August 1927

August 1, 1927 (Monday)

• The Nanchang Uprising began as a pivotal event that created the China's People's Liberation Army, as 20,000 of the Communist members of the Twentieth Army of the Kuomintang revolted and took control of the city of Nanchang, capital of the Jiangxi Province. The rebels dispersed four days later when the Nationalists counter-attacked, but the new Chinese Red Army planned other attacks. Among the participants were future Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, the later to be disgraced Lin Biao, and future Marshals Zhu De, General He Long, Ye Ting, Liu Bocheng, Nie Rongzhen and Luo Ruiqing and Lin Biao. August 1 is still celebrated annually as "Army Day".
• The Carter Family, led by A. P. Carter and described as "the first band sensation in country music history", recorded the first of many bestselling records. Their debut single, made at a studio in Bristol, Tennessee, was "Bury Me Beneath the Willow".
• The Japanese minelaying ship Tokiwa was heavily damaged while trying to deactivate armed mines in the Saiki Bay. One of the floating mines exploded, setting off a chain reaction in seventeen other mines. Thirty-five of the crew were killed and another sixty-eight seriously injured.
• The Leningrad Oblast, one of the largest in Soviet Union, was formed by the consolidation of the lands around Leningrad, Murmansk, Novgorod, Cherepovets, and Pskov. Over the next fifteen years, the oblast would be broken up again.

  August 2, 1927 (Tuesday)

• While on an extended vacation in Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge closed his weekly 9:30 am press conference with a directive to return at noon for a special announcement. When the newspapermen returned to Coolidge's office, located at Central High School, the President told them, "Will you please file past me? I have a little statement for you." Each reporter was handed a folded slip of paper with one typewritten statement: "I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight." A reporter asked, "Does the president care to comment further?" The laconic Coolidge replied, "No", and left the room. The surprise had been timed so that it could not make the news until after the close of trade on the stock markets. Speculation about the Republican candidate for president in 1928 included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and former Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden.

  August 3, 1927 (Wednesday)

• Sixteen miners were killed in an explosion at the West Kentucky Coal Company Mine Number 7 at Clay, Kentucky. The disaster occurred one day before the tenth anniversary of an explosion, on August 4, 1917, at the very same mine, which had killed 67 coal miners.
• Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller denied a request for clemency for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti after reviewing arguments concerning the fairness of their murder trial. Fuller wrote, "As a result of my investigation I find no sufficient justification for executive intervention. I believe with the jury, that those men, Sacco and Vanzetti, were guilty and they had a fair trial." The two men had been given a temporary reprieve on their execution, due to expire on August 10. Whether Fuller actually investigated the case is doubted by some historians.
• The SS Carl D. Bradley sailed for the first time. The freighter would sink in Lake Michigan in 1958, drowning 33 of its 35 crew.
• Died: William Harvey Thompson, 24, American Bureau of Prohibition agent in Seattle, died one week after being shot on July 27 by a patrolman of the Tacoma police department. After an investigation, the administrator of the Seattle prohibition office concluded that the patrolman had acted in self-defense.

  August 4, 1927 (Thursday)

• Radio station WFAA in Dallas did the first "rebroadcast" of a news report, repeating NBC Radio's June 11 report of Charles Lindbergh's parade in Washington. Four phonograph records had been made from the broadcast by the RCA Victor company.
• Three days after the Carter Family had cut their debut single in the same studio, Jimmie Rodgers recorded his first country song. At Bristol, Tennessee, he sang the "yodeling lullaby", "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" and "The Soldier's Sweetheart"
• Born:
• *Jess Thomas, American tenor, in Hot Springs, South Dakota
• *Eddie Kamae, American singer who led music's Hawaiian Renaissance; in Honolulu
• Died: Eugène Atget, 70, French surrealist photographer

  August 5, 1927 (Friday)

• The U.S. Federal Reserve Board cut the prime lending rate at the same time that British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill placed Britain back on to the gold standard. The action, taken in order to protect the British government from the possibility of the British pound being devalued against the U.S. dollar. This has been described as the first time in history "that one of the world's great economic powers altered its macroeconomic policy with the aim of supporting a minor currency".
• A previously unknown species of beetle, the Gehringia olympica, was discovered by Philip Darlington, who collected eight specimens at the Sol Duc River in the state of Washington. Darlington named the beetle in honor of J.G. Gehring, who had sponsored the expedition.
• Following the denial of clemency to Sacco and Vanzetti, bombs exploded at two subway stations on New York City's 28th Street, seriously injuring two people and hurting many others. The threat of violent protests put police on alert worldwide.

  August 6, 1927 (Saturday)

• Harold Stephen Black invented the negative feedback amplifier. Four days earlier, he had come up with the idea while riding the Lackawanna Ferry across the Hudson River to his New York job.
• The forerunner of the breathalyzer was first demonstrated by Professor Rolla H. Harger of Indiana University, who showed how breath contained in a balloon could be dispersed into sulfuric acid and then accurately measured to calculate blood alcohol content. Harger would patent the "Drunkometer" in 1938 for use by police.
• Born: Richard Murphy, Irish poet, in County Mayo

  August 7, 1927 (Sunday)

• At an emergency meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, convened in Hankou by the Vissarion Lominadze Soviet representative of Comintern, Secretary General Chen Duxiu was deposed as the CCP's leader, and replaced by Qu Qiubai. At the meeting, future Party Chairman Mao Zedong made the oft-quoted statement that "political power is obtained out of the barrel of a gun".
• The Peace Bridge opened between Fort Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York, as British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Edward, Prince of Wales, U.S. Vice President Charles G. Dawes, U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, and New York Governor Al Smith, met at the center of the span. Mrs. Dawes, and Mrs. W.D. Ross, wife of the Deputy Premier of Ontario, cut the ribbon with golden shears.
• Trofim Lysenko, whose discredited ideas about genetics would dominate Soviet thought during the era of Joseph Stalin, first came to national attention in the Soviet Union as the subject of a feature story in Pravda.
• Born:
• *Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, American actor and singer in the Little Rascals comedies
• *Edwin Edwards, three-time Governor of Louisiana between 1972 and 1996, who was later convicted of racketeering; in Marksville, Louisiana
• *George Busbee, Governor of Georgia 1975–83, in Vienna, Georgia
• Died:
• *Pope Cyril V of Alexandria, 96, Patriarch of the Coptic Christian Church since 1874
• *U.S. Army Major General Leonard Wood, Governor-General of the Philippines, 66
• *Arthur T. Walker, 49, multimillionaire who had inherited most of the estate of Edward F. Searles.

  August 8, 1927 (Monday)

• The Manila Stock Exchange, first stock market in the Philippines, was established by five American businessmen. In 1994, it and the rival Makati Stock Exchange would merge to create the Philippine Stock Exchange.
• Pilot Clarence Chamberlin demonstrated a method for speeding up the delivery of overseas mail, by flying his airplane from the deck of the cruise ship Leviathan, to New York for the first ship to shore delivery.
• Standard Oil of New Jersey President Walter C. Teagle announced a deal with German chemical cartel IG Farben to produce synthetic motor fuel at a lower price than that refined strictly from oil. Manufacturing using the Bergius process proved to be more expensive than expected. By 1931, synthetic oil cost six times as much as natural petroleum, after both companies had lost millions on the investment.
• Born: Johnny Temple, American baseball player

  August 9, 1927 (Tuesday)

• A crowd of 100,000 protesters rallied at Union Square in New York on the eve of the scheduled execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. After the meeting, 2,000 of the protesters marched down Fifth Avenue, where police dispersed them. On the same day, at least 70,000 workers nationwide walked off their jobs.
• Born: Marvin Minsky, American computer scientist, philosopher and 1970 Turing Award winner; in New York City.

  August 10, 1927 (Wednesday)

• The upcoming artistic project on Mount Rushmore was dedicated by President Calvin Coolidge, who promised national funding for the carving and praised, as described later, George Washington for founding America, Jefferson for expanding it, Lincoln for preserving it and Roosevelt for reaching out to the world. Coolidge then handed sculptor Gutzon Borglum a set of drills, and Borglum climbed to the top of the mountain and began drilling where Washington's head would one day be.
• The French Chamber of Deputies repealed a law that had previously taken away French citizenship from women who married foreigners. There had been no analogous law taking away citizenship of French men with foreign wives.
• Forty minutes before they were scheduled to go to the electric chair, Sacco and Vanzetti, along with Celestino Madeiros, were given a twelve-day reprieve by Governor Fuller. The Governor had been notified by the Massachusetts Supreme Court that it would announce at noon Thursday whether it would reconsider the case. The condemned men were informed at 11:27 pm.
• Navy Lieutenants George Covell and R.W. Waggener crashed shortly after takeoff from San Diego, where they had planned to be part of the field for the Dole Air Race. They were only the first of many casualties associated with the ill-fated competition.
• Born:
• *Vainu Bappu, Indian astronomer, and co-discoverer of the Wilson–Bappu effect, which permits the judgment of the absolute magnitude of certain types of stars; in Madras
• *Jimmy Martin, American musician known as "The King of Bluegrass"; in Sneedville, Tennessee
• Died: King Sisowath of Cambodia, 86, monarch of the French protectorate since 1904. He was succeeded by his son, King Sisowath Monivong