General
Population: 2.00 Billion*
- Entertainment: Writers include James Joyce (Ulysses), TS Eliot (The Waste Land), Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt),
HL Mencken (Defense of Women), WB Yeats (Later Poems)
Music includes Irving Berlin, Ottorino Respighi, Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith
Popular artists include Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Lambert Murphy (I Dream of Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair)
Victor Silvester becomes world dancing champion
Emily Post publishes "Etiquette"
Writers include Henry Ford, Willa Cather, TS Eliot (The Wasteland), F Scott Fitzgerald, John Galsworthy, Maxim Gorki, Herman Hesse (Siddhartha), James Joyce (Ulysses published in Paris – 500 copies burned),
SH Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis, Katherine Mansfield, AA Milne, Hugh Walpole, Virginia Woolf, AE Housman, Eugene O'Neill, John Dewey, Herbert Hoover
Films include Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, Nosferatu, Nanook of the North, Last of the Mohicans, Glorius Adventure
Art includes Delaunay, Kandinsky elected professor at Bauhaus, Max Beckmann, Max Beerbohm, Clive Bell, Paul Klee,
David Low (political cartoons), John Marin, Joan Miro
Andre Masson experiments with cubism
Marc Chagall leaves Russia for Paris
TS Eliot founds literary journal
- Fashion: "Classic Style" prevails in women's fashions
- Medicine: Insulin first used to treat diabetes
Carrel discovers white corpuscles
- Politics: Washington Conference agrees Pacific Treaty between Britain France Japan and US
Nansen Passports used as travel documents for stateless persons
- Religion: Pope Benedict XV dies, Pope Pius XI elected (Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti Desio)
Pope gets Vatican City recognized as a sovereign state, signs Lateran treaty
Benedictines of Solesmes (Gregorian chants) return to their abbey
- Science: Albert Einstein wins Nobel Prize
Aston with mass spectrography
Blackett experiments with transmutation
Niels Bohr wins Nobel Prize
Boclentz measures star intensities
Evans and Bishop discover antisterility Vitamin E
Hegrovsky investigates aluminum
TH Morgan experiments with fruit flies
First dinosaur eggs discovered
- Technology: First 3-D Movie
Massolle and Vogt develop unsuccessful sound film system "Tri-Ergon"
Harwood invents self-winding wristwatch
First technicolor film (Germany)
- Travel: Mercedes-Daimler cars dominate racing
Austin Seven popularizes motoring
- Deaths: Chocolatier George Cadbury, English singer Marie Lloyd, Lillian Russell, Alexander Graham Bell, English explorer John Moresby,
English naturalist WH Hudson, Malaria pioneer Sir Patrick Manson, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, English cartoonist Sir Leslie Ward,
Irish politician Erskine Childers executed, Boer general Christiaan De Wet, Field marshal Sir Henry Wilson assassinated,
English cartoonist Leslie Ward "Spy", French writer Marcel Proust, American preacher Lyman Abbott, Store innovator John Wanamaker,
French dramatist Henri Bataille, Mori Ogai (modern Japanese literature), English astronomer Sir William Christie, Pope Benedict XV,
Ex-Emperor Charles of Austria
Africa
- General: Drought at horn of Africa
- Egypt: Independence under King Faud I
King Tut's tomb discovered by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon
- South-West Africa: (Namibia) South Africa holds colony of South-West Africa to 1990
Americas
- General: Quake on Chile/Argentina border measures 8.5
- Argentina: End of presidency of Hipolito Irigoyen as Marcelo Torcuato de Alevar becomes president
- Canada: Many Brits and Scots travel to Canada for work
- Chile: Edwards becomes president of League Assembly
Asia
- China: Typhoon kills 60,000
- India: Gandhi sentenced to six years' imprisonment for civil disobedience
- Japan: Washington Naval Agreement limits power in Pacific
Japanese-US naval agreement signed
Launch of Hosho the aircraft carrier
Europe
- General: Treaty of Rapallo with Soviet-German military agreement
Stanislavsky goes on a tour of Europe with Moscow Arts Theater
American cocktail becomes popular in Europe
- Austria: Ignaz Seipel named Federal Chancellor
Geneva Protocol – Austria denounces Anschluss
International Society for Contemporary Music formed in Vienna
International Union for Cultural Cooperation founded in Vienna
Hannes Schneider the Austrian skiing champion opens school
- France: BCG tuberculosis vaccine used
Ramond Poincare succeeds Aristide Briand as Prime Minister
Nouvelles litteraires founded in Paris
- Germany: Walter Rathenau named German Foreign Minister then assassinated by German fanatics
Friedrich Ebert reelected German president
Remarkable gliding flights (3 hours)
Mussolini demands that Black Shirt militia be given cabinet posts
- Great Britain: Liberal party takes control though A Bonar Law (Conservative) becomes Prime Minister succeeds David Lloyd George (Liberal)
Unemployed Glasgow workers undertake hunger march to London
Wilhelm Cuno named German chancellor
P.E.N. club founded in London
LCC County Hall in London completed
BBC 2LO begins broadcast
Lord Rothermere in London inherits "Daily Mail"
Dr. Marie Stopes holds meeting in Queen's Hall London advocating birth control
Unemployment grows in Britain and Scotland
Scottish socialists organize Hunger March
- Greece: King Constantine abdicates – George II succeeds him until 1924 and again from 1935-47
King George V opens new tennis stadium at Wimbledon
- Ireland: Irish free state cuts ties with Britain - 26 of 32 counties leave union
Civil war between Free Staters and Republicans to 1923
- Italy: Mussolini takes power in march on Rome establishing Fascism and demanding that Black Shirt militia be given cabinet posts
Conference of Genoa
King Victor Emmanuel III invites Benito Mussolini to be prime minister
- Lithuania: End of republic of Central Lithuania in Russia area
- Poland: Germany cedes upper Silesia to Poland
President Pilsudski resigns
- USSR: Formation with Lenin as leader
Russia joins with Ukraine, Belorussia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - later with Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (Moldova), Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan
Droughts in Volga and Ukraine regions end killing 5 million
Typhus outbreak
- Vatican City: Pope Pius XI orders Italian clergy not to become part of the Partito Popolare – enables Mussolini
- Yugoslavia: Kingdom of Montenegro annexed to Kingdom of Serbs etc.
Middle East
- Ottoman Empire: Dissolution as preparations for Turkey to become a Republic
Sultan deposed by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk)
Greeks driven out of Izmir (Smyrna) and city is destroyed
- Palestine: League of Nations approves Palestinian mandate
Arab Congress at Nablus rejects British mandate for Palestine
Pacific