1920 – 1930s

Events in the 1920s 72

• 1299 – 1922 The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) The Ottoman Empire endured for 623 years -- from Osman I's declaration of independence from the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in 1299 to the abolition of the sultanate by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1922. At its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) it controlled three continents: southeastern Europe from Hungary to the Aegean, Anatolia and the Middle East from Mesopotamia to Yemen, and North Africa from Egypt to Algeria. It was the successor to Byzantium, the inheritor of Rome's eastern legacy, the protector of the Islamic holy cities and the dominant power of the Mediterranean world for three centuries. Its capital Constantinople -- renamed Istanbul -- became again the greatest city between Vienna and Beijing.
• 1789 – 1925 Qajar dynasty Decline, territorial losses and foreign pressure The Qajar dynasty ruled Iran for over a century but presided over territorial losses to Russia and Britain and growing foreign interference. The 1906 Constitutional Revolution forced the creation of a parliament (Majlis), a landmark in Iran's political modernisation, before the dynasty fell to Reza Khan's coup.
• 1835 – 1921 Camille Saint-Saëns French Romantic composer French composer of the Carnival of the Animals, Organ Symphony and the opera Samson et Dalila. One of the most versatile composers of the 19th century.
• 1839 – 1922 Reform & Collapse (1839–1922) The final 83 years of Ottoman history are the most dramatic -- a race between modernisation and disintegration that the empire ultimately loses. The Tanzimat reforms (1839-1876) attempt to create a modern centralised state with equal rights for all subjects. The Constitutional period (1876, 1908) produces two parliaments. But the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) strip the empire of nearly all its European territory; the First World War (1914-1918) destroys it; the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) kills over a million people; and Ataturk's War of Independence (1919-1922) produces the Turkish Republic from the ruins. The sultanate is abolished on 1 November 1922.
• 1840 – 1926 Claude Monet Impressionism · France Claude Monet (November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926) was the founder of French Impressionism, whose series paintings of haystacks, Rouen Cathedral and water lilies are among the most beloved works in art history.
• 1856 – 1924 Woodrow Wilson 28th President — led US in WWI, founded League of Nations Woodrow Wilson (Dec 28, 1856 – Feb 3, 1924) was the 28th President 1913-1921. He led the US through World War I, proposed the League of Nations, and won the Nobel Peace Prize. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919.
• 1858 – 1924 Giacomo Puccini Verismo opera master Italian opera composer whose La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and the unfinished Turandot are among the most performed operas in the world.
• 1870 – 1924 Lenin Russian Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, establishing the Soviet state and the foundation for communist rule in Russia.
• 1870 – 1924 Vladimir Lenin Founder of the Soviet Union Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924) was the founder of the Soviet state and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. He led Soviet Russia from 1917 and the Soviet Union from its formation in 1922 until his death in 1924.
• 1883 – 1924 Franz Kafka Czech writer Kafka wrote surreal stories about alienation, bureaucracy, and existential anxiety in modern society.
• 1884 – 1920 Amedeo Modigliani Modernism · Italy Amedeo Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian Modernist painter and sculptor known for his elongated, mask-like portraits and nudes. He died of tubercular meningitis at 35, his work largely unrecognised in his lifetime.
• 1900 – 1927 Quantum mechanics Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger — the physics of the very small Max Planck's discovery that energy is emitted in discrete quanta (1900) launched quantum theory. Bohr's atomic model (1913), Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (1927), and Schrödinger's wave equation (1926) completed a revolution that showed nature at the atomic scale is fundamentally probabilistic. Quantum mechanics underlies lasers, transistors, MRI scanners, and the entire electronics industry.
• 1912 – 1926 Emperor Taisho (Yoshihito) Reign 1912–1926 — the era of "Taisho democracy" Emperor Taisho's short reign saw a shift toward liberal, party-based politics known as "Taisho democracy", Japan's participation in World War I on the Allied side, and the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. His poor health led Crown Prince Hirohito to serve as regent from 1921.
• 1915 – 1923 Armenian Genocide The Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) is the systematic mass murder and deportation of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (Young Turks). Between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians are killed in massacres, death marches through the Syrian desert, and starvation. The genocide is ordered by the triumvirate of Enver, Talaat and Cemal Pashas, who use the cover of World War I to eliminate what they see as a disloyal Christian minority. It is widely recognised by historians and many governments as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey officially denies it.
• 1918 – 1920 Spanish flu 50 million+ deaths The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic infected 500 million people and killed an estimated 50–100 million — more than World War I.
• 1919 – 1922 Ataturk and the War of Independence Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) organises Turkish nationalist resistance to the Allied partition of Anatolia following WWI, defeating Greek, Armenian and French forces in the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922). The victory is celebrated as the salvation of the Turkish homeland. The sultanate is abolished (1 November 1922); the caliphate follows (3 March 1924). The Republic of Turkey is proclaimed on 29 October 1923 with Ankara as its capital. Ataturk's radical westernisation programme -- alphabet reform, secularism, women's suffrage -- transforms Turkey into a modern nation-state.
• 1920 Harlem Renaissance African-American arts flourish The Harlem Renaissance saw an explosion of African-American literature, art, and music that reshaped American culture and identity.
• 1920 Women vote in US Women vote in US The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on 18 August 1920 when Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to approve it, barring the denial of the vote on grounds of sex. It capped seven decades of campaigning that began at Seneca Falls in 1848. In practice many Black women remained disenfranchised until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• 1920 – 1958 Rosalind Franklin X-ray crystallographer whose data was pivotal to discovering the structure of DNA Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920-1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose diffraction images of DNA, most famously "Photo 51", provided critical evidence for the double-helix structure published by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. Beyond DNA, she made lasting contributions to the understanding of coal and carbon structures and to the molecular structure of viruses, including tobacco mosaic virus and poliovirus. Her data was used by Watson and Crick without her knowledge or consent, and for decades her role in the DNA discovery was underappreciated. She died of ovarian cancer at 37, four years before the 1962 Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins for the work her data underpinned.
• 1920 – 2006 Shelley Winters (1920-2006) American actress with a career of six decades, winner of two Oscars, for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue.
• 1920 – 1991 Gene Tierney (1920-1991) American actress celebrated for her beauty and for Laura and Leave Her to Heaven.
• 1921 Insulin discovered Insulin discovered Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated a pancreatic extract that lowered blood sugar at the University of Toronto in the summer of 1921, working in J. J. R. Macleod's laboratory with James Collip purifying it for human use. Fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson was treated in January 1922. The discoverers sold the patent for one dollar so the drug would stay cheap.
• 1921 – 1986 Donna Reed (1921-1986) American actress, Mary Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life and star of The Donna Reed Show.
• 1921 – 1995 Lana Turner (1921-1995) American actress, one of MGM's biggest stars, known for The Postman Always Rings Twice and Imitation of Life.
• 1921 – 1995 W.F. Hermans Novelist, essayist, geographer, 1921-1995 Willem Frederik Hermans (1921-1995) — one of the three great Dutch postwar writers, alongside Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve. Novelist, essayist, geographer and polemicist. Author of The Darkroom of Damocles (1958), Beyond Sleep (1966) and An Untouched House (1952). His work is defined by epistemological nihilism: the conviction that certainty is impossible and that human existence is fundamentally without meaning or redemption.
• 1921 – 2007 Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) Scottish actress known for refined roles in Black Narcissus, From Here to Eternity and The King and I, with six Oscar nominations.
• 1922 Tutankhamun tomb discovered Tutankhamun tomb discovered Howard Carter uncovered the steps to Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings on 4 November 1922, after six seasons funded by Lord Carnarvon. It was the only near-intact royal tomb found in Egypt, holding more than 5,000 objects. Carnarvon's death a few months later gave the world the story of the pharaoh's curse.
• 1922 Tutankhamun's tomb Howard Carter discovers it Howard Carter discovered the nearly intact tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in November 1922.
• 1922 Australian Open 1922 Men: James Anderson · Women: Mall Molesworth First women's Australian Championships. Mall Molesworth became the inaugural women's champion.
• 1922 – 2019 Doris Day (1922-2019) American actress and singer, one of the biggest box-office stars of the 1950s and 1960s and later a leading animal-welfare campaigner.
• 1922 Abolition of the Sultanate -- 1 November 1922 The Grand National Assembly of Turkey abolishes the Ottoman Sultanate on 1 November 1922, separating the sultanate from the caliphate. Mehmed VI, the last sultan, flees Constantinople on a British warship on 17 November 1922. His cousin Abdulmecid II becomes the last caliph until the caliphate too is abolished in March 1924. The Ottoman Empire -- 623 years after Osman I's declaration of independence -- ceases to exist. Its territory is divided among Turkey, the British and French mandates of the Middle East, and the new Balkan states. The empire's legacy shapes the Middle East to the present day.
• 1922 – present Jose Saramago Portuguese novelist Saramago wrote philosophical novels like Blindness, blending allegory and political commentary.
• 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake ~140,000 killed; Tokyo and Yokohama devastated On 1 September 1923 a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Kanto plain, destroying much of Tokyo and Yokohama and killing an estimated 140,000 people, many in the firestorms that followed. It remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in Japanese history.
• 1923 Hollywood sign erected Hollywood sign erected The Hollywood sign was erected in 1923 reading HOLLYWOODLAND, an advertisement for a hillside housing development that was meant to stand for about eighteen months. It was left to decay instead, and the last four letters were removed in 1949. The sign was rebuilt in 1978 with money raised by donors including Hugh Hefner and Alice Cooper.
• 1923 – 1955 Robert Woodruff era Transforms Coca-Cola into a global brand Robert W. Woodruff became president of Coca-Cola in 1923 and led the company for over three decades. He introduced six-bottle cartons, vending machines and coolers, supplied Coca-Cola to every US soldier in WWII for 5 cents regardless of cost, and began international expansion.
• 1923 – 1985 Anne Baxter (1923-1985) American actress, granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, Oscar winner for The Razor's Edge and Eve in All About Eve.
• 1923 – 2023 Henry Kissinger American Diplomat & Statesman German-born American diplomat and political scientist who served as US National Security Advisor (1969–1975) and Secretary of State (1973–1977) under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for negotiating a ceasefire in the Vietnam War, one of the most controversial decisions in the award's history. He remained one of the most influential and divisive figures in American foreign policy for over five decades.
• 1923 First Pepsi bankruptcy Sugar speculation ruins Bradham — May 31, 1923 Pepsi-Cola declared bankruptcy on May 31, 1923. Caleb Bradham had gambled heavily on sugar during WWI, buying large stocks anticipating rising prices. When sugar crashed from 28 cents to 2 cents per pound, the company collapsed. Assets were sold to a North Carolina concern for $30,000.
• 1923 – present Rudolph A. Marcus Canadian-American Chemist Canadian-born American theoretical chemist who won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Marcus theory, which explains the rate at which electrons transfer between molecules. His elegant equations illuminated fundamental processes from photosynthesis and cell metabolism to the functioning of batteries and solar cells. Born in Montreal, he taught himself theory after repeatedly breaking laboratory glassware, and continued active research past his 100th birthday. He died five days before his 103rd birthday.
• 1923 – 1997 Roy Lichtenstein Pop Art · USA Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American Pop Art painter who transformed comic book imagery into fine art. His bold primary colours and Ben-Day dots became one of the most recognisable styles of the 20th century.
• 1924 First Winter Olympics First Winter Olympics Chamonix hosted an International Winter Sports Week in January 1924, which the IOC later recognised retroactively as the first Winter Olympic Games. Some 258 athletes from sixteen nations competed in skating, skiing, bobsleigh, curling and ice hockey. Norway and Finland took the great majority of the medals.
• 1924 – 1953 Stalin in power Soviet dictator — 1924 to 1953 Stalin consolidated power gradually after Lenin's death, becoming undisputed leader by the late 1920s. His 29-year rule transformed the USSR through forced industrialisation and collectivisation, but also brought the Great Terror, the Gulag and an estimated 6-20 million deaths from political repression.
• 1924 Australian Open 1924 — becomes Grand Slam Men: James Anderson · Women: Sylvia Lance The Australian Championships become one of the four Grand Slam tournaments.
• 1925 – 1979 Pahlavi dynasty The last shahs; rapid modernisation The Pahlavi dynasty, founded by Reza Shah after a 1921 coup, was Iran's last monarchy. Reza Shah and his son Mohammad Reza drove rapid, top-down modernisation and Westernisation, and in 1935 the country's international name was formally changed from Persia to Iran. Autocratic rule and inequality fuelled the discontent that led to revolution.
• 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial Scopes Monkey Trial John Scopes was tried in Dayton, Tennessee in July 1925 for teaching evolution in violation of the state's Butler Act, in a case deliberately staged to test the law. Clarence Darrow defended him against William Jennings Bryan, and Darrow's questioning of Bryan on the literal truth of Genesis became the trial's famous moment. Scopes was convicted and fined $100; the verdict was later overturned on a technicality.
• 1925 – 1964 Yukio Mishima Japanese novelist Mishima explored beauty, death, and tradition in modern Japan through highly stylized literary works.
• 1925 French Open 1925 — first international Grand Slam Men: René Lacoste · Women: Suzanne Lenglen First French Open open to international players and recognised as a Grand Slam event. René Lacoste and Suzanne Lenglen won. Lenglen was virtually unbeatable on clay.
• 1925 – 2015 B.B. King American blues guitarist & singer B.B. King (1925-2015) — born Riley B. King in the Mississippi Delta — became "the King of the Blues", famous for his guitar Lucille, his hit "The Thrill Is Gone", and a touring and recording career spanning more than sixty years and fifteen Grammy Awards.
• 1925 – 2022 Angela Lansbury (1925-2022) British-American actress whose career spanned eight decades, from Gaslight to Broadway's Mame and television's Murder, She Wrote.
• 1926 – 1989 Emperor Showa (Hirohito) Reign 1926–1989 — war, defeat and postwar recovery Hirohito, posthumously Emperor Showa, was Japan's longest-reigning emperor. His era spanned the rise of militarism, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the catastrophe of 1945, and then Japan's extraordinary postwar reconstruction into an economic superpower. After 1945 he became a symbolic constitutional monarch.
• 1926 – 1927 Hubble — the expanding universe Galaxies are receding — the universe had a beginning In 1924-1929, Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the "nebulae" are distant galaxies far beyond the Milky Way, and that they are receding from us at speeds proportional to their distance (Hubble's Law, 1929). The expanding universe implied it had once been smaller and hotter — the foundation of the Big Bang theory. It is the most consequential astronomical discovery of the 20th century.
• 1926 Television Baird's first demo John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in London in January 1926, transmitting moving images for the first time.
• 1926 Ingvar Kamprad born in Småland Ingvar Feodor Kamprad is born on 30 March 1926 on a farm called Elmtaryd near the village of Agunnaryd in Småland, southern Sweden. Småland is a poor, rocky region where the soil is thin and farming is hard — a place that historically produces either emigrants or extremely resourceful people. Kamprad inherits both traits: he works with ferocious intensity and treats every öre as precious. His grandmother gives him money as a reward for collecting berries; he uses it to buy matches in bulk and resell them individually at a profit. He is five years old.
• 1926 – 1984 Michel Foucault French philosopher, historian of ideas, and social theorist Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, producing genealogical histories of madness, medicine, punishment, and sexuality that exposed how knowledge and power jointly construct the categories through which societies understand themselves. Trained in philosophy and psychology in postwar Paris, he moved between clinical psychiatry, diplomatic teaching posts abroad, and the highest academic chair in France, the Collège de France. His major works — History of Madness, The Birth of the Clinic, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and the multi-volume History of Sexuality — reshaped fields from history and sociology to literary theory and law. He was also a committed activist, co-founding a prison-information group and speaking out on behalf of refugees and dissidents. He died in Paris in 1984 of an AIDS-related illness, the first prominent French public figure known to have died of the disease.
• 1927 First solo Atlantic flight First solo Atlantic flight Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis alone from New York to Paris on 20-21 May 1927, covering about 5,800 kilometres in 33.5 hours without radio or sextant. He won the $25,000 Orteig Prize and instant worldwide fame. The flight turned public opinion toward aviation as a practical way to travel rather than a stunt.
• 1927 First talkie film The Jazz Singer The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first feature-length film with synchronised dialogue, ending the silent era and transforming Hollywood.
• 1927 – 2023 Gina Lollobrigida (1927-2023) Italian actress, one of the great European stars of the 1950s and 1960s, and later a photojournalist and sculptor.
• 1927 – 2004 Janet Leigh (1927-2004) American actress best remembered for the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho, and mother of Jamie Lee Curtis.
• 1927 – 2015 Günter Grass Writer, sculptor, Nobel laureate, 1927-2015 Günter Grass (1927-2015) — novelist, poet, playwright, sculptor and printmaker. Author of The Tin Drum (1959), the defining work of post-war German literature; winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1999); political activist and speechwriter for Willy Brandt; and, in his final decades, the man who shattered his own image as Germany's moral conscience by revealing his Waffen-SS service sixty years after the fact.
• 1928 Penicillin discovered Penicillin discovered Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the world's first antibiotic, revolutionising the treatment of bacterial infections.
• 1928 – 2014 Maya Angelou American poet and memoirist Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, reflecting on identity, racism, and resilience.
• 1928 – 2023 Burt Bacharach American Songwriter & Composer American composer, songwriter, record producer and pianist, widely regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular music. Working primarily with lyricist Hal David, he wrote dozens of hit songs including Walk on By, I Say a Little Prayer and Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head. He won six Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards, and charted 73 songs in the American Top 40.
• 1928 French Open 1928 Men: Henri Cochet · Women: Helen Wills First French Open at the new Stade Roland Garros, built to host the Davis Cup.
• 1928 – 1987 Andy Warhol Pop Art · USA Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American Pop Art artist who blurred the line between fine art and commercial culture. His Campbell's Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe prints made him the defining artist of the 1960s.
• 1928 – 2026 Zhu Rongji Premier of China (1998-2003) Chinese politician and economic reformer who served as Premier of China from 1998 to 2003. Sharp-tongued and impatient, he earned the nickname 'Madman Zhu' for his demanding style and willingness to confront corruption and inefficiency. He overhauled China's state-owned enterprises at the cost of tens of millions of jobs, tamed double-digit inflation, steered the economy through the Asian financial crisis, and masterminded China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 — a decision that helped transform China into the world's second-largest economy.
• 1928 – 2007 Karlheinz Stockhausen Electronic music pioneer German avant-garde composer who pioneered electronic and serial music. His work Gesang der Jünglinge is a landmark of electronic composition.
• 1929 – 1939 Great Depression Global economic collapse The 1929 stock market crash triggered the Great Depression — a decade of mass unemployment, poverty, and political instability worldwide.
• 1929 Wall Street Crash Wall Street Crash The stock market crash of October 1929 triggered the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn of the 20th century.
• 1929 – 1968 Martin Luther King Civil rights leader Dr. King led the American civil rights movement, delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech and winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
• 1929 – 2010 Jean Simmons (1929-2010) British actress who went from Ophelia in Olivier's Hamlet to Hollywood epics like The Robe and Spartacus.
• 1929 – 2026 Yayoi Kusama Japanese Artist Japanese contemporary artist whose immersive polka-dot installations, infinity mirror rooms and vibrant pumpkin sculptures made her one of the most celebrated and commercially successful artists in the world. Born into a seed-merchant family in Matsumoto, she began experiencing vivid hallucinations as a child — flashes of light, auras and dense fields of dots — and channelled these visions into an extraordinary body of work spanning painting, sculpture, installation, performance, fiction and fashion. She lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution in Tokyo from 1977, walking to her nearby studio each morning to create. By the time of her death at 97, she was the world's top-selling living artist.
• 1929 – 2023 Milan Kundera Czech-French Novelist Czech-born French novelist, essayist and playwright. His novels, including The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, explored themes of identity, exile and the fragility of human existence under totalitarianism. Stripped of his Czechoslovak citizenship after the Soviet invasion, he lived in France from 1975 and became a French citizen in 1981.