The following events occurred in 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.Stephen Taylor, Fats Waller on the Air: The Radio Broadcasts and Discography (Scarecrow Press, 2006) p155 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"Nick Tosches, Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n' Roll (Da Capo Press, 1996) p110 Born: Jess Thomas, American tenor, in Hot Springs, South Dakota (d. 1993) Eddie Kamae, American singer who led music's Hawaiian Renaissance; in Honolulu (d. 2017) 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".Daniel A. Bell, East meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (Princeton University Press, 2000) p123 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.George E. Ball, Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Zoogeography of Beetles and Ants: A Volume Dedicated to the Memory of Philip Jackson Darlington, Jr., 1904–1983 (Springer, 1985) p35 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."Bomb New York Subways!", Milwaukee Sentinel, August 6, 1927, p1 The threat of violent protests put police on alert worldwide.John F. Neville, Twentieth-century Cause Cèlébre: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the Press, 1920–1927 (Greenwood Publishing, 2004) p119
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.William H. Middendorf, What Every Engineer Should Know about Inventing (CRC Press, 1981) p21 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."Breath Tester Answers Query Of How Drunk", Milwaukee Sentinel, August 7, 1927, p3 Harger would patent the "Drunkometer" in 1938 for use by police."Rolla N. Harger Dies; Invented Drunkometer", New York Times, August 9, 1983 Born: Richard Murphy, Irish poet, in County Mayo (d. 2018)
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 (Ch'en Tu-hsiu) was deposed as the CCP's leader, and replaced by Qu Qiubai (Ch'u Ch'iu-pai). 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".William L. Tung, The Political Institutions of Modern China (Springer, 1968) p155; Stephen Uhalley, A History of the Chinese Communist Party (Hoover Press, 1988) p35 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."Party Attends Dedication of Peace Bridge", Milwaukee Sentinel, August 8, 1927, p2 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.Peter Pringle, The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century (Simon and Schuster, 2008) p130 Born: Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, American actor and singer in the Little Rascals comedies (killed, 1959) Edwin Edwards, three-time Governor of Louisiana between 1972 and 1996, who was later convicted of racketeering; in Marksville, Louisiana (d. 2021) George Busbee, Governor of Georgia 1975–83, in Vienna, Georgia (d. 2004) 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.Donald Kirk, The Business Guide to the Philippines (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998) p225 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."Air Mail Across the Atlantic", by Clarence Chamberlin, The Rotarian (January 1935) p7 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."Standard to Sell Synthetic 'Gas' - at 10 Cents a Gallon", Milwaukee Sentinel, August 9, 1927, p1 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.Diarmuid Jeffreys, Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine (Macmillan, 2008) PP 139-142 Born: Johnny Temple, American baseball player (d. 1994)
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."Riots Flare As Police Break Up Sacco-Vanzetti Parade", Milwaukee Sentinel, August 10, 1927, p2 Born: Marvin Minsky, American computer scientist, philosopher and 1970 Turing Award winner; in New York City (d. 2016).
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."Coolidge Dedicates Mighty Shrine to Four Presidents", Milwaukee Sentinel, August 11, 1927, p2; Peter H. Gibbon, A Call to Heroism: Renewing America's Vision of Greatness (Grove Press, 2003) p118 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.Jennifer Ngaire Heuer, The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, 1789–1830 (Cornell University Press, 2005) p202