1927

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• In May, American pilot Charles Lindbergh is the first to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic.

• In China, Chiang Kai-shek tries to destroy the Communists, led by Mao Zedong.

• In the United States on 23 August, two Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, are executed for murder after an unfair trial that focuses on their political beliefs. (They are posthumously pardoned in 1977.)

• In the Soviet Union on 14 November, Josef Stalin expels his rival Trotsky from the Communist party.

• The newly incorporated (by royal charter) British Broadcasting Corporation begins to transmit radio programmes.

• Rolex markets the first waterproof watch, and cellotape is invented.

• British writer Virginia Woolf publishes the innovative modernist novel To the Lighthouse.

• Jazz musician Duke Ellington plays at the Cotton Club in New York's Harlem district.

• Talking motion pictures begin with Al Jolson starring in The Jazz Singer.

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