November 1937

November 1, 1937 (Monday)

• The University of Kerala was founded in British India as the University of Travancore, by the decree of Sir Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the Maharaja of the Princely State of Travancore.
• The Defense of Sihang Warehouse, in the Zhabei district of Shanghai ended in Japanese victory and forced the retreat of the Chinese defenders. The Japanese invaders then crossed Suzhou Creek to go further into Shanghai..
• Celâl Bayar became the third Prime Minister of Turkey, succeeding İsmet İnönü, who had taken office in 1925.
• The American radio soap opera Hilltop House, starring Bess Johnson as the director of an orphanage began a five-year run on the CBS Radio Network and on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
• Anna Marie Hahn took the stand in her own defense during her sensational murder trial in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hahn denied ever poisoning anyone with arsenic.
• Born:
• *Bill Anderson, American country musician and television personality; in Columbia, South Carolina
• *William Melvin Kelley, African-American novelist known for A Different Drummer; in Staten Island, New York City
• Died:
• *Milan Gorkić, 33, Yugoslav communist leader and exiled General Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was executed nine days after being arrested as part of the Soviet Union's Great Purge.
• *Shio Batmanishvili, 52, Soviet Georgian Greek Catholic priest, was executed two months before his 10-year prison sentence was set to end.

  November 2, 1937 (Tuesday)

• The musical I'd Rather Be Right, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre fpr the first of 290 Broadway performances. The musical was unprecedented because it was a political satire on the incumbent U.S. president and the rest of the federal government, with George M. Cohan singing the role of Franklin D. Roosevelt in forgettable Rodgers and Hart songs such as ""We're Going to Balance the Budget" and "Off the Record".*The Howie Morenz Memorial Game was played as a benefit to raise money for the family of the late Montreal Canadiens star Howie Morenz. The National Hockey League All-Stars defeated the "Montreal All-Stars" 6 to 5 in front of 8,683 fans at the Montreal Forum. Morenz, who had sustained multiple fractures of broken his left leg during a game on January 28, had died from a coronary embolism while convalescing in the hospital on March 8.
• Republican Fiorello H. La Guardia easily won re-election as Mayor of New York City, receiving more than 60 percent of the votes against challenger Jeremiah T. Mahoney.
• Born: Bharath Gopi, film actor, producer and director; in Chirayinkeezhu, British India

  November 3, 1937 (Wednesday)

• The Nine Power Treaty Conference opened in Brussels to consider means of ending the war between Japan and China, with the nine World War One allies participating. Japan's envoy said that it would formally declare was on China in order to speed a Chinese surrender, and soon withdrew from the talks.
• In Tokyo, Japan's Foreign Minister Kōki Hirota presented German ambassador Herbert von Dirksen with Japan's set of peace terms, to be sent by Dirksen to the German ambassador to China, Oskar Trautmann, to present to the Chinese government. Trautmann delivered the terms to Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek on November 5. Chiang made no reply to the peace offer, and neither the Nine Power Treaty Conference nor the League of Nations received a request for mediation of the terms of the offer.
• At Sandarmokh, the Soviet Union carried out the mass execution of 289 Ukrainians incarcerated at the Solovki prison camp on the orders of the senior executioner, Captain Mikhail Matveyev, who had set aside a day to shoot members of the "Executed Renaissance", the name for members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The dead including former Ukrainian People's Republic prime minister Volodymyr Chekhivskyi, film director Les Kurbas, diplomats Mykhailo Poloz and Mykhailo Lozynsky, and writers Mykola Kulish, Mykola Zerov, Hryhorii Epik, Mykhailo Yalovy, Antin Krushelnytskyi, Klym Polishchuk, and Myroslav Irchan.
• Ethiopia's Crown Prince, Asfaw Wossen Selassie petitioned the Coptic Church Council in Egypt for a divorce from his wife, Wolete Israel Seyoum, declaring that he could not live with the daughter of a man who surrendered to the Italian invaders.
• Police in the Free City of Danzig seized Jewish bank deposits.
• Born: Laxmikant Kudaikar, Indian film score composer for more than 750 movies; in Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
• Died: Solomon Lee Van Meter Jr., 49, American inventor who created the first successful backpack parachute, for which he received U.S. Patent No. 1,192,479 on July 25, 1916 after applying on March 27, 1911" died after in a hospital after short illness.

  November 4, 1937 (Thursday)

• The popular Soviet ice cream Plombir was first produced as part of a Soviet Union adaptation of American food production, but with strict regulations for content for fat, sugar and added ingredients.
• Good News of 1938, an entertainment and interview program premiered on the NBC Radio Red Network, with adaptations of scenes from current MGM films with the actors reprising their roles and being interviewed afterward. The NBC series imitated CBS Radio's Lux Radio Theatre, which had originated on NBC in 1934 with adaptations of current Broadway plays. The first Good News program featured Allan Jones and Jeanette MacDonald voicing scenes from their latest movie, The Firefly, followed by interviews with 22 other prominent film personalities.
• The Clifford Odets play Golden Boy premiered on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre for the first of 250 performances. It would be revived in 1952 and 2012.
• Three men were executed by decapitation in Nazi Germany for high treason and espionage. Former Communist deputy Robert Stamm, Communist activist Adolf Rembte, and French spy Peter Sausen were all beheaded by guillotine at the Plötzensee prison in Charlottenburg.
• Born:
• *Loretta Swit, American TV actress best known for portraying Major Margaret Houlihan on M*A*S*H, for which she won two Emmy Awards ; in Passaic, New Jersey
• *Michael Wilson, Canadian Finance Minister from 1984 to 1991, and Minister of International Trade and of Industry, Science and Technology from 1991 to 1993; in Toronto
• Died:
• *Emil Hassler, 73, Switzerland-born Paraguayan botanist and physician
• *Junius Henderson, 72, American natural history expert and first curator of the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
• *Ghiță Moscu, 48, Romanian leftist activist, was killed in the Great Purge

  November 5, 1937 (Friday)

• At a secret meeting with his military advisors at the Chancellery in Berlin, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler disclosed his plan for the use of military force to annex the nations of Austria and Czechoslovakia to secure Lebensraum for Germany's people. According to the minutes of the meeting written five days later by Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, Hitler noted that "The aim of German policy was to make secure and to preserve the Volksmasse" and that since the pure German race of 85 million people living in "the narrow limits of habitable space in Europe" was more "tightly packed" than in any other country, the Germans had an "implied right to a greater living space". In addition, since there was a decline in Deutschtum in Austria and Czechoslovakia since the dissolution of Austria-Hungary after World War One, the future of Germany was "wholly conditional upon the solving of the need for space" by annexing the two nations into Nazi Germany.
• The Japanese Army defeated the Chinese in the Battle of Xinkou after more than three weeks of fighting for access to the Niangzi Pass through the Taihang Mountains and clearing the way for the Japanese occupation into Northern China. In 25 days of fighting between October 11 and the date of the capture of Taiyuan in the Shaanxi province, the Chinese had more than 55,000 casualties and the Japanese between 6,200 and 21,000.
• At Hangzhou Bay in China, 30,000 Japanese troops landed virtually unopposed.
• Germany and Poland signed a joint declaration on minorities, guaranteeing proper reciprocal treatment and protection of the Polish minority in Germany and the German minority in Poland.
• Pierre Dupong became the new prime minister of Luxembourg when premier Joseph Bech and his government resigned following the failure of a referendum to approve the Maulkuerfgesetz that would have allowed Luxembourg's government to ban any political parties deemed a danger to the nation's constitution. Finance Minister Dupong formed a new coalition government, with Bech remaining as the Foreign Minister.
• The Duke of Windsor cancelled a visit to the United States the day before he was to set sail. A statement through the Anglo-American Press Association cited "grave misconceptions" about the purpose of the trip, which was due to take place with Charles Bedaux.
• Born:
• *Chan Sek Keong, third Chief Justice of Singapore, from 2006 to 2012; in Ipoh, Federated Malay States
• *Harris Yulin, American character actor in film and television; in Los Angeles
• Died:
• *Ivan Voronaev, 52, Soviet Russian Christian missionary who had introduced the first Pentecostal church to Russia, was executed at a labor camp after being arrested the year before.
• *Hadji Ali, 45+, Egyptian-born U.S. magician and vaudeville performer in the UK and the U.S., known for his acts of professional regurgitation
• *Jack McAuliffe, 71, Irish-born American boxer and the world lightweight boxing champion from 1886 to 1893, inductee to the International Boxing Hall of Fame, known for never having lost a bout.