1931
Japan invades Manchuria
Japanese officers blew up a small stretch of their own railway near Mukden and blamed Chinese bandits. Within months the entire Chinese northeast was under Japanese occupation as the puppet state of Manchukuo. The League of Nations sent a commission and wagged its finger. Japan walked out. The Second World War in Asia had quietly begun.
Spanish Second Republic proclaimed
After municipal elections showed republican majorities in the big cities, King Alfonso XIII quietly left Spain and a republic was declared in the streets of Madrid to huge crowds singing the Marseillaise. It would be a short, violent, creative, contested five years, ending in civil war and forty years of Franco.
Empire State Building opens
Hoover pressed a button in Washington and the lights of the world's tallest building came on in midtown Manhattan. It had gone up in a year and forty-five days, at the rate of a floor every three days, built by ironworkers walking girders without harnesses. The Depression left it half-empty for a decade.
India's salt tax civil disobedience
Following Gandhi's Salt March, hundreds of thousands of Indians participated in civil disobedience across the subcontinent: boycotting British goods, refusing taxes, making their own salt by the sea. The British jailed sixty thousand protesters in a few months. Viceroy Irwin finally met Gandhi for talks, an unprecedented recognition of the movement's moral authority. The psychological balance in India had shifted.
Scottsboro boys trial
Nine young Black men accused of raping two white women on a freight train in Alabama were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death within weeks. The case, based on fabricated testimony, dragged through American courts for decades and exposed the Jim Crow legal system to national view. It became an early civil rights cause celebre.
Al Capone convicted of tax evasion
After years of organized crime that federal prosecutors could not pin on him, Al Capone was finally brought down by Treasury agents on tax charges. He got eleven years at Alcatraz. Syphilis finished him off in the 1940s. The government had found its formula for dismantling organized crime: follow the money.
Want 1931 in context? Print the whole 20th century as a one-sheet timeline chart.
Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1931?
Saeculum lists 6 curated events from 1931. The most significant is Japan invades Manchuria: Japanese officers blew up a small stretch of their own railway near Mukden and blamed Chinese bandits.
What era was 1931 part of?
1931 falls within the Modern Era (1901-2000). World wars, cold war, and the splitting of the atom.
Which regions saw notable events in 1931?
The curated events from 1931 span East Asia, Europe, North America and South Asia.