50 Fun Facts About 1937

Which lifting gas filled the German airship Hindenburg when it burned at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in May 1937?

Hydrogen in the Hindenburg burned out within about ninety seconds, and 62 of the 97 people on board survived. The publicity ended the age of the passenger airship.

Which aviator vanished over the Pacific in July 1937 while trying to become the first woman to fly around the world?

Amelia Earhart was heading for Howland Island, a flat sliver of coral under two miles long, when she disappeared. She was declared dead eighteen months later.

Which American landmark opened in May 1937 with the longest suspension span in the world?

The Golden Gate Bridge wears International Orange because its architect chose that colour over a US Navy suggestion of black and yellow stripes for visibility.

Which fairy-tale heroine starred in Walt Disney's first feature-length film, which premiered in December 1937?

Snow White was mocked in Hollywood as "Disney's Folly" during production, then earned Walt Disney an honorary Oscar that came with seven miniature statuettes.

Which canned meat brand did Hormel launch in July 1937, its name chosen through a contest with a $100 prize?

Spam was named by Ken Daigneau, the brother of a Hormel executive, and the company says only a small circle of former executives knows what the name means.

Which Tolkien novel, published in London in September 1937, began as a sentence scribbled on a blank exam page?

The Hobbit reached print after publisher Stanley Unwin asked his 10-year-old son Rayner to review it, and the boy's favourable comments settled the decision.

Which Looney Tunes character debuted in April 1937 in a Tex Avery cartoon inspired by the director's own hunting trips?

Daffy Duck first appeared in Porky's Duck Hunt, which Avery, a lifelong duck hunter, based on his outings at White Rock Lake in Dallas.

Which American socialite married the former King Edward VIII at a château in France in June 1937?

Wallis Simpson became Duchess of Windsor that day, but letters patent from the new king stopped her sharing her husband's style of Royal Highness.

Which supermarket invention did Oklahoma grocer Sylvan Goldman introduce in June 1937, only for shoppers to shun it?

The shopping cart caught on only after Goldman hired models to push carts around his store: men had found them effeminate and women thought of baby carriages.

Which doughnut chain began in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1937 with a recipe bought from a New Orleans chef?

Krispy Kreme founder Vernon Rudolph chose the city after learning that his favourite cigarette brand, Camel, had its headquarters there.

Which president's face on Mount Rushmore was dedicated on September 17, 1937, a year after Thomas Jefferson's?

Abraham Lincoln's face was unveiled in the same year that a bill in Congress proposed adding Susan B. Anthony to the mountain. Funds were limited to heads already begun.

Which London church hosted the coronation of King George VI in May 1937, on a date first planned for his brother?

Westminster Abbey was fitted with 28 microphones for the first coronation service broadcast on radio. Edward VIII had asked whether a coronation could be skipped altogether.

Which Picasso painting, first shown at the 1937 Paris exposition, was his response to the bombing of a Basque town?

Guernica was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government for its pavilion, then went on tour to raise funds for Spanish war relief.

Which John Steinbeck novella of 1937 follows two migrant ranch hands and takes its title from a Robert Burns poem?

Of Mice and Men was first titled Something That Happened, and Steinbeck's setter pup shredded about half of the manuscript one night.

Which boxer knocked out James Braddock in June 1937 to begin a heavyweight title reign that lasted until 1949?

Joe Louis was knocked down in round one before stopping Braddock in the eighth, and he went on to win 25 consecutive title defences.

Which future US president debuted in Hollywood in 1937 as a crusading radio commentator in Love Is on the Air?

Ronald Reagan had recently been a sports announcer for radio station WHO in Des Moines, where the film was first previewed with his parents in the audience.

Which politician succeeded Stanley Baldwin as British prime minister in May 1937, two weeks after the coronation?

Neville Chamberlain was 68 and widely seen as a caretaker who would soon step down in favour of a younger man. He stayed in office until May 1940.

Which three-time Oscar-winning actor, born in April 1937, learned as an adult that his supposed sister was his mother?

Jack Nicholson was told the truth in 1974 by Time magazine researchers, after both his mother and the grandmother who raised him as her son had died.

Which actress, born in December 1937 to a famous film-star father, released a best-selling workout video in 1982?

Jane Fonda is the daughter of actor Henry Fonda, and her 1982 exercise tape launched a second career that continued for many years.

Which actor, born in Memphis in June 1937, rose to fame in the 1970s on the children's series The Electric Company?

Morgan Freeman was raised in Mississippi, where he began acting in school plays; decades later came Oscar nominations for Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawshank Redemption.

Which American composer of Rhapsody in Blue died in July 1937, aged 38, after moving to Hollywood to score films?

George Gershwin went west after Porgy and Bess failed commercially, and wrote the music for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Shall We Dance.

Which film star nicknamed the Blonde Bombshell died in June 1937, aged 26, while making Saratoga with Clark Gable?

Jean Harlow died of kidney failure, and MGM finished the film with body doubles and released it less than two months later.

Which institution did President Franklin Roosevelt try to enlarge in 1937 with a bill adding up to six new members?

The Supreme Court would have gained a justice for every sitting member over 70 under the plan, but the Senate sent the bill back to committee by 70 votes to 20.

Which month hosted a US presidential inauguration for the first time in 1937, under the Twentieth Amendment?

January 20 became Inauguration Day under the amendment, and the first one was a washout: it rained all morning and throughout the ceremony at the Capitol.

Which carmaker recognised the United Auto Workers in February 1937 after strikers occupied its Flint plants for 44 days?

General Motors signed a one-page agreement, and within a year the union's membership had grown from 30,000 to 500,000.

Which fuel had a warning smell added to it after a leak destroyed the New London School in Texas in March 1937?

Natural gas is odourless and invisible, so the leak went unnoticed. Within weeks of the disaster a pungent sulphur compound was being added so that leaks could be smelled.

Which long-distance American footpath, first proposed in 1921, was finally completed in August 1937?

The Appalachian Trail was completed at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine, though many of its present highlights, such as Roan Mountain, were not on the 1937 route.

Which German carmaker was set up in May 1937 by the Nazi-run German Labour Front to build a small family car?

Volkswagen was revived after the Second World War by a British Army officer, Major Ivan Hirst, who had been put in control of the factory.

Which Japanese carmaker, incorporated in August 1937, grew out of a family business that built automatic looms?

Toyota swapped the family name Toyoda for a spelling that takes eight brush strokes in Japanese, a count linked with wealth and good fortune.

Which author published his first children's book in 1937 after at least 20 publishers had turned the manuscript down?

Dr. Seuss was saved by a chance meeting with an old college classmate who had just become juvenile editor at Vanguard Press, which printed 15,000 copies.

Which 1937 drama about an aspiring actress and a fading screen idol was later remade with Judy Garland and Lady Gaga?

A Star Is Born gave Janet Gaynor her only Technicolor film, opposite Fredric March, from a script that Dorothy Parker helped to write.

Which idyllic hidden valley gives refuge to a stranded group of travellers in Frank Capra's 1937 film Lost Horizon?

Shangri-La cost Columbia Pictures dearly: the film ran more than $776,000 over its original budget and took five years to earn back its cost.

Which Civil War novel, America's top fiction bestseller of 1936 and 1937, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

Gone with the Wind earned Margaret Mitchell the prize, and its German edition, published that year, sold 12 thousand copies within two days.

Which child star played the title role in the 1937 film Heidi while reigning as Hollywood's biggest box-office draw?

Shirley Temple named tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson as her favourite co-star; the pair appeared in four films together.

Which medieval traveller gives his name to the bridge near Beijing where fighting broke out with Japan in July 1937?

Marco Polo Bridge was where Japanese troops demanded to search a nearby town for a missing soldier, who had in fact already returned to his lines.

Which kind of aircraft engine did British engineer Frank Whittle first run on a test bench in April 1937?

The turbojet began its test runs despite limited funding and an Air Ministry that saw little immediate value in the work.

Which American soap opera began as an NBC radio serial in 1937 and ran on radio and television for 72 years?

Guiding Light began as the story of a clergyman, Reverend John Ruthledge, moved to television in 1952 and stayed there until CBS cancelled it in 2009.

Which unlikely radio act made Edgar Bergen a star in 1937, even though listeners could not see him perform it?

Ventriloquism won Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy regular roles on The Chase and Sanborn Hour, and the pair stayed on the air until 1956.

Which three-digit number, introduced in London in June 1937, is the world's oldest emergency telephone service?

999 was set up after a fatal 1935 fire in Wimpole Street, when a neighbour left queuing for the fire brigade complained in a letter to The Times.

Which element, number 43, was confirmed at the University of Palermo in 1937 as the first to be made artificially?

Technetium filled a gap that had sat between molybdenum and ruthenium since Mendeleev's early periodic tables, and its name comes from the Greek for artificial.

Which nutrient did Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi isolate, earning the 1937 Nobel Prize in Medicine?

Vitamin C turned out to be the long-sought factor that prevents scurvy, and his team used paprika as their source of it in some experiments.

Which Carl Orff cantata, based on 24 medieval poems, was first performed by the Frankfurt Opera in June 1937?

Carmina Burana has 25 movements, and the only one heard twice is its famous opening chorus, O Fortuna, which returns to close the work.

Which country's voters approved a new constitution in July 1937, its drafting personally supervised by Éamon de Valera?

Ireland voted on the text on the same day as a general election, and it created a directly elected president and a head of government called the taoiseach.

Which Asian leader shared Time magazine's 1937 Man and Wife of the Year title with his wife, Soong Mei-ling?

Chiang Kai-shek's wife thereby became one of only four women the magazine named as individuals before 1999, and the only one honoured as half of a couple.

Which American horror writer, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, died in Providence, Rhode Island, in March 1937?

H. P. Lovecraft was virtually unknown in his lifetime, published almost only in pulp magazines, and never able to support himself by his writing.

Which rookie quarterback won the 1937 NFL title with the Washington Redskins, newly relocated from Boston?

Sammy Baugh set a league record with 81 completions that season, then beat the Chicago Bears 28–21 at Wrigley Field on what he called the worst field he ever saw.

Which Harlem Renaissance writer wrote the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks while in Haiti?

Zora Neale Hurston was in Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship to research Obeah practices, and fellow novelist Richard Wright condemned the book in a review that year.

Which 1937 American dance craze took its name from a South Carolina nightclub housed in a former synagogue?

The Big Apple spread after University of South Carolina students began dancing it at the Pavilion in Myrtle Beach during the summer of 1937.

Which Soviet cosmonaut, born in March 1937, worked in a textile mill before becoming the first woman in space?

Valentina Tereshkova trained as a competitive parachutist in secret from her family, and was 26 when she flew solo aboard Vostok 6.

Which actor, born in Los Angeles in August 1937, earned his first Oscar nomination for The Graduate?

Dustin Hoffman first meant to study medicine, then spent about ten years in odd jobs and unemployment, a life he later played for laughs in Tootsie.