1935

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	[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.
c. 1931–c. 1940	[technology]	The development of facsimile machines is made possible with the discovery of a dry chemical copying process.
1935	[cinema and film]	The name ‘Oscar’ is adopted for the Academy Awards.
1935	[cinema and film]	The film Les Misérables, directed by Polish film-maker Richard Boleslavsky, is released in the USA. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, it stars Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke, and Rochelle Hudson.
1935	[fiction]	The Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti publishes the novel Die Blendung/The Blinding in German. It will be translated in 1946 as Auto-Da-Fé in Britain and The Tower of Babel in the USA.
1935	[fiction]	The English writer Christopher Isherwood publishes his novel Mr Norris Changes Trains. It is published in the USA as The Last of Mr Norris.
1935	[health and medicine]	German chemist Gerhard Domagk uses the dye Prontosil red to cure a streptococcal infection in his youngest daughter; this is the first use of a sulfa drug on a human.
1935	[transport]	US inventor Robert H Goddard launches a liquid-propelled rocket faster than the speed of sound.
1935	Japan [statistics and demography]	Despite emigration and a falling birth rate, overpopulation causes concern in Japan: the population has effectively doubled in size since 1872 and stands at more than 70 million.
1935	USA [statistics and demography]	US businesses spend $1.7 billion on advertising: $762 million in newspapers; $136 million in magazines; and $112 million on radio.
1935	Germany [technology]	The magnetophone, the first tape recorder to use plastic tape, is developed by AEG in Berlin, Germany.
1935	[opera]	The opera Porgy and Bess by the US composer George Gershwin is first performed, in New York City and Boston, Massachusetts.
1935	[painting]	The English artist Stanley Spencer paints St Francis and the Birds.
1935	USA [legislation]	In a second round of New Deal legislation in the USA, President Franklin D Roosevelt establishes the Resettlement Administration, to help owners and tenants move to better land; the Works Progress Administration, to provide work for the unemployed; and the Rural Electrification Administration, to raise the standard of rural living by equipping farms with electric power.
1935	England [materials]	British chemist Michael Perrin and his group working for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) polymerize ethylene to make polyethylene, the first true plastic.
1935	Japan [physics]	Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa proposes the existence of a new particle, an exchange particle, to explain the strong nuclear force.
1935	[plays]	The play Waiting for Lefty, by the US writer Clifford Odets is first performed, at the Civic Theater in New York City. It becomes one of the best-known examples of US proletarian drama.
1935	[plays]	The verse play Murder in the Cathedral, by the US-born English writer T S Eliot, is first performed, in Canterbury Cathedral, England.
8 January 1935	[births and deaths]	Elvis Presley, US rock and roll singer, whose great success changed US popular culture, born in Tupelo, Mississippi (–1977).
15 January - 17 January 1935	USSR [political events]	Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, and other former leading communists in the USSR are tried and imprisoned for ‘moral complicity’ in the assassination of party leader Sergey Kirov in December 1934, beginning the ‘ Great Terror’ or purge of the Communist Party.
1 March 1935	Germany [political events]	The district of Saarland, administered by the French under the League of Nations since 1919, is restored to Germany.
1 March 1935	Greece [revolution]	The former Greek prime minister Eleutherios Venizelos leads a rebel group attempting to prevent the restoration of the monarchy. The attempt fails and he flees to France.
16 March 1935	Germany [diplomacy]	Germany repudiates the disarmament clauses of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the Führer Adolf Hitler reintroduces general military conscription.
11 April - 14 April 1935	Italy, France, UK, Germany [diplomacy]	The prime ministers of Italy, France, and Britain, conferring in Stresa, Italy, protest against German rearmament and agree to act jointly against Germany, forming what becomes known as the Stresa Front.
15 April 1935	USA [photography]	US scientists Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes announce the development of ‘Kodachrome’, the first commercially available colour film.
19 May 1935	[births and deaths]	T(homas) E(dward) Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), British scholar, military strategist, and author, dies in Clouds Hill, Dorset, England (46).
25 May 1935	USA [athletics]	In less than an hour at the Big Ten Championships held at Ann Arbor, Michigan, US athlete Jesse Owens, of Ohio State University, breaks the world record in the long jump, the 220 yards, the 220 yards hurdles, and equals the record for the 100 yards. His jump of 8.13 m/26 ft 8¹⁄₄in is the first ever over 8 metres and is not bettered until 1960.
18 June 1935	UK, Germany [diplomacy]	Britain and Germany make an agreement by which Germany undertakes that its navy will not exceed a third of the tonnage of Britain's Royal Navy. Britain's independent negotiation of the agreement fatally undermines the unity of the Stresa Front (formed in April 1935).
2 August 1935	India, UK [legislation]	The British Parliament passes the Government of India Act. It reforms the governmental system, separates Burma and Aden from India, grants provincial governments greater autonomy, and creates a central legislature in Delhi (effective from 1 April 1937).
14 August 1935	USA [legislation]	The Social Security Act is enacted in the USA. It provides for old-age pensions, help for the disabled, and unemployment assistance (from 1942), paid for by contributions rather than from tax revenues. The act also provides states with matching grants to help them care for dependent mothers and children.
3 September 1935	USA [motor-racing and rallying]	British driver Malcolm Campbell drives Bluebird at 484.5 kph/301.1 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA; he sets a new land speed record.
12 September 1935	USA [aircraft]	US multimillionaire Howard Hughes sets the world's airspeed record of 567.23 kph/352.46 mph, in an aeroplane of his own design.
15 September 1935	Germany [political events]	The German Führer Adolf Hitler announces the racist ‘Nuremberg Laws’ against Jews at the Nazi Party Nuremberg rally. Legislation will define Jews, ban them from professions, and forbid their marriage or sexual relations with non-Jews.
October 1935	Germany [jazz]	German radio bans jazz of black or Jewish origin.
3 October 1935	Italy, Ethiopia [wars]	Italy invades Ethiopia (Abyssinia), aiming to extend Italian territory in East Africa.
28 November 1935	United Kingdom [everyday life]	The Miles quads of St Neots, England, are the first quads to survive infancy.
29 November 1935	New Zealand [administration]	Michael Joseph Savage becomes New Zealand's first Labour prime minister.
1 December 1935	China [administration]	Jiang Jie Shi (Chiang Kai-shek) is elected chairman of the Guomindang (Nationalist Party) Executive Council, so becoming virtual ruler of China.
1 December 1935	[births and deaths]	Woody Allen, US film director, screenwriter, actor, and author, born in Brooklyn, New York City.
9 December 1935	UK, France, Ethiopia, Italy [diplomacy]	Britain's foreign minister, Sir Samuel Hoare, signs an agreement with the French prime minister, Pierre Laval, for the partitioning of Ethiopian territory between Ethiopia and Italy. The Hoare–Laval Plan is denounced in both countries, and is disowned by the British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin.