• 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 •

Sporting 1937...