Around the World | 1912-1961

1912

• Founding of the African National Congress in Bloemfontein, South Africa

1914

• June 28 Archduke Ferdinand of Austria assassinated. Start of WWI
• August 15 Panama Canal opened for shipping
• Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan of the Apes, the first in a series

1915

• British super liner Lusitania sunk by German submarine, loss of 1,153 lives

1916

• Tanks used for the first time by British in the Battle of the Somme
• Edward Sharpey Schafer, British psychologist, identified the site for a hypothetical hormone, he called insulin which controlled food metabolism

1917

• Russia lost 5.5 million troops on eastern front against Germany - Lenin lead the Bolsheviks and established All Russian Congress of Soviets

1918

• November 11 an armistice was signed ending the First World War
• Oswald Spengler greatly impacted Germans with the publication of Decline of the West
• Bela Bartok produced his brooding opera “Bluebeard’s Castle”

1919

• World powers convene in Paris to sign the Treaty of Versailles
• League of Nations formed to preserve peace

1920

• Adolf Hitler became the 7th member of National Socialist German Workers Party, “Nazi Party”
• X-ray method to detect finger prints developed in France

1921

• Hermann Rorschach, psychologist, introduced the ink-blot tests

1922

• Mussolini demanded a fascist government in Italy
• Kemal Ataturk drove the Greeks from Turkey
• Tomb of King Tutanhkhamun opened by Howard Carter
• BCG tuberculosis vaccine introduced in France

1923

• Attempted coup by Adolf Hitler sent him to jail for 5 years
• September earthquake in Tokyo results is death of 150,000 people

1924

• January 21 Lenin died; Joseph Stalin took control of the party
• Founding of the Turkish Republic

1926

• Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the television system

1930

• Haile Selassie acceded to the thrown as Emperor of Abyssinia
• Mahatma Gandhi began his campaign of civil disobedience
• Karl Landsteiner won the Nobel Prize for discovering different types of human blood

1933

• Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, invited to become Chancellor of Germany

1934

• British historian, Arnold Toynbee, published Vol. I of A Study of History
• Enrico Fermi discovered that a chain reaction of nuclear fission could be achieved with uranium

1936

• German troops, violating the Treaty of Versalles, entered the demilitarized Rhineland
• Germany, Italy and Japan signed mutual aid pact

1937

• German dive-bombers destroyed a Basque city
• Japan invaded China
• Oxford University academic, J. R. R. Tolkein, published The Hobbit - first in great series

1938

• German oppression of the Jews, “Kristalnacht” - shops attacked, 30,000 to concentration camps

1939

• August: Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact signed
• September 1:Germany invaded Poland
• Sigmund Freud died in London

1940

• German forces occupied Denmark
• “Battle of Britain” was fought in the skies over southern England

1941

• Germany occupied part of Russia; by September Leningrad was surrounded

1942

• War in Europe and north Africa expands

1943

• Manhattan Project achieve first operational nuclear reactor
• First portable kidney dialysis machine

1944

• June 6 D-Day: British, US, and Canadian forces landed on the beaches in Normandy
• Age of Jets introduced with the RAF’s “Gloster Meteor” and Lufwaffe’s “Messerschmitt”

1945

• April 21: Soviet troops entered Berlin
• April 30: Hitler committed suicide
• May 7: Germany finally capitulated
• August 6:U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima
• August 9: U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, on the city of Nagasaki
• August 15: Japan officially surrendered
• Structure and function of the United Nations Organization agreed on

1949

• October 7: The Chinese People’s Republic proclaimed
• Establishment of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

1950

• Korean War started when communist North Korea invaded South Korea
• India became an independent democratic republic under Jawaharlal Nehru

1951

• Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb
• Winston Churchill’ Conservatives returned to power in Britain

1952

• Elizabeth II became queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Mau Mau started seven year anti-colonial campaign in Kenya

1953

• The Korean War ended with an armistice signed in Panmunjom
• Dag Hammarskjold became influential Secretary-General of the United Nation
• Joseph Stalin died

1954

• Gamal Abdel Nasser became Prime Minister of Egypt
• Viet Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu and Ho Chi Minh (in Hanoi) started the communist campaign against Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon

1955

• Juan Peron, President of Argentina, forced into exile
• Russian-born Vladimir Nabokov published his most famous novel, Lolita

1956

• The Suez Canal was nationalized by Nasser. Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt
• Hungary invaded by Soviet troops to crush anti-communist revolt

1957

• Sputnik I launched by the Soviet Union
• Boris Pasternak expressed his disappointment in the Russian Revolution in Dr Zhivago

1958

• Charles de Gaulle, by public demand, became president of France
• Fidel Castro began total civil war against the Batista regime

1959

• Fidel Castro takes over regime in Cuba
• Archbishop Makarios, exiled Cypriot leader, returned to Cyprus to head a provisional government

1960

• South African police opened fire on black demonstrators in Sharpeville killing 67 people
• Mrs. Bandaranaike of Ceylon, became the first female head of state in the modern world

1961

• Bay of Pigs invasion failed attempting to oust Fidel Castro in Cuba
• Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel in space, completing a single earth orbit aboard the capsule Vostock

Sources - Inter Alia:
(1.) Beazley, Mitchell (ed.): Time Lines: World History Year by Year since 1492. New York Crescent Books, 1991
(2.) Grun, Bernard: The Timetables of History. New York, Simon Schuster/Touchstone, 1991

By Brian du Toit  - Transylvania Sesquicentennial Steering Committee