1931

Events in 1931 102

• 1847 – 1931 Otto Wallach (1847-1931) Died 26 February 1931, aged 83 German chemist who won the 1910 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on alicyclic compounds. His studies of terpenes laid the foundations of the essential oils industry. He died in Göttingen.
• 1847 – 1931 Thomas Edison (1847-1931) Died 18 October 1931, aged 84 American inventor and businessman who developed the phonograph, a practical incandescent light bulb and early motion picture equipment. His Menlo Park laboratory pioneered organised industrial research. He held more than a thousand US patents.
• 1848 – 1931 Thomas Lipton (1848-1931) Died 2 October 1931, aged 83 Scottish grocer and tea merchant who founded the Lipton tea brand. He challenged unsuccessfully for the America's Cup five times with his yachts named Shamrock. He died in London.
• 1851 – 1931 Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) Died 26 December 1931, aged 80 American librarian who devised the Dewey Decimal Classification system. He was a founder of the American Library Association. He also set up the first school for training librarians.
• 1851 – 1931 Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931) Died 2 December 1931, aged 80 French composer and teacher, best known for his Symphony on a French Mountain Air. He co-founded the Schola Cantorum de Paris. Through it he influenced a generation of French musicians.
• 1852 – 1931 Albert A. Michelson (1852-1931) Died 9 May 1931, aged 78 American physicist known for precise measurements of the speed of light and for the Michelson-Morley experiment. In 1907 he became the first American to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences. His interferometer remains a basic tool of physics.
• 1852 – 1931 Joseph Joffre (1852-1931) Died 3 January 1931, aged 78 French general who was commander-in-chief of the French Army from 1914 to 1916. He led the Allied counter-attack at the First Battle of the Marne, which stopped the German advance on Paris. He was made a Marshal of France in 1916.
• 1853 – 1931 David Belasco (1853-1931) Died 14 May 1931, aged 77 American theatrical producer, playwright and impresario, known for lavish, realistic stagecraft. His plays Madame Butterfly and The Girl of the Golden West were adapted by Puccini as operas. He died in New York City.
• 1853 – 1931 Kitasato Shibasaburō (1853-1931) Died 13 June 1931, aged 78 Japanese bacteriologist who co-discovered the infectious agent of bubonic plague in 1894. He also developed serum therapy for tetanus with Emil von Behring. He founded the Kitasato Institute in Tokyo.
• 1861 – 1931 Motilal Nehru (1861-1931) Died 6 February 1931, aged 69 Indian lawyer and nationalist who served twice as president of the Indian National Congress. He wrote the Nehru Report of 1928 on a constitution for India. He was the father of Jawaharlal Nehru.
• 1861 – 1931 Nellie Melba (1861-1931) Died 23 February 1931, aged 69 Australian operatic soprano and one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. She sang leading roles at Covent Garden for decades. Peach Melba and Melba toast are named after her.
• 1862 – 1931 Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) Died 21 October 1931, aged 69 Austrian playwright and novelist, author of Reigen (La Ronde) and Dream Story. His works frankly explored sexuality and the psychology of fin-de-siècle Vienna. He died in Vienna.
• 1865 – 1931 Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) Died 3 October 1931, aged 66 Danish composer, conductor and violinist, known especially for his six symphonies. He is regarded as Denmark's greatest composer. He also wrote the comic opera Maskarade.
• 1866 – 1931 Nathan Söderblom (1866-1931) Died 12 July 1931, aged 65 Swedish Lutheran Archbishop of Uppsala and a leader of the ecumenical movement. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930. He also pioneered the academic study of religion.
• 1867 – 1931 Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) Died 27 March 1931, aged 63 English novelist, best known for The Old Wives' Tale and the Clayhanger novels, set in the Staffordshire Potteries. He was also an influential critic and journalist. He died of typhoid in London.
• 1879 – 1931 Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) Died 5 December 1931, aged 52 American poet, known for performance poems written to be sung or chanted, such as The Congo and General William Booth Enters into Heaven. He helped popularise modern poetry with public audiences. He took his own life in Springfield, Illinois.
• 1881 – 1931 Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) Died 23 January 1931, aged 49 Russian prima ballerina, best known for The Dying Swan. She toured the world with her own company and brought ballet to audiences who had never seen it. She died of pleurisy in The Hague during a tour.
• 1882 – 1931 Lili Elbe (1882-1931) Died 13 September 1931, aged 48 Danish painter and transgender woman, one of the first people to undergo gender-affirming surgery. She died of complications after a uterus transplant operation in Dresden. Her life inspired the novel and film The Danish Girl.
• 1883 – 1931 Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) Died 10 April 1931, aged 48 Lebanese-American writer, poet and artist. His collection of prose poems The Prophet (1923) became one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century. He died in New York City.
• 1883 – 1931 Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) Died 7 March 1931, aged 47 Dutch artist, designer and theorist who founded the De Stijl movement and its journal. He worked with Piet Mondrian before the two fell out over diagonal lines. He died in Davos, Switzerland.
• 1888 – 1931 F. W. Murnau (1888-1931) Died 11 March 1931, aged 42 German film director of the silent era, whose films include Nosferatu, The Last Laugh and Sunrise. He was a leading figure of German Expressionist cinema. He died in a car accident in California shortly before his film Tabu was released.
• 1888 – 1931 Knute Rockne (1888-1931) Died 31 March 1931, aged 43 Norwegian-born American football coach at the University of Notre Dame. He won more than 88 per cent of his games and popularised the forward pass. His death in an airliner crash in Kansas was a national shock.
• 1903 – 1931 Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931) Died 6 August 1931, aged 28 American jazz cornetist and composer. His lyrical tone made him one of the most influential soloists of the 1920s. He died in New York after years of heavy drinking.
• 1906 – 1931 Chandra Shekhar Azad (1906-1931) Died 27 February 1931, aged 24 Indian revolutionary and a leader of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. He was surrounded by police in Alfred Park, Allahabad. He shot himself with his last bullet rather than be captured.
• 1907 – 1931 Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) Died 23 March 1931, aged 23 Indian revolutionary who was convicted of killing the British police officer John Saunders. He was hanged in Lahore together with Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru. He is remembered in India as one of the most celebrated martyrs of the independence movement.
• 1927 – 1931 Duke Ellington's Cotton Club residency Harlem Radio broadcasts from the Cotton Club make his orchestra famous nationwide.
• 1931 – 2025 Alfred Brendel (1931-2025) Died 17 June 2025, aged 94 Austrian pianist and writer whose recordings, especially of Beethoven, secured a reputation as one of the century's great interpreters.
• 1931 – 2024 Alice Munro (1931-2024) Died 13 May 2024, aged 92 Canadian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013 and called the master of the contemporary short story.
• 1931 – 2024 Audrey Flack (1931-2024) Died 28 June 2024, aged 93 American painter and sculptor who brought a sociopolitical dimension to Photo-realism.
• 1931 Empire State Building opens Empire State Building opens The Empire State Building opened on 1 May 1931, rising 381 metres in Midtown Manhattan after just 410 days of construction. It was the tallest building in the world for nearly forty years. Opening into the Depression, it stood so empty that New Yorkers called it the Empty State Building.
• 1931 – 2023 Fay Weldon (1931-2023) Died 4 January 2023, aged 91 English novelist and screenwriter whose satirical fiction, including The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, dissected the lives of women.
• 1931 – 2024 Galina Zybina (1931-2024) Died 10 August 2024, aged 93 Soviet shot-putter who set eight consecutive world records and won three Olympic medals.
• 1931 Gödel publishes his incompleteness theorems Kurt Gödel shows that formal arithmetic cannot prove all its truths Kurt Gödel's paper in Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik showed that any consistent formal system rich enough to express arithmetic contains true statements it cannot prove. He also showed that such a system cannot prove its own consistency. The results ended Hilbert's programme and changed logic and the philosophy of mathematics.
• 1931 – 2025 Ivan Klima (1931-2025) Died 4 October 2025, aged 94 Czech author whose fiction and plays were banned for decades under communist rule.
• 1931 – 1955 James Dean (1931-1955) Died 30 September 1955, aged 24 James Dean was an American actor known for his roles in East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause. He died in a car crash near Cholame, California, while driving his Porsche 550 Spyder. His death shortly before Rebel Without a Cause's release cemented his status as a cultural icon.
• 1931 – 2024 James Earl Jones (1931-2024) Died 9 September 2024, aged 93 American actor whose deep voice gave us Darth Vader and Mufasa, and whose stage work won two Tony Awards.
• 1931 – 2025 Maurice Gee (1931-2025) Died 12 June 2025, aged 93 New Zealand novelist known for realist evocations of New Zealand life and for fantastical tales for young readers, notably the Plumb trilogy.
• 1931 – 2024 Paolo Taviani (1931-2024) Died 29 February 2024, aged 92 Italian filmmaker who with his brother Vittorio combined Neorealism with modernist storytelling.
• 1931 – 2022 Philip Baker Hall (1931-2022) Died 12 June 2022, aged 90 American character actor of Magnolia, Boogie Nights and Hard Eight.
• 1931 – present Porsche German sports car manufacturer Founded by Ferdinand Porsche, the company became one of the world’s most respected sports car manufacturers. Porsche achieved legendary status through models such as the 356 and 911 as well as extensive motorsport success.
• 1931 – 2026 Robert Duvall (1931-2026) Died 15 February 2026, aged 95 American actor of extraordinary restraint, indelible in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Great Santini and Tender Mercies, for which he won an Academy Award.
• 1931 – 1932 Robert Johnson returns transformed The crossroads legend Back after a year away playing brilliantly — the legend says he sold his soul at the crossroads.
• 1931 – 2024 Robert MacNeil (1931-2024) Died 12 April 2024, aged 93 Canadian-born journalist who co-anchored the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS.
• 1931 – 1964 Sam Cooke (1931-1964) Died 11 December 1964, aged 33 Cooke was an American singer and songwriter widely regarded as one of the pioneers of soul music, with hits including "You Send Me" and "A Change Is Gonna Come". He was shot and killed under disputed circumstances at a Los Angeles motel.
• 1931 – 2025 Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-2025) Died 13 March 2025, aged 93 Russian composer whose work fused Russian and Central Asian traditions with the Western classical tradition.
• 1931 – 2024 Whitey Herzog (1931-2024) Died 15 April 2024, aged 92 American baseball manager who led the St Louis Cardinals to the 1982 World Series.
• 1931 – 2024 Willie Mays (1931-2024) Died 18 June 2024, aged 93 American baseball player considered by many the greatest all-round player in the history of the game.
• 1931 – 2015 E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015) Died 21 July 2015, aged 84 E.L. Doctorow was an American novelist best known for Ragtime and Billy Bathgate, which blended historical fact with fiction. His work won multiple National Book Critics Circle Awards and influenced a generation of American historical fiction writers. Ragtime was adapted into both a film and a Tony Award-winning musical.
• 1931 – 2001 Mordecai Richler (1931-2001) Died 3 July 2001, aged 70 Richler was a novelist and essayist whose satirical books, including The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney's Version, drew on the Jewish working-class Montreal of his youth. His mockery of Quebec nationalism made him a polarising figure at home. He also wrote the children's book Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.
• 1931 City Lights premieres Chaplin's silent romantic comedy opens in Los Angeles Charlie Chaplin released City Lights, in which his Tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl. He made it as a silent film with a synchronised score several years after sound films had arrived. It was a critical and commercial success and is often ranked among the greatest films ever made.
• 1931 – 2007 Boris Yeltsin First president of Russia, 1991-1999 Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (February 1, 1931 – April 23, 2007) was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. He oversaw Russia's chaotic transition to democracy and market economy, and famously appointed Vladimir Putin as his successor on New Year's Eve 1999.
• 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake Magnitude 7.8 earthquake destroys Napier and Hastings A powerful earthquake struck the Hawke's Bay region of New Zealand's North Island, and the fires that followed destroyed much of central Napier. 256 people were killed, making it New Zealand's deadliest natural disaster. Napier was rebuilt in the Art Deco style.
• 1931 Dracula premieres Bela Lugosi's Count opens Universal's horror cycle Tod Browning's film adaptation of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, premiered at the Roxy Theatre in New York. It was a major commercial success. It began Universal Pictures' series of classic monster films.
• 1931 Vatican Radio begins broadcasting Pope Pius XI makes the first papal radio address Vatican Radio was built by Guglielmo Marconi and inaugurated by Pope Pius XI, who gave the first radio broadcast by a pope. It let the Holy See speak directly to Catholics around the world. The station grew into a major international broadcaster in many languages.
• 1931 – present Claire Bloom (born 1931) English actress of stage and screen, discovered by Charlie Chaplin for Limelight.
• 1931 – 2019 Toni Morrison (1931-2019) Died 5 August 2019, aged 88 Toni Morrison was an American novelist and Nobel laureate whose novels, including Beloved and Song of Solomon, explored African American identity and history. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, the first Black woman to receive it. She died in New York after a brief illness.
• 1931 – 2022 Mikhail Gorbachev Last leader of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (March 2, 1931 – August 30, 2022) was the last leader of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until the USSR's dissolution in 1991. His policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) inadvertently led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
• 1931 The Star-Spangled Banner becomes US national anthem Congress formally adopts Francis Scott Key's song President Herbert Hoover signed an act of Congress making The Star-Spangled Banner the official national anthem of the United States. The words come from a poem Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814 after the bombardment of Fort McHenry. The song had already been widely used on official occasions.
• 1931 Gandhi-Irwin Pact Gandhi agrees to end civil disobedience in exchange for concessions Mahatma Gandhi and the Viceroy Lord Irwin signed an agreement under which the Indian National Congress suspended its civil disobedience campaign. In return the British released political prisoners and allowed Indians to make salt for their own use. Gandhi then attended the Second Round Table Conference in London.
• 1931 Nevada legalises gambling Wide-open casino gambling becomes legal in Nevada Governor Fred Balzar signed a bill that legalised most forms of gambling in Nevada. On the same day the state cut the residency requirement for divorce to six weeks. Together these laws laid the foundations of the casino economies of Las Vegas and Reno.
• 1931 Scottsboro Boys arrested Nine Black teenagers are falsely accused of rape in Alabama Nine Black youths were taken off a freight train near Paint Rock, Alabama, and accused of raping two white women. All but the youngest were quickly sentenced to death by all-white juries. The case became a landmark of the American civil rights struggle and produced two major Supreme Court rulings.
• 1931 – 2015 Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) Died 27 February 2015, aged 83 Leonard Nimoy was an American actor best known for playing the half-Vulcan Spock in the Star Trek television series and films. His portrayal made Spock one of the most recognizable characters in science fiction. Nimoy also worked as a director, photographer and poet over a career spanning six decades.
• 1931 Managua earthquake Earthquake and fire destroy the centre of Nicaragua's capital An earthquake struck Managua, and the fires that followed destroyed most of the city centre. Around 2,000 people were killed. United States Marines stationed in Nicaragua took part in relief efforts.
• 1931 1931 World Snooker Championship Joe Davis Title 5 Winner: Joe Davis; Runner-up: Tom Dennis. Score: 25–21.
• 1931 – 2023 Daniel Ellsberg (1931-2023) Died 16 June 2023, aged 92 American analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing the government's private assessment of the Vietnam War.
• 1931 Second Spanish Republic proclaimed Alfonso XIII leaves Spain after republicans sweep municipal elections Republican parties won in the major cities in the municipal elections of 12 April. Two days later the republic was proclaimed and King Alfonso XIII went into exile without abdicating. A provisional government under Niceto Alcalá-Zamora took power.
• 1931 Collapse of the Creditanstalt Failure of Austria's largest bank spreads the banking crisis across Europe The Vienna bank Creditanstalt announced huge losses and had to be rescued by the Austrian state. Its failure set off bank runs in Germany, Hungary and elsewhere in Central Europe. This turned the Great Depression into a Europe-wide financial crisis.
• 1931 M premieres Fritz Lang's thriller about a child murderer opens in Berlin Fritz Lang's first sound film stars Peter Lorre as a serial killer hunted by both the police and the criminal underworld. It made innovative use of sound, including a whistled leitmotif for the killer. It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of German cinema.
• 1931 Quadragesimo anno issued Pius XI's encyclical on the social order Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical on the fortieth anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum novarum. It criticised both unrestrained capitalism and socialism. It set out the principle of subsidiarity as a basis for Catholic social teaching.
• 1931 Piccard's first stratosphere balloon flight Auguste Piccard reaches about 15,780 metres in a pressurised gondola The Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and his assistant Paul Kipfer took off from Augsburg in a sealed aluminium gondola. They became the first people to reach the stratosphere. They landed safely on a glacier in the Austrian Alps.
• 1931 Hoover Moratorium US proposes a one-year halt to war debt and reparation payments President Herbert Hoover proposed that intergovernmental war debt and German reparation payments be suspended for one year. He hoped this would ease the financial crisis in Central Europe. The moratorium came into effect in July after France delayed its agreement.
• 1931 Post and Gatty fly around the world The Winnie Mae circles the globe in under nine days The pilot Wiley Post and the navigator Harold Gatty flew the Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae around the world from Roosevelt Field, New York. They took eight days, 15 hours and 51 minutes, a new record. Post made the first solo round-the-world flight two years later.
• 1931 China floods Yangtze and Huai rivers flood after months of extreme rain Very heavy rainfall and snowmelt caused the Yangtze, Huai and Yellow rivers to flood huge areas of central China. The city of Wuhan was inundated and Nanjing was badly affected. Estimates of the death toll from drowning, famine and disease range from several hundred thousand to millions, which makes it one of the deadliest natural disasters on record.
• 1931 – 2018 Tab Hunter (1931-2018) American actor and singer, a teen idol of the 1950s who later wrote openly about his life.
• 1931 UK National Government formed Ramsay MacDonald forms a coalition amid the financial crisis The Labour cabinet split over spending cuts, and Ramsay MacDonald formed an all-party National Government with Conservatives and Liberals. Labour expelled him from the party. The National Government won a landslide at the general election in October.
• 1931 – 2020 Regis Philbin (1931-2020) Died 24 July 2020, aged 88 Regis Philbin was an American television host best known for Live! with Regis and Kelly and for hosting Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. He died of natural causes on 24 July 2020.
• 1931 – 2024 Mitzi Gaynor (1931-2024) American actress, singer and dancer, star of South Pacific.
• 1931 Second Round Table Conference Gandhi attends London talks on India's constitutional future Gandhi attended the conference as the only representative of the Indian National Congress. The talks broke down, largely over separate electorates for minorities. Gandhi returned to India empty-handed and was arrested soon afterwards.
• 1931 Belize hurricane Hurricane devastates Belize City A hurricane struck Belize City, then the capital of British Honduras, on the day of the colony's national celebrations. The storm surge flooded the low-lying city. About 2,500 people were killed.
• 1931 – 2013 George Jones (1931-2013) Died 26 April 2013, aged 81 George Jones was an American country music singer known for hits including He Stopped Loving Her Today, widely regarded as one of the genre's greatest vocalists. He died in Nashville from hypoxic respiratory failure.
• 1931 Invergordon Mutiny Atlantic Fleet sailors refuse duty over pay cuts Sailors of the Royal Navy's Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon in Scotland refused to put to sea in protest at pay cuts announced by the National Government. The Admiralty agreed to review the cuts and the mutiny ended peacefully. News of it helped trigger the run on sterling that forced Britain off gold days later.
• 1931 – 2005 Anne Bancroft (1931-2005) Died 6 June 2005, aged 73 Anne Bancroft, the Academy Award-winning actress best known for her role as Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate", died on 6 June 2005. She won the Oscar for Best Actress for "The Miracle Worker" in 1962 and had a career spanning stage, film and television. Bancroft was married to filmmaker and comedian Mel Brooks.
• 1931 Mukden Incident Japan stages a railway bombing to justify invading Manchuria Japanese officers of the Kwantung Army set off a small explosive on the South Manchuria Railway near Mukden and blamed Chinese dissidents. Japan used the incident as a pretext to occupy Manchuria. The following year it set up the puppet state of Manchukuo there.
• 1931 Britain abandons the gold standard Sterling floats after a run on the pound Heavy withdrawals of gold during the financial crisis forced the National Government to suspend the convertibility of sterling into gold. The pound quickly lost about a quarter of its value against the dollar. Many other countries soon followed Britain off gold.
• 1931 – 2012 Larry Hagman (1931-2012) Died 23 November 2012, aged 81 American actor best known for playing the villainous oil baron J.R. Ewing on the television series "Dallas." He died of complications from cancer.
• 1931 Dick Tracy debuts Chester Gould's detective comic strip first appears Dick Tracy first appeared in the Detroit Mirror and was then syndicated nationally by the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate. The strip reflected the gangland violence of the Prohibition era. It became one of the longest-running comic strips in America.
• 1931 – 2021 Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) Died 26 December 2021, aged 90 South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who led the moral campaign against apartheid and chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
• 1931 Christ the Redeemer inaugurated Rio de Janeiro's statue of Christ is dedicated on Corcovado The Art Deco statue by the French sculptor Paul Landowski was inaugurated on top of Corcovado mountain after nine years of construction. It stands about 30 metres tall on its pedestal. It became the best-known symbol of Rio de Janeiro and of Brazil.
• 1931 Al Capone convicted of tax evasion Chicago's most notorious gangster is brought down by the tax code A federal jury in Chicago convicted Al Capone on several counts of income tax evasion. A week later he was sentenced to eleven years in prison. He served most of the sentence in Atlanta and at Alcatraz.
• 1931 – 1995 Mickey Mantle (1931-1995) Died 13 August 1995, aged 63 Mickey Mantle was a New York Yankees outfielder widely regarded as one of the greatest switch hitters and power hitters in baseball history. He won three American League MVP awards and helped the Yankees to seven World Series titles. His later years were marked by public advocacy for organ donation and alcoholism treatment after a liver transplant.
• 1931 – 2007 Ursula K. Le Guin American novelist Le Guin wrote science fiction and fantasy exploring society, gender, and anthropology.
• 1931 – 2024 Margaret Bryan Davis (1931-2024) Died 22 May 2024, aged 92 American palaeoecologist whose pioneering work in palynology showed how biological communities shift with climate.
• 1931 George Washington Bridge opens Suspension bridge links Manhattan and New Jersey across the Hudson The George Washington Bridge, designed by Othmar Ammann, was dedicated between Manhattan and Fort Lee, New Jersey. Its main span was nearly twice as long as any previous suspension bridge. It became one of the busiest motor vehicle bridges in the world.
• 1931 – 2014 Mike Nichols (1931-2014) Died 19 November 2014, aged 83 Mike Nichols, the director of films including "The Graduate" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", died in New York. He was one of a small number of people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. His five-decade career spanned film, theater and television.
• 1931 Chinese Soviet Republic proclaimed Communists declare a rival state at Ruijin with Mao as chairman The First National Soviet Congress, meeting in Ruijin in Jiangxi, founded the Chinese Soviet Republic with Mao Zedong as its chairman. It controlled scattered rural base areas in southern China. Nationalist encirclement campaigns forced it to abandon Jiangxi in 1934 at the start of the Long March.
• 1931 – 2022 Mwai Kibaki (1931-2022) Died 21 April 2022, aged 90 Kenyan politician who served as president from 2002 to 2013.
• 1931 Whitney Museum of American Art opens Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's museum opens in Greenwich Village The sculptor and patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney founded the museum on West Eighth Street in New York after the Metropolitan Museum declined her collection. It was devoted to living American artists. It became one of the leading museums of American art.
• 1931 Frankenstein released Boris Karloff plays the Monster in James Whale's film Universal released James Whale's Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff as the Monster. Jack Pierce's make-up created the flat-headed image of the creature that people still recognise. The film was a hit and led to a string of sequels.
• 1931 Spanish Constitution adopted Republic's constitution sets up a secular democratic state The Constituent Cortes approved a new constitution for the Second Spanish Republic. It separated church and state, gave women the vote and allowed regional autonomy. Its anticlerical provisions deeply divided Spanish society.
• 1931 – 1990 Osho (1931-1990) Died 19 January 1990, aged 58 Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain and also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, was an Indian spiritual teacher who founded a controversial international movement. His Oregon commune collapsed in 1985 amid criminal charges against its leadership. He died in Pune, India, on 19 January 1990.
• 1931 – present Rita Moreno (born 1931) Puerto Rican actress, singer and dancer, the first Latina to win an Oscar and one of few performers with an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.
• 1931 Statute of Westminster British Parliament grants legislative independence to the Dominions The Act made the parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland legally equal to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Westminster could no longer legislate for a Dominion without its consent. The statute is a founding document of the modern Commonwealth.