1932
The opening New Morning Talks Programme By The Director Of General Talks broadcast.
Aldoux Huxley's Brave New World published. A new record was set for the most goals scored in the Football League on a single day. In all two hundred and nine goals were scored in forty three matches - fifty six in the First Division, fifty three in the Second Division, forty three in the Third Division North and fifty seven in the Third Division South. Highlights included Aston Villa's eight-three victory at Leicester, Bradford City thumping Barnsley nine-one, Barrow defeating Walsall seven-one and a five-five draw between Coventyr City and Fulham.
The Week's Good Cause featured an appeal on behalf of The Hospital For Sick Children, Great Ormond Street by the Right Honourable Lord MacMillan, Chairman of the Hospital.
In Aklavik in the Northwest Territories, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police formed a posse to hunt down the fugitive Albert Johnson, who had been dubbed by the media as 'The Mad Trapper Of Rat River.'
Umberto Eco born in Alessandria.
The first episode of Through Foreign Eyes featured Mister I Von Ustinow's views on Britain from a German perspective. Arthur Charles Oates born in London.
The first episode of Diseases Of Organised Society broadcast.
The first episode of The Common Earth and Holt Marvell's comic operetta Good Night, Vienna! broadcast.
Desmond Bernard O'Connor born in Stepney. John Edward Cater born in Hendon.
Richard Lester Liebman born in Philadelphia.
Marjie Lawrence born in Birmingham.
The Howard Hughes-produced Cock Of The Air - directed by Tom Buckingham and starring Chester Morris and Billie Dove - premiered.
A prison riot broke out at Dartmoor. One hundred convicts gained control of the prison, setting the administrative block on fire and destroying records. Prisoners also tried to scale the walls, although no one escaped. Police were called in and the riot was put down within two hours.
Vaudville featured performances by The Carlyle Cousins, Nobby Knight His Whispering Trumpeters, Max Miller and The Three Eddies.
Duke Ellington & His Orchestra first recorded 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)' in Chicago. World War I flying ace Wop May was hired to assist in the manhunt for the fugitive Albert Johnson in Northern Canada. It was the first time a plane had ever been used in Canadian law enforcement. Josef Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express - starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brooks and Anna May Wong - premiered.
Patricia Haines born in Sheffield.
François Roland Truffaut born in Paris.
Jean Aubrey born in Burton Upon Trent.
Barrie Stanton Ingham born in Halifax. Edgar Wallace died in Beverley Hills whilst working on the script for RKO's King Kong.
Mount Hinks, Mount Marsden and the Rouse Islands were discovered in Antarctica by the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson. Barbara Teresa Kowin born in Harrow. Charlotte Gercke born in New York. David Henry Neal born in Kettering.
Irish politician Patrick Reynolds knocked on a door campaigning for votes in the forthcoming erection. He got into an argument with the occupant of the house, a former Royal Irish Constabulary officer Joseph Leddy, who produced a double-barrelled gun and shot both Reynolds and a Garda Síochána detective, Patrick McGeehan, who was on protective duty with Reynolds. The detective was fatally wounded and Reynolds also died a month later. Terence Richard Knapp born in Hackney.br /> Troy Kennedy Martin born in Rothesay, Isle of Bute. Erika Crobath born in Medan, Indonisia.
Peter Patterson born in Walker, Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Over a month after the manhunt for Albert Johnson began, the posse caught up to him and killed him in a shootout. The case popularised the saying 'the Mounties always get their man.'
Jan Tomáš Forman born in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia.
Tod Browning's controversial film Freaks was released.
Sir Malcolm Campbell broke his own land speed world record, attaining two hundred and fifty four miles per hour in his Blue Bird at Daytona Beach. Michel Legrand born in Bécon les Bruyères.
John R Cash born in Kingsland, Arkansas. Michael Goldie born in Edmonton, London.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor born in Hampstead. In Washington, John Philip Sousa conducted the US Marine Band in his 'Hands Across The Sea' march. It proved to be Sousa's final performance. The Sixth Round of the FA Cup saw wins for Newcastle United (five-nil over Watford), Manchester City (a four-three victory at Bury), Chelsea <(two won two-nil against Liverpool at Anfield) and Arsenal (who won a tight game at Huddersfield).
The Lindbergh kidnapping occurred. Twenty-month old Charles Lindbergh Junior, son of famous aviator and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was abducted from the family's home near Hopewell, New Jersey. A fifty thousand dollars ransom note was left on the window sill.
Terence Scully born in Leigh.
The first transmissions from the newly opened Broadcasting House took place.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge was officially opened. Stoke City's one-nil victory at Bury in the Second Division saw the league debut of seventeen year old Stanley Matthews, the first of eight hundred and three games - for Stoke, Blackool and England - in a remarkable career which lasted until 1965 and concluded with him still playing at the highest level at the age of fifty.
Thomas Welsh Watson born in Auchinleck, Ayrshire.
Delphi Cajetana Holzman born in Hampstead.
Tarzan The Ape Man starring Johnny Weissmuller was released.
Patrick David Newell born in Hadleigh, Suffolk.
British pastor Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey, was brought before court to answer charges that he had pursued and molested young girls. The case became a notorious tabloid sensation. Subsequently convicted defrocked, Davidson became a lion tamer and died in Skegness in 1937 after being attacked by a lion called Freddie.
Widgey R Newman's Castle Sinister premiered.
Avril Elgar Williams born in Halifax.
Diane Cilento born in Mooloolaba, Queensland.
William Baudine's Pernod & Sam - starring Leon Janney, Frank Coghlan Jr and Margaret Marquis - premiered.
Howard Hawks's Scarface - starring Paul Muni and George Raft - premiered. Carl Lee Perkins born in Tiptonville, Tennessee. John Smethurst born in Collyhurst, Manchester. England defeated Scotland three-nil at Wembley in the Home International championship. Tom Waring, Sammy Crooks and debutant Bob Barcley of Sheffield United scored. England other debutants were Harry Pearson and George Shaw of West Bromwich Albion, Peter O'Dowd of Cheslea and Newcastle United's Sammy Weaver. The inquest was held into the death of Liverpool science teacher, James Foote. Four days earlier, he had drunk cyanide from a beaker, instead of one containing water, in front of his class, acknowledged what he had done, then collapsed and died. The teacher had been under investigation by the school over his honours degrees from Glasgow University which he had falsely claimed when he joined the school, eleven years earlier. His qualifications had enabled him to take an increased salary and it had been calculated that he would have been paid around fifteen hundred pounds more than he should have been entitled to without the qualifications. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, though the Deputy Coroner stated that it could have been a staged suicide made to look like an accident.
Michel Dimitri Chalhoub born in Alexandria.
John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, two of Ernest Rutherford's team at the the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, focused a proton beam on lithium and split its nucleus in a controlled manner.
Terence A Duggan born in Hoxton.
James Parrott's The Music Box - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered. It would subsequently win the first Academy Award for Best Live Action Short (Comedy). Howard Hawks's The Crowd Roars - starring James Cagney and Joan Blondell - premiered.
Henry King's Over The Hill - starring James Dunn, Sally Eilers, Mae Marsh and James Kirkwood - premiered.
German art dealer Otto Wacker was sentenced to a year in jail for selling forgeries of paintings by Vincent van Gogh.
Two goals from Jack Allen helped Newcastle United beat Arsenal in the controversial 'over-the-line' FA Cup final at Wembley.
William Patrick Roache born in Nottingham. Jennifer Wenda Lohr born in London.
Baltimore repealed its two hundred-year-old blue law which prohibited movie showings, sporting events and men kissing their wives on a Sunday. Christine Annabel Joyce Shaw born in London.
Despite losing their final game of the season at home to Portsmouth, Everton claimed their fourth First Division title just a year after being promoted from the Second Division. Arsenal were runners-up. Grimsby Town and West Ham United were relegated from the top flight whilst Wolverhampton Wanderers and Leeds United were promoted.
Phyllida Ann Law born in Glasgow.
Geraldine McKeown born in Old Windsor.
The body of Charles Lindbergh Junior was found less than five miles from the Lindbergh home.
Terence Scully born in Leigh.
Before the Recorder, Sir Ernest Wild, at the Central Criminal Court, William Greenwood and Stanley Shrodinsky pleaded guilty to an indictment charging them with, while armed with offensive weapons, robbing John George Brown of the sum of one pound and ten shillings. The recorder ordered Greenwood to be sent to a home for mental deficients. He sentenced Shrodinsky - aged sixteen - to eight months in a boy's prison and eighteen strokes with the birch. At midnight on 8 May, according to The Times, police sergeant Burge saw the defendants with an attaché case containing a hacksaw and other tools. He seized Greenwood, pinned him against a wall and took a revolver from his pocket. Shrodinsky, who was also armed, ran away. Sergeant Burge called to a civilian to pursue him and Vivian Howell, a schoolmaster from Morden, chased him on a bicycle. Shrodinsky pointed a revolver at Howell and fired twice. Undaunted, Howell continued the pursuit, threw the bicycle at Shrodinsky and, ultimately, captured him. Unfortunately, Sergeant Burge was unable to give evidence. As the result of the shock from the case - and particularly from the thought of sending a civilian to what might have been his death - Burge died the previous week. Up to this incident, he was a strong healthy man. The Recorder noted: 'I desire to express the sympathy of the court for that gallant officer, Sergeant Burge, who undoubtedly owes his death partially to the brutal conduct of you two young ruffians. I shall bring to the attention of the Secretary of State my strong suggestion that the officer's dependents should not suffer.'
Harry L Frazer's Mason of The Mounted - starring Bill Cody, Andy Shuford and Nancy Drexel - premiered.
Alma Angela Cogan born in Whitechapel.
Vera Vuseck born in Prague.
Arnold Wesker born in Stepney.
Patrick Bedford born in Dublin.
Alan Russell Dobie born in Wombwell, West Yorkshire.
Yasujirō Ozu's I Was Born, But ... - starring Tatsuo Saitō, Tomio Aoki, Mitsuko Yoshikawa and Hideo Sugawara - premiered.
Lord Rothermere stated in the Daily Scum Mail that there was 'no safer political prophecy' than that the Hohenzollerns would 'retake the throne of Germany within eighteen months.' Billie Honor Whitelaw born in Coventry.
Raymond Illingworth born in Pudsey.
Lloyd Corrigan's Beloved Bachelor - starring Paul Lukas and Dorothy Jordan - premiered.
George Victor Bishop born in Brooklyn, New York.
Norman Jones born in Donnington, Shropshire.
Jack Sharkey won the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in a controversial split decision over Max Schmeling at Madison Square Garden Bowl in Queens, New York. 'I was robbed,' Schmeling whinged in the dressing room after the fight.
Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth born in Sutton Abinger, Surrey.
Peter Thomas Blake born in Dartford.
Valerie Sheila Gaunt born in Stratford-On-Avon.
The India national cricket team completed its first-ever test match, losing to England at Lord's by one hundred and fifty eight runs. Douglas Jardine - captaining the side for the first time - top-scored in both of England's innings whilst Bill Bowes,making his test debut, took four for forty nine. India were captained by Cottai Nayudu in the absense of the Maharaja of Porbander.
George Formby recorded his breakthrough hit, 'Chinese Laundry Blues' for Decca Record.
The Anglo-Irish Trade War began when the government voted to impose a one hundred per cent tariff on imports from the Irish Free State as retaliation for its refusal to make the semi-annual instalment payments on Irish land annuities.
Phyllida Ann Law born in Glasgow.
John Turner born in London.
Lady Louis Mountbatten won a libel suit against Odhams Press for printing gossip in its newspapers reporting that she had been caught in 'compromising circumstances' with 'a coloured man.' Alastair Brian Walden born in West Bromwich. George Formby's 'Chinese Laundrey Blues'/'Do De O Do' released.
Hedley Verity of Yorkshire established a new first-class cricket record taking all ten Nottinghamshire wickets for ten runs on a Headingley pitch affected by rain.
Edward Elgar conducted a recording of his Violin Concerto featuring the sixteen-year-old Yehudi Menuhin.
There's Magic In The Air - featuring John MacDonell and Jasper Maskelyne - broadcast on The Home Service.
Preußenschlag: Chancellor Franz von Papen used Article Forty Eight of the Weimar Constitution to dissolve the government of Prussia and insert himself in its place as a virtual dictator answerable only to President Hindenburg.
Vilma Hollingbery born in London.
Paul Gorguloff went on trial for the assassination of French President Paul Doumer, claiming that he had been 'possessed by a demon' as part of an insanity defence. The judges didn't buy it, he was found extremely guilty with full criminal responsibility and sentenced to execution by guillotine.
Eugene Neil McCarthy born in Lincoln.
Tony Tanner born in Hillgdon, Middlesex.
Two days before the beginning of the Los Angeles Olympics, Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi was suspended by the IAAF for violating his amateur status by accepting remuneration in excess of his expenses to run five exhibition races in Germany during September and October 1931.
John Shannon born in Lambeth.
Forrest Mars produced the first Mars Bar in his Slough factory. Norman Clifford Bowler born in London. Jolyon Booth born in Hitchin. Robert Z Leonard's Lovers Courageous - starring Robert Montgomery, Madge Evans and Jackie Searl - premiered.
Tommy Hampson won gold in the eight hundred-metre Olympic race with a time of one minute 49.8 seconds, a new world record. Peter Seamus O'Toole born in Connemara. Or, possibly, Leeds (sources differ).
Michael Curtiz's Doctor X - starring Lionel Atwell and Fay Wray - premiered.
After being shot and killed by two Barrow Gang members - probably Clyde Barrow and Ralph Fults - after they refused to put away their alcohol, Deputy Sheriff Eugene Clyde Moore became the first of the nine lawmen the gang would kill.
The first section of Autobahn, a twelve mile stretch between Köln and Bonn, opened. Charles Gerald Wood born in Guernsey.
Edward Cedric Hardwicke born in London.
Reginald Tindal Kennedy Bosanquet born in Chertsy. Denys Hawthorne born in Portadown.
Horse Feathers - starring The Marx Brothers - premiered. Rin Tin Tin the German Shepherd dog film star died aged thirteen. Murray Melvin born in London.
John Sumner Gorrie born in Hastings.
Marion Gering's Devil & The Deep - starring Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant and Charles Laughton - premiered.
Adolf Hitler held meetings with Chancellor Franz von Papen and President Paul von Hindenburg in Berlin. Von Papen offered Hitler the position of vice-chancellor, but Hitler refused the post and demanded to Hindenburg that he be made chancellor. Hindenburg rejected this demand. Speak Easily - starring Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante - premiered.
Doreen May Stevens born in Southampton.
Auguste Piccard and assistant Max Cosyns ascended more than ten miles above the Earth inside a metal ball attached to a balloon, a new flight altitude record. The historic ascent took off from Dübendorf, Switzerland and landed near Pozzolengo, Italy about twelve hours later.
Anthony Ainley born in Stanmore.
The first experimental television programme produced by the BBC was broadcast. The experimental broadcasts, from studio BB in the basement of Broadcasting House, were produced by Eustace Robb and the chief engineer was Douglas Birkinshaw. John Logie Baird appeared on the first programme to thank the BBC and said afterwards that the transmission was the best he had yet seen. Whilst the BBC were using Baird's thirty-line mechanical system, EMI demonstrated an electronic television system, with up to three times as many lines as Baird's.
William Morgan Sheppard born in London.
Yorkshire defeated Sussex at Hove by one hundred and sixty seven runs in their final county championship match having already taken their second successive title. Sussex finished second and Kent third. Herbert Sutcliffe was the leading run-scorer (two thousand six hundred and twenty four) and Kent's Tich Freeman was the leading wicket-taker for the sixth successive season (two hundred and nine). Harold Larwood again topped the bowling averages (one hundred and sixty two at 12.86).
Roy Castle born in Scholes, Yokrshire.
Edward James De Souza born in Hull. Dinsdale James Landen born in Margate.
Malcolm Stanley Bradbury born in Sheffield.
Virginia Patterson Hensley born in Winchester, Virginia.
Mervyn LeRoy's Big City Blues - starring Joan Blondell - premiered.
The Reichstag passed a motion of no confidence against the Franz von Papen cabinet by an overwhelming vote of 513 to 32, though von Papen called the vote illegal because he was entitled to the floor and had already placed the decree on the speaker's desk dissolving parliament. President Paul von Hindenburg rebuked Reichstag president Hermann Göring, ordering him "to acknowledge the command for dissolution expressed yesterday and to recognise the legal status it created." Göring responded that he could not interrupt the vote on the no-confidence motion once it began. Howard Higgin's Hell's House - starring Bette Davis, Pat O'Brien and Frank Coghlan Jr - premiered.
Andrée Melly born in Liverpool.
Cyril Uwins broke the world aeroplane altitude record by reaching a height of almost forty five thousand feet. The actress Peg Entwistle gained jumped to her death from the 'H' on the 'Hollywoodland' sign in Los Angeles. A note found in her pocket read, 'I am afraid I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this long ago it would have saved a lot of pain.' Josef Von Sternberg's Blonde Venus - starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Cary Grant - premiered.
George Marshall and Raymond McCarey's Pack Up Your Troubles - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered.
Mahatma Gandhi began a 'fast unto death' in Yerwada Central Jail as a protest against Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award. The authorities opened the door of Gandhi's cell and allowed him to leave, but Gandhi vowed to stay unless forcibly removed.Gandhi ended his fast some days later when the government in London accepted a compromise agreement allotting the Untouchables a certain number of legislative seats.
Howard Hawks's Tiger Shar - starring Edward G Robinson - premiered.
Martin Fric's Kantor Ideál - starring Karel Lamac and Anny Ondra - premiered.
Brian Trevor John Murphy born in Ventor, Isle of Wight.
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez born in Chillán Viejo, Chile.
That disgraceful old stinker Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascist Knobheads.
Pauline Lesley Chamberlain born in West Ham.
Edward Judd born in Shanghai.
Anne Veronica Maria Quayle born in Birmingham.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert, at Queen's Hall.
JB Priestley's To An Unnamed Listener broadcast.
As part of observances of the one hundredth anniversary of the invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse, the chairman of the Postal Telegraph Company sent a telegram around the world in a record time of four minutes and forty five seconds. The message - 'What hath God wrought' - was identical to that which Morse sent from Baltimore to Washington in 1844.
John Glenister born in London.
Bing Crosby and Bob Hope first met, according to legend outside the New York Friars Club.
William L Shirer was fired from the Chicago Tribune due to a defamation lawsuit filed over a minor story in which he mixed up the name of a woman who had been arrested for an accident in Vienna. Shirer was promised a month's worth of severance pay, but he only received it in 1989 – fifty-seven years later.
England defeated Ireland one-nil in the Home International championship at Bloomfield Road, Blackpool. Bob Barcley scored the winner. An unemployed Sunderland welder, Thomas Howard strangled his wife, Florence. Less than four weeks later, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to death, though the jury recommended mercy. Immediately after the attack, Howard had tried to get a neighbour to call an ambulance. Fifty thousand people signed a petition appealing for his reprieve. Eleven days before the date of execution, the Home Secretary, John Gilmour, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
James Whale's The Old Dark House - starring Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton - premiered.
Sheila Allen born in Chard.
Thousands of National Hunger Marchers converged on London, where they clashed in the streets with Oswald Mosley's Fascists near Trafalgar Square. Abd kicked the shit out of them.
George Lansbury was elected Leader of the Labour Party.
Charlie Chaplin won his legal action against ex-wife Lita Grey seeking to prevent her from entering their two young sons into film acting. The judge ruled that the children should not be placed in films without the consent of both parents.
Tens of thousands of National Hunger Marchers gathered in Hyde Park protesting Britain's dole system and the Means est. When a brick was thrown through a post office window at Great Cumberland Place, mounted police charged with clubs and rioting began, resulting in between sixty and seventy injuries and numerous arrests. Sylvia Plath born in Boston, Massachusetts.
William A Seitel's Hot Saturday - starring Nancy Carroll, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott - premiered. Cecilia Ann Renee Parker born in Long Island.
Mervyn LeRoy's Three On A Match - starring Joan Blondell, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart - premiered.
Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble In Paradise - starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall - premiered.
Jackie Brown defeated Victor Perez for boxing's world flyweight title in Manchester.
The Emu War began by the military against emus in Western Australia. On general principle.
The Mask Of Fu Manchu - starring Boris Karloff - premiered. Gillespie Road station on the London Underground was renamed Arsenal (Highbury Hill), on the suggestion of Arsenal's manager Herbert Chapman.
Franklin D Roosevelt defeated the incumbent Herbert Hoover in the United States presidential erection, winning forty two of forty eight states.
The film I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang starring Paul Muni was released. Donald Francis Henderson born in Leytonstone. Roy Richard Scheider born in Orange, New Jersey.
Our Neighbours - Today & Yesterday broadcast - featuring G Harrison Brown discussing Germany's 'religious differences and cultural development.' Michael Wynne born in Bromley.
Carmen Esme Munroe born in New Amsterdam, British Guyana.
Alfred Benito Mancini born in Steubenville, Ohio.
Sally Olwen Clark born in Epsom. Clyde Lensley McPhatter born in Durham, North Carolina.
England and Wales shared a goalless draw at Wrexham in the Home International championship. Birmingham's Lewis Stoker, Huddersfield Town's Alf Young and West bromwich Albion's Eddie Sandford made their England debuts. The new Parliament Buildings at Stormont, the seat of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, were opened by Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales.
Trevor Baxter born in Lewisham.
Beryl Margaret Bainbridge born in Liverpool.
War Secretary Lord Hailsham accused the American press of publishing 'misleading photographs' accompanying stories on the National Hunger March rioting of 30 October. The photos in question ran in the New York Daily Mirror and actually depicted, Lord Hailsham claimed, a crowd 'anxious at news of the King's health during his serious illness in 1928.' One or two people even believed him. Robert Francis Vaughn born in New York.
George Bernard Shaw gave a speech before the Fabian Society titled In Praise Of Guy Fawkes, in which he declared that the election of Roosevelt in the United States 'will not make the slightest difference to any American' and praised Oswald Mosley as 'one of the few people who is writing and thinking about real things and not about figments and phrases.' Shaw laid out his proposal for a dictatorship, saying 'you need not be alarmed by the name' because 'you have never had anything else than dictators governing you although you did not call them so.' Frederick John Titmus born in London.
Maureen Swanson born in Glasgow.
Bing Crosby's recording of 'Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?' reached number one on the American music charts.
The BBC began a series of broadcasts to mark the seventy fifth birthday of Sir Edward Elgar.
Dennis Spooner born in Tottenham.
The Ashes series began in Brisbane. The so-called 'Bodyline' series would see England employ provocative, if effective (and entirely legal), fast-bowling by Harold Larwood and Bill Voce under captain Douglas Jardine to nullify Don Bradman and put the wind right up the other Australian batsmen. It worked brilliantly, England won the series four-one and the Aussies shitted in their own pants and whinged like a bunch of girls about how 'unsporting' it all was. For England, Herbert Sutcliffe scored one hundred and ninety four and the Nawab of Pataudi, on his test debut, one hundred and two, although the latter incurred the ire of his captain by dissenting against Jardine's bodyline tactics. Upon Pataudi's refusal to take his place in a leg-side field, Jardine allegedly noted: 'I see His Highness is a conscientious objector.' Pataudi was dropped after the second test in Melbourne and did not play again that series. Larwood took ten wickets in the match and, despite Stan McCabe's memorable hundred, England won by ten wickets.
A joint resolution was introduced to US Congress of a Twenty-First Amendment to the United States Constitution, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment and turning the regulation of liquor over to the individual states. The comic strip Jane by Norman Pett first appeared in the Daily Mirror. Richard Wayne Penniman born in Macon, Georgia.
Albert Einstein was granted a visa to enter the United States. An organisation called the Woman's Patriot Corporation had filed a complaint claiming Einstein was inadmissible 'because of his affiliations with certain organisations claimed to be connected with the Communist International,' but the State Department announced that George S Messersmith had 'examined Professor Einstein as he would any applicant and has reached the conclusion that Professor Einstein is admissible to the United States.' Thomas Declan Mulholland born in Belfast.
England defeated Austria four-three in a friendly international at Stamford Bridge. Jimmy Hampson scored twice with Sammy Crooks and Eric Houghton also on-target. Eric Keen of Derby County made his England debut. Ernie Blenkinsop's twenty fifth consecutive appearance for his country equalled the record set by Billy Wedlock in 1914.
Frank Borzage's adaptation of A Farewell To Arms - starring Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper - premiered.
Wendy Thompson born in Holbeach, Lincolnshire.
John Ford's Flesh - starring Wallace Beery - premiered.
William A Seiter's Is My Face Red? - starring Helen Twelvetrees, Ricardo Cortez and Jill Esmond - premiered.
The BBC Empire Service, later the World Service, begins broadcasting using a shortwave facility at Daventry.
The Universal horror film The Mummy - starring Boris Karloff - premiered.
The film Rasputin & The Empress, starring the Barrymore siblings (John, Ethel and Lionel) premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York.
An adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeomen Of The Guard broadcast live from the Savoy Theatre. Michael Curtiz's Twenty Thousand Years In Sing-Sing - starring Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis - premiered. Fifty four goals were scored in eleven First Division matches. Arsenal beat Sheffield United nine-two and there were also big wins for Birmingham City (four-nil against Portsmouth), Newcastle United (four-nil at Blackpool) and Everton (who beat Wolves five-one). Blackburn Rovers defeated Middlesbrough four-two whilst Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion both enjoyed four-three victories (over Bolton Wanderers and Leicester City respectively). Only Derby County and Aston Villa let the side dowm ,sharing a goalless draw at The Baesball Ground.
George V became the first monarch to deliver a Christmas Day Message to the nation and the empire.
GK Chesterton's New Books broadcast.
Geraldo & His Gaucho Tango Orchestra broadcast.
Dulcima Glasby's adaptation of The Green Goddess broadcast.
Reminiscences, 'a programme of popular favourites from bygone days' broadcast.
Gracie Fields and Max Miller appeared on Music-Hall. Marion Gering's adaptation of Madame Butterfly - starring Sylvia Sidney and Cary Grant - premiered.
A Night In The Plantation, 'with John Payne and his Jubilee Singers in a programme of Negro Spirituals and Folk Songs' broadcast. In the Third Division (North), Carlisle United's two-two draw with Rochdale saw the league debut of nineteen year old Bill Shankly, the first of three hundred and eighteen games for Carlisle, Preston North End and Scotland in a career that lasted until 1949.
The opening New Morning Talks Programme By The Director Of General Talks broadcast.
Aldoux Huxley's Brave New World published. A new record was set for the most goals scored in the Football League on a single day. In all two hundred and nine goals were scored in forty three matches - fifty six in the First Division, fifty three in the Second Division, forty three in the Third Division North and fifty seven in the Third Division South. Highlights included Aston Villa's eight-three victory at Leicester, Bradford City thumping Barnsley nine-one, Barrow defeating Walsall seven-one and a five-five draw between Coventyr City and Fulham.
The Week's Good Cause featured an appeal on behalf of The Hospital For Sick Children, Great Ormond Street by the Right Honourable Lord MacMillan, Chairman of the Hospital.
In Aklavik in the Northwest Territories, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police formed a posse to hunt down the fugitive Albert Johnson, who had been dubbed by the media as 'The Mad Trapper Of Rat River.'
Umberto Eco born in Alessandria.
The first episode of Through Foreign Eyes featured Mister I Von Ustinow's views on Britain from a German perspective. Arthur Charles Oates born in London.
The first episode of Diseases Of Organised Society broadcast.
The first episode of The Common Earth and Holt Marvell's comic operetta Good Night, Vienna! broadcast.
Desmond Bernard O'Connor born in Stepney. John Edward Cater born in Hendon.
Richard Lester Liebman born in Philadelphia.
Marjie Lawrence born in Birmingham.
The Howard Hughes-produced Cock Of The Air - directed by Tom Buckingham and starring Chester Morris and Billie Dove - premiered.
Vaudville featured performances by The Carlyle Cousins, Nobby Knight His Whispering Trumpeters, Max Miller and The Three Eddies.
Duke Ellington & His Orchestra first recorded 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)' in Chicago. World War I flying ace Wop May was hired to assist in the manhunt for the fugitive Albert Johnson in Northern Canada. It was the first time a plane had ever been used in Canadian law enforcement. Josef Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express - starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brooks and Anna May Wong - premiered.
Patricia Haines born in Sheffield.
François Roland Truffaut born in Paris.
Jean Aubrey born in Burton Upon Trent.
Barrie Stanton Ingham born in Halifax. Edgar Wallace died in Beverley Hills whilst working on the script for RKO's King Kong.
Mount Hinks, Mount Marsden and the Rouse Islands were discovered in Antarctica by the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson. Barbara Teresa Kowin born in Harrow. Charlotte Gercke born in New York. David Henry Neal born in Kettering.
Irish politician Patrick Reynolds knocked on a door campaigning for votes in the forthcoming erection. He got into an argument with the occupant of the house, a former Royal Irish Constabulary officer Joseph Leddy, who produced a double-barrelled gun and shot both Reynolds and a Garda Síochána detective, Patrick McGeehan, who was on protective duty with Reynolds. The detective was fatally wounded and Reynolds also died a month later. Terence Richard Knapp born in Hackney.br /> Troy Kennedy Martin born in Rothesay, Isle of Bute. Erika Crobath born in Medan, Indonisia.
Peter Patterson born in Walker, Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Over a month after the manhunt for Albert Johnson began, the posse caught up to him and killed him in a shootout. The case popularised the saying 'the Mounties always get their man.'
Jan Tomáš Forman born in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia.
Tod Browning's controversial film Freaks was released.
John R Cash born in Kingsland, Arkansas. Michael Goldie born in Edmonton, London.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor born in Hampstead. In Washington, John Philip Sousa conducted the US Marine Band in his 'Hands Across The Sea' march. It proved to be Sousa's final performance. The Sixth Round of the FA Cup saw wins for Newcastle United (five-nil over Watford), Manchester City (a four-three victory at Bury), Chelsea <(two won two-nil against Liverpool at Anfield) and Arsenal (who won a tight game at Huddersfield).
The Lindbergh kidnapping occurred. Twenty-month old Charles Lindbergh Junior, son of famous aviator and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was abducted from the family's home near Hopewell, New Jersey. A fifty thousand dollars ransom note was left on the window sill.
Terence Scully born in Leigh.
The first transmissions from the newly opened Broadcasting House took place.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge was officially opened. Stoke City's one-nil victory at Bury in the Second Division saw the league debut of seventeen year old Stanley Matthews, the first of eight hundred and three games - for Stoke, Blackool and England - in a remarkable career which lasted until 1965 and concluded with him still playing at the highest level at the age of fifty.
Thomas Welsh Watson born in Auchinleck, Ayrshire.
Delphi Cajetana Holzman born in Hampstead.
Tarzan The Ape Man starring Johnny Weissmuller was released.
Patrick David Newell born in Hadleigh, Suffolk.
British pastor Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey, was brought before court to answer charges that he had pursued and molested young girls. The case became a notorious tabloid sensation. Subsequently convicted defrocked, Davidson became a lion tamer and died in Skegness in 1937 after being attacked by a lion called Freddie.
Widgey R Newman's Castle Sinister premiered.
Avril Elgar Williams born in Halifax.
Diane Cilento born in Mooloolaba, Queensland.
William Baudine's Pernod & Sam - starring Leon Janney, Frank Coghlan Jr and Margaret Marquis - premiered.
Howard Hawks's Scarface - starring Paul Muni and George Raft - premiered. Carl Lee Perkins born in Tiptonville, Tennessee. John Smethurst born in Collyhurst, Manchester. England defeated Scotland three-nil at Wembley in the Home International championship. Tom Waring, Sammy Crooks and debutant Bob Barcley of Sheffield United scored. England other debutants were Harry Pearson and George Shaw of West Bromwich Albion, Peter O'Dowd of Cheslea and Newcastle United's Sammy Weaver. The inquest was held into the death of Liverpool science teacher, James Foote. Four days earlier, he had drunk cyanide from a beaker, instead of one containing water, in front of his class, acknowledged what he had done, then collapsed and died. The teacher had been under investigation by the school over his honours degrees from Glasgow University which he had falsely claimed when he joined the school, eleven years earlier. His qualifications had enabled him to take an increased salary and it had been calculated that he would have been paid around fifteen hundred pounds more than he should have been entitled to without the qualifications. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, though the Deputy Coroner stated that it could have been a staged suicide made to look like an accident.
Michel Dimitri Chalhoub born in Alexandria.
John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, two of Ernest Rutherford's team at the the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, focused a proton beam on lithium and split its nucleus in a controlled manner.
Terence A Duggan born in Hoxton.
James Parrott's The Music Box - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered. It would subsequently win the first Academy Award for Best Live Action Short (Comedy). Howard Hawks's The Crowd Roars - starring James Cagney and Joan Blondell - premiered.
Henry King's Over The Hill - starring James Dunn, Sally Eilers, Mae Marsh and James Kirkwood - premiered.
German art dealer Otto Wacker was sentenced to a year in jail for selling forgeries of paintings by Vincent van Gogh.
Two goals from Jack Allen helped Newcastle United beat Arsenal in the controversial 'over-the-line' FA Cup final at Wembley.
William Patrick Roache born in Nottingham. Jennifer Wenda Lohr born in London.
Despite losing their final game of the season at home to Portsmouth, Everton claimed their fourth First Division title just a year after being promoted from the Second Division. Arsenal were runners-up. Grimsby Town and West Ham United were relegated from the top flight whilst Wolverhampton Wanderers and Leeds United were promoted.
Phyllida Ann Law born in Glasgow.
Geraldine McKeown born in Old Windsor.
The body of Charles Lindbergh Junior was found less than five miles from the Lindbergh home.
Terence Scully born in Leigh.
Before the Recorder, Sir Ernest Wild, at the Central Criminal Court, William Greenwood and Stanley Shrodinsky pleaded guilty to an indictment charging them with, while armed with offensive weapons, robbing John George Brown of the sum of one pound and ten shillings. The recorder ordered Greenwood to be sent to a home for mental deficients. He sentenced Shrodinsky - aged sixteen - to eight months in a boy's prison and eighteen strokes with the birch. At midnight on 8 May, according to The Times, police sergeant Burge saw the defendants with an attaché case containing a hacksaw and other tools. He seized Greenwood, pinned him against a wall and took a revolver from his pocket. Shrodinsky, who was also armed, ran away. Sergeant Burge called to a civilian to pursue him and Vivian Howell, a schoolmaster from Morden, chased him on a bicycle. Shrodinsky pointed a revolver at Howell and fired twice. Undaunted, Howell continued the pursuit, threw the bicycle at Shrodinsky and, ultimately, captured him. Unfortunately, Sergeant Burge was unable to give evidence. As the result of the shock from the case - and particularly from the thought of sending a civilian to what might have been his death - Burge died the previous week. Up to this incident, he was a strong healthy man. The Recorder noted: 'I desire to express the sympathy of the court for that gallant officer, Sergeant Burge, who undoubtedly owes his death partially to the brutal conduct of you two young ruffians. I shall bring to the attention of the Secretary of State my strong suggestion that the officer's dependents should not suffer.'
Harry L Frazer's Mason of The Mounted - starring Bill Cody, Andy Shuford and Nancy Drexel - premiered.
Alma Angela Cogan born in Whitechapel.
Vera Vuseck born in Prague.
Arnold Wesker born in Stepney.
Patrick Bedford born in Dublin.
Alan Russell Dobie born in Wombwell, West Yorkshire.
Yasujirō Ozu's I Was Born, But ... - starring Tatsuo Saitō, Tomio Aoki, Mitsuko Yoshikawa and Hideo Sugawara - premiered.
Lord Rothermere stated in the Daily Scum Mail that there was 'no safer political prophecy' than that the Hohenzollerns would 'retake the throne of Germany within eighteen months.' Billie Honor Whitelaw born in Coventry.
Raymond Illingworth born in Pudsey.
Lloyd Corrigan's Beloved Bachelor - starring Paul Lukas and Dorothy Jordan - premiered.
George Victor Bishop born in Brooklyn, New York.
Norman Jones born in Donnington, Shropshire.
Jack Sharkey won the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in a controversial split decision over Max Schmeling at Madison Square Garden Bowl in Queens, New York. 'I was robbed,' Schmeling whinged in the dressing room after the fight.
Prunella Margaret Rumney Illingworth born in Sutton Abinger, Surrey.
Peter Thomas Blake born in Dartford.
Valerie Sheila Gaunt born in Stratford-On-Avon.
The India national cricket team completed its first-ever test match, losing to England at Lord's by one hundred and fifty eight runs. Douglas Jardine - captaining the side for the first time - top-scored in both of England's innings whilst Bill Bowes,making his test debut, took four for forty nine. India were captained by Cottai Nayudu in the absense of the Maharaja of Porbander.
George Formby recorded his breakthrough hit, 'Chinese Laundry Blues' for Decca Record.
Phyllida Ann Law born in Glasgow.
John Turner born in London.
Lady Louis Mountbatten won a libel suit against Odhams Press for printing gossip in its newspapers reporting that she had been caught in 'compromising circumstances' with 'a coloured man.' Alastair Brian Walden born in West Bromwich. George Formby's 'Chinese Laundrey Blues'/'Do De O Do' released.
Hedley Verity of Yorkshire established a new first-class cricket record taking all ten Nottinghamshire wickets for ten runs on a Headingley pitch affected by rain.
Edward Elgar conducted a recording of his Violin Concerto featuring the sixteen-year-old Yehudi Menuhin.
There's Magic In The Air - featuring John MacDonell and Jasper Maskelyne - broadcast on The Home Service.
Preußenschlag: Chancellor Franz von Papen used Article Forty Eight of the Weimar Constitution to dissolve the government of Prussia and insert himself in its place as a virtual dictator answerable only to President Hindenburg.
Vilma Hollingbery born in London.
Paul Gorguloff went on trial for the assassination of French President Paul Doumer, claiming that he had been 'possessed by a demon' as part of an insanity defence. The judges didn't buy it, he was found extremely guilty with full criminal responsibility and sentenced to execution by guillotine.
Eugene Neil McCarthy born in Lincoln.
Tony Tanner born in Hillgdon, Middlesex.
Two days before the beginning of the Los Angeles Olympics, Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi was suspended by the IAAF for violating his amateur status by accepting remuneration in excess of his expenses to run five exhibition races in Germany during September and October 1931.
John Shannon born in Lambeth.
Forrest Mars produced the first Mars Bar in his Slough factory. Norman Clifford Bowler born in London. Jolyon Booth born in Hitchin. Robert Z Leonard's Lovers Courageous - starring Robert Montgomery, Madge Evans and Jackie Searl - premiered.
Tommy Hampson won gold in the eight hundred-metre Olympic race with a time of one minute 49.8 seconds, a new world record. Peter Seamus O'Toole born in Connemara. Or, possibly, Leeds (sources differ).
Michael Curtiz's Doctor X - starring Lionel Atwell and Fay Wray - premiered.
After being shot and killed by two Barrow Gang members - probably Clyde Barrow and Ralph Fults - after they refused to put away their alcohol, Deputy Sheriff Eugene Clyde Moore became the first of the nine lawmen the gang would kill.
The first section of Autobahn, a twelve mile stretch between Köln and Bonn, opened. Charles Gerald Wood born in Guernsey.
Edward Cedric Hardwicke born in London.
Reginald Tindal Kennedy Bosanquet born in Chertsy. Denys Hawthorne born in Portadown.
Horse Feathers - starring The Marx Brothers - premiered. Rin Tin Tin the German Shepherd dog film star died aged thirteen. Murray Melvin born in London.
John Sumner Gorrie born in Hastings.
Marion Gering's Devil & The Deep - starring Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant and Charles Laughton - premiered.
Adolf Hitler held meetings with Chancellor Franz von Papen and President Paul von Hindenburg in Berlin. Von Papen offered Hitler the position of vice-chancellor, but Hitler refused the post and demanded to Hindenburg that he be made chancellor. Hindenburg rejected this demand. Speak Easily - starring Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante - premiered.
Doreen May Stevens born in Southampton.
Auguste Piccard and assistant Max Cosyns ascended more than ten miles above the Earth inside a metal ball attached to a balloon, a new flight altitude record. The historic ascent took off from Dübendorf, Switzerland and landed near Pozzolengo, Italy about twelve hours later.Anthony Ainley born in Stanmore.
The first experimental television programme produced by the BBC was broadcast. The experimental broadcasts, from studio BB in the basement of Broadcasting House, were produced by Eustace Robb and the chief engineer was Douglas Birkinshaw. John Logie Baird appeared on the first programme to thank the BBC and said afterwards that the transmission was the best he had yet seen. Whilst the BBC were using Baird's thirty-line mechanical system, EMI demonstrated an electronic television system, with up to three times as many lines as Baird's.
William Morgan Sheppard born in London.
Yorkshire defeated Sussex at Hove by one hundred and sixty seven runs in their final county championship match having already taken their second successive title. Sussex finished second and Kent third. Herbert Sutcliffe was the leading run-scorer (two thousand six hundred and twenty four) and Kent's Tich Freeman was the leading wicket-taker for the sixth successive season (two hundred and nine). Harold Larwood again topped the bowling averages (one hundred and sixty two at 12.86).
Roy Castle born in Scholes, Yokrshire.
Edward James De Souza born in Hull. Dinsdale James Landen born in Margate.
Malcolm Stanley Bradbury born in Sheffield.
Virginia Patterson Hensley born in Winchester, Virginia.
Mervyn LeRoy's Big City Blues - starring Joan Blondell - premiered.
The Reichstag passed a motion of no confidence against the Franz von Papen cabinet by an overwhelming vote of 513 to 32, though von Papen called the vote illegal because he was entitled to the floor and had already placed the decree on the speaker's desk dissolving parliament. President Paul von Hindenburg rebuked Reichstag president Hermann Göring, ordering him "to acknowledge the command for dissolution expressed yesterday and to recognise the legal status it created." Göring responded that he could not interrupt the vote on the no-confidence motion once it began. Howard Higgin's Hell's House - starring Bette Davis, Pat O'Brien and Frank Coghlan Jr - premiered.
Andrée Melly born in Liverpool.
Cyril Uwins broke the world aeroplane altitude record by reaching a height of almost forty five thousand feet. The actress Peg Entwistle gained jumped to her death from the 'H' on the 'Hollywoodland' sign in Los Angeles. A note found in her pocket read, 'I am afraid I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this long ago it would have saved a lot of pain.' Josef Von Sternberg's Blonde Venus - starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Cary Grant - premiered.
George Marshall and Raymond McCarey's Pack Up Your Troubles - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered.
Mahatma Gandhi began a 'fast unto death' in Yerwada Central Jail as a protest against Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award. The authorities opened the door of Gandhi's cell and allowed him to leave, but Gandhi vowed to stay unless forcibly removed.Gandhi ended his fast some days later when the government in London accepted a compromise agreement allotting the Untouchables a certain number of legislative seats.
Howard Hawks's Tiger Shar - starring Edward G Robinson - premiered.
Martin Fric's Kantor Ideál - starring Karel Lamac and Anny Ondra - premiered.
Brian Trevor John Murphy born in Ventor, Isle of Wight.
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez born in Chillán Viejo, Chile.
That disgraceful old stinker Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascist Knobheads.
Pauline Lesley Chamberlain born in West Ham.
Edward Judd born in Shanghai.
Anne Veronica Maria Quayle born in Birmingham.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert, at Queen's Hall.
JB Priestley's To An Unnamed Listener broadcast.
As part of observances of the one hundredth anniversary of the invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse, the chairman of the Postal Telegraph Company sent a telegram around the world in a record time of four minutes and forty five seconds. The message - 'What hath God wrought' - was identical to that which Morse sent from Baltimore to Washington in 1844. John Glenister born in London.
Bing Crosby and Bob Hope first met, according to legend outside the New York Friars Club.
William L Shirer was fired from the Chicago Tribune due to a defamation lawsuit filed over a minor story in which he mixed up the name of a woman who had been arrested for an accident in Vienna. Shirer was promised a month's worth of severance pay, but he only received it in 1989 – fifty-seven years later.
England defeated Ireland one-nil in the Home International championship at Bloomfield Road, Blackpool. Bob Barcley scored the winner. An unemployed Sunderland welder, Thomas Howard strangled his wife, Florence. Less than four weeks later, he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to death, though the jury recommended mercy. Immediately after the attack, Howard had tried to get a neighbour to call an ambulance. Fifty thousand people signed a petition appealing for his reprieve. Eleven days before the date of execution, the Home Secretary, John Gilmour, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
James Whale's The Old Dark House - starring Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton - premiered.
Sheila Allen born in Chard.
Thousands of National Hunger Marchers converged on London, where they clashed in the streets with Oswald Mosley's Fascists near Trafalgar Square. Abd kicked the shit out of them.
George Lansbury was elected Leader of the Labour Party.
Charlie Chaplin won his legal action against ex-wife Lita Grey seeking to prevent her from entering their two young sons into film acting. The judge ruled that the children should not be placed in films without the consent of both parents.
Tens of thousands of National Hunger Marchers gathered in Hyde Park protesting Britain's dole system and the Means est. When a brick was thrown through a post office window at Great Cumberland Place, mounted police charged with clubs and rioting began, resulting in between sixty and seventy injuries and numerous arrests. Sylvia Plath born in Boston, Massachusetts.
William A Seitel's Hot Saturday - starring Nancy Carroll, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott - premiered. Cecilia Ann Renee Parker born in Long Island.
Mervyn LeRoy's Three On A Match - starring Joan Blondell, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart - premiered.
Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble In Paradise - starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall - premiered.
Jackie Brown defeated Victor Perez for boxing's world flyweight title in Manchester.
The Emu War began by the military against emus in Western Australia. On general principle.
The Mask Of Fu Manchu - starring Boris Karloff - premiered. Gillespie Road station on the London Underground was renamed Arsenal (Highbury Hill), on the suggestion of Arsenal's manager Herbert Chapman.
Franklin D Roosevelt defeated the incumbent Herbert Hoover in the United States presidential erection, winning forty two of forty eight states.
The film I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang starring Paul Muni was released. Donald Francis Henderson born in Leytonstone. Roy Richard Scheider born in Orange, New Jersey.
Our Neighbours - Today & Yesterday broadcast - featuring G Harrison Brown discussing Germany's 'religious differences and cultural development.' Michael Wynne born in Bromley.
Carmen Esme Munroe born in New Amsterdam, British Guyana.
Alfred Benito Mancini born in Steubenville, Ohio.
Sally Olwen Clark born in Epsom. Clyde Lensley McPhatter born in Durham, North Carolina.
England and Wales shared a goalless draw at Wrexham in the Home International championship. Birmingham's Lewis Stoker, Huddersfield Town's Alf Young and West bromwich Albion's Eddie Sandford made their England debuts. The new Parliament Buildings at Stormont, the seat of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, were opened by Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales.
Trevor Baxter born in Lewisham.
Beryl Margaret Bainbridge born in Liverpool.
War Secretary Lord Hailsham accused the American press of publishing 'misleading photographs' accompanying stories on the National Hunger March rioting of 30 October. The photos in question ran in the New York Daily Mirror and actually depicted, Lord Hailsham claimed, a crowd 'anxious at news of the King's health during his serious illness in 1928.' One or two people even believed him. Robert Francis Vaughn born in New York.
George Bernard Shaw gave a speech before the Fabian Society titled In Praise Of Guy Fawkes, in which he declared that the election of Roosevelt in the United States 'will not make the slightest difference to any American' and praised Oswald Mosley as 'one of the few people who is writing and thinking about real things and not about figments and phrases.' Shaw laid out his proposal for a dictatorship, saying 'you need not be alarmed by the name' because 'you have never had anything else than dictators governing you although you did not call them so.' Frederick John Titmus born in London.
Maureen Swanson born in Glasgow.
Bing Crosby's recording of 'Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?' reached number one on the American music charts.
Dennis Spooner born in Tottenham.
The Ashes series began in Brisbane. The so-called 'Bodyline' series would see England employ provocative, if effective (and entirely legal), fast-bowling by Harold Larwood and Bill Voce under captain Douglas Jardine to nullify Don Bradman and put the wind right up the other Australian batsmen. It worked brilliantly, England won the series four-one and the Aussies shitted in their own pants and whinged like a bunch of girls about how 'unsporting' it all was. For England, Herbert Sutcliffe scored one hundred and ninety four and the Nawab of Pataudi, on his test debut, one hundred and two, although the latter incurred the ire of his captain by dissenting against Jardine's bodyline tactics. Upon Pataudi's refusal to take his place in a leg-side field, Jardine allegedly noted: 'I see His Highness is a conscientious objector.' Pataudi was dropped after the second test in Melbourne and did not play again that series. Larwood took ten wickets in the match and, despite Stan McCabe's memorable hundred, England won by ten wickets.
A joint resolution was introduced to US Congress of a Twenty-First Amendment to the United States Constitution, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment and turning the regulation of liquor over to the individual states. The comic strip Jane by Norman Pett first appeared in the Daily Mirror. Richard Wayne Penniman born in Macon, Georgia.
Albert Einstein was granted a visa to enter the United States. An organisation called the Woman's Patriot Corporation had filed a complaint claiming Einstein was inadmissible 'because of his affiliations with certain organisations claimed to be connected with the Communist International,' but the State Department announced that George S Messersmith had 'examined Professor Einstein as he would any applicant and has reached the conclusion that Professor Einstein is admissible to the United States.' Thomas Declan Mulholland born in Belfast.
England defeated Austria four-three in a friendly international at Stamford Bridge. Jimmy Hampson scored twice with Sammy Crooks and Eric Houghton also on-target. Eric Keen of Derby County made his England debut. Ernie Blenkinsop's twenty fifth consecutive appearance for his country equalled the record set by Billy Wedlock in 1914.
Frank Borzage's adaptation of A Farewell To Arms - starring Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper - premiered.
Wendy Thompson born in Holbeach, Lincolnshire.
John Ford's Flesh - starring Wallace Beery - premiered.
William A Seiter's Is My Face Red? - starring Helen Twelvetrees, Ricardo Cortez and Jill Esmond - premiered.
The BBC Empire Service, later the World Service, begins broadcasting using a shortwave facility at Daventry.
The Universal horror film The Mummy - starring Boris Karloff - premiered.
The film Rasputin & The Empress, starring the Barrymore siblings (John, Ethel and Lionel) premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York. An adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeomen Of The Guard broadcast live from the Savoy Theatre. Michael Curtiz's Twenty Thousand Years In Sing-Sing - starring Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis - premiered. Fifty four goals were scored in eleven First Division matches. Arsenal beat Sheffield United nine-two and there were also big wins for Birmingham City (four-nil against Portsmouth), Newcastle United (four-nil at Blackpool) and Everton (who beat Wolves five-one). Blackburn Rovers defeated Middlesbrough four-two whilst Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion both enjoyed four-three victories (over Bolton Wanderers and Leicester City respectively). Only Derby County and Aston Villa let the side dowm ,sharing a goalless draw at The Baesball Ground.
George V became the first monarch to deliver a Christmas Day Message to the nation and the empire.
GK Chesterton's New Books broadcast.
Geraldo & His Gaucho Tango Orchestra broadcast.
Dulcima Glasby's adaptation of The Green Goddess broadcast.
Reminiscences, 'a programme of popular favourites from bygone days' broadcast.
Gracie Fields and Max Miller appeared on Music-Hall. Marion Gering's adaptation of Madame Butterfly - starring Sylvia Sidney and Cary Grant - premiered.
A Night In The Plantation, 'with John Payne and his Jubilee Singers in a programme of Negro Spirituals and Folk Songs' broadcast. In the Third Division (North), Carlisle United's two-two draw with Rochdale saw the league debut of nineteen year old Bill Shankly, the first of three hundred and eighteen games for Carlisle, Preston North End and Scotland in a career that lasted until 1949.
