General
Population: 2.24 Billion*
- Entertainment: Picasso paints Guernica
Edgar Bergen and puppet Charlie McCarthy debut on television
Orff's Carmina Burana
Musicians include Count Basie, Fred Astaire (They Can't Take That Away From Me), Eddy Duchin (De-lovely), Tommy Dorsey and Sophie Tucker
Popular songs include Bei Mir Bist Du Schon, The Lady is a Tramp, Whistle While You Work, I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm
Films include "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (Disney), "Camille" (Garbo)
Art includes Picasso (Guernica), Klee, Joan Miro
Writers include Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Sartre, John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men), Aldous Huxley
Music includes Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Rodgers and Hart, Carl Orff (Carmina Burana)
- Finance: Keyes publishes regarding money
- Medicine: Yellow fever vaccine created
First account of placebo effect published by Cornell after non-consensual medical study
Insulin used to control diabetes
- Science: Discovery of positrons
Kreb's Cycle discovered
Chloroplast reactions discovered in plants
Crystalline vitamin A and K concentrates first obtained
Marietta Blau examines cosmic radiation using photographic plate
Meteoroid "Hermes" passes between Earth and the moon
Radiometric dating invented
Radio telescope put into operation
- Technology: Nylon patented (see 1934) for Du Pont
First jet engine built by Frank Whittle
Turing machine (computer/simulator) invented
- Deaths: Lord Ernest Rutherford, Guglielmo Marconi, John D Rockerfeller, Andrew Mellon, Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin, JM Barrie
Africa
- Egypt: Membership in League of Nations
Anglo-Egyptian Treaty restricts British forces to Canal Zone for 20 years
Americas
- Argentina: Ortiz elected after period of instability
- Brazil: Vargas becomes dictator
Asia
- General: Sino-Japanese War begins as Japan attacks China
- China: China under internal conflict with Communists- absorbed into WWII
China loses control of most large cities to Japan (Shanghai and Beiing (Peking)) - "Rape of Nanking" - 100,000 troops massacred
Chinese and Communists unite to fight Japanese
Chiang Kai-shek unites with Communists – - led by Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai – Chinese government makes Chungking its capital
- India: Autonomy
All-India Congress Party wins elections
- Japan: Aggression in Asia
Unit 731 in Japan begins human experimentation until end of WWII
Prince Konoye named Japanese Premier – aggressive Japanese war policy begins
- New Guinea: Batana, the volcanic crater under water in New Guinea erupts
Europe
- General: Italy and Yugoslavia sign Belgrade Pact
Britain signs naval agreements with Germany and the USSR
- Austria: Amnesty declared for illegal Austrian Nazis
- Belgium: Germany guarantees indisolability of Belgium
- Czechoslovakia: German Czechs demand full rights
Death of first Czechoslovakian president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk
Riots in Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia – Sudeten Germans leave Czech parliament
- France: Lein Blum resigns and Camille Chautemps becomes French Premier
French armament factories nationalized
Repairs completed on Rheims Cathedral in France after heavy damage in WWI
- Germany: Martin Niemoller a Protestant parson of Berlin interned in concentration camp by Hitler
End of independent German Free City of Lübeck
Albert Speer becomes Hitler's chief architect
Catholic and Protestant leaders persecuted in Germany - Nazis rally at Nuremberg
- Great Britain: King George VI of England coronated
Death of British statesman Austen Chamberlain
Lord Halifax visits Hitler – beginning of policy of appeasement
Imperial Conference held in London
Stanley Baldwin retires – Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of Britain
Matrimonial Causes Bill facilitates divorce proceedings in England
ARP introduced in England
London Bus Strike
Duke of Windsor marries Mrs. Wallis Simpson
Two London papers merge
Billy Butlin opens first commercial holiday camp in Britain
Lord Nuffield founds his college at Oxford
- Ireland: Eamonn de Valera becomes prime minister
Irish Free State renamed Eire
- Italy: Council of Corporations taken over by government
Italy joins German-Japanese alliance
Mussolini visits Libya and Berlin
Schuschnigg and Mussolini meet in Venice
Italy joins anti-Comintern Pact
Italy withdraws from League of Nations
- Poland: Poland refuses to sign agreement to return Danzig to Germany
- Soviet Union: Moscow show trial against Karl radek and other political leaders
Eight Soviet generals executed
- Spain: Spanish rebels take Malaga destroy Guernica and Gijon - German planes bomb Basque town of Guernica
Spanish government moves to Barcelona
Franco begins naval blockade
Government troops open offensive at Teruel
Civil War continues
Picasso's Guernica shows disstruction in Spanish Civil War
Middle East
- Aden: Aden becomes British Crown Colony (South Arabia - became Yemen)
- Iraq: Bakr Sidqi of Iraq assassinated
- Palestine: Conflict between Jews and Arabs
Royal Commission on Palestine recommends the establishment of Arab and Jewish states
Israel Philharmonic founded in Tel Aviv
Pacific
- Australia: Start of 8 years of droughts in SW
Fire
- New Zealand: National Party formed in opposition to Labour Party