1932 - Definition and Overview

1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday.

Events

January-February

• January 3 - British arrest and intern Mohandas Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel
• January 8 - In Great Britain the Archbishop of Canterbury forbids church remarriage of divorcees
• January 12 - Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate
• January 15 - Pierre Laval forms a new government in France
• January 15 - About 6 million unemployed in Germany
• January 26 - British submarine M-2 sinks with all 50 hands
• January 28 - Japan occupies Shanghai
• January 29 - Minority government of Karl Mureschi in Austria ends the governmental crisis
• January 31 - Japanese warships arrive in Nanking
• February 2 - General convention of disarmament begins in Geneva
• February 2 - League of Nations again recommends negotiations between the Republic of China and Japan
• February 4 - Japan occupies Harbin, China
• February 11 - Pope Pius XI meets Benito Mussolini in the Vatican City
• February 18 - Japan declares Manzhouguo (Japanese name for Manchuria) formally independent from China
• February 27 - Adolf Hitler gains German citizenship prior to elections
• February 27 - Mäntsälä Rebellion in Finland

March-April

• March 1 - Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, the baby son of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh is kidnapped
• March 9 - Eamon de Valera is elected President of the Executive Council. It is the first change of government in the Irish Free State in 10 years.
• March 18 - Peace negotiations between China and Japan begin.
• March 19 - Sydney Harbour Bridge opens
• March 20 - Graf Zeppelin begins a regular route to South America
• April 6 - U.S. president Herbert Hoover supports armament limitations
• April 10 - Paul von Hindenburg elected president of Germany. Adolf Hitler receives over 13 million votes.
• April 17 - Haile Selassie announces an anti-slavery law in Abyssinia
• April 19 - German art dealer Otto Wacker is sentenced for 19 months for selling fraudulent paintings of Vincent van Gogh

May-June

• May 6 - Paul Gordulof assassinates French president Paul Doumer in Paris - Doumer dies the next day.
• May 10 - Albert Lebrun becomes the new president of France
• May 12 - Ten weeks after his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh is found dead in Hopewell, New Jersey just a few miles from the Lindbergh's home.
• May 13 - The Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, is dismissed by the State Governor, Sir Phillip Game
• May 15 - Japanese troops leave Shanghai; May 15 incident occurs.
• May 16 - Massive riots between Hindus and Muslims in Bombay - thousands dead and injured.
• May 18 - Assassination of Japanese prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai
• May 20-21 - Amelia Earhart flies from USA to Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 14 hours 54 minutes
• May 30 - German chancellor Heinrich Brüning resigns. President Hindenburg takes Franz von Papen to form a new government.
• June - 15,000 World War I veterans march in Washington, DC
• June 4 - Military coup in Chile
• June 6 - The Revenue Act of 1932 is enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States (1 cent per gallon sold).
• June 14 - Bans against SS and SA overturned in Germany
• June 20 - Benelux customs union negotiated
• June 24 - After a relatively bloodless military rebellion, Siam becomes a constitutional monarchy

July-October

• July 5 - António de Oliveira Salazar becomes the fascists prime minister of Portugal (for the next 36 years)
• July 7 - French submarine Sromethee sinks off Cherbourg - 66 dead
• July 17 - Bloody Sunday of Altona in Germany - armed communists attack a national socialist demonstration - 18 dead. Many other political street fights follow.
• July 28 - US President Herbert Hoover orders the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, DC. US troops dispersed the last of the "Bonus Army" the next day.
• August 6 - First Venice Film Festival
• August 18 - Auguste Piccard reaches altitude of 16.500 meters with an air balloon
• August 30 - Hermann Göring elected as a chairman of German senate
• August 31 - Total solar eclipse visible from northern Canada through NE Vermont, New Hampshire, SW Maine, and the Capes of Massachusetts
• September 9 - The Generalitat reinstaurated, Catalonia regains political autonomy inside the 2nd Spanish Republic from September 25
• September 20 - Mohandas Gandhi begins an hunger strike in Poona prison
• September 28 - According to Prussian statistics, 115 people have been killed in political riots during the year
• October 15 - Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight
• October 19 - Wedding of Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden and Princess Sibylla of Sachse-Coburg

November-December

• November 1 - San Francisco Opera House opened
• November 7 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on radio for the first time.
• November 8 - U.S. presidential election, 1932: Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory.
• November 9 - Riots between conservative and socialist supporters in Switzerland - 12 dead, 60 injured
• November 11 - Tornado and huge waves kills about thousand in Santa Crus del Sure in Cuba
• November 19 - Second wife of Josef Stalin is found dead in her home
• November 21 - German president Hindenburg begins negotiations with Adolf Hitler about the formation of a new government
• November 24 - In Washington, DC, the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
• December 3 - Hindenburg names Kurt von Schleicher as a German chancellor
• December 12 - Japan and Soviet Union reform their diplomatic connections
• December 25 - Earthquake in the Kansu Province in China - 70,000 dead

unknown dates

• Saudi Arabia declared as a unified nation with Ibn Saud as a king
• Female suffrage in Brazil
• Norway annexes northern Greenland
• Chaco war between Bolivia and Paraguay
• In the next five years, Dr Morris Bolber and associates successfully murder and collect the insurance money for more than 30 victims
• Mars candy bar
• Zippo lighters
• The Kennedy-Thorndike experiment shows that measured time as well as length are affected by motion, in accordance with the theory of special relativity.
• Chadwick discovers the neutron.
• Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane publishes The Causes of Evolution and thereby unifies the findings of Mendelian genetics with those of evolutionary science.
• Second Polar Year, an international scientific collaboration.

Births

January

• January 3 - Dabney Coleman, actor
• January 4 - Carlos Saura, director
• January 5 - Umberto Eco, Italian semiotic scholar and author
• January 5 - Raisa Gorbachev, Soviet political consort, (d. 1999)
• January 16 - Dian Fossey, zoologist (d. 1985)
• January 18 - Robert Anton Wilson, US author
• January 22 - Piper Laurie, actress
• January 26 - Clement Seymour "Sir Coxsone" Dodd, Jamaican record producer
• January 30 - Knock Yokoyama, Japanese comedian and politician

February-March

• February 3 - Peggy Ann Garner, actress (d. 1984)
• February 6 - François Truffaut, French film director (d. 1984)
• February 7 - Gay Talese, author
• February 8 - John Williams, composer, conductor
• February 9 - Gerhard Richter, painter and graphic artist
• February 11 - Jerome Lowenthal, pianist/professor
• February 12 - Julian Simon, economist, author
• February 14 - Alexander Kluge, author and film director
• February 18 - Milos Forman, film director
• February 22 - Edward Kennedy, US politician and brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy
• February 23 - Majel Barrett, actress (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
• February 24 - Michel Legrand, composer
• February 25 - Faron Young country music singer (d. 1996)
• February 26 - Johnny Cash, US country music singer
• February 27 - Elizabeth Taylor, US actress
• March 4 - Miriam Makeba, singer
• March 12 - Andrew Young, civil rights activist, politician, ambassador to the United Nations
• March 18 - John Updike, US author

April-July

• April 1 - Gordon Jump, actor, "Maytag Repairman" (d. 2003)
• April 1 - Debbie Reynolds, actress
• April 4 - Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian movie director (d. 1986)
• April 4 - Anthony Perkins, US actor (d. 1992)
• April 8 - Baginda Almutawakkil Alallah Sultan Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail, later Sultan of Johor and 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
• April 12 - Tiny Tim, musician (d. 1996)
• April 23 - Halston, fashion designer (d. 1990)
• April 27 - Casey Kasem, American disc jockey
• April 27 - Gian-Carlo Rota, Italian-born American mathematician and philosopher
• May 8 - Phyllida Law, actress
• May 8 - Sonny Liston, boxer (d. 1970)
• May 21 - Gabriele Wohmann, author
• June 4 - John Drew Barrymore, actor (d. 2004)
• June 4 - Maurice Shadbolt, New Zealand writer (d. 2004)
• June 12 - Rona Jaffe, novelist
• June 25 - Peter Blake, artist
• June 27 - Anna Moffo, American soprano
• June 28 - Pat Morita, actor
• July 2 - Dave Thomas - founder of Wendy's restaurant chain (d. 2002)
• July 9 - Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence (2001-present)
• July 12 - Otis Davis, American runner
• July 21 - Ernie Warlick, American football player
• July 29 - Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker, US Senator (1978-1996)

August-December

• August 2 - Peter O'Toole, Irish film and stage actor
• August 2 - Lamar Hunt, American sportsman
• August 6 - Howard Hodgkin, painter and print-maker
• August 11 - Fernando Arrabal, writer
• August 17 - V. S. Naipaul, writer
• September 8 - Patsy Cline, singer and the first woman elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame
• August 18 - William R. Bennett, Premier of British Columbia
• September 18 - Nikolai Rukavishnikov, Soviet cosmonaut
• September 25 - Glenn Gould, Canadian pianist (d. 1982)
• September 26 - Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India
• September 27 - Oliver E. Williamson , US economist
• October 19 - Robert Reed, actor (The Brady Bunch) (d. 1992)
• October 20 - Rosey Brown, Pro Football Hall of Famer (d. 2004)
• October 26 - Eidegenegen Eidagaruwo, first Angam Baby
• October 28 - Suzy Parker, actress
• November 3 - Albert Reynolds, Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland
• November 4 - Noam Pitlik, actor/director (d. 1999)
• November 15 - Petula Clark, singer-actress-composer
• November 20 - Richard Dawson, game show host
• November 29 - Jacques Chirac, president of France
• December 9 - Bill Hartack, jockey
• December 24 - Earl Dodge, United States Prohibition Party Presidential candidate.
• December 28 - Roy Hattersley, British politician
• December 28 - Dorsey Burnette, Rockabilly pioneer (d. 1979)

unknown dates

• Blaze Starr, American stripper and burlesque performer
• Irene Jai Narayan, Fijian politician.
• Mehmood, Indian actor

Deaths

• January 21 - Giles Lytton Strachey British writer and biographer (b. 1880)
• January 24 - Sir Alfred Yarrow, shipbuilder, philanthropist
• February 10 - Edgar Wallace, novelist, screenwriter for King Kong
• March 6 - John Philip Sousa, US band leader, conductor, composer
• March 1 - Frank Teschemacher, jazz clarinetist and alto-saxophonist
• March 7 - Aristide Briand, diplomat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1928)
• March 14 - George Eastman, camera inventor
• March 31 - Eben Byers, steel tycoon and Pittsburgh socialite, from radiation poisoning due to the ingestion of the radium-laced nostrum Radithor over three years. His gruesome death made front-page news and led to the eventual regulation of radium and empowerment of the FDA.
• April 3 - Wilhelm Ostwald, chemist
• April 20 - Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician
• April 26 - Hart Crane, American poet (b. 1899)
• May 3 - Charles Fort, US researcher of the unusual
• May 7 - Paul Doumer, French president (assassinated)
• May 15 - Tsuyoshi Inukai, Japanese prime minister (assassinated)
• July 6 - Kenneth Grahame, author, The Wind in the Willows
• July 23 - Alberto Santos-Dumont, Brazilian aviation pioneer
• September 23 - Jules Chéret, master poster designer
• November 9 - Nadezhda Alliluyeva-Stalin, second wife of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Werner Karl Heisenberg
• Chemistry - Irving Langmuir
• Medicine - Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, Edgar Douglas Adrian
• Literature -John Galsworthy
• Peace - Not awarded.