1932 (TUESDAY)
UNITED STATES: At the height of the Great Depression, thousands turn out for the opening of Radio City Music Hall, a magnificent Art Deco theater in New York City. Since its opening, more than 300 million people have gone to Radio City to enjoy movies, stage shows, concerts, and special events. The theater, which shows movies as well as live performances featuring the famous chorus line the Rockettes, is the largest indoor theater in the world when it opened, seating 6,200 people.
1934 (THURSDAY)
JAPAN: U.S. Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew warns thatthe Japanese intend "to obtain trade control and eventually predominant political influence in China, the Philippines, the Straits Settlements, Siam and the Dutch East Indies, the Maritime Provinces and Vladivostok. With such dreams of empire cherished by many, and with an army and navy capable of taking the bit in their own teeth and running away with it regardless of the restraining influence of the saner heads of the Government in Tokyo (a risk which unquestionably exists and of which we have already had ample evidence in the Manchurian affair), we would be. reprehensibly somnolent if we were to trust to the security of treaty restraints or international comity to safeguard our own interests or, indeed, our own property . . . Such a war may be unthinkable, and so it is, but the spectre of it is always present and will be present for some time to come. It would be criminally short-sighted to discard it from our calculati ons, and the best possible way to avoid it is to be adequately prepared, for preparedness is a cold fact which even the chauvinists, the military, the patriots and the ultra-nationalists in Japan, for all their bluster concerning `provocative measures' in the United States, can grasp and understand."
1935 (FRIDAY)
HAWAIIAN ISLANDS: U.S. Army Air Corps (USAAC) aircraft drops bombs to divert a lava flow of Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii. This is the first recorded use of aerial bombs for this purpose.
1936 (SUNDAY)
WESTERN EUROPE: Britain and France agree on a mutual policy of non-intervention in the Spanish civil war. Although Winston Churchill advocates non-intervention in the war, he arouses resentment with his sympathy for what he called "the Anti-Red Movement." But he sees both Nazism and Communism as "those non-God religions." He compares Fascism and Communism to the Arctic and Antarctic Poles - both similar in their wastes of snow and icy winds.
1937 (MONDAY)
CHINA: Jinan (Tsinan), a city in central China, surrenders to the Japanese. .
December 27th, 1939 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: RAF Coastal Command: German destroyers and patrol boats attacked off German coast.Cambridge: A verdict of accidental death is given in the case of a couple who cycled into a river during the blackout and drowned.
The first Canadian troops arrive in England and are based at
the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) World War I base at Aldershot on
Salisbury Plain.
Corvette HMS Jonquil laid down.
Minesweeping trawler HMS Hazel launched.
FRANCE: Troops from the Indian Army arrive to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).
U.S. freighter SS Oakwood, en route from Gibraltar to Genoa, Italy, is intercepted by French naval vessel and diverted to Villefranche after a boarding officer mistakes a notation in the log as an order to proceed to Marseilles. Once the mistake is realized, the ship is released to proceed on her way within a few hours.
GERMANY: U-108 are laid down.
Wilbur Keblinger, the U.S. Consul General in Hamburg, reports that German prize control authorities have released all but seven neutral vessels detained in German ports for the evaluation of cargo deemed contraband.
FINLAND: The Finnish 9th Division attacks in the Suomussalmi sector and takes the village completely after a few days. The Soviet 163rd Division retreats in panic.
POLAND: After two German officers are killed in a scuffle in a bar at Wawer, the authorities round up and shoot dead 107 men and boys selected at random.
EUROPE: The Allies lobby Sweden and Norway for permission to ship unofficial aid to Finland.
TURKEY: A powerful earthquake is estimated to have killed 8,000 people.
U.S.A.: The Department of State
dispatches a "vigorous protest" to the British Foreign Office concerning the
British practice of removing and censoring U.S. mail from British and U.S. and
neutral ships. In World War I, the Woodrow Wilson administration protested the
same British practice.
Submarine USS Gar laid
down.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The German merchantman Glücksburg (2680 GRT) was intercepted by destroyer HMS Wishart and was run aground by her crew near the Chipiona Lightship, Spain.