General
Population: 1.87 Billion*
- Entertainment: Music includes Swanee, Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo, Dardanella, Alcoholic Blues, A Good Man is Hard to Find
Music includes Manuel de Falla, Fritz Kreisler, Oskar Straus, Richard Strauss, Harry Tierney
Adolf Busch starts Busch String Quartet
Max Reinhardt opens Oresteia play
Art includes Ernst Barlach (sculpture), Kandinsky, Klee, Max Liebermann, Monet, Munch, Picasso, Ferdinand Leger
Writers include Sherwood Anderson, Joseph Conrad, John Drinkwater, Hermann Hesse, Hugh Lofting (Dr. Doolittle), Upton Sinclair,
Hugh Walpole, Rabindranath Tagore, Carl Sandburg, JM Keynes, Count Hermann von Keyserling
Films include Madame Dubarry, J'Accuse!, Half-Caste, The Devil's Passkey
"Zeigfeld's Follies" debuts
Architect Hans Poelzig works
Hans Arp and Max Ernst create collages
- Medicine: Flu Pandemic kills 20-100 million
- Politics: Treaty of Versailles punishes Germany for WWI
Treaties of St. Germain, Neuilly and Trianon settle WWI
Woodrow Wilson wins Nobel Peace Prize
War between British Indian and Afghan forces
- Science: Rutherford splits atom
Sommerfeld writes about spectroscopy
Aston builds mass-spectrograph
Bherknes discovers causes of cyclones
Goddard publishes on rocketry
Thomas Hunt Morgan publishes about genetics
First experiments with short-wave radio
- Sports: Mechanical rabbit developed for modern greyhound racing
Jack Dempsey takes world boxing title
Suzanne Lenglen begins to dominate women's tennis
- Technology: First self-dial telephones
- Transportation: First transatlantic flight by U.S. Navy NC-4 seaplane
Alcock and Brown make first non-stop flight across Atlantic
Ross and Keith Smith fly from London to Australia
- Deaths: Businessman Frank W Woolworth, Industrialist Andrew Carnegie, English physicist William Crookes, German chemist Emil Fischer,
English physicist John William Strutt (Baron Rayleigh), Swiss chemist Alfred Werner, Swiss Botanist Simon Schwendener, Renoir, William Michael Rossetti,
German philosopher Ernst Haeckel, Painter Sir Edward Poynter, Count Taisuke Itagaki, Sir Evelyn Wood – first British Sirdar of Egyptian army,
Impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir, Theodore Roosevelt, Cosmetic manufacturer Mme. C.J. Walker, George I of Greece, Chemist Alfred Werner,
Murder of Rosa Luxemburg the German socialist leader, Assassination of German socialist leader Hugo Haase,
South African statesman Louis Botha, First French-Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier
Africa
- South Africa: Jan Christian Smuts succeeds Botha as Prime Minister
- Transvaal: ANC demonstrates against pass laws
Americas
- Canada: Mackenzie King becomes Canadian Liberal leader
General strike in Winnipeg CAN
- Mexico: Emiliano Zapata assassinated
- Peru: End of President Pardo and return of progressive President Leguia
Asia
- China: Ancient dragon bones disproven and shown to be horses and deer
- India: Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas) begins passive resistance to British Rule
British troops fire on Nationalist rioters in Amritsar killing 379 wounding over 1200
- Japan: gains in China confirmed by Treaty of Versailles
- Java: Mt. Keluit erupts
Europe
- General: Treaty of Versailles signed by Germany under protest - sets up new countries in Eastern Europe
League of Nations forms
Germany agrees to give Alsace-Lorraine back to France and lands to Belgium Czechoslovakia and Poland then pay reparations and remain unarmed
Daily air service begins between London and Paris
Jazz arrives in Europe
- Austria: Territory dramatically reduced
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye ending Habsburg monarchy and recognizes states of Czechoslovakia Poland Yugoslavia and Hungary
Hapsburg dynasty exiled
Death penalty abolished
- Belgium: Belgian war damage est $7.6 billion
- Bulgaria: Under treaty of Neuilly – Bulgaria cedes territories to Romania
- Czechoslovakia: Hungarian Red troops invade Czechoslovakia but are forced to withdraw
- Finland: War between Finland and Russia
- France: Peace conference opens at Versailles
Wilson presides over League of Nations in Paris
- Germany: Economic depression
Weimar assembly takes over
Spartakist (Communist) uprising in Berlin is crushed
Karl Liebknecht the left-wing socialist murdered by counterrevolutionary Freikorps officers together with Rosa Luxemburg the socialist leader
Friedrich Ebert named President of German Republic
Bavarian Premier Kurt Wisner assassinated
Gustav Bauer follows Scheidemann as German Chancellor
German fleet scuttled at Scapa Flow
Church and State separated
New universities in Hamburg Posen Bratislava and Cologne
Bauhaus founded and built
- Great Britain: Aviators Alcock and Brown cross atlantic nonstop
Cenotaph unveiled in London
Prince of Wales tours Canada and US
Lady Astor takes seat in House of Commons as first woman
First two-minutes silence in Britain on anniversary of armistice day
Church Assembly established by British Parliament
- Hungary: Soviet government formed by Bela Kin in Budapest - overthrown
- Ireland: Treaty in Ireland lets Sinn Féin set up parliament under Eamon de Valera and declare country republic
Carson demands repeal of Home Rule
Michael Collins forms IRA (Irish Republican Army)
- Italy: Fascists organized by Mussolini
Nitti succeeds Orlando as Prime Minister
Regency of Carnaro claimed by both Italy and Yugoslavia
- Poland: Plans made for independent state
Ignace Paderewski named Premier
- Russia: Communist International founded by Lenin
Soviet Republic set up
Anti-Bolshevik army of Admiral AV Kolchak defeated in the Urals
Civil war - Red Army takes Ufa – beginning of White defeat
War with Finland
- Spain: Juan Belmonte the Spanish matador kills 200 bulls in 109 corridas
- Yugoslavia: Italian Nationalist Gabriel d'Annunzio takes port of Fiume (Rijeka) from Yugoslavia
Red Army enters Crimea
British troops withdraw from Murmansk, Red Army takes Omsk and captures Kharkov, Republic of Prekmurje forms briefly
Middle East
- Afghanistan: Amanullah becomes Amir (Emir)
- Syria: Fighting between French and Syrians at Baalbek
Pacific
- Antarctica: Shackleton publishes regarding trek