Overview

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dominated by the Wall St Crash followed by the Great Depression then Hitler & the devastating World War II terminated by the 1st use of the atomic bomb which ushered in the “Cold War” of communism vs capitalism and the creation of Israel as a Jewish state.

1925: Unemployment Insurance Act enacted; Q. Alexandra dies; British troops evacuate Cologne;

1926: general strike; 

1928: women's suffrage reduced from age 30 to 21;

1932: Huxley's “Brave New World”;

1934: road traffic driver tests introduced; Depressed Areas bill introduced; Churchill warns govt of German air menace;

1936: K.George V dies, succeeded by his son Edward VIII; Britain, US & France sign London Naval Convention; Edward VIII abdicates after relationship with Mrs Wallis Simpson, succeeded by his brother George VI;

1937: Royal Commission on Palestine recommends establishment of Arab & Jewish states; Britain signs naval agreements with Germany & USSR; Lord Halifax visits Hitler, beginning of policy of appeasement; Hindenburg dirigible disaster;

1938: Orson Welles's radio production of H.G.Wells' “War of the Worlds” causes considerable panic; gas masks issued to British public during the Munich crisis; Hutton scores 364 runs against Australia;

1939: conscription adopted; K. George VI & Queen Elizabeth visit US; England & Poland sign treaty of mutual assistance; women & children are evacuated from London;

1940: food rationing; Chamberlain resigns & Churchill becomes PM; Home Guard formed; George Cross instituted;

1941: utility clothing & furniture encouraged; 

1942: songs: “The white cliffs of Dover”; Malta awarded George Cross; wartime “National Loaf”;

1945: Churchill, Truman & Stalin confer at Potsdam after VE Day; Labour landslide, Attlee becomes PM; George Orwell's “Animal Farm”; family allowances introduced; 

1946: Churchill gives his “Iron Curtain” speech; London Airport opened (new terminal in 1955);

1947: British coal industry nationalised;  most severe winter since 1894;

1948: Brit. Citizenship Act grants British passports to all Commonwealth citizens; Brit. railroads nationalised; bread rationing ends;

1949: Republic of Eire proclaimed in Dublin & its independence recognised by Britain; Britain devalues pound from $US4.03 to $US2.80, most European nations follow suit; George Orwell's “1984”; British gas industry nationalised; clothes rationing ends;

1925: Christiania, Norway capital, renamed Oslo; Hitler reorganises Nazi Party & publishes 1st volume of “Mein Kampf”; jazz Chicago style arrives in Europe;

1926: Pilsudski's coup d'etat in Poland; Germany admitted to League of Nations; Ger. ministers take office in Czech govt; Trotsky & Zinoviev expelled from USSR; reforms in Turkey - abolition of polygamy/modernisation of female attire/prohibition of fez/adoption of Latin alphabet;

1927: “Black Friday” in Germany as its economic system collapses; Socialists riot in Vienna; 

1928: USSR's 1st 5yr plan; Ravel's “Bolero”;

1929: dictatorship established in Yugoslavia by King Alexander I; Lateran Treaty establishes independent Vatican City; name of Serbo-Croat-Slovene Kingdom changed to Yugoslavia; Remarque's “All quiet on the western front”; Trotsky leaves Soviet Russia;

1930: Constantinople changed to Instabul; Britain, US, Japan, France & Italy sign naval disarmament treaty; last Allied troops leave Rhineland;

1930: Stalin's forced collectivization of Soviet peasants and the resulting the great Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which many considered to be a genocidal act against the Ukraines in particular

1932: USSR's 2nd 5yr plan starts; Nazi's win elections; Hitler refuses Hindenburg's offer to become Vice Chancellor; Austrian-born Hitler receives German citizenship; USSR famine; Ibn Saud renames his kingdom Saudi Arabia; drainage of Pontine marshes in Italy;

1933: Hitler appointed German chancellor; Goering named Prussian Prime Minister; Chancellor Dollfuss suspends parliamentary govt in Austria; Goebbels named Hitler's Minister of Propaganda; Hitler granted dictatorial powers (Enabling Law); 1st German concentration camps erected; boycott of Jews begins in Germany; German labour unions suppressed; non-Nazi political parties suppressed; 92% of German electorate vote for Nazi's; 60,000 artists (authors, actors, painters, musicians) emigrate from Germany (-1939); USSR's famine reaches disastrous proportions;

1934: Austrian revolution overturns Social Democrats; general strike in France;  Hitler & Mussolini meet in Venice; Hitler promotes bloodbath in Germany with many assassinated; German plebiscite votes Hitler as Fuhrer; USSR admitted to League of Nations; King Alexander of Yugoslavia assassinated, replaced by Prince Paul; German Labor Front founded; 

1935: Nazis repudiate Versailles Treaty & reintroduce compulsory military service; Nuremberg Laws against Jews; show trials take place in Russia; USSR concludes treaties with France, Czech., US & Turkey; Mussolini invades Abyssinia; anti-Hapsburg laws abolished in Austria; German Luftwaffe formed; Moscow subway opened; Kemal adopts Swiss standards, abolishing polygamy, allowing women to vote & then adopting Latin alphabet for Turkey;

1936: German troops occupy Rhineland;  Italy, Austria & Hungary sign Rome Pact; Abyssinian war ends with Italy annexing Abyssinia; Spanish civil war; France devalues franc; Italy devalues lira; Mussolini & Hitler proclaim Rome-Berlin Axis; 

1936-38: Soviet's Great Purge or Great Terror¹⁾ and their Kulak Operation to repress and kill oppositional intelligentsia, wealthy peasants (kulaks) and ethnic minorities, killing 680,000 - 1.2 million people and constituted 75% of Gulag sentences; The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by Leon Trotsky (who had been expelled in 1929) and Nikolai Bukharin (arrested in 1937 and executed in 1938), respectively.

1937: Italy & Yugoslavia sign Belgrade Pact; Italy withdraws from League of Nations;

1938: anti-Jewish legislation enacted in Italy; US recalls their ambassador to Germany; Kemal “Ataturk”, the father of modern Turkey dies;

1946: Albania, Hungary, Transjordan, & Bulgaria become independent states; Britain & France evacuate Lebabon; E.German Social democrats merge with Communists; 

1947: US Secretary of State, Gen. Marshall calls for European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan); Brit. proposal to divide Palestine rejected by Arabs & Jews, & thus deferred to UN which announces plan for partition; “The diary of Anne Frank” published;

1948: Communist coup d'etat Czech; US Congress passes Marshall Plan & $US17b aid to Europe; Jewish state founded; USSR stops road/rail traffic b/n Berlin & the West, airlift begins; 1st World Health Assembly meeting; 

1949: US Foreign Assistance Bill grants $US5.4b to Europe; Israel admitted to UN; Berlin blockade officially lifted; Ger. Federal Republic founded with Bonn as capital; Transjordan renamed Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; Berlin airlift ends; Democratic Republic established in E. Germany;

1925: F.Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby”; popular song: “Show me the way to go home”;

1926: Houdini dies;

1927: Holland Tunnel opens linking NY & New Jersey; Great Moffat Tunnel through Rocky Mtns opened; Harlem Globetrotter's basketball team founded; great flood disaster in Lower Mississippi Valley; slow foxtrot becomes fashionable; 

1928: Lawrence's “Lady Chatterley's Lover”; 1st Mickey Mouse films; Brazil's economy collapses due to over-production of coffee; Garconne-style female fashion; 

1929: Cascade Tunnel opens; Empire State Building construction starts; Wall St crash; St Valentine's Day Massacre - six notorious Chicago gangsters machine-gunned to death by a rival gang;

1930: Argentinian & Brazilian revolutions; Congress creates Veterans Administration; Federal Bureau Narcotics organised; Jehovah's Witnesses formed; Clark Gable begins Hollywood career;

1931: building of Rockefeller Centre begins (-1947); Empire State completed; George Washington Bridge NY completed; “Minnie the Moocher”; “Star spangled banner”;

1932: Golden Gate Bridge construction starts; Johnny Weissmuller in his 1st Tarzan film; Shirley Temple's 1st film; song - “Night and Day”;

1933: 1st US aircraft carrier launched; F.D.Roosevelt inaugurated as 32nd President of US; US goes off the gold standard; US recognises USSR & resumes trade; 21st amendment repeals prohibition; film “Little Women”;

1934: songs - “Blue Moon”

1935: Wealth Tax Act passed; jazz becomes swing; songs - “It aint necessarily so”; “Begin the Beguine”; rumba dance fashionable; Alcoholics Anonymous organised in NY;

1936: - song “Pennies from heaven”; Hoover Dam completed;

1937: Steinbeck's “Of mice & men”; films: “Snow White”; “Life of Emile Zola”; Carl Orff's “Carmina burana”; songs: “The lady is a tramp”; Golden Gate Bridge opens;

1938: US recession; song: “A Tisket, A Tasket”; 40hr work week; Lambeth Walk a fashionable dance; 32,000 people die in motor vehicle accidents in US;

1939: Roosevelt asks Congress for $552m for defense & demands assurances from Hitler/Mussolini that they wont attack 31 named states; films “ Gone with the wind”, “The wizard of Oz”; songs: “Beer Barrel Polka”, “Over the rainbow”; WWII breaks the US recession of 1938 by creating demand for supplies to Europe;

1940: US mobilises military; Grahame Greene “The power & the glory”; Hemingway “For whom the bell tolls”; Koestler “Darkness at noon”; film: “Fantasia”; songs: “You are my sunshine”, “Blueberry hill”, “When you wish upon a star”

1941: US enter WWII after Pearl Harbour; films: “Citizen Kane”, Marx Brothers, “Suspicion”; songs: “Chatanooga Choo-Choo”; Rainbow Bridge over Niagara Falls opens; Joe DiMaggio hits safely in 56 consecutive baseball games; restrictions of work for 16-18yr olds;

1942: US govt transfer 100,000 Niseis (Jap-Americans) from west coast to inland camps; FBI capture 8 Ger. saboteurs who landed in Florida & NY; films: “Bambi”, “Holiday Inn”; songs: “Paper Doll”; 487 die in Coconut Grove Nightclub fire as doors opened inwards; sugar & petrol rationing;

1943: 1300-mile long oil pipeline from Texas to Penn.; Uranium pile built; new cyclotron completed; Roosevelt freezes wages, salaries & prices to forestall inflation; polio epidemic kills 1200, cripples thousands more; rationing - shoes, then meat, cheese, fats, canned foods; US War Labor Board orders coal mines be taken over by govt when 0.5m miners strike; Pay-as-you-go tax system instituted; Zoot suit popular among hepcats; Lindy hop yields to jitterbugging; films: “Jane Eyre”; plays: “Oklahoma!”; songs: “Oh what a beautiful morning”

1944: Roosevelt re-elected; cost of living rises almost 30%; songs: “Don't fence me in”; 165 killed & 175 injured in a circus fire;

1945: Franklin D Roosevelt dies & succeeded by vice-President Harry Truman; bebop becomes fashionable; Empire State Building hit by B52 bomber at floors 78-79; 

1946: Juan Peron elected President of Argentina; Warren's “All the King's Men”; “Annie get your gun”; US Navy tests atomic bomb at Bikini;

1947: “New Look” dominates fashion; Blizzard in NY almost 28inches; 1m war veterans enroll in colleges under US “G.I. bill of rights”; Al Capone dies;

1948: songs: “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”; films: “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “Oliver Twist”; Cole Porter's “Kiss Me Kate”;

1949: 11 US communists found guilty of conspiracy to overthrow govt; Arthur Miller's “Death of a salesman”; samba becomes fashionable; songs: “Diamonds are a girl's best friend”, “Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer”;

see Australian history 1925-1950

 

1929: term “apartheid” used for 1st time;

1935: longest bridge in world opened over the lower Zambesi;

1949: apartheid program established in Sth Africa;

see also history of photography

1925: Logie Baird transmits TV; Bosch's hydrogen manufacture process; synthetic oil; quantum mechanics for atoms; 1st Leica camera; cosmic rays in upper atmosphere; Pauli exclusion principle; 1st International Congress of Radiologists; rhenium; NY solar eclipse is 1st in 300yrs; US schoolteacher goes on trial for teaching theory of evolution;

1926: Goddard's 1st liquid fuel rocket; vitamin B isolated; Kodak's 16mm movie film; liver extract to Rx pernicious anaemia; urease enzyme; Lufthansa airline founded; Brit. Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) founded; permanent wave invented for hair;

1927: Pavlov's conditioned reflexes; “Iron lung”; airplanes used as crop dusters;

1928: Baird's color TV; penicillin; Geiger counter; radiochemistry; Eastman's color motion pictures; 1st scheduled TV broadcasts in NY;

1929: talkie films kill the silent films; vitamin K; estrone; vitamin B1; quartz crystal clocks; Hubble measures red shifts; EEG; aluminium furniture; Graf Zeppelin airship flies around world in 20 days;

1930: Xrays to Ix molecular structure; theory of oscillation; pluto; acetylene-based fabrics; Schmidt makes 1st coma-free 14“ mirror telescope; yellow fever vaccine;

1931: vitamin A isolated; cyclotron; neoprene; deuterium; Swedish artistSundblom illustrates Santa Claus wearing the Coca Cola Company colours of red and white for a series of ads creating the image of Santa Claus as we know today.

1932: positron; polyamide; neutron; synthetic light polariser; sulphonamide; Piccard reaches 17.5miles high in his stratosphere balloon; balloon tyre for tractors; vitamin D;

1933: electronic television; vitamin C synthesised; vitamin B2; Campbell's motor car speed recod of 272mph;

1934: androsterone isolated; refrigeration process for meat cargoes devised; phthalocyanine dyes;

1935: radar to detect aircraft; Prontosil, 1st sulphonamide for Rx streptococci;

1936: artificial heart

1937: insulin to control diabetes; vitamin A & K concentrates; nylon; jet engine; Coca Cola on sale in Australia;

1937: superfluidity of helium

1938: perlon; ballpoint pen; vitamin B6 isolated; Howard Hughes flies around world in just under 4 days;

1939: possibility of splitting the atom; DDT; polyethylene; helicopter; Rh factor; FM radio; BOAC founded; nylon stockings;

1940: penicillin as a practical antibiotic; electron microscope; neptunium;

1941: portable military bridge; underwater photography; “Manhatten Project” begins; dacron; plutonium; “Mosquito” fighter aircraft;

1942: Fermi splits atom; 1st electronic computer; magnetic recording tape; device for clearing fog from airfields (FIDO); turbo-prop engine; 1st US jetplane tested; technique for building 10,000 ton Liberty Ships in 4 days;

1943: streptomycin; 

1944: quinine synthesised; 1st non-stop flight from London to Canada;

1945: vitamin A synthesised; 1st atomic bomb detonated July 16;

1947: Dead Sea scrolls from 22BC-100AD discovered; supersonic flight; Heyerdahl sails on raft from Peru to Polynesia to prove prehistoric immigration; transistor; Odom flies around world in 73hrs; Cobb's record motorcar speed 394mph; “Flying Saucers” in US; 19thC Nippur excavations results in reconstruction of the laws of Hammurabi from 18thC BC;

1948: aureomycin; chloromycetin; LP record; chemogenetics; 1st port radar system; rocket missiles reach 78 miles high & 3000mph; 200in Mt Palomar telescope; Kinsey's “Sexual behaviour in the human male”; Polaroid Land camera;

1949: cortisone; neomycin; USSR tests its 1st atomic bomb; US airforce jet flies across US in 3h 46m; US launches guided missile 250miles;