Home > 1920's: Overview > World Events: Selected Occurences Outside the United States

World Events: Selected Occurences Outside the United States

1920

  • Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introducing Hercule Poirot, is published.
  • Le Côté de Guermantes I (The Guermantes Way, part 1), a section of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), is published in France.
10 Jan.
The Treaty of Versailles takes effect. Signed by the leaders of the victorious Al-lies—the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy—the agreement re-draws the map of Europe, imposes punitive reparations on Germany, and reassigns German colonies; Britain, for example, takes over German East Africa and renames it Tanganyika.
13 Jan.
In a workers' attack on the Reichstag during rioting in Berlin, 44 people killed and 105 are wounded.
17 Jan.
Premier Georges Clemenceau of France is defeated in general elections for the presidency by Paul Deschanel, who is succeeded on 23 September by Alexandre Millerand.
7 Mar.
Russia invades Poland, which on 20 April invades Russia. The conflict between the two countries is temporarily ended by an armistice granting Polish terms on 6 October. Borders between Russia and Poland are established by the Treaty of Riga on 18 March 1921.
10 Mar.
Three hundred thousand workers in India go on strike against British rule. In Jamshedpur British troops fire on protesting strikers.
11 Mar.
The Syrian Congress declares Syria an independent nation and proclaims Prince Faisal king. On 24 March Faisal orders French troops out of his country. French forces under Gen. Pierre Gouraud, French high commander of Syria, occupy Damascus and dethrone King Faisal on 25 July. On 5 September Gouraud declares Lebanon a French mandate separate from Syria.
13 Mar.
Berlin is seized in a coup d'état led by monarchist Dr. Wolfgang Kapp. The coup is put down within a week, and Kapp flees to Stockholm on 16 April.
6 Apr.
French troops occupy Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hamad, and Die burg in an attempt to force German troops to leave the Ruhr, Germany's industrial region. Germany agrees on 8 April to withdraw.
7 Apr.
Italy formally recognizes the state of Albania, which is occupied by Italian troops. Skirmishes between Italian and Albanian soldiers continue until a treaty insuring Albanian sovereignty is signed on 15 July by the two countries.
23-25 Apr.
The Allies grant Armenia independence under United States protection, pronounce Syria a French mandate, declare Mesopotamia a British mandate, and designate Palestine a Jewish state under British protection.
16 May
Joan of Arc is canonized by Pope Benedict XV.
Russia invades Persia, which is occupied by British troops. The British give ground but maintain uneasy control until early February 1921.
17 May
Mexican president Venustiano Carranza, defeated by the triumvirate of Plutarco Elias Calles, Alvaro Obregón, and Aldolfo de la Huerta, flees Mexico City but is captured in Puebla. On 21 May Carranza is assassinated in a Pueblan village by his escorts.
14 June
Max Weber, German economist and sociologist, dies at age fifty-six.
10 July
Peking is placed under martial law after conflict between President Hsu Shihchang and the Chinese military.
12 July
Russia recognizes Lithuanian independence.
23 July
The British East Africa Protectorate is transformed into the colony of Kenya.
24 July
The Treaty of Saint-Germain, designating Austrian boundaries and conditions, takes effect.
9 Aug.
The Treaty of Trianon, defining Hungarian boundaries and conditions, is signed.
10 Aug.
The Treaty of Sèvres, stipulating Turkish boundaries and conditions, is signed.
14 Aug.
The Summer Olympics begin in Antwerp, Belgium.
22 Aug.
In Italy 500,000 workers take over more than five hundred factories in protests over economic and political difficulties.
31 Aug.
Wilhelm Wundt, German philosopher and one of the founders of modern psychology, dies at age eighty-eight.
25 Sept.
Twenty-five are killed in anti-Japanese protests in Gensan, Korea.
26 Sept.
After some five thousand attacks on individuals and property result in more than one hundred deaths, the British government orders a curfew in Belfast and other Irish cities.
19 Oct.
John Reed, an American writer who celebrated Russia's Bolshevik Revolution in Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), dies in Moscow at age thirty-three. He is the only American to be buried in the Kremlin wall.
25 Oct.
King Alexander I of Greece dies after being bitten by his pet monkey.
18 Nov.
The Jewish Quarter in Prague is plundered in three days of rioting by Czechs and nationalized Germans.
26 Nov.
Russia drives Turkish troops out of Armenia.
29 Nov.
Russian leader V. I. Lenin disavows all Soviet treaties and agreements.
16 Dec.
An earthquake in northern China kills more than 100,000 people.
24 Dec.
Russia conquers the country of Georgia.
26 Dec.
Karl Rudolph Legien, president of the German Federation of Labor Unions, dies at age sixty.

1921

  • Luigi Pirandello's drama Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) premieres in Italy.
  • Pablo Picasso paints Three Musicians.
  • Le Côté de Guermantes II (The Guermantes Way, part 2) and Sodome et Gomorrhe I (Cities of the Plain, part 1), a section of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), is published in France.
9 Feb.
The first Indian parliament under the Government of India Act of 1919 is convened in New Dehli.
21 Feb.
Gen. Reza Khan launches a coup d'état against British rule in Persia and establishes an independent government. On 26 February he concludes an agreement with Russian invaders who begin to withdraw from the country. On 1 May British troops leave Persia under Reza Khan's orders.
8 Mar.
Spanish premier Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated by rightists.
24 Mar.
Greece invades Turkey in an attempt to enforce the Treaty of Sèvres, establishing an Allies-supported government in Turkey.
31 Mar.
Coal miners strike in Great Britain. On 28 June the government agrees to provide miners a subsidy of £10 million.
1 May
Riots erupt in Jaffa, Palestine, between Arab and Jewish workers; twenty-seven, all Jews, are killed.
May-July
German war criminals are tried at Leipzig. France withdraws from the trial in protest over light sentences.
29 June
Lady Randolph Churchill, American-born mother of Winston Churchill, dies at age sixty-seven.
21 July
Moroccan rebels, led by Abd-el-Krim, defeat a Spanish force, killing twelve thousand, and establish the Republic of the Riff.
27 July
Canadian Frederick Grant Banting discovers insulin, for which he shares the 1923 Nobel Prize in medicine.
29 July
Adolf Hitler is elected chairman and absolute dictator of the Nazi Party centered in Munich, Germany.
2 Aug.
Enrico Caruso, internationally famous Italian tenor, dies at age forty-eight.
16 Aug.
Peter I, king of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, dies and is succeeded by his son, Alexander I.
23 Aug.
Emir Faisal becomes crowned head of the new kingdom of Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia.
27 Aug.
Dr. Alexander Wekerlé, five times premier of Hungary, dies at age seventy-one.
28 Aug.
Nicaragua is invaded by rebels based in Honduras; on 7 September these rebels are driven back into Honduras by the Nicaraguan army and captured by Honduran troops.
12 Sept.
Russia declares war on Bessarabia, a new Romanian province.
22 Sept.
Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria's national poet, dies.
19 Oct.
Premier Antonio Granjó of Portugal and several other officials are assassinated after being arrested by the military.
4 Nov.
Hara Takashi, the first commoner to become premier of Japan, is assassinated by a fanatic; he is succeeded on 12 November by Korekiyo Takahashi, who is, in turn, succeeded by Baron Tomosaburo Kato on 11 June 1922.
11 Nov.
The Washington Armaments Conference, during which the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and France agree on Pacific boundaries and conditions, is convened.
6 Dec.
The British government signs a treaty with the Dail Eireann (Assembly of Ireland) to establish the Irish Free State. Nineteen members of the radical group Sinn Fein had already been executed during 1921 in the rebellion leading up to the signing of the treaty.
8 Dec.
The United States, Japan, England, and France sign the Four-Power Treaty for the arbitration and mediation of economic disputes.
16 Dec.
French composer Camille Saint-Saëns dies at age eighty-six.

1922

  • Sodome et Gomorrhe II (Cites of the Plain, part 2), a section of Proust's Ala recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), is published in France.
  • James Joyce's novel Ulysses is published in Paris.
  • The silent movie classic of German expressionist horror, Nosferatu, directed by F. W. Murnau, is released.
  • Centre Court at Wimbledon is built.
  • Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse's novel of oriental mythology, is pubEshed in Germany.
22 Jan.
Pope Benedict XV dies at age sixty-five. On 6 February Achille Cardinal Ratti, who takes the name Pius XI, is elected pope.
15 Feb.
The International Court of Justice is established at The Hague, in the Nether-lands.
18 Feb.
Britain grants Egypt titular independence but maintains military bases throughout the country.
25 Feb.
Henri-Désiré Landru, the so-called modern Bluebeard, is guillotined in Versailles, France, for the murder often women and a young boy.
3 Mar.
Italian Fascists seize the disputed port city of Fiume, which briefly had operated as a state independent from either Italy or the new, loosely federated Yugoslavia.
15 Mar.
Four hundred followers of revolutionary Irish leader Eamon de Vaiera capture Limerick and evict moreconservative officials in the Free State government.
18 Mar.
The British government sentences Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi to six years in prison for sedition.
1 Apr.
Charles I, deposed emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, dies at age thirty-five.
3 Apr.
Joseph Stalin is elected general secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.
16 Apr.
The Treaty of Rapallo, insuring economic trade and military cooperation between Germany and Russia, is signed.
24 June
German foreign minister Walther Rathenau is assassinated by political opponents within his staff.
12 Aug.
Arthur Griffith, president of the Dáil Eireann, dies at age fifty. On 22 August Michael Collins, moderate leader of the Irish Free State, is assassinated by members of the Republican Society founded by de Valera.
14 Sept.
Great Britain sends a fleet of warships to the Dardanelles after Turkish troops rout the Greek army in Smyrna and destroy the city. On 28 November five Greek political leaders, including Premier Demetrios Gounaris and the head of the military, are executed in Athens after being blamed for the disaster at Smyrna.
28 Oct.
Italian Fascists march on Rome and demand the creation of a Fascist government. On 31 October Benito Mussolini, the military head (duce) of the Fascist Party, is named premier by King Victor Emmanuel III; on 25 November Mussolini is granted dictatorial powers.
18 Nov.
French novelist Marcel Proust dies at age fifty-one.
20 Nov.
The Lausanne Conference, called to rewrite the Treaty of Sèvres, convenes in Switzerland.
26 Nov.
Excavation begins on the tomb of ancient Egyptian king Tutankhamen near Luxor, Egypt.
6 Dec.
The provisional government in Ireland is superseded by the Free State government, formally establishing the Irish Free State.
18 Dec.
One week after his election, President Gabriel Narutowicz of Poland is assassinated by a madman.
30 Dec.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is officially proclaimed.

1923

  • La Prisonnière (The Captive), a section of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), is published posthumously in France.
  • The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran's meditative prose poem, is published in London.
  • Ich und du (land Thou), Martin Buber's most famous work of philosophy, is published in Vienna.
  • English-language production of Czech writer Karel Capek's drama R U.R. (Czechoslovakia, 1921) introduces the term robot, which refers to a machine with human characteristics.
10 Jan.
France sends 100,000 troops into the Ruhr to seize German assets as war reparations. On 17 February German saboteurs sink a coal barge in the Rhine-Herne Canal, the first of many acts of sabotage in protest of French occupation.
11 Jan.
Constantine I, former king of Greece, dies at age fifty-four. He is succeeded by George II, a puppet of the military.
1 Feb.
Yaqui Indian soldiers put down a trolley car strike in Mexico City, killing fourteen and wounding thirty.
10 Feb.
Wilhelm Röntgen, the German scientist who discovered X rays in 1895 and was awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901, dies at age seventy-seven.
26 Mar.
Sarah Bernhardt, the celebrated French actress, dies at age seventy-eight.
5 Apr.
George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, an Egyptologist who is financially backing explorations of the tomb of King Tutankhamen, dies in Cairo following an insect bite.
5 Apr.
Soviet troops massacre 340 Ukrainian peasants for protesting the execution of Roman Catholic vicar general Constantine Butchkavitch six days earlier.
22 May
Lady Constance Lytton, leader in the British woman's suffrage movement, dies at age fifty-four.
9 June
Aleksandur'S tamboliyski, premier of Bulgaria and leader of the Peasant Party, is overthrown by right-wing military officers. On 14 June he is shot, allegedly in an escape attempt.
20 July
Mexican bandit Francisco "Pancho" Villa is shot and killed in ambush at Parral, Mexico.
23 Aug.
Baron Tomosaburo Kato, premier of Japan and hero of the Russo-Japanese War, dies at age sixty-two. On 28 August he is succeeded by Count Gombe Yamamoto, who is forced to resign on 29 December following ari attempt on the life of Prince Regent Hirohito.
27 Aug.
The murders of an Italian delegation on the Greek-Albanian border leads to an international crisis.
1 Sept. A
major earthquake, with more than three hundred distinct shocks, destroys Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan, killing 143,000.
10 Sept.
The Irish Free State is unanimously elected to the League of Nations.
13 Sept.
Rightist general Miguel Primo de Rivera seizes power in Spain with the approval of King Alfonso XIII. Primo de Rivera exiles liberal opponents, such as writers Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.
28 Sept.
Ethiopia is admitted to the League of Nations despite British protests over Ethiopia's continued practice of slavery.
22 Oct.
A royalist revolt in Greece against the military government is quickly crushed but increases popular support for a republic. King George II is deposed and leaves Greece on 18 December.
24 Oct.
Clashes between police and Communist revolutionaries in Hamburg, Germany, kill 44 and wound 350.
28 Oct.
Reza Khan, minister of war in Persia, declares himself prime minister.
29 Oct.
Three weeks after Turkish nationalist troops occupy Constantinople, the Grand Assembly in Turkey proclaims the nation a republic and elects a new president, Mustafa Kemal, and a new premier, Ismet Pasha, ending six centuries of Ottoman rule.
8 Nov.
A putsch is launched in a Munich beer hall by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers but is crushed after one day. On 1 April 1924 Hitler is sentenced to nine months in prison, during which he writes Mein Kampf.
5 Dec.
Mexican rebels launch a revolt in Vera Cruz against the government of Alvaro Obregón. On 16 December, as rebel troops threaten Mexico City, the United States promises munitions to support the government.
6 Dec.
An international fleet of warships begins assembling at Canton after Sun Yatsen, leader of southern China, threatens to close the free port.
24 Dec.
Martial law is declared in Honduras, and opponents of President Rafael López Gutiérrez are imprisoned. On 10 March 1924 Gutiérrez is killed by rebels supported by U.S. Marines.
28 Dec.
Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, engineer on the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, dies in Paris at age ninety-one.

1924

  • E. M. Forster publishes his novel A Passage to India in London.
  • Der Zauberberg ( The Magic Mountain), Thomas Mann's symbolic novel set in a Swiss tuberculosis sanitarium, is published in Germany.
  • I. A. Richards's Principles of Literary Criticism, which will influence literary criticism in the United States for more than thirty years, is published in England.
18 Jan.
A plot by the executive committee of the Communist International forces Russian Communist leader Leon Trotsky to retire to the Crimea. On 1 June he returns to Moscow to campaign against Leninist policies that prevail despite Lenin's death. Trotsky is expelled a second time on 10 December and dismissed as commissar of war on 18 January 1925.
21 Jan.
V. I. Lenin dies at age fifty-three.
22 Jan.
The British Labour Party wins its first election, making Ramsay MacDonald Britain's first Labour prime minister.
25 Jan.
The first Winter Olympics opens in Chamonix, France.
27 Jan.
The Treaty of Rome between Italy and Yugoslavia determines that Italy will take possession of the disputed port of Fiume but cede Porto Barros to Yugoslavia.
l Feb.
Britain becomes the first nation to formally recognize the Soviet Union.
12 Feb.
The sarcophagus of King Tutankhamen is opened after four thousand years.
6 Apr.
Rigged elections give Mussolini's Fascist Party a huge majority in the Italian parliament.
13 Apr.
Greek citizens vote to make their country a republic, and Greece is officially proclaimed a republic on 1 May.
4 May
The eighth Summer Olympics open in Paris.
11 May
Rioting between Communists and monarchists in Halle, Germany, kills thirty.
3 June
Franz Kafka, German-speaking Czech novelist, dies at age forty.
10 June
Socialist Giacomo Matteotti, an outspoken critic of Mussolini, is murdered by Fascists. In March 1926 the assassins are either acquitted or given light prison terms.
5 July
Gen. Isidor Lopes launches a bloody but unsuccessful rebellion in Brazil against the ineffectual government of Artur da Silva Bemardes, who then brings about minor economic reforms.
3 Aug.
Anglo-Polish novelist Joseph Conrad dies at age sixty-six.
8 Sept.
A military junta in Chile overthrows the liberal, reformist government of President Arturo Alessandri Palma. He is restored through a coup d'état on 23 January 1925 but resigns on 1 October 1925 because of continuing Chilean disorder.
10 Sept.
A revolt against the Soviet government breaks out in the Soviet republic of Georgia.
12 Oct.
Anatole France, France's leading literary figure and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1921, dies at age eighty.
13 Oct.
Ibn Sa'ud, sultan of Nedj and leader of the Arabian Wahabis, captures Mecca in an attempt to expand his dominion in the Arabian Peninsula. By December 1925 he has also taken Medina, site of Muhammad's tomb.
29 Oct.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, British author of Little LordFauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1911), dies at age seventy-four.
19 Nov.
The assassination of Sir Lee Stack, commander of the Anglo-Egyptian army and British governor general of the Sudan, leads Britain to reassert its authority in Egypt; Stack's assassins are executed on 23 August 1925.
29 Nov.
Giacomo Puccini, Italian opera composer, dies at age sixty-five.
30 Nov.
Photographs are sent in a twenty-minute period by radio from London to New York.
6 Dec.
France begins wholesale arrests of Russian Communists in its country.
27 Dec.
Cesare Rossi, a former Mussolini lieutenant implicated in the murder of Matteotti, accuses Mussolini of serious crimes.

1925

  • The first volume of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is published in Germany.
  • Dmitry Shostakovich composes his first symphony.
  • Sergey Eisensteines movie Potemkin (The Battleship Potemkin) is produced.
  • Franz Kafka's Der Prozess (The Trial) is published posthumously.
  • Albertine disparue (The Sweet Cheat Gone), a section of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), is published posthumously in France.
7 Jan.
Germany elects a socialist, Paul Loebe, president of the Reichstag.
24 Feb.
Kurdish rebels, under Sheik Said, launch a revolt against the Turkish government but are put down, and Said executed, within two months.
28 Feb.
Friedrich Ebert, president of Germany, dies.
12 Mar.
Sun Yat-sen, leader of China's Kuomintang party and president of the southern republic of China, dies at age fifty-nindd.
15 Apr.
Bolshevik agrarians in Bulgaria, backed by Soviet agents, attempt to assassinate the Bulgarian czar, Boris III. The following day they blow up the Cathedral of Sveti Krai in Sofia, killing 160 people.
18-19 Apr.
Military leaders attempt a coup against the democratic government of Portugal's Manuel Teixeira Gomes. It fails, and in December Bernardino Machado, who had served as president from 1915 to 1917, is again elected to Portugal's highest office.
26 Apr.
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, at age seventy-eight, is elected president of Germany in a run-off election.
14 May
H. Rider Haggard, English author of King Solomons Mines (1885), dies at age sixty-nine.
15 May
The Italian parliament grants women limited voting rights in certain elections.
10 June
The Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational Churches in Canada merge to form the United Church of Canada.
19 June
The French and Spanish armies, allied against the Riffs in Morocco, begin a blockade of all shipments entering Morocco in an attempt to prevent arms smuggling. On 26 July French forces reject an envoy from Riffian leader Abd-elKrim attempting to negotiate Riffian autonomy. On 26 May 1926 the Franco-Spanish troops under the command of Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain conquer the Riffs and force Abd-el-Krim into exile. On 10 July 1926 rance and Spain sign a treaty promising peace in Morocco between the two occupying forces.
18 July
L'Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (known as the Paris Exposition) opens and provides a venue and the name for art deco.
7 Aug.
Druze rebels in Syria kill two hundred French soldiers and wound six hundred more in a revolt against the French mandate. The following day British troops in Transjordan mobilize on the Syrian border to prevent Druze rebels from fleeing Syria. On 20 September French troops attack Damascus and shell the native quarter.
21 Aug.
A skirmish between Bulgarian and Greek troops near the tiny Turkish town of Demir Hissár launches a six-week border dispute between the two nations.
15 Sept.
Russian Bolsheviks lead a revolt in Bessarabia, killing fifty Romanian troops, but the uprising is quickly put down.
16 Oct.
At Locarno, Switzerland, seven European nations negotiate a series of treaties that guarantee postwar borders and offer what Europeans consider the best hope for lasting peace.
26 Nov.
Rama VI, king of Siam, dies at age forty-four.

1926

  • Metropolis, director Fritz Lang's cinematic examination of power and technology, premieres in Germany.
  • The production of Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Starsy an unflattering portrayal of the Easter Rebellion, causes riots in Dublin.
  • Britain's Academy of Choreographic Art, later the Royal Ballet, is founded by Ninette de Valois.
  • English writer A. A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh, the first in this series of children's books.
3 Jan.
Gen. Theodoros Pangalos leads a military coup in Greece and declares himself dictator. On 22 August Pangalos is overthrown by Gen. George Kondylas, who restores democracy.
28 Jan.
Viscount Takaakira Kato, premier of Japan since May 1924, dies at age sixty-six and is succeeded by commoner Reijiro Wakatsuki.
8 Mar.
The League of Nations calls a special session to admit Germany to membership but adjourns because of complications raised by Brazil and Spain over permanent seating on the council. On 11 June Brazil resigns from the League to protest nonrepresentation of Latin American states, and on 11 September Spain resigns when it is denied a permanent seat after Germany was unanimously admitted to the League of Nations on 7 September.
7 Apr.
Mussolini is shot and slightly wounded by a British woman, Violet Gibson. On 11 September he is unhurt when anarchist Gino Lucetti throws a bomb at his carriage, and on 31 October he is rescued by an angry mob that kills his fifteen-year-old wouldbe assassin, Anteo Zamboni.
25 Apr.
Reza Khan, prime minister of Persia, becomes shah, reigning as Reza Shah Pahlavi. He is first of the line that will remain in power in Iran until the Islamic revolution in 1979.
1 May
British coal miners go on strike, leading to a nationwide strike by millions of tradeunion members.
2 May
Nicaraguan rebels, under Augusto César Sandino, launch a rebellion against the right-wing government of Emiliano Chamorro Vargas. In the early fall the uprising is quelled with the help of U.S. Marines, and on 11 November a conservative, Adolfo Díaz, is elected president. In December Juan Bautista Sacasa, the liberal vice president forced out by Sandino, sets up an opposition government, and civil war ensues.
12 May
A coup led by Marshal Józef Pilsudski overthrows the Polish government of Wincenty Witos. Pilsudski and his puppet president, Ignacy Moscicki, impose a highly repressive, rightist regime.
28 May
Portuguese general Gomes da Costa leads a military coup that deposes President Bernardino Machado. On 9 July Gomes da Costa is, in turn, deposed in a second military coup led by Gen. António de Fragoso Cannona, who is elected president in March 1928.
2 July
Emile Coué, French psychotherapist who pioneered the use of auto-suggestion, dies at age sixty-nine.
14 July
President Mustafa Kemal Pasha of Turkey has fifteen members of the Young Turk Party executed for plotting against the government.
23 Aug.
Rudolph Valentino, Italian-born American movie actor, dies at age thirty-one following an appendectomy.
5 Dec.
French impressionist painter Claude Monet dies at age eighty-six.
25 Dec.
Yoshihito, emperor of Japan, dies at forty-seven and is succeeded by his son, Hirohitdd.
29 Dec.
Rainer Maria Rilke, German lyric poet, dies at age fifty-one.

1927

  • Napoléon, director Abel Gance's ambitious silent film, premieres in France.
  • Le Temps retrouvé (Time Regained), the final section of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), is published in France, five years after Proust's death.
  • Ivan Pavlov publishes Conditioned Reflexes in the Soviet Union.
  • Martin Heidegger's classic of existentialist philosophy, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), is published in Germany.
  • Der Steppenwolf (Steppenwolf), Hermann Hesse's mystical novel of the outsider, is published in Germany.
6 Jan.
Wireless communication between London and New York City is established for public use.
7 Mar.
An earthquake in Osaka and Kobe, Japan, kills five thousand.
7 Apr.
The British government in India convicts eighteen men of antigovernment activity and sentences three to death.
18 Apr.
Nationalist Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek splits with radical Chinese Communists and sets up a government at Nanjing. On 17 December he breaks diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union.
4 May
The United States negotiates an end to the civil war in Nicaragua. The two sides agree that President Adolfo Díaz will be allowed to remain in office until his successor is chosen through free elections supervised by Americans. On 4 November 1928 a liberal, José Moncado, is elected, and his party remains in power until it is overthrown by right-wing strongman Gen. Anastasio Somoza García in 1936.
12 May
British agents raid the headquarters of the Soviet propaganda office in London and seize documents intended to undermine the British government. Britain severs diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union on 26 May.
15 May
Excavation begins on the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum in southern Italy.
21 May
Charles Lindbergh arrives in Paris and is greeted by ecstatic crowds after a thirty-three-and-one-half-hour nonstop flight from New York.
22 May
An earthquake in northern China kills more than 200,000 people.
1 June
Prohibition ends in Ontario, Canada, after eighteen years.
15 July
Irish Republican activist Constance Markievicz dies.
15 July
Rioting involving Socialists and monarchists in Vienna kills eighty-nine and injures more than six hundred.
20 July
King Ferdinand of Romania dies at age sixty-one and is succeeded by his five-year-old grandson, Prince Mihai.
29 Aug.
Combat between Hindus and Moslems in India kills three hundred and injures almost three thousand.
2 Oct.
France expels the Soviet ambassador for encouraging revolution.
3 Oct.
Mexican rebels, led by Arnulfo Gómez and Francisco R. Serrano, revolt against the candidacy of former president Alvaro Obregón, who wishes to succeed Plutarco Elias Calles, president from 1924 to 1928. The rebels are defeated, and on 5 November Gómez is executed.
12 Nov.
Stalin expels Trotsky and his followers from the Communist Party and banishes them to the Soviet provinces.
2 Dec.
Olga Rudel-Zeunek is elected first female president of the Austrian senate.
14 Dec.
Britain grants Iraq a nominal independence but maintains military bases throughout the country.

1928

  • Eisenstein's film on the Russian Revolution, October, premieres in the Soviet Union.
  • An early classic surrealist film, Un Chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog), by Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali, and others, premieres in France.
  • French composer Maurice Ravel produces Boléro.
  • Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence's controversial novel, is privately published in Florence, Italy. The full text is unavailable in Great Britain until 1960.
  • Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht collaborate to produce Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three-Penny Opera) in Berlin.
  • Evelyn Waugh's first novel, Decline and Fall, is published in London.
6 Jan.
Pope Pius XI issues an encyclical condemning "Pan-Christian unity."
11 Jan.
Thomas Hardy, one of Britain's foremost men of letters, dies at age eighty-seven.
28 Jan.
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Spanish novelist best known for his popular 1916 work Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), dies at age sixty-one.
2 Feb.
Transjordan signs a treaty with Britain creating an independent constitutional monarchy.
11 Feb.
The second Winter Olympics opens in Saint Moritz, Switzerland.
2 Mar.
Egypt rejects a treaty with Britain perceived to limit Egyptian sovereignty and is warned that British authority will not be compromised.
22 Mar.
Spain revokes its September 1926 decision to resign from the League of Nations.
25 Mar.
General Carmona is elected president of Portugal. In April he appoints rising statesman Antonio de Oliveira Salazar his minister of financed.
12 Apr.
German financier Gunther von Huenefeld completes the first successful east to west transatlantic flight.
24 Apr.
Chinese Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek capture Peking (Peiping). On 5 May Chiang Tso-Lin, warlord of Manchuria, is killed during a retreat from Peking after his defeat by nationalist forces. These forces clash on 14 May with Japanese troops at Tsinan-fu. On 8 June Chiang Kai-shek enters Peking after conquering much of northern China and dissipating the power of the feudal warlords.
17 May
The ninth Summer Olympics open in Amsterdam, Holland.
7 June
Hungary is cited by the League of Nations for importing five freight cars of machinegun parts from Italy, thereby violating the Treaty of Trianon.
14 June
Emmeline Pankhurst, the original British suffragist organizer, dies at age sixty-nine.
18 June
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen disappears with his pilot and crew while attempting to rescue a stranded polar expedition.
2 July
Great Britain lowers the voting age for women from thirty to twenty-one, the voting age for British men.
10 July
Japan withdraws its troops from Shandong, China.
17 July
Alvaro Obregón, reelected president of Mexico on 1 July, is assassinated in Mexico City by forces convinced that he and former president Plutarco Elias Calles are using their reform movement to undermine the Roman Catholic Church. On 8 November José de Léon Toral is sentenced to death for the assassination, and a nun, Sister María Concepcíon Acevedo y de la Llata, is sentenced to twenty years as "intellectual author" of the crime.
19 July
King Faud of Egypt suspends the Egyptian parliament and assumes legislative control under British authority.
21 July
Ellen Terry, acclaimed British actress, dies at age eighty.
27 Aug.
The Pact of Paris, an ineffective agreement by twenty-three nations to outlaw war, is signed in Parid.
27 Aug.
Mustafa Kemal Pasha, president of Turkey, replaces the Arabic alphabet with the Roman alphabet for all future written communication in Turkey.
12 Sept.
Spain arrests more than two thousand protesters on the fifth anniversary of the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.
7 Oct.
Ras Tafari becomes king of Ethiopia, and on 2 November 1930 he is named king of kings with the title Haile Selassie I.
25 Nov.
Mountain tribes in Afghanistan launch a major revolt against King Amanollah to protest his attempts at social reform. He abdicates on 14 January 1929 in favor of his brother, Inayatullah, who on 17 January is deposed by bandit leader Bacha-i-Saquao. On 3 November 1929 Gen. Mohammed Nadir Shah assumes the throne of Afghanistan and stabilizes the nation.
24 Dec.
Hungarian police arrest leaders of the Fascist Party and charge them with treason.

1929

  • Erich Maria Remarque's antiwar novel, Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), is published in Germany.
  • Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking examination of women and literature, A Room of Ones Own, is published in England.
  • Construction of the Maginot Line, a system of fortifications on the French-German border, begins in France.
5 Jan.
Alexander I, king of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes since August 1921, proclaims himself dictator. On 3 October he officially renames the state Yugoslavia.
16 Jan.
Stalin expels Trotsky from European Russia and on 23 January arrests 150 of Trotsky's followers on charges of conspiracy. Trotsky takes refuge in Constantinople, then Norway, then Mexico, where in 1940 he is assassinated by Stalinists.
11 Feb.
The Lateran treaties between Italy and the Roman Catholic Church are signed, creating Vatican City—a 108.7-acre section of Rome encompassing Saint Peter's Church and the Vatican—as a sovereign state.
12 Feb.
English actress Lillie Langtry dies at age seventy-five.
2 Mar.
Gen. Jesús María Aguirre launches an unsuccessful two-month revolt in Vera Cruz against the government of Mexican president Emilio Portes Gil and the power behind Portes Gil, former president Plutarco Elias Calles.
20 Mar.
French general Ferdinand Foch, commander of the Allied expeditionary forces in World War I, dies at age seventy-eight.
1 May
Communist noting in Berlin kills twenty and injures fifty.
20 May
Germany signs the Pact of Paris outlawing war.
5 Aug.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett, British suffragist organizer, dies at age eighty-two.
19 Aug.
Sergey Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario in Paris, dies at age fifty-seven.
22 Aug.
A wave of Arab violence against Jews in the British mandate of Palestine kills hundreds.
20 Oct.
The new state of Tadzhikistan joins the U.S.S.R.
6 Nov.
Prince Maximilian, Germany's first republican chancellor, dies at age sixty-two.
17 Nov.
Moderate leader Nikolay Bukharin is expelled by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. Stalin is now clearly dictator of the U.S.S.R.
24 Nov.
Georges Clemenceau, former premier of France, dies.
5 Dec.
U.S. Marines put down a revolt against American control in Haiti.
17 Dec.
Gen. Gomes da Costa, former dictator of Portugal, dies in exile.
21 Dec.
Seventy are arrested in Mexico after the discovery of a plot to assassinate public officials.