1932

Events

January

• January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.
• January 9 – Sakuradamon Incident: Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang fails in his effort to assassinate Emperor Hirohito of Japan. The Kuomintang's official newspaper runs an editorial expressing regret that the attempt failed, which is used by the Japanese as a pretext to attack Shanghai later in the month.
• January 12 – Hattie W. Caraway of Arkansas becomes the first woman to be elected to the United States Senate, succeeding her late husband, Thaddeus Caraway, in a special election,
• January 22 – The 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising begins; it is suppressed by the government of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.
• January 24 – Marshal Pietro Badoglio declares the end of Libyan resistance.
• January 26 – British submarine aircraft carrier sinks with the loss of all 60 onboard on exercise in Lyme Bay in the English Channel.
• January 28 – January 28 incident: Conflict between Japan and China in Shanghai.
• January 31 – Japanese warships arrive in Nanking.

  February

• February 2
• * A general World Disarmament Conference begins in Geneva. The principal issue at the conference is the demand made by Germany for Gleichberechtigung and the French demand for sécurité.
• * The League of Nations again recommends negotiations between the Republic of China and Japan.
• * The Reconstruction Finance Corporation begins operations in Washington, D.C.
• February 4
• * The 1932 Winter Olympics open in Lake Placid, New York.
• * Japan occupies Harbin, China.
• February 9 – League of Blood Incident: Junnosuke Inoue, prominent Japanese businessman, banker and former governor of the Bank of Japan is assassinated by the right-wing extremist group the League of Blood.
• February 11 – Pope Pius XI meets Benito Mussolini in Vatican City.
• February 15 – Clara, Lu & Em, generally regarded as the first daytime network soap opera, debuts in its morning time slot over the Blue Network of NBC Radio in the United States, having originally been a late evening program.
• February 18 – Japan declares Manchukuo formally independent from China.
• February 25 – Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship by naturalization, opening the opportunity for him to run in the 1932 German presidential election.
• February 27 – The Mäntsälä rebellion occurs in Finland.

  March

• March 1
• * Lindbergh kidnapping: Charles Lindbergh Jr., the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. On May 12 he is found dead just a few miles away.
• * Japan installs Puyi as puppet emperor of Manchukuo.
• March 2 – The Mäntsälä rebellion ends in failure; Finnish democracy prevails. The Lapua Movement is condemned by conservative Finnish president Pehr Evind Svinhufvud in a radio speech.
• March 5 – Dan Takuma, prominent Japanese businessman and director of the Mitsui Zaibatsu conglomerate is assassinated by the radical right-wing League of Blood group.
• March 9 – Éamon de Valera is elected President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, the first change of government in the country since its foundation 10 years previously.
• March 14 – George Eastman, founder of Kodak, commits suicide in Rochester, New York.
• March 18 – Peace negotiations between China and Japan begin.
• March 19 – The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens in Australia.
• March 20 – The Graf Zeppelin airship begins a regular route between Germany and South America.
• March 21–22 – 1932 Deep South tornado outbreak: A series of deadly tornadoes in the United States kills more than 220 people in Alabama, 34 in Georgia and 17 in Tennessee.
• March 22 – Tarzan the Ape Man premieres in New Yord City, first of the classic film series starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan.

  April

• April 5
• * 10,000 disgruntled Newfoundlanders march on their legislature to show discontent with their current political situation; this is a flash point in the demise of the Dominion of Newfoundland.
• * The first Alko stores are opened in Finland at 10 in the morning following the end of Prohibition in that country, resulting in a new mnemonic "543210".
• April 6
• * U.S. president Herbert Hoover supports armament limitations at the World Disarmament Conference.
• * The trial of fraudulent art dealer Otto Wacker begins in Berlin.
• April 11 – 1932 German presidential election: Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected as Reichspräsident, defeating Hitler.
• April 13 – German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning bans the SA and the SS as threats to public order, arguing that they are chiefly responsible for the wave of political violence afflicting Germany.
• April 14 – John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, at the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge, focus a proton beam on lithium and split its nucleus.
• April 17 – Haile Selassie announces an anti-slavery law in Abyssinia.
• April 19 – German art dealer Otto Wacker is sentenced to 19 months in prison for selling fraudulent paintings he attributed to Vincent van Gogh.
• April 25
• * Gladys Elinor Watkins consecrates the carillon of the National War Memorial in New Zealand.
• * The bodies of Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman and Jabir ibn Abd Allah, two of the companions of Islamic prophet Muhammad, are moved from their graves in Salmaan Paak following a dream of King Faisal I of Iraq that they are affected by water.
• April 29 – Korean pro-independence paramilitary Yun Bong-gil detonates a bomb at a gathering of Japanese government and military officials in Shanghai's Hongkou Park, killing General Yoshinori Shirakawa and injuring Mamoru Shigemitsu and Vice Admiral Kichisaburō Nomura.

  May

• May 6
• * Paul Gorguloff shoots French president Paul Doumer in Paris; Doumer dies the next day.
• * The politically powerful General Kurt von Schleicher meets secretly with Adolf Hitler. Schleicher tells Hitler that he is scheming to bring down the Brüning government in Germany and asks for Nazi support of the new "presidential government" Schleicher is planning to form. Schleicher and Hitler negotiate a "gentlemen's agreement" where in exchange for lifting the ban on the SA and SS and having the Reichstag dissolved for early elections this summer, the Nazis will support Schleicher's new chancellor.
• May 10
• * There are violent scenes in the German Reichstag building in Berlin as Hermann Göring and other Nazi MRDs attack the Defense Minister General Wilhelm Groener for his lack of belief in a supposed Social Democratic putsch. After the debate, General Schleicher tells Groener that he has lost the confidence of the Army and must resign at once.
• * Albert Lebrun becomes the new president of France.
• * James Chadwick, working at the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge, reports the existence of the neutron.
• May 12 – General Wilhelm Groener resigns as German Defense Minister. Schleicher takes control of the Defense Ministry.
• May 13 – The Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, is dismissed by the State Governor, Sir Philip Game.
• May 15 – May 15 Incident, an attempted military coup in which Japanese prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai is assassinated by naval officers. Japanese troops leave Shanghai.
• May 16 – Massive riots between Hindus and Muslims in Bombay leave thousands dead and injured.
• May 20–21 – Amelia Earhart flies from the United States to County Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 14 hours 54 minutes.
• May 20 – Federación Obrera de la Industria de la Carne initiates a major strike in the Argentinian meat-packing industry.
• May 25 – Goofy makes his appearance in the Disney animated short Mickey's Revue.
• May 26 – Judgement in Donoghue v Stevenson handed down in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom, creating the modern concept of a duty of care in British law.
• May 30 – German chancellor Heinrich Brüning is dismissed by President von Hindenburg. President Hindenburg asks Franz von Papen to form a new government, known as the "Government of the President's Friends", which is openly dedicated to the destruction of democracy and the Weimar Republic. The downfall of Brüning is largely the work of Schleicher, who has been scheming against him since the beginning of May. Schleicher takes the position of Defense Minister in his friend Papen's government.

  June

• c. June – The Republican Citizens Committee Against National Prohibition is established for the repeal of Prohibition in the United States.
• June 4
• * A military coup occurs in Chile.
• * The Papen government in Germany dissolves the Reichstag for elections on July 31 in the full expectation that the Nazis will win the largest number of seats.
• June 14 – The Papen government lifts the ban against the SS and SA in Germany.
• June 16– Lausanne conference opens to discuss reparations, which Germany had not paid since the Hoover Moratorium of June 1931.
• June 20 – The Benelux customs union is negotiated.
• June 24 – After a relatively bloodless military rebellion, Siam becomes a constitutional monarchy.
• June 25 – India plays its first Test cricket match with England at Lord's.

  July

• July 5 – António de Oliveira Salazar becomes the fascist prime minister of Portugal.
• July 7 – French submarine Prométhée sinks with the loss of 62 of 69 onboard on trial out of Cherbourg in the English Channel.
• July 8 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average in the United States reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, bottoming out at 41.22.
• July 9
• * The Constitutionalist Revolution starts in Brazil with the uprising of the state of São Paulo.
• * Lausanne conference ends, agreeing to cancel World War I reparations against Germany.
• July 12
• * Norway annexes northern Greenland.
• * Hedley Verity establishes a new first-class cricket record by taking all ten wickets for only ten runs against Nottinghamshire on a pitch affected by a storm.
• July 17 – Altona Bloody Sunday: In Altona, Germany, a bloody clash with heavy police involvement occurs when Nazi marchers enter a working class area with many communist supporters; 18 are killed.
• July 20 – The Preußenschlag in Germany. The political coup gives Franz von Papen control of Prussia, the most powerful state in Germany, and is a major blow to German democracy.
• July 21 – The British Empire Economic Conference opens in Ottawa, Canada.
• July 30
• * The 1932 Summer Olympics open in Los Angeles.
• * Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, the first animated cartoon to be presented in full Technicolor, premieres in Los Angeles. It releases in theaters, along with the film version of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude ; Flowers and Trees goes on to win the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
• July 31 – July 1932 German federal election sees the Nazis become the largest party in the Reichstag, winning 37% of the vote.