May 1927

May 1, 1927 (Sunday)

• The Experimental Mechanised Force, the first military unit created for research and development of tanks and other weapons of armoured warfare, was created as part of the British Army.
• Born: Albert Zafy, President of Madagascar 1993 to 1996, in Ambilobe

  May 2, 1927 (Monday)

• In the case of Buck v. Bell, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., delivered the 8-1 majority opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court, upholding a Virginia law permitting compulsory sterilization of mentally retarded women, writing, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their own imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind." Pierce Butler was the lone dissenter.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture began the grading of beef sold at retail, on a one-year trial, with "choice" and "prime" grades being applied to those producers who requested the service.
• Died: Ernest Starling, 61, British physiologist

  May 3, 1927 (Tuesday)

• Dr. Quirino Majorana, Italian physicist, announced in Rome that he had invented a system for "wireless transmission of speech by means of ultra-violet rays", which had been tested over a distance of.
• In the largest seizure in the U.S. up to that time of illegal drugs, the British trawler Gabriella was seized in New York Harbor with 2,000 drums of alcohol, valued at $1,200,000. The ship's captain had been free on bond after being arrested the year before for smuggling of 1,200 cases of whiskey.
• Aviator Ferdinand Scholtz set a record for longest time aloft in a glider, keeping the unpowered airplane up for 14 hours and 8 minutes.
• Born: Mell Lazarus, American comic strip artist who created Miss Peach and Momma; in Brooklyn
• Died: Ernest Ball, 47, American singer and songwriter

  May 4, 1927 (Wednesday)

• At its annual meeting at Columbia University, the Simplified Spelling Board of America announced partial success in getting dictionary recognition of its alternative spelling of twelve words, with "program" and "catalog" coming into popular use. Other words were "".
• Captain Hawthorne C. Gray set an unofficial record for highest altitude reached by a human being, as he attained in a balloon over Belleville, Illinois. Because of the rapid descent of the balloon, Gray parachuted out at, disqualifying him from recognition by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which now bestows the "Academy Awards" for excellence in film, was incorporated.
• Born: Terry Scott, English actor and comedian, in Watford, Hertfordshire
• Died: General Rodolfo Gallegos, Mexican rebel leader who had led the April 19 train robbery and massacre, was shot while trying to flee federal authorities.

  May 5, 1927 (Thursday)

• French aviators Pierre de Serre de Saint-Roman and Hervé-Marcel Mouneyrès took off from Saint-Louis, Senegal, to make a transatlantic flight from Africa to South America. The pair never arrived. Wreckage of an airplane believed to be theirs washed ashore in Brazil on July 16, and a year later, a message in a bottle, possibly written by Saint-Roman, was found, suggesting that the plane had ditched in the ocean.
• To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, was first published.
• Germany's Nazi Party, the National Socialists, was banned by police from activities in Berlin's metropolitan area. Soon after, Joseph Goebbels was banned from speaking anywhere in Prussia.

  May 6, 1927 (Friday)

• The first radio broadcasts in Turkey began, from a station in Istanbul. Television would be introduced on January 31, 1968.
• Dr. Richard Meissner, a German chemist, claimed that he had developed an insulin substitute, which he called "horment", from the islands of Langerhans, which could be taken in tablet form, and which would cure diabetes.
• The romantic drama film 7th Heaven starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell received its world premiere.
• Born: Mary Ellen Avery, American physician who discovered the cause of respiratory distress syndrome and contributed to its treatment and cure; in Camden, New Jersey
• Died: Ansis Kaupēns, 31, Latvian serial killer suspected of murdering 19 people, was executed by hanging.

  May 7, 1927 (Saturday)

• San Francisco Mayor James Rolph Jr. dedicated the city's municipal airport at Mills Field, selected from nine proposed locations. Greatly expanded, the site was renamed in 1954 as the San Francisco International Airport.

  May 8, 1927 (Sunday)

• Captain Charles Nungesser and his navigator, Captain François Coli, departed from Paris at 5:18 am in L'Oiseau Blanc, a Levasseur biplane, in an attempt to make the first nonstop airplane flight from Paris to New York. Expected to reach New York the next day, the plane never arrived, and was last seen approaching Cape Race, Newfoundland, at 10:00 am on Monday, with left of flying. The two men were never seen again.
• Died: Col. A.E. Humphreys, Denver multimillionaire, accidentally shot himself while packing guns and fishing tackle for a hunting trip.

  May 9, 1927 (Monday)

• The Parliament of Australia first convened in Canberra, following relocation of the capital from Melbourne. The Duke of York dedicated the new Parliament House and opened the joint session of Australian Senate and Australian House of Representatives, after being introduced by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce. The opening would be described in later years as the Duke's "first real test" of public speaking after working with therapist Lionel Logue to overcome stammering.
• Tornadoes swept through the south-central U.S., killing 230 people, and injuring over 800 other people in six states. Hardest hit were the towns of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where 93 people died, and Nevada, Texas.
• A jury in New York convicted Mrs. Ruth Snyder and her accomplice, Henry Judd Gray, of the murder of her husband, Albert Snyder. The two would be executed separately, by electric chair, in 1928.
• Born:
• *Manfred Eigen, German biophysicist, recipient of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; in Bochum
• *Leonard Mandel, German-born American physicist and pioneer in the field of quantum optics; in Berlin
• Died: Margaret Worth "Peggy" Porter, daughter of William Sidney "O. Henry" Porter, who had written stories under the pen name of "Miss O. Henry"

  May 10, 1927 (Tuesday)

• Sending a pistol by United States mail became illegal as a new law took effect.
• The popular hymn Shall We Gather at the River? was recorded for the first time, by the Dixie Sacred Singers.
• Born: Nayantara Sahgal, Indian female novelist

  May 11, 1927 (Wednesday)

• Charles Lindbergh landed in St. Louis, 14 hours after taking off from San Diego the afternoon before. Lindbergh was "the only entrant in the Raymond Orteig $25,000 flight who plans to make the transatlantic flight alone", and was nicknamed "The Foolish Flyer" as a result.
• Born:
• *Mort Sahl, Canadian-born American comedian, in Montreal
• *Gene Savoy, American author, explorer, and cleric, in Bellingham, Washington
• *Bernard Fox, Welsh actor, in Port Talbot
• Died: Juan Gris, 40, Spanish sculptor and painter, from uremia and kidney failure

  May 12, 1927 (Thursday)

• Under the direction of Scotland Yard, London police raided Arcost, Ltd., the office of the Soviet trade delegation. At 4:00 pm, telephone lines were cut and the building was sealed, with the 600 employees detained during a search. Evidence of Russian espionage was found and a break of diplomatic relations followed.

  May 13, 1927 (Friday)

• The equity market in Germany suffered a severe price drop after Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht had attempted to stop price speculation. Prices continued to decline following the "Black Friday".
• King George V issued a royal proclamation dropping the term "United Kingdom" from his title, referring to himself instead as "Georgius V, Dei Gratia Magnae Britanniae, Hiberniae et terrarum transmarinarum quae in ditione iunt Britannica Rex, Fidei Defensor, Indiae Imperator".
• FC Dynamo Kiev, a well-known association football club in Ukraine, was founded.
• Born:
• *Herbert Ross, American film director; in Brooklyn
• *Fred Hellerman, American songwriter; in Brooklyn

  May 14, 1927 (Saturday)

• One man was killed and ten others injured when the bleachers at the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia collapsed during a game between the Phillies and the visiting St. Louis Cardinals. The Phillies were leading, 12–3, after six innings, and the Cardinals had one out in the 7th, when the right field pavilion seats fell without warning.
• The German luxury liner Cap Arcona was launched from the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg. The ship was long and could carry 1,315 passengers and made its first voyage on November 19. The ship was sunk on May 3, 1945, by the RAF, with 5,000 concentration camp inmates on board.

  May 15, 1927 (Sunday)

• The civil war in Nicaragua came to an end, with President Adolfo Díaz requesting U.S. President Calvin Coolidge to supervise elections that would be "free, fair, and impartial and not open to fraud or intimidation". With U.S. envoy Henry L. Stimson as the intermediary, Díaz and rebel leader José María Moncada had agreed to terms at Tipitapa, with Díaz to arrange elections following Moncada's troops completing disarmament. The voting took place in October 1928, with Moncada winning the presidency.

  May 16, 1927 (Monday)

• Admiral Richard E. Byrd, one of several aviators planning to fly from New York to Paris, told reporters that he would fly no earlier than the middle of the following week, after alerting his elderly mother in a phone conversation.
• A fireball was witnessed by thousands of spectators in Missouri and Kansas, streaking across the sky shortly before midnight and then exploding near the General Hospital on the south side of Kansas City, Missouri.
• Died: Sam Bernard, 64, English vaudeville comedian