Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s - 1930s - 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s

Years: 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939

Events and Trends

• Worldwide Great Depression
• Socialists proclaim The death of Capitalism
• Radio becomes dominant mass media in industrial nations.
• Nuclear fission discovered by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann
• First intercontinental commercial airline flights.
• Rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany
• Under Joseph Stalin, millions die in famines. The Great Purges eliminate all Old Bolsheviks from the Soviet government, except for Molotov and Stalin himself.
• Japan invaded China as a precursor to Japanese invasions in Southeast Asia
• The Spanish Civil War
• Start of World War II in Asia and Europe
• Height of the Art Deco movement in Europe and the US
• The Wizard of Oz

• President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China)
• President Lin Sen (Republic of China)
• President Paul von Hindenburg (Germany)
• Adolf Hitler (Germany)
• King Victor Emmanuel III (Italy)
• Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (Italy)
• Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
• Pope Pius XI
• Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)
• King George V (United Kingdom)
• King Edward VIII (United Kingdom)
• King George VI (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (United Kingdom)
• President Herbert Hoover (United States)
• President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (United States)
• President W.T. Cosgrave (Irish Free State)
• President Eamon de Valera (Irish Free State)
• Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Éire)

• Louis Armstrong
• Fred Astaire
• Duke Ellington
• Judy Garland
• Katharine Hepburn
• Boris Karloff
• Bela Lugosi
• The Marx Brothers
• Edward G. Robinson
• Ginger Rogers
• Fats Waller
• Alice Brady