1937

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• In November in Palestine, Arab and Jewish communities fight each other as tensions caused by increasing Jewish immigration escalate (ends 1938).

• On 6 May, the Hindenburg, a German-built airship launched in1936, explodes while landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The disaster means the end of commercial airship travel.

• On 28 May, British prime minister Stanley Baldwin retires. Neville Chamberlain forms another National government.

• On 12 December, Japanese troops commit 'Rape of Nanking' atrocities during their invasion of China (occupation ends 1945). About a quarter of a million Chinese are killed.

• The photocopier is patented in the United States by C F Carlson

• Golden Gate bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge, is completed in San Francisco.

• Nylon (a new word made from the abbreviations for New York and London), the first synthetic fibre, is patented by the US chemicals company Du Pont.

• Pablo Picasso paints Guernica, a mural that depicts the horrors of the Fascist bombing of the Basque town of Guernica (27 April) during the Spanish Civil War.

• In Germany, the Nazis mount an exhibition of 'degenerate art', which includes paintings by Jewish, left-wing and modernist artists.

• American cartoon film-maker Walt Disney releases Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

• German composer Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, which sets medieval poems to a deliberately primitive rhythm, is first performed.

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