1931

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1900s 1910s 1920s – 1930s – 1940s 1950s 1960s
Years:	1928 1929 1930 – 1931 – 1932 1933 1934

Events[change | change source]

January 27 – Pierre Laval forms a government in France
February 16 – Pehr Evind Svinhufvud is elected president of Finland
March 31 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000 people
April 25 – The automobile manufacturer Porsche is founded by Ferdinand Porsche in Stuttgart
May 1 – Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City
June 3 – Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory is put on display for the first time
July 9 – Irish racing driver Kaye Don breaks the world water speed record at Lake Garda, Italy^[1]
July 20 – A violent tornado strikes the city of Lublin, Poland.
August – Warner Brothers releases the first Merrie Melodies cartoon
September- The 1931 Belize hurricane strikes Belize (then British Honduras), killing over 2,500 people
September 22 – The United Kingdom abandons the gold standard
October 5 – American aviators Clyde Edward Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, Jr. complete the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean. They travel from Misawa, Japan to East Wenatchee, Washington in 41½ hours.^[2]
November 7 – The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong
December 10 – Niceto Alcalá-Zamora is elected president of the Spanish Republic

January 23 – Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (b. 1881)
February 11 – Charles Algernon Parsons, British inventor (b. 1854)
February 26 – Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1847)
March 7 – Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish painter (b. 1865)
April 8 – Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
April 26 – George Herbert Mead, American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist (b. 1863)
May 9 – Albert Abraham Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
June 2 – Joseph W. Farnham, American screenwriter (b. 1884)
July 12 – Nathan Söderblom, Swedish archbishop, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1866)
August 26 – Hamaguchi Osachi, 27th Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1870)
September 12 – Joseph Le Brix, French aviator and naval officer (b. 1899)
October 21 – Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian author and dramatist (b. 1862)
November 13 – Ivan Fichev, Bulgarian general, minister of defense, military historian, and academician (b. 1860)
December 9 – Antonio Salandra, Italian statesman, 21st Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1853)
December 27 – José Figueroa Alcorta, 16th President of Argentina (b. 1860)

↑ BBC History, July 2011, p12.
↑ "Pangborn-Herndon Memorial Site". Aviation: From Sand Dunes To Sonic Booms. National Park Service. Retrieved 22 December 2016.