American Political Thought, 1890–1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 13–14.
^Parish, James Robert (2006). The Hollywood Book of Breakups. John Wiley & Sons.
^William Kaszynski, The American Highway: The History and Culture of Roads in the United States (McFarland, 2000) p. 48
^"Ogden College", in The Kentucky Encyclopedia (University Press of Kentucky, 1992) pp. 688–689
^Benjamin Jacobs and Eugene Pool, The 100-Year Secret: Britain's Hidden WWII Massacre (Globe Pequot, 2004
p40
^"J. J. Dossen", in Historical Dictionary of Liberia, ed. by Elwood D. Dunn, et al. (Scarecrow Press, 2000) p174
^James Whiteside, Regulating Danger: The Struggle for Mine Safety in the Rocky Mountain Coal Industry (University of Nebraska Press, 1990) p. 29; "Police Turn Machine Guns on Colorado Mine Strikers, Killing 5 and Wounding 20", New York Times, November 22, 1927, p. 1
^Dmitri Volkogonov and Harold Shukman, Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (Simon and Schuster, 1999) p. 100
^Bob Colacello, Ronnie & Nancy: Their Path to the White House, 1911 to 1980 (Warner Books, 2004)
^Robert Elsie, Historical Dictionary of Albania (Scarecrow Press, 2010) p. 499
^Don Weekes and Kerry Banks, The Unofficial Guide to Even More of Hockey's Most Unusual Records (Greystone Books, 2004) p. 175
^Howard Pollack, George Gershwin: His Life and Work (University of California Press, 2006) p. 411
^Langley, Lester D. (1983). The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 191–192.
^Grippo, Robert M.; Hoskins, Christopher (2004). Images of America: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Arcadia Publishing. pp. 7, 14, 156.
^"Macy's Parade to Welcome Santa— Great Street Show Provided for Thanksgiving Day". Hackensack Record. Hackensack, New Jersey. November 23, 1927. p. 8.
^"400 Prisoners Surrender After Siege". Miami News. November 25, 1927. p. 1.
^R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915–1945 (Penguin, 2007) p. 241
^Gordon Bussey, Wireless, the Crucial Decade: History of the British Wireless Industry, 1924–34 (IET, 1990) p. 28
^Roy Malan, Efrem Zimbalist: A Life (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004) p. 176; "Boy Violinist Stirs Hearers to Cheers", New York Times, November 26, 1927, p. 13
