1929

1845–1958	Germany [earth sciences]	German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion.
1929	[fiction]	The German writer Alfred Döblin publishes his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz.
1929	[fiction]	The English writer Richard Hughes publishes his novel A High Wind in Jamaica, which is published in the USA as The Innocent Voyage.
1929	[fiction]	The English writer J B Priestley publishes his novel The Good Companions.
1929	[fiction]	The US writer Ernest Hemingway publishes his novel A Farewell to Arms.
1929	[fiction]	The German writer Erich Remarque publishes his novel Im Westen nichts Neues/All Quiet on the Western Front.
1929	USA [ecology]	Regulation L-20 is introduced in the USA, permitting the heads of national forests to set aside wilderness areas for recreational use. By 1939 some 72 areas have been designated.
1929	USA [television]	NBC begins operating the first public television broadcasting station in the USA; 60 lines are scanned at 20 frames per second.
1929–1935	United Kingdom [television]	Experimental television broadcasting begins in England.
1929	[tools]	US inventors Joseph Horton and Warren Marrison apply the oscillations of the quartz crystal to timekeeping. Because the crystals oscillate at 100,000 hertz, they greatly improve the accuracy of clocks, being out by about one second every ten years.
1929	USA [architecture]	The USA now has 377 skyscrapers with more than 20 storeys.
1929	[archaeology]	English archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley publishes Ur of the Chaldees.
1929	[art]	The German photographer August Sander publishes his photo album Antlitz der Zeit/Face of our Time. Beginning in 1910, Sander tried to create a comprehensive ‘man of the 20th century’ series, photographing a wide range of Germans in their everyday occupations. One of the best-known images is The Pastry Cook 1928.
1929	[astronomy]	English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead publishes Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology.
1929	[medicine]	German psychiatrist Hans Berger invents the electroencephalograph, which measures and records brain wave patterns.
1929	[painting]	The Swiss artist Paul Klee draws Fool in a Trance with one continuous line.
1929	[painting]	The Belgian artist René Magritte paints The Treachery of Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe/This is not a Pipe) and On the Threshold of Liberty.
1929	[painting]	The Dutch artist Piet Mondrian paints Composition with Yellow and Blue.
1929	[philosophy]	Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset publishes La rebelión de las masas/The Revolt of the Masses.
1929	[physics]	Irish physicist Ernest Walton and English physicist John D Cockcroft develop the first particle accelerator.
1929	United Kingdom [plays]	The play Journey's End, by the English dramatist R C Sherriff, is first performed, at the Savoy Theatre in London, England. It becomes a classic depiction of World War I.
1929	[poetry]	The Spanish writer Federico García Lorca writes his poems Poeta en Nueva York/Poet in New York, which are published posthumously in 1940.
5 January 1929	Kingdom of the Serbs Croats and Slovenes [political events]	King Alexander I suppresses the constitution of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and establishes a royal dictatorship.
31 January 1929	USSR [political events]	Leon Trotsky, having lost the contest to succeed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as Soviet leader to Joseph Stalin, is expelled from the USSR.
11 February 1929	Italy, Vatican [treaties]	The Lateran Treaties recognize the pope's sovereignty over the Vatican, bringing the Vatican City State into being, and ending the hiatus in Italian relations with the Vatican that had existed since Italian unification in 1870.
14 February 1929	USA [law and government]	In the ‘St Valentine's Day Massacre’ in Chicago, Illinois, gangsters dressed as policemen, working for Al ‘Scarface’ Capone, gun down seven members of the gang led by George ‘Bugsy’ Moran.
4 May 1929	[births and deaths]	Audrey Hepburn (born Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston), US motion picture actor, born in Brussels, Belgium (–1993).
30 May 1929	United Kingdom [elections]	In the British general election, the first held under universal adult suffrage, Labour wins 287 seats, the Conservatives 260, the Liberals 59, and others 9.
3 June 1929	Chile, Peru, Bolivia [political events]	A settlement is reached in the Arica–Tacna border territory dispute (originated in 1910), by which Chile is awarded Arica, Peru gains Tacna, and Bolivia acquires railway rights.
5 June 1929	United Kingdom [political events]	Ramsay MacDonald forms a Labour government in Britain, with Arthur Henderson as foreign secretary, Philip Snowden as chancellor of the Exchequer, and John Clynes as home secretary.
12 June 1929	[births and deaths]	Anne Frank, German Jew whose diary written while hiding from the Nazis has been translated into over 30 languages, born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany (–1945).
27 June 1929	USA [technology]	Scientists at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey demonstrate the transmission of moving color images; 50 lines are scanned at 17.7 frames per second. Among the pictures they show are the US flag, the Union Jack, and a bouquet of roses.
6 August - 13 August 1929	Netherlands, Germany [political events]	At the Reparations Conference in The Hague in the Netherlands, Germany accepts the Young Plan for German World War I reparations; in return, the Allies agree to evacuate the Rhineland by June 1930.
24 August 1929	[births and deaths]	Yassir Arafat, Palestinian nationalist politician and president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969, born in Jerusalem, in the British mandate of Palestine.
30 September 1929	[aircraft]	German car manufacturer Fritz von Opel test-pilots the first rocket-powered aircraft, a glider with a gunpowder rocket attached.
3 October 1929	Kingdom of the Serbs Croats and Slovenes [political events]	The name of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes is changed to Yugoslavia as part of King Alexander I's attempts to end ethnic divisions within the country.
24 October - 29 October 1929	USA [banking and finance]	Share values crash on the Wall Street stock market, New York City, starting with ‘Black Thursday’ and continuing (after closure of the market from noon on 24 October until 28 October) on ‘Black Monday’ (28 October) and ‘Black Tuesday’ (29 October). Widespread panic results in the trading of some 16.4 million shares, a new record. The episode triggers still more panic in the days and weeks ahead, ultimately precipitating the Depression.
17 November 1929	USSR [political events]	The ‘Right Opposition’ led by Nikolai Bukharin is expelled from the Communist Party of the USSR by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.