1937

1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1937th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 937th year of the 2nd millennium, the 37th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1930s decade.

Events

January

January 1 – Anastasio Somoza García becomes President of Nicaragua.

January 5 – Water levels begin to rise in the Ohio River in the United States, leading to the Ohio River flood of 1937, which continues into February, leaving 1 million people homeless and 385 people dead.

January 15 – Spanish Civil War: The Second Battle of the Corunna Road ends inconclusively.

January 23 – Moscow Trials: Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center – In the Soviet Union 17 leading Communists go on trial, accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime, and assassinate its leaders.

January 30 – The Moscow Trial initiated on January 23 is concluded. Thirteen of the defendants are sentenced to death (including Georgy Pyatakov, Nikolay Muralov and Leonid Serebryakov), while the rest, including Karl Radek and Grigory Sokolnikov are sent to labor camps and later murdered. They were initially spared for implicating others, including Rykov, Bukharin and Tukhachevsky, setting the stage for further trials

February

February 8 – Spanish Civil War: Falangist troops take Málaga.

February 8–27 – Spanish Civil War – Battle of Jarama: Nationalist and Republican troops fight to a stalemate.

February 16 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a patent for nylon in the United States.