1931

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Top Song(s)
• Wayne King - Dream a Little Dream of Me
• The Mills Brothers - Tiger Rag
• Isham Jones - Stardust
• Guy Lombardo - Goodnight Sweetheart
• Bing Crosby - Just One More Chance

Top Film(s)
• City Lights
• M
• Frankenstein
• Dracula
• The Public Enemy

Best Selling Book(s)
• The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
• The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett
• Joy of Cooking - Irma S. Rombauer
• Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's - Frederick Lewis Allen
• Shadows on the Rock - Willa Cather

Famous Deaths
• January 3 – Joseph Joffre, French World War I general
• February 9 – Mammad Hasan Hajinski, last Prime Minister of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic
• March 20 - Joseph B. Murdock, United States Navy admiral, New Hampshire politician
• April 4 – André Michelin, French industrialist and originator of Michelin Guides
• June 22 – Armand Fallieres, 9th President of France
• July 12 – Nathan Soderblom, Swedish archbishop, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• September 7 – Federico Tinoco Granados, 21st President of Costa Rica
• September 19 – David Starr Jordan, American ichthyologist, educator, eugenicist, and peace activist
• October 18 – Thomas Edison, American inventor
• December 26 – Melvil Dewey, American librarian, inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification

Medical/Science/Technology
• Harold Urey and associates at Columbia University discover deuterium.
• The first aerogel is created by Steven Kistler.
• Modified Mercalli intensity scale introduced as a seismic scale for earthquakes in the United States.
• Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll build the first prototype electron microscope.
• The drug Alka-Seltzer is placed on the market.
• Lucy Wills, working in India, demonstrates that anemia in pregnancy can be reversed using brewer's yeast.
• The first electroencephalography is performed by Hans Berger in Germany.
• John Haven Emerson and August Krogh introduce new forms of negative pressure ventilator.
• George Beauchamp invents the electric guitar.
• John H. Sharp of Chicago files the first patent for a torque wrench.

Political Events
• January – The Volstead Act is formed.
• January 19 – Benjamin M. Miller is sworn in as the 39th governor of Alabama replacing Bibb Graves.
• January 22 – Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia.
• February 20 – California gets the go-ahead by the U.S. Congress to build the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
• February 16 – Pehr Evind Svinhufvud is elected president of Finland.
• March 5 – The British viceroy of India and Mohandas Gandhi sign the Gandhi–Irwin Pact.
• May 13 – Paul Doumer is elected president of France.
• June 19 – President Herbert Hoover issues the Hoover Moratorium.
• July 16 – Emperor Haile Selassie signs the first Constitution of Ethiopia.
• October 27 – The United Kingdom general election results in the victory of the National Government.

National Events
• January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron.
• February 14 – The original film version of Dracula, with Bela Lugosi, is released in the United States.
• March 3 – The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the United States national anthem.
• April 1 – Canyon de Chelly National Monument is established.
• May 1 – Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City.
• July 26 – The International Bible Students Association adopts the name Jehovah's Witnesses.
• August 16 – Texas experiences an earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.5.
• October 17 – American gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion in Chicago.
• November 21 – James Whale's film of Frankenstein is released in New York City.
• December 10 – Jane Addams becomes the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Worldwide Events
• January 25 – Mohandas Gandhi is again released from imprisonment in India.
• March 31 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000 people.
• April 14 – The Second Spanish Republic is proclaimed in Madrid.
• April 25 – The automobile manufacturer Porsche is founded by Ferdinand Porsche in Stuttgart.
• June–November – The Yangtze and Huai Rivers flood in a populous region, leaving an estimated 422,000 dead.
• July 1 – The rebuilt Milano Centrale railway station officially opens in Italy.
• July 20 – A violent tornado strikes the city of Lublin, Poland.
• September 10 – The worst hurricane in British Honduras history kills an estimated 1,500.
• September 19 – The United Kingdom abandons the gold standard.
• November 8 - French police launch a large-scale raid against Corsican bandits.