Year 1937 Fun Facts, Trivia, and History Events

This quick read presents a collection of fun facts, trivia, and history events from the year 1937. Discover the year’s top news stories, most influential people, sports facts, historic firsts, entertainment trivia, and much more.

Take a journey through history in just minutes.

1. In 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge, Gone with the Wind, and America's high unemployment rate were all on center stage. Chicken noodle soup and rice pudding were Depression-era staples, and Jerry and Joan were two of the most popular baby names.
2. For a nickel, you could buy a bottle of Coke, a Three Musketeers bar, or two packs of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum. You could also buy a freshly baked cherry pie for 25 cents, a Monopoly board game for $2.00, or a raccoon coat for $98.00.
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D-New York) was the president of the United States, and John Nance Garner (D-Texas) was the nation’s vice president.
4. In 1937, Americans were slowly and painfully digging their way out of the Great Depression. The nation's unemployment rate remained stubbornly high at 14.3 percent, and an estimated 7,700,000 Americans were still out of work and could not find a job.
5. The recession of 1937-38, sometimes called “the recession within the Depression,” was a major setback to the American economy. CEPR.org tells us that “Real GDP fell 11% and industrial production fell 32%, making it the third-worst US recession in the 20th century (after 1929-32 and 1920-21).” As with other recessions, the 1937-38 recession was attributed to “a tightening of fiscal and monetary policy.”
6. American companies and brands established during 1937 included the Dart Container Corporation, Dunham's Sports, the Heritage Press, Krispy Kreme, Pepperidge Farm, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, T. Rowe Price, and Zep.
7. Consumer products launched during the year were Beer Nuts, Chex breakfast cereal, the clothes dryer, Kix breakfast cereal, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Old Spice grooming products, Parkay margarine, PF Flyers, Ragu pasta sauce, Suave grooming products, and the Three Musketeers candy bar.
8. During January and February, weeks of heavy rain caused the Ohio River to flood parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. An estimated 350 people lost their lives, and another million were left homeless. Flood-related damage was estimated at $500 million, which is about $7 billion in today's money. Some of the hardest hit areas were Cairo (Illinois), Cincinnati (Ohio), Evansville (Indiana), Huntington (West Virginia), Jeffersonville (Indiana), Louisville (Kentucky), Parkersburg (West Virginia), Point Pleasant (West Virginia), Portsmouth (Ohio), Steubenville (Ohio), and Wheeling (West Virginia).
9. January 8: The temperature plunged to -50° Fahrenheit in San Jacinto, Nevada, setting a new state record.
10. January 19: MLB players Cy Young, Tris Speaker, and Nap Lajoie were all inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
11. January 20: President Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to be inaugurated during January. For the first time, the presidential Inauguration Day was held on January 20 instead of on March 4, thanks to the ratification of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933.
12. January 25: The soap opera The Guiding Light (1937-52) debuted on the NBC Red Network. (In 1952, The Guiding Light premiered as a daytime soap on CBS television and ran for the next 57 years.)
13. February 5: President Roosevelt announced a plan "to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it more efficient." However, FDR's "war on the court was short-lived, and it was defeated by a crafty Chief Justice and Roosevelt's party members."
14. February 11: The 44-day sit-down strike at a General Motors factory in Flint, Michigan, ended. As a result of the walkout, "General Motors agreed to recognize the United Auto Workers as the sole bargaining agent in all GM plants."
15. February 12: The Cleveland Rams was granted an NFL franchise.
16. February 13: The NFL gave the Boston Redskins permission to move to Washington, DC, and also to share Griffith Stadium with the Washington Senators MLB team.
17. Between February 27 and March 9, German police officers rounded up an estimated 2,000 "convicted offenders" and incarcerated them in concentration camps.
18. On March 1, Connecticut issued the first permanent automobile license plates.
19. On March 4, at the Ninth Academy Awards, The Great Ziegfeld won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Dance Direction. Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town) won an Oscar for Best Director, Paul Muni (The Story of Louis Pasteur) won an Oscar for Best Actor, and Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld) won an Oscar for Best Actress.
20. March 18: A gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas, claimed the lives of 295 students and teachers.
21. March 23: PPC streetcars first appeared on the streets of Los Angeles.
22. May 3: Margaret Mitchell won a Pulitzer Prize for her epic novel, Gone with the Wind.
23. May 6: The German airship, Hindenburg, exploded while attempting to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst (New Jersey) Naval Air Engineering Station. Thirteen passengers, 22 crew members, and one member of the ground crew were killed. (Just so you know, the Hindenburg disaster marked the end of an era for airships.)
24. May 25: At the 13th Scripps National Spelling Bee, the winner was fourteen-year-old Waneeta Beckley of Kentucky, who correctly spelled the word "promiscuous."
25. May 27: The Golden Gate Bridge, which connects the City and County of San Francisco with Marin County to the north, opened to vehicular traffic. The bridge took four years to build and was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
26. June 30: The UK instituted the first 999 emergency call telephone service.
27. July 2: American aviator Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan "mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during a circumnavigation flight." After multiple searches, Earhart was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939.
28. In September, Congress passed the Housing Act of 1937, which focused on the construction of nationwide public housing units "to replenish the depleted national rental housing stock."
29. September 26: The Shadow, one of the most popular radio programs in history, aired for the first time in the United States.
30. In 1937, the first hospital-based blood bank in the U.S. opened at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Smithsonian magazine explains that “The cost to open the original blood bank was $1,500, according to the Cook County Health & Hospitals System. In its first year of operation, it was used in 1,364 blood transfusions.”
31. There were 646 radio stations across the U.S., and nearly 75 percent of Americans owned a radio receiver. In 1937, you could buy a Philco table-top radio for $14.00, which is about $300.00 in today's money.
32. Dr. Wallace Carothers received a patent for nylon.
33. The first Krispy Kreme doughnut was sold in Salem, North Carolina.
34. SPAM (Special Processed American Meat) was introduced to the American diet.
35. The world's largest flower bloomed at the New York Botanical Garden. The giant Sumatran Titan Arum was 8 1/2 feet high and had a diameter of 4 feet.
36. In 1937, Look magazine (1937-71), Modern Photography (1937-89), and Travel + Leisure all began publishing.
37. Gone with the Wind was the most popular fiction book, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy was the most popular radio program, and Sing, Sing, Sing was the most popular song.
38. Top celebrities in 1937 included Fred Astaire, Joan Blondell, James Cagney, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Olivia de Havilland, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Ginger Rogers, John Wayne, and Mae West.
39. Famous people born in 1937 were Billy Dee Williams, Colin Powell, Connie Francis, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Madeleine Albright, Morgan Freeman, Roberta Flack, and Suzanne Pleschette.
40. Here are some sports facts from 1937: The Washington Redskins were the NFL champs, the Detroit Red Wings clinched the Stanley Cup, and the New York Yankees won the World Series.
41. In 1937 as well, the words "bubble gum," "green light," "green thumb," "ID card," "mammogram," "person of interest," "press conference," "rat race," "Russian roulette," "salad bar," "skull session," "trailer park," and "washateria" all appeared in print for the first time.

References:

1. https://popculturemadness.com/1937-history-trivia-and-fun-facts/
2. https://www.infoplease.com/year/1937
3. https://www.history.com/a-year-in-history/1937
4. https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/1937
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937
6. https://www.moviefone.com/movies/1937/western/
7. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/what-caused-recession-1937-38
8. https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1937
9. https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1937.html
10. https://www.foodreference.com/html/html/food-history-1936.html
11. https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/depression-era-recipes/
12. https://www.mclib.info/Research/Local-History-Genealogy/Historic-Prices/Historic-Prices-1930s/Historic-Prices-1937

© 2026 Gregory DeVictor