* 1937 – Merle Haggard, American singer-songwriter and musician

* 1937 – Peter Maivia, Samoan wrestler ( d. 1982 )

* 1937 – Billy Dee Williams, American actor

* 1937 – Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.

* 1856 – William Martin Conway, English art critic and mountaineer ( d. 1937 )

* 1937 – Igor Volk, Soviet astronaut

* 1937 – The Philippines holds a plebiscite for Filipino women on whether they should be extended the right to suffrage ; over 90 % would vote in the affirmative.

* 1876 – Orso Mario Corbino, Italian physicist ( d. 1937 )

* 1937 – Alice Coltrane, American pianist and composer ( d. 2007 )

* 1937 – Tommy Sands, American actor and singer

* 1937 – Baden Powell de Aquino, Brazilian guitarist ( d. 2000 )

* 1937 – Barbara Windsor, English actress

* 1845 – André Bessette, Canadian pastor and saint ( d. 1937 )

* 1937 – The Battle of Shanghai begins.

* 1937 – The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, the effect of which is to render marijuana and all its by-products illegal.

* 1937 – Billy Cannon, American football player

* 1937 – Garth Hudson, Canadian musician, composer, and producer ( The Band )

* 1937 – Josip Broz Tito reads the resolution " Manifesto of constitutional congress of KPH " to the constitutive congress of KPH ( Croatian Communist Party ) in woods near Samobor.

* 1858 – Gaston Doumergue, French politician ( d. 1937 )

* 1937 – Al D ' Amato, American politician

* 1937 – Steven Berkoff, English actor

* 1937 – Roland Burris, American politician

* 1937 – Duncan Sharpe, Pakistani cricketer

* 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica ( or Gernika in Basque ), Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe.

A failed sit-down strike in 1937 ended in violence, as loyalist workers and local dairy farmers beat many of the strikers as they attempted to leave the plant.

The CIO met with dramatic initial successes in 1937, with the UAW winning union recognition at General Motors Corporation after a tumultuous forty-four day sit-down strike, while the Steel Workers Organizing Committee ( SWOC ) signed a collective bargaining agreement with U. S. Steel.

On January 3, 1937, workers at the plant sat down on the job ; Fisher Plant No. 2 later joined in the sit-down strike.

Production at the factory was halted during the Great Depression for a short time and there was a famous sit-down strike in 1937.

* May 25 – The Remington Rand strike of 1936 – 1937 begins, spawning the notorious " Mohawk Valley formula ", a corporate plan for strikebreaking.

Hall was a leader of the 1937 “ Little Steel ” strike, so called because it was directed against Republic Steel, Bethlehem Steel and the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, as opposed to the industry giant U. S. Steel.

After the 1937 strike, Hall focused on party activities instead of union work, and became the leader of the CPUSA in Youngstown in 1937.

He negotiated with RKO to strike out on his own with A Damsel in Distress in 1937 with an inexperienced, non-dancing Joan Fontaine, unsuccessfully as it turned out.

Republic Steel Strike Riot Newsreel Footage is a 1937 documentary film which tells the story of a strike at Republic Steel on Memorial Day, May 26, 1937, which escalated into a massacre in which 10 workers were killed, documented by this film.

The first tornado of two to strike Magnet happened on June 18, 1937.

A second strike in 1937 was broken in a similar fashion, with two striking workers shot and killed and the National Guard forced to intervene.

In 1938 after Disney's success with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Paramount gave the Fleischers permission to produce a feature film and Fleischer studio relocated itself from New York to Miami, Florida in order to avoid organized unions, which became a threat to the studio after a five-month strike occurred among Fleischer Studio workers in late 1937.

It helped secure rail centers during the railroad workers ' strike of 1922, helped out with the aftermath of the Poplar Bluff tornado of 1927, and worked on the Mississippi River levees during the floods of 1927 and 1937.

Paramount lent Fleischer the money for a larger studio, which was built in Miami, Florida to take advantage of tax breaks and to break up union activity resulting from a bitter 1937 strike.

In 1937, film production at Fleischer's studio was affected by a five month strike, which kept his cartoons off theater screens through the rest of the year.

Animators of Fleischer Studios went on strike in 1937 when Max Fleischer fired 15 employees, all who were a part of American Art-Union.

On April 8, 1937, the CIO-backed General Motors plant in Oshawa went on strike, demanding 8-hour workdays, a seniority system, and recognition of their CIO-affiliated United Auto Workers union.

However, the strike held out, and Hepburn capitulated on April 23, 1937.

GM obtained a second injunction against the strike on February 1, 1937.

In addition, after the west coast longshoremen organized in the strike led by Harry Bridges in 1934 split from the International Longshoremen's Association in 1937 to form the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, the ILWU joined the CIO.

That strike ended in February 1937 after Michigan's governor Frank Murphy played the role of mediator, negotiating recognition of the UAW by General Motors.

The TWU won the right to represent New York City's public transit workers after several years of clandestine organizing, a series of small strikes, a sitdown strike in the BMT's Kent Avenue powerhouse in 1937 and an overwhelming victory among IRT employees in an NLRB election several months later.

* Remington Rand strike of 1936 – 1937

On 19 June 1937 a strike in protest of working conditions, wages, racism and exploitation began in the oilfields in the southern Trinidad.