1927 Society (4)

Society
1927. The Supreme Court rules that illegal income is taxable, thus giving the federal government a powerful new weapon against the underworld.

1927. April flood waters in the lower Mississippi Valley cover 4 million acres and cause $300 million in property loss.

1927. The mechanical cotton picker perfected by Texas inventor John Daniel Rust and his brother Mack will have a profound social impact on the South when marketing of the machine begins in 1949. The Rust Cotton Picker inserts a long spinning spindle with teeth into the cotton boll, winds up the cotton, picks it out, and is kept wet to facilitate removal of the cotton from the teeth. It picks a bale of cotton in one day, and it will spur migration of blacks to northern cities as it reduces the need for field hands.

1927. Your Money's Worth by U.S. economist Stuart Chase and engineer F. J. Schlink says, "We are all Alices in a Wonderland of conflicting claims, bright promises, fancy packages, soaring words, and almost impenetrable ignorance."

1927 Society (3)

Society

1927. Popular songs: "Me and My Shadow"; "Girl of My Dreams"; "I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover"; "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella"; "My Blue Heaven"; " 'S Wonderful"; "Strike Up the Band"; "The Song is Ended But the Melody Lingers On"; "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."

1927. The first all-electric jukeboxes are introduced.

1927. The first Golden Gloves boxing tournament opens March 11 at New York's Knights of Columbus Center.

1927. The first Ryder Cup golf match ends in victory for a team of U.S. professionals led by Walter Hagen who defeat a British team at Worcester, Mass.

1927. Babe Ruth hits his sixtieth home run of the season September 30 off a pitch by Washington's Tom Zachary to set a record that will stand for 30 years.

1927. The Cyclone roller coaster opens June 26 at Coney Island, N.Y., with a 100-second ride that takes screaming passengers up and down nine hills and over connecting tilted curves for 25 cents each.

1927. Al Capone has an income for the year of $105 million, the highest gross income ever received by a private U.S. citizen. Most of the Chicago gangster's money derives from bootleg liquor operations.

1927. Society (2)

Society

1927. The Iron Lung invented by Harvard professor Philip Drinker has an airtight chamber that employs alternating pulsations of high and low pressure to force air in and out of a patient's lungs.

1927. Transatlantic telephone service begins January 7 between London and New York: 3 minutes of conversation costs $75.

1927. Television gets its first U.S. demonstration April 7 in the auditorium of New York's Bell Telephone Laboratories by AT & T president Walter S. Gifford who lets a large group of viewers see Commerce Secretary Herbert C. Hoover in his office at Washington while hearing his voice over telephone wires.

1927. David Sarnoff's year-old National Broadcasting Co. has so many radio stations that it splits up into a Blue Network and a Red Network.

1927. Films: Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer is the first full-length talking picture to achieve success.

1927. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded May 11 by Louis B. Mayer of M-G-M. Annual awards of the academy will be called "Oscars" by movie columnist Sidney Skolsky.

1927. "The Varsity Drag" is introduced to U.S. dance floors.

1927. Society (1)

Society

1927. An "autumn harvest uprising" led by Communist Mao Zedong is crushed September 19 and Chiang expels Russians from Shanghai. Despite questions as to the legality of his divorce from the mother of his son, Chiang has married Wellesley-educated Christianized Song Mei-ling and allied himself with one of China's richest, most powerful families.

1927. Josef Stalin expels Leon Trotsky from the Central Committee of the Communist party in November.

1927. Sacco and Vanzetti die in the electric chair at Dedham Prison August 23 despite worldwide efforts to have Massachusetts authorities drop charges against the two for lack of evidence.

1927. Charles A. Lindbergh lands his single-engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis at Le Bourget Airfield, Paris, May 21, at 10. 24 P.M., after completing the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight. Hailed as "The Lone Eagle," Lindbergh rejects motion picture, vaudeville, and commercial offers totaling $5 million.

1927. Ford introduces the Model A to succeed the Model T that has been the U.S. standard for nearly 20 years.

1927. Massachusetts enacts the first compulsory state automobile insurance law.

1927. An uncertainty principle announced by German physicist Werner Heisenberg melds physics and philosophy. He states that certain pairs of variables describing motion-velocity and position, or energy and time cannot be measured simultaneously with absolute accuracy because the measuring process itself interferes with the quantity to be measured, so while quantum mechanics provides valuable information it is useful only within limits of tolerance since no events can be described with zero tolerance.

1926 Literature (2)

Literature

Nigger Heaven. Carl Van Vechten. American. 1926. Novel. One of the first novels about black life in Harlem. Jazz era. Written by a white. True, understanding explanation of black suffering and aspiration.

The Plumed Serpent. D.H. Lawrence. British. 1926. Novel. Vivid evocation of Mexico and ancient Aztec religion revived in modern Mexico. Female Irish visitor to Mexico passively submits to male domination.

Red Cavalry. Isaak Babel. Russian 1926. Stories. Based on the Soviet author's experiences with his cavalry regiment during the civil war in Russia.

The Romantic Comedians. Ellen Glasgow. American. 1926. Novel. Ironical comedy of manners. January/June marriage. Generational differences.

Show Boat. Edna Ferber. American. 1926. Novel. Showboat captain marries New England school marm. Daughter runs away with leading man. Their daughter grows up to be a Broadway star.

The Silver Cord. Sidney Howard. American. 1926. Play. Early psychological study of dominant mother. Two sons struggle to break free.

The Sun Also Rises. Ernest Hemingway. American. 1926. Novel. Lost generation of Americans who had fought in France in WWI and expatriated themselves. No change. No direction. No point toward which to develop.

1926. Literature (1)

Literature

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years. Carl Sandburg. American. 1926. Biography. For Sandburg, Lincoln was the archetypal American.

The Counterfeiters. Andre Gide. French. 1926. Novel. Counterfeit personalities with which people disguise themselves to conform to convention and to deceive themselves.

Days of the Turbins. Mikhail Bulgakov. Russian. 1926. Play. Czarist White Guard vs. the forces of the Red Army during the Russian Revolution. Balanced account.

Don Segunda Sombra (Shadows in the Pampas). Ricardo Guiraldes. Argentina. 1926. Novel. First gaucho fiction . Boy learns to live with courage and honor by the gaucho code. Outstanding example of gaucho literature.

The Great God Brown. Eugene O'Neill. American. 1926. Play. Masks symbolize varying personalities of characters as they are and as they appear to others.

If It Die.... Andre Gide. French. 1926. Autobiography. Trips to North Africa. Confessions of homosexuality. Issue normally avoided.

The Mauve Decade. Thomas Beer. American. 1926. Nonfiction. American literary and social scene of the 1890s.

1926.Society (4)

Society

1926. Italian hairdresser Antonio Buzzacchino invents a new permanent waving method that will make the "permanent" widely fashionable.

1926. Slide fasteners get the name "zippers" after a promotional luncheon at which English novelist Gilbert Frankau has said, "Zip[! It's open! Zip! It's closed!"

1926. Chicago bootlegger Al Capone's Hawthorne Hotel headquarters are sprayed with machine gun fire in broad daylight September 20 by gunmen firing from eight touring cars that parade single file through the streets of the suburban area but no one is killed and the cars disappear into the traffic.

1926. Illegal liquor traffic is estimated to be a $3.6 billion business and has spawned a gigantic underworld of criminal activity since 1919. Widespread defiance if of the Prohibition laws is encouraging citizens to flout other laws and the "Noble Experiment" is clearly a failure.

1926. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko gains notice for the first time in the Soviet Union. The agronomist puts ideology ahead of science and will have enormous influence on Soviet farm policies.