Jelly Roll Morton and his new group of seven, the Red Hot Peppers, record their first classic, Black Bottom Stomp

Ely Culbertson devotes his playing skill and his promotional abilities to the new contract version of bridge

23-year-old US crooner Bing Crosby makes his first record, singing I''ve Got the Girl with the Paul Whiteman band

US author Ernest Hemingway succeeds with his second novel, The Sun also Rises (also known as Fiesta)

US dancer and choreographer Martha Graham opens a School of Contemporary Dance in New York

Clara Bow stars in It, the silent film that gives her her famous nickname – the 'It' Girl

Mae West is sentenced to eight days in gaol when Sex, written, produced and starred in by herself on Broadway, is judged to be obscene

US author Thornton Wilder achieves world-wide success with his second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

US aviator Charles Lindbergh, in his single-engine plane Spirit of St Louis, flies solo across the Atlantic from New York to Paris

US golfer Walter Hagen wins his fifth PGA Championship, and the fourth in succession

DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy, dramatized with a new title by himself and his wife Dorothy, has a great success on Broadway and in London

Gutzon Borglum begins the massive task of carving portraits of four US presidents in the rock face at Mount Rushmore

In spite of widespread protest and grave judicial doubt Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are sent to the electric chair

Although not the first film with synchronized sound, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson in the title role does much to popularize the 'talkies'

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy star together for the first time in the silent film Duck Soup

William Randolph Hearst by now owns a nation-wide string of some 28 daily newspapers

Irish author Frank Harris publishes the fourth and final volume of My Life and Loves

Don Marquis publishes archy and mehitabel, the first collection of his sketches about archy the cockroach and mehitabel the alley cat

President Coolidge issues a famously terse statement: 'I do not choose to run for President in 1928'

11-year-old Yehudi Menuhin gives a sensational performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in the Carnegie Hall, conducted by Fritz Busch

Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern open on Broadway with an immensely influential American musical, Show Boat

'Pine Top' Smith records Pinetop's Boogie-Woogie, the first recording to be labelled boogie-woogie

Gershwin's orchestral work An American in Paris (with parts for four taxi-horns) has its first performance in New York

Mickey Mouse makes his first appearance in Walt Disney's short animated film Steamboat Willie

George Balanchine creates Apollo for Ballets Russes, to music by Igor Stravinksy