In Tibet, 4-year old Tenzin Gyatso is named the 13th Dalai Lama.
Winston Churchill elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. In a radio address he blames Mussolini for leading Italy into war placing “the inheritors of ancient Rome upon the side of the ferocious pagan barbarians”.
In June, the St. Louis, a ship carrying 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later die in Nazi death camps during The Holocaust.
In September Germans invade England’s ally, Poland and World War II begins.
King George V of Britain dies, succeeded by son (Edward VIII) who abdicates. His brother becomes George VI and his daughter, Elizabeth, next in royal succession to the throne.
Rome-Berlin Axis proclaimed and Civil War begins in Spain.
Senator Huey Long is assassinated in Louisiana. (“All the King’s Men”, a 1949 film, was based on prize-winning novel, based on Long’s life, by Robert Penn Warren.)
Hitler becomes National Socialist (NAZI) Fuhrer in Germany, meets with Mussolini, dictator of Italy.
The Long March of the Communist Liberation Army in China marshals a force, in retreat, to combat the government of Chiang Kai Shek that had machine-gunned Communist members and broken up labor unions.
Elected the previous November, Franklin Roosevelt is inaugurated in April, promising to restore prosperity: the New Deal programs begin. Francis Perkins is names Secretary of Labor, the first woman in any President’s Cabinet.
The Geneva Convention of 1929 goes into force, signed by 129 nations. It requires the humane treatment of prisoners of war, care of the sick or wounded and protection of civilians.
Jane Addams becomes the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
