istoryworld
Events relating to europe
French cabaret singer Edith Gassion acquires the nickname la môme piaf ('the little sparrow'), and so becomes Edith Piaf
Leningrad's opera and ballet company is renamed the Kirov, in memory of the city's recently assassinated commissar
Italian baritone Tito Gobbi makes his operatic debut in Gubbio in Bellini's La Somnambula
Mussolini uses a disagreement over grazing rights as a pretext for an empire-building invasion of Ethiopia
A collection of Constantine Cavafy's poems is published in Alexandria in an undated edition
R.K. Narayan's novel Swami and Friends is the first set in his fictional town of Malgudi
British publisher Allen Lane launches a paperback series to which he gives the name Penguin Books
Salvador Dali creates a stir by attending the opening of London's Surrealist exhibition in a diving suit
The rest of Europe offers no effective objection when Adolf Hitler moves his troops into the demilitarized Rhineland
The Italian forces invading Ethiopia reach Addis Ababa, and Haile Selassie flees into exile
García Lorca writes his play The House of Bernarda Alba in the last year of his short life
Stalin stages the first of the Moscow show trials, designed to eliminate any surviving high-level opponents
In response to the gang violence of Oswald Mosley's black-shirted thugs, a Public Order Act in the UK bans political uniforms
British mathematician Alan Turing writes an influential paper On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidung Problem
Maxim Gorky dies in suspicious circumstances while undergoing routine medical treatment in the USSR
John Maynard Keynes defines his economics in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
A rebellion by Spanish troops in Morocco is soon led by Francisco Franco and sparks the Spanish Civil War
Mussolini appoints his son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, as his minister for foreign affairs
In Language, Truth and Logic 26-year-old A.J. Ayer produces a classic exposition of Logical Positivism
Terence Rattigan's first play, French without Tears, is performed in London
In the first month of the Spanish Civil War the playwright García Lorca is arrested and shot by rebel Falange militia
Alexander Korda's bleakly visionary film Things to Come is based on the H.G. Wells novel of 1933
On Stalin's orders Dmitry Shostakovich is attacked in Pravda for providing 'chaos instead of music'
The prototype of the Spitfire, designed by Reginald Mitchell, has its first test flight
Rachmaninov completes his Third Symphony, and records it two years later with the Philadelphia Orchestra
