Events relating to north america
The US military government is finally withdrawn from Haiti after nineteen years
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers have one of their greatest successes dancing in their fourth film together, Top Hat
The German composer Kurt Weill moves to New York, where he writes Broadway musicals
Frank Lloyd directs Charles Laughton and Clark Gable in a dramatic account of the famous mutiny on the Bounty
George Balanchine's new company, American Ballet, has its first brief season in New York
In Frontier the Japanese-US sculptor Isamu Noguchi designs the first of his many sets for Martha Graham ballets
Frank Lloyd Wright designs Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, for Edgar Kaufmann
US athlete Jesse Owens sets three world records and equals a fourth within the space of less than an hour in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Strikers in Vancouver begin the On-to-Ottawa Trek, to take their grievances to government
Tortilla Flat brings success for the US novelist John Steinbeck
In A Night at the Opera the Marx Brothers make the first of their films as the famous threesome, Groucho, Harpo and Chico
George Gallup founds the American Institute of Public Opinion and becomes the pioneer of modern polling techniques
US seismologist Charles Richter devises a scale for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes
The mighty Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam in 1947) is completed on the Colorado River
US industrialist Howard Hughes sets a new speed record of 352 mph, flying a plane designed by himself

George Gershwin's 'folk opera' Porgy and Bess, based on the novel by DuBose Heyward, opens on Broadway
US jazz pianist William ('count') Basie acquires his own orchestra
The new sound of jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman's touring band brings him the title 'King of Swing'
In Modern Times, the last film featuring the little tramp, Charlie Chaplin sets his character in a mechanistic, impersonal world
Frank Lloyd Wright experiments with prefabrication for low-cost housing in a style he calls Usonian (meaning 'in the US style')
US composer Aaron Copland writes El Salón México, using popular Mexican tunes
US author Margaret Mitchell publishes her one book, which becomes probably the best-selling novel of all time – Gone with the Wind
Paul Robeson sings 'Ol' Man River' in the film of Jerome Kern's Showboat
William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! chronicles the violently destructive rise and fall of a poor Southern white, Thomas Sutpen
At the Berlin Olympics, attended by Hitler, the African-American athlete Jesse Owens sets three new Olympic records and equals a fourth