1934

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.
1929–1935	United Kingdom [television]	Experimental television broadcasting begins in England.
c. 1931–c. 1940	[technology]	The development of facsimile machines is made possible with the discovery of a dry chemical copying process.
c. 1931–c. 1940	[aircraft]	Aeroplanes undergo radical changes; they become streamlined, are made almost entirely of metal, acquire controllable-pitch propellers, have air-cooled engines and retractable landing gear, and passengers and crew are protected in soundproofed and insulated cabins.
1932–1934	USSR [agriculture]	Soviet leader Joseph Stalin collectivizes farms and seizes grain and livestock in the Ukraine and Caucasus regions, starting a famine; an estimated 5 million people die.
1934	[Buddhism]	Japanese Buddhist scholar Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki publishes An Introduction to Zen Buddhism.
1934	[fiction]	The English crime writer Agatha Christie publishes novel Murder on the Orient Express.
1934	[fiction]	The US writer William Saroyan publishes The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, a collection of short stories that establishes his reputation.
1934	[fiction]	The English novelist Evelyn Waugh publishes his satirical novel A Handful of Dust.
1934	[fiction]	The novel And Quiet Flows the Don by the Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov is published in English. The first part of a two-part English translation, it comprises the first two volumes of the four-volume epic Tikhy Don/The Silent Don, which began appearing in the Soviet Union in 1928.
1934	[fiction]	The English novelist James Hilton publishes his sentimental novel about a school teacher, Goodbye, Mr Chips. It becomes a best-seller in the USA.
1934	France [chemistry]	French physicists Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie bombard boron, aluminium, and magnesium with alpha particles and obtain radioactive isotopes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and aluminium – elements that are not normally radioactive. They are the first radioactive elements to be prepared artificially.
1934	[cinema and film]	The film David Copperfield, directed by George Cukor, is released in the USA. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, it stars Frank Lawton, with W C Fields as Mr Micawber.
1934	[historical study]	English historian Arnold Toynbee publishes the first volume of his monumental 12-volume A Study of History. The last volume will appear in 1961.
1934	[language studies]	The German philosopher Rudolf Carnap publishes Logische Syntax der Sprache/The Logical Syntax of Language.
1934	USA [legislation]	Using powers granted to him by the Gold Reserve Act, the US president Franklin D Roosevelt devalues the dollar to 59.06% of its last official gold value.
1934	[philosophy]	Austrian-born English philosopher Karl Popper publishes Logik der Forschung/The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
1934	[plays]	The play La Machine infernale/The Infernal Machine, an adaptation of the Oedipus myth by the French writer Jean Cocteau, is first performed, in Paris, France.
1 February - 16 February 1934	Austria [legislation]	Political parties are forcibly dissolved in Austria except for Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss's Fatherland Front.
3 February 1934	Germany [aircraft]	Deutsche Lufthansa start the first regular transatlantic airmail service, completing the journey from Berlin, Germany to Buenos Aires, Argentina in four days.
9 February 1934	Greece, Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia [treaties]	Greece, Turkey, Romania, and Yugoslavia form the Balkan Entente as a counterpart to the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia), with the aim of preventing attack by another Balkan state.
15 February 1934	USA [legislation]	The Civil Works Emergency Relief Act becomes law in the USA, extending the scope of New Deal relief and work relief provision through civil works projects during the economic depression.
17 February 1934	Belgium [political events]	King Albert I of Belgium is killed in a climbing accident. He is succeeded by his son, Leopold III.
March 1934	USA [golf]	The first US Masters (later to become the fourth major golfing championship) is held in at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia; the winner is Horton Smith of the USA.
9 March 1934	[births and deaths]	Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first person to travel in space, born near Gzhatsk, Russia (–1968).
15 March 1934	Latvia [political events]	Premier Karlis Ulmanis becomes dictator in Latvia after suspending parliament in response to an alleged communist plot.
16 March 1934	Germany [law and government]	German chancellor Adolf Hitler announces the creation of an army of half a million soldiers, in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles.
16 March - 17 March 1934	Italy, Austria, Hungary [diplomacy]	Protocols are signed in Rome between Italy, Austria, and Hungary to form a Danubian bloc against the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia).
20 March 1934	Germany [technology]	German scientist Rudolf Kuhnold, using a 700-watt transmitter on 600 megacycles plus a receiver, succeeds in receiving echoes bounced off a battleship anchored 550 m/1,800 ft away. It is the first practical demonstration of radar.
26 March 1934	United Kingdom [transport]	The Road Traffic Act introduces driving tests in the UK.
18 April 1934	USA [consumer products]	The first launderette opens in Fort Worth, Texas. It charges by the hour.
May 1934	USA [ecology]	As the drought in the US dust bowl enters its second year, about 270 billion kg/300 million tons of topsoil from 40 million hectares/100 million acres in Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma is blown into the Atlantic, causing large-scale migration to California and other states.
19 May 1934	Bulgaria [law and government]	Fascists in Bulgaria seize power in collaboration with King Boris.
6 June 1934	USA [legislation]	The US Congress passes the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act. It authorizes the president to conclude trade agreements with individual nations, thereby annulling the 1930 Smoot–Hawley tariff.
30 June 1934	Germany [political events]	The German chancellor, Adolf Hitler, purges the SA (Sturmabteilung, storm troopers or ‘Brownshirts’) of dozens of its top leaders in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’. Those murdered by Heinrich Himmler's SS (Schutzstaffel, Nazi elite corps) as potential rivals to Hitler include the SA head Ernst Röhm and the former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.
July 1934	[cricket]	English cricketer Jack Hobbs plays his 1,315th and final first class innings. Since making his county debut for Surrey in 1905 he had scored a record 61,237 first class runs, including 197 centuries.
2 July 1934	Mexico [elections]	General Lázaro Cárdenas, of the reformist wing of the ruling National Revolutionary Party, is elected president of Mexico.
4 July 1934	[births and deaths]	Marie Curie (born Sklodowska), Polish-born French physicist who, with her husband Pierre Curie, discovered polonium and radium, and who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 and for Chemistry in 1911, dies near Sallanches, France (66).
13 July 1934	[births and deaths]	Wole Soyinka, Nigerian poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, born near Abeokuta, Nigeria.
16 July 1934	USA [unions and associations]	The first general strike in the USA takes place in San Francisco, California, with workers out in sympathy with stevedores.
25 July 1934	Austria [revolution]	Engelbert Dollfuss, leader of the Fatherland Front, chancellor, and effective fascist dictator of Austria, is assassinated by the Nazis in an attempted coup.
30 July 1934	Austria [political events]	The ‘Fatherland Front’ politician Kurt von Schuschnigg is appointed Austrian chancellor following the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss by the Nazis.
2 August 1934	Germany [administration]	When the German president, Paul von Hindenburg, dies, the German presidency is merged with the chancellorship and all members of the armed forces take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler personally as Führer (‘Leader’).
12 September 1934	Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania [treaties]	The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) sign a Treaty of Understanding and Cooperation (known as the ‘Baltic Entente’) in Geneva, Switzerland.
18 September 1934	USSR [League of Nations]	The USSR is admitted to the League of Nations.
9 October 1934	Yugoslavia [political events]	King Alexander I of Yugoslavia is assassinated by a Croatian separatist agent during a visit to France. He is succeeded by his 11-year-old son, Peter II.
15 October 1934	China [Chinese Civil War (1922–46)]	The Long March of the Chinese communists begins, led by Mao Zedong and others. Driven out by a Nationalist offensive, some 100,000 people leave the Jiangxi Soviet in southern China and march 9,600 km/6,000 mi to the province of Shaanxi in the extreme northwest, where the survivors set up a new communist revolutionary base.
1 December 1934	USSR [political events]	Sergey Kirov, Party leader in Leningrad and a senior communist leader in the USSR, is assassinated, probably with the connivance of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The assassination marks the beginning of the Great Purge (1934–38).