1937

1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (dominical letter C) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1937th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 937th year of the 2nd millennium, the 37th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1930s decade.

Events

January

General Motors

General Motors Company, commonly known as GM, is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, that designs, manufactures, markets and distributes vehicles and vehicle parts and sells financial services. General Motors produces vehicles in 37 countries under thirteen brands: Alpheon, Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Holden, HSV, Opel, Vauxhall, Wuling, Baojun, Jie Fang, UzDaewoo. General Motors holds a 20% stake in IMM, and a 77% stake in GM Korea. It also has a number of joint-ventures, including Shanghai GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling and FAW-GM in China, GM-AvtoVAZ in Russia, Ghandhara Industries in Pakistan, GM Uzbekistan, General Motors India, General Motors Egypt, and Isuzu Truck South Africa. General Motors employs 212,000 people and does business in more than 120 countries. General Motors is divided into five business segments: GM North America (GMNA), Opel Group, GM International Operations (GMIO), GM South America (GMSA), and GM Financial. As part of its 2009 bankruptcy restructuring the current company, General Motors Company LLC, ("new GM"), was formed in 2009, after the bankruptcy of the General Motors Corporation ("old GM"). The new company purchased the majority of the assets of "old GM", including the name "General Motors".

Chevrolet

Chevrolet (/ʃɛvrəˈleɪ/ shev-rə-LAY), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet and ousted General Motors founder William C. Durant started the company on November 3, 1911 as the Chevrolet Motor Car Company. Durant used the Chevrolet Motor Car Company to acquire a controlling stake in General Motors with a reverse merger occurring on May 2, 1918 and propelled himself back to the GM presidency. After Durant's second ousting in 1919, Alfred Sloan, with his maxim "a car for every purse and purpose," would pick the Chevrolet brand to become the volume leader in the General Motors family, selling mainstream vehicles to compete with Henry Ford's Model T in 1919 and overtaking Ford as the best-selling car in the United States by 1929.

Chevrolet-branded vehicles are sold in most automotive markets worldwide, with the notable exception of Oceania, where GM is represented by its Australian subsidiary, Holden. In 2005, Chevrolet was relaunched in Europe, primarily selling vehicles built by GM Daewoo of South Korea with the tagline "Daewoo has grown up enough to become Chevrolet", a move rooted in General Motors' attempt to build a global brand around Chevrolet. With the reintroduction of Chevrolet to Europe, GM intended Chevrolet to be a mainstream value brand, while GM's traditional European standard-bearers, Opel of Germany, and Vauxhall of England would be moved upmarket. However, GM reversed this move in late 2013, announcing that the brand would be withdrawn from Europe, with the exception of the Camaro and Corvette in 2016. Chevrolet vehicles will continue to be marketed in the CIS states, including Russia. After General Motors fully acquired GM Daewoo in 2011 to create GM Korea, the last usage of the Daewoo automotive brand was discontinued in its native South Korea and succeeded by Chevrolet.

Julien Bryan

Julien Hequembourg Bryan (23 May 1899 in Titusville, Pennsylvania – 20 October 1974) was an American photographer, filmmaker, and documentarian. He is best known for documenting the daily life in Poland, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1939. He was honored with „Zasłużony dla Kultury Polskiej" ("Merit for Polish culture") during his last visit in Poland (1974) for showing the truth about the Invasion of Poland.

Before World War II

Bryan was a son of an elder in the Presbyterian Church with a long missionary tradition.

At seventeen after graduating from high school, he volunteered to serve American Field Service for the French Army in World War I, driving an ambulance in Verdun and the Argonne, and wrote a book Ambulance 464 about this experience illustrated by his photographs

He graduated from Princeton University in 1921 and finished Union Theological Seminary, though he chose not to be ordained as a minister. Afterwards he directed YMCA in Brooklyn, NY At this time Bryan started traveling abroad taking photographs, making films and writing travelogues along the way. He funded his travels by giving slideshow lectures about countries he visited and by selling his films to various companies including ERPI. Many of the films from those travels can be found in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive. Those human-interest movies chronicle travels through China, Caucasus and Georgia (1933), Soviet Union (1930 and 1935), Poland (1936), Germany (1937), Switzerland and the Netherlands (1939). His films and photographs from Nazi Germany chronicled party rallies, daily life on the streets, anti-Jewish propaganda and Nazi leaders. They were incorporated into two ’’March of Time’’ films. His slide lectures were held in concert halls including Carnegie Hall.

Louis Chevrolet

Louis-Joseph "Louis" Chevrolet (December 25, 1878 – June 6, 1941) was a Swiss-born American race car driver of French descent, co-founder of the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in 1911, and a founder in 1916 of the Frontenac Motor Corporation, which made racing parts for Ford's Model T.

Biography

The second child of Joseph-Félicien and Marie-Anne Angéline, née Mahon, Louis-Joseph Chevrolet was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Canton of Neuchâtel, a center of watchmaking in northwestern Switzerland. In 1886, Chevrolet's family left Switzerland to live in Beaune, in the Côte-d'Or département of France. There, as a young man, Louis developed his mechanical skills and interest in bicycle racing.

Early career

Chevrolet worked for the Roblin mechanics shop from 1895 to 1899. He then went to Paris, where he worked for a short time before emigrating to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1900 to work as a mechanic. The following year, he moved to New York City, where he worked briefly for a fellow Swiss immigrant's engineering company, then moved to the Brooklyn operations of the French car manufacturer de Dion-Bouton.