1927 Annual History Facts

1927 Annual History Facts

  • Transportation: After 15 Million were sold, Ford’s Model T ended production, replaced by the Model A.
  • Influential Songs include: My Blue Heaven by Gene Austin and Singin’ The Blues by Frankie Trumbauer
  • The Big Movies included The Jazz Singer, Wings, and Metropolis
  • Price of a pound of butter in 1927: 55 cents
  • The World Population was ~ 2,063,000,000
  • Sliced Bread was invented in 1927. A machine to slice bread was invented, by Otto Frederick Rohwedder. 1927 also brought us the Jukebox and early home televisions.
  • And… Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his final Sherlock story, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes.

World Series Champions

New York Yankees

NFL Champions

New York Giants

Stanley Cup Champions

Ottawa Senators

US Open Golf

Tommy Armour

US Open Tennis (Men Ladies)

Rene Lacoste/Helen Wills

Wimbledon (Men/Women)

Henri Cochet/Helen Wills

NCAA Football Champions

Illinios & Yale

Bowl Game

January 1, 1927 – Stanford (tie 7/7) Alabama

Kentucky Derby

Whiskery

Westminster Kennel Best in Show Dog

Pinegrade Perfection

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year

Charles Lindbergh

Miss America

Lois Delander (Joliet, IL)

1927’s Fresh Faces and Top Celebrities

Josephine Baker, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Dolores Costello, Marion Davies, Dolores Del Rio, Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Mary Pickford, Dolores Del Rio, Anna May Wong

“The Quote”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”
– Al Jolson, in The Jazz Singer

1927 Pop Culture History

The earliest known use of the phrase “trick or treat” appeared in a small town in Alberta, Canada in 1927.

William Wellman used his military experience as a WWI pilot to direct the war drama Wings (1927), the first to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The Jazz Singer, was the first film to use synchronized sound and picture, although the entire film was not an all-sound movie. There were just two scenes with talking and ten songs that Mr. Jolson sang. It was based on Samson Raphaelson’s 1921 short story The Day of Atonement. It was about a Jewish cantor’s son who wanted to get into showbiz. Al Jolson was a cantor’s son who got into showbiz BTW.

An experiment was begun to show that solid pitch was actually a liquid by Professor Thomas Parnell. It is listed as the longest-running lab experiment by Guinness World Records. It drops about every eight/nine years.

The first robot depicted in cinema was a gynoid, Maria, in the science fiction film Metropolis. The 1927 classic will remain copyrighted until 2023, over 95 years after its release.

Felix the Cat was the first giant balloon ever in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

American Hero, Philo Farnsworth invented a working television. In court, he beat John Logie Beard, who had a TV-type demonstration in 1925 in London in court for the title and rights.

Another American hero, Charles Lindberg, traveled non-stop on his ‘Spirit of Saint Louis’ flight on May 20-21 from New York’s Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France.

It was a Roman Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaitre, who proposed the Big Bang Theory, in 1927.

The Magazine Cover: National Geographic magazine was the first US publisher to establish a color photo lab in 1920, the first to publish underwater color photographs in 1927, the first to print an all-color issue in 1962, and the first to print a hologram in 1984.

The idea that foil hats can protect you from mind reading first came from a 1927 novel, The Tissue-Culture King.

Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone each contributed $25,000 to front a botanic research corporation to discover a domestic way to produce rubber In 1927. Their lab and equipment remain intact, and the research was never fully completed.

Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming.

Santa Claus was issued a pilot’s license from the United States government in 1927.

The first recorded recipe for S’mores can be found in the publication “Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts” from 1927. #whatwasthefirstonecalled?

A tough, durable kind of plastic, polystyrene, was invented.

In 1804, the world’s population reached 1 billion. The next billion came only 123 years later, in 1927, and three billion in 1960.

A 5th-grade teacher in Hawaii single-handedly started 1990’s Pogs craze. She showed the game she used to play as a little girl to her class in 1991. Pogs originated from Hawaii as early as 1927.

When Walt Disney tried to get MGM studios to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927, he was told that the idea would never work, because a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women.

Edwin Perkins devised a method of removing the liquid from Fruit Smack so the remaining powder could be re-packaged in envelopes under a new name, Kool-Ade.

Having been founded in Chicago in 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters never played a ‘home’ game in Harlem until 1968

The silent horror film The Unknown (1927) was missing for many years in the archives of Cinematheque Francaise because they had hundreds of film cans marked “unknown.”

George P. Burdell received all undergrad degrees from Georgia Tech, served in the military and on Mad magazine’s board of directors, and led the Times’s poll for Person of the Year. He is also completely made up. He was created in 1927 when Ed Smith received two enrollment forms.

In 1927, Pez candy was created to help people quit cigarettes. In 1948, the dispenser was created to mimic a lighter. It wasn’t until the 50s that it was made into a children’s toy.

Several million people in the United States sent over 100,000 petitions urging Congress to adopt the metric system. It is still under consideration.

Calvin Coolidge walked outside his vacation home to waiting reporters and handed them a slip of paper that said, “I do not choose to run for President in nineteen-twenty-eight.” he took no questions and went back inside.

Garnet Carter built the first public miniature golf course, Tom Thumb Golf, on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.

Charles D. B. King won the presidential election in Liberia with 234,000 votes against the opponents’ 9,000. There were 15,000 registered voters in Liberia at the time. The Guinness Book of Records recognizes the presidential election 1927 in Liberia as the most fraudulent election reported in history.

Hans Langseth died, along with the world’s longest beard. You can see it at the Smithsonian Institute.

The Ford Motor Company made 15,000,000 Model T cars since 1908, and production stopped in 1927.

RIP, Scandals, Sad and Odd News

The worst school mass murder in US history was in Bath, Michigan, in 1927, when Andrew Kehoe killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children at an elementary school.

James Dole the “Pineapple King” sponsored the Dole Air Race, putting up a prize of $25,000 for the first airplane to fly from Oakland to Honolulu and $10,000 for second place. Those prizes were won by the only two airplanes to survive the flight. Ten other people died in their attempts.

The Columbine Massacre – a fight between Colorado State Police and unarmed striking coal miners led to machine guns being fired into the crowd of miners. Six miners were killed and dozens were injured.

When the Mississippi River flooded in April 1927 it affected Arkansas the most. Covering 6,600 sq. miles, 36/75 counties were under water up to 30ft deep, covered 2 million acres of farmland, and cost over $1 million in relief and recovery (almost $14m today). It was the most destructive in Arkansas history.

A fire started in the Laurier Palace Theatre in Montreal, Canada, killing 78 children. The city responded by banning children under 16 from cinemas which lasted until 1961.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who were executed for murder in Massachusetts in 1927; widely believed to be innocent, their execution triggered protests and riots worldwide.

The Texas Bankers Association declared it would pay $5,000 to anybody who killed an individual caught in the act of robbing a bank. It would not pay a single penny for live robbers.

In 1927, the US Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional for the government to sterilize mentally handicapped people forcefully

Firsts and the Biggest Christmas Gifts

Metal Radio Flyer wagons

John W. Hammes made the first garbage disposal unit.

Southland Corp (7-11) was founded in Dallas, Texas.

The Habits

Drinking tasty Kool-Aid
Reading Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
Reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Reading Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Popular Music Artists

The Biggest Pop Artists of 1927 include:
Gene Austin, Ben Bernie and His Orchestra, Vernon Dalhart, Vaughn DeLeath, Cliff Edwards, Ruth Etting, Gene Goldkette and His Orchestra, Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra, Irving Kaufman, Gertrude Lawrence, Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, Nick Lucas, Johnny Marvin, John McCormack, Red Nichols and His Five Pennies, George Olson and His Orchestra, Nat Shilkret and the Victor Orchestra, Whispering Jack Smith, Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra

Charts based on Billboard music charts.

Popular Movies

The Beloved Rogue, The General, It, The Jazz Singer, The Kid Brother, The KIng of Kings, Love, London After Midnight, Metropolis, Napoleon, The Ring, Seventh Heaven, Sunrise, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Underworld, The Unknown, Variety, The Way of All Flesh, Wings
An estimated 90% of silent films are completely lost. 🙁
Scroll to Top