Timeline April 1927

Events in April 1927 9

• 1868 – 1927 Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) Died 15 April 1927, aged 58 Gaston Leroux was a French journalist and novelist. He wrote The Phantom of the Opera and the locked-room mystery The Mystery of the Yellow Room.
• 1889 – 1927 Li Dazhao (1889-1927) Died 28 April 1927, aged 37 Li Dazhao was a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party and one of the first Chinese intellectuals to promote Marxism. The warlord Zhang Zuolin had him executed in Beijing.
• 1927 – 2006 Ferenc Puskás The Galloping Major Leader of the "Magical Magyars" and Real Madrid icon; the FIFA Puskás Award is named in his honor.
• 1927 Napoléon premieres Abel Gance's epic debuts at the Paris Opéra Abel Gance's silent epic about the early life of Napoleon Bonaparte premiered at the Paris Opéra. It introduced Polyvision, a three-screen widescreen effect, and used new moving-camera techniques.
• 1927 Shanghai massacre Chiang Kai-shek purges communists from the Nationalist movement Nationalist troops and allied gangsters attacked communists and labour unions in Shanghai, killing hundreds of people and arresting many more. The purge ended the first alliance between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. It is usually treated as the start of the Chinese Civil War.
• 1927 – 2022 Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022) Died 31 December 2022, aged 95 German theologian who led the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 and in 2013 became the first pope in six centuries to resign.
• 1927 – 2008 Phil Hill The American Champion The first American-born driver to win the Formula 1 World Championship (1961).
• 1927 Great Mississippi Flood The most destructive river flood in US history The Mississippi River broke through levees across seven states, and the Mounds Landing crevasse gave way on 21 April. Around 70,000 square kilometres were flooded and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. The disaster pushed many African Americans to move north and led to the Flood Control Act of 1928.
• 1927 – 2006 Coretta Scott King (1927-2006) Died 30 January 2006, aged 78 Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr. and a civil rights leader in her own right, died following a stroke and complications from ovarian cancer. She had continued civil rights activism for decades after her husband's assassination. Her funeral was attended by four US presidents.