August 24, 1937

1937Moshood Abiola, Nigerian businessman and politician (died 1998)^[†]

Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, also known as M. K. O. Abiola, was a Nigerian business magnate, publisher, and politician. He was the honorary supreme military commander of the Oyo Empire and an aristocrat of the Egba clan.

1937Susan Sheehan, Austrian-American journalist and author^[†]

Susan Sheehan is an Austrian-born American writer.

1937Spanish Civil War: the Basque Army surrenders to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement.^[†]

The Spanish Civil War was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic and included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists. The opposing Nationalists who established the Spanish State were an alliance of fascist Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, or a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, or between fascism and communism. The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.

1937Spanish Civil War: Sovereign Council of Asturias and León is proclaimed in Gijón.^[†]

The Sovereign Council of Asturias and León, was an unrecognized state in northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Proclaimed on 6 September 1936, it was self-declared sovereign on 24 August 1937, while the region was occupied on 20 October 1937 by Franco's military forces. Belarmino Tomás was the Sovereign Council's first and only President. The capital of the short-lived state was Gijón.