November 1927

November 1, 1927 (Tuesday)

• 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.
• 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.
• Died:
• *Florence Mills, 32, African-American performer, died of complications from an appendectomy.
• *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.

  November 2, 1927 (Wednesday)

• The Soviet Communist Party declared an amnesty for former White Army officers.
• American native T. S. Eliot became a naturalized British citizen.
• Born: Steve Ditko, American comic-book writer and artist, co-creator of Spider-Man; in Johnstown, Pennsylvania

  November 3, 1927 (Thursday)

• Rainfall began in Vermont, continuing into the next day, claiming its first victims. Described as the "worst natural disaster in the state's history". The final death toll was 132 people, of which 114 were in Vermont.
• Forty people were killed at the Sydney Harbour when the steamer Tahiti struck the passenger ferry Greycliffe.
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder, was first published in the United States. The first run of 4,500 copies was priced at $2.50 and sold out within a month.
• The Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee, based on Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, was first performed, at the Vanderbilt Theater on Broadway.
• Born:
• *Marius Barnard, South African cardiac surgeon and pioneer in that nation's critical illness insurance; in Beaufort West
• *Odvar Nordli, Prime Minister of Norway 1976 to 1981; in Tangen
• *Peggy McCay, American stage and television actress; in New York City

  November 4, 1927 (Friday)

• A cyclone struck the town of Nellore, northwest of Madras in India, killing almost 300 people.
• Legalized and state regulated prostitution in Germany, known as the "Bremen System", was abolished.
• United States Army Air Corps Captain Hawthorne C. Gray, 38, who had reached a record altitude of 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, lost consciousness, and died. His body and the balloon were found in a tree near Sparta, Tennessee, the next day.
• The 7.3 Lompoc earthquake shook the Central Coast of California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII, causing moderate damage and a non-destructive tsunami.
• The drama film Uncle Tom's Cabin, based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel of the same name and starring Margarita Fischer and Arthur Edmund Carewe was released.

  November 5, 1927 (Saturday)

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Born: Kenneth Waller, English TV actor; in Huddersfield, Yorkshire,
• Died:
• *Marceline Orbes, 53, who, as "Marceline the Clown", was world-renowned during the late 19th and early 20th century, committed suicide
• *Augusta Déjerine-Klumpke, 68, pioneering neurologist who had been the first woman to become a member of the Societe de Neurologie

  November 6, 1927 (Sunday)

• 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.
• Died: David George Hogarth, 65, British archaeologist, scholar, and an associate of T. E. Lawrence

  November 7, 1927 (Monday)

• The last anti-government protests 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.
• 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."
• 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

  November 8, 1927 (Tuesday)

• 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.
• 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.
• Born:
• *Patti Page, American singer, known for "Tennessee Waltz" and " That Doggie in the Window?"; as Clara Ann Fowler in Claremore, Oklahoma
• *Ken Dodd, English comedian and singer; in Liverpool
• *Si Newhouse, American publishing magnate, in New York City;
• *Chris Connor, American jazz singer; as Mary Loutsenhizer in Kansas City, Missouri
• *Lal Krishna Advani, the last Deputy Prime Minister of India and opposition leader in the Lok Sabha ; in Karachi, British India

  November 9, 1927 (Wednesday)

• An uprising broke out in Lithuania at the city of Tauragė, 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.
• Died: Campbell MacKenzie-Richards, 27, British test pilot for the Royal Air Force, was died after he and his observer, Harry Norman Green, parachuted out of their airplane as it was running out of gas. Green had bailed out first and landed safely in a field near East Grinstead, Sussex, but MacKenzie-Richards "was killed, his parachute falling like a stone" after he jumped from the aircraft.

  November 10, 1927 (Thursday)

• 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."
• 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

  November 11, 1927 (Friday)

• 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.
• On Armistice Day, the Canadian Cross of Sacrifice section of Arlington National Cemetery was dedicated as a final resting place for American citizens who had been veterans of the Canadian Army, as U.S. President Calvin Coolidge appeared in a ceremony with honor guards from the U.S. Army and the Canadian Army.
• Born: Mose Allison, American jazz pianist; in Tippo, Mississippi
• Died: Frances Gardiner Davenport, American historian and expert on treaties

  November 12, 1927 (Saturday)

• 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.
• The Mahatma Gandhi made his first and only visit to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.
• Born: Yutaka Taniyama, Japanese mathematician who postulated the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture, referred to as the modularity theorem; in Kisai, Saitama Prefecture
• 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.