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Top Song(s)
• Rudy Vallee & his Connecticut Yankees - Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
• Louis Armstrong - All of Me
• Bing Crosby - Please
• Ted Lewis & his Orchestra - In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town
• Guy Lombardo - Paradise
Top Film(s)
• Trouble in Paradise
• Freaks
• Horse Feathers
• Vampyr
• Scarface
Best Selling Book(s)
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
• Have His Carcase - Dorothy L. Sayers
• The Thirteen Problems - Agatha Christie
Famous Deaths
• January 8 - Antoni Maria Alcover i Sureda, Spanish Roman Catholic priest and writer
• February 16 - Ferdinand Buisson, French pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• March 2 – Angela of the Cross, Spanish Roman Catholic nun and saint
• May 17 – Frederick C. Billard, Commandant of the United States Coast Guard
• July 9 – King C. Gillette, American businessman, safety razor inventor
• July 23 - Emma Pow Bauder, American evangelist, missionary, reformer, and author
• September 30 - Constantin Coanda, Romanian general and politician, 26th prime minister of Romania
• October 26 – Molly Brown, Denver socialite, noted survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic
• November 12 – Alessandro Tonini, Italian aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer and manufacturer
• November 15 – Charles W. Chesnutt, African-American author, essayist and political activist
Medical/Science/Technology
• A 5.1 kg chondrite-type meteorite breaks into fragments and strikes earth near the town of Archie, Missouri.
• Astronomer Ernst Opik postulates that long-period comets originate in an orbiting cloud.
• Braggite is first described, the first mineral discovered with the assistance of X rays.
• John von Neumann makes foundational contributions to ergodic theory in a series of papers.
• The pathology of Cushing's syndrome is first described by Harvey Cushing.
• Grace Medes discovers tyrosinosis, the metabolic disorder later known as Type I tyrosinemia.
• Commencement of the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis experiment by the U.S. Public Health Service.
• Rudolph Schindler introduces the first semi-flexible gastroscope, in Germany.
• Gerhard Domagk develops a chemotherapeutic cure for streptococcus.
• Albert Szent-Györgyi and Charles Glen King identify ascorbic acid as an anti-scorbutic.
Political Events
• January 7 – The Stimson Doctrine is proclaimed, in response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
• January 12 – Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
• February 22 The Purple Heart is revived by War Department General Order No. 3 as a decoration of the U.S. military.
• January 28 - 1st US state unemployment insurance act enacted (Wisconsin).
• April 6 – U.S. president Herbert Hoover supports armament limitations.
• April 17 – Haile Selassie announces an anti-slavery law in Abyssinia.
• June 6 - The Revenue Act of 1932 is enacted, creating the first gas tax in the United States.
• July 28 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army to forcibly evict the Bonus Army of World War I veterans.
• October 13 – Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes lays the cornerstone for a new U.S. Supreme Court building.
• November 8 – Democratic Governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican President Herbert Hoover.
National Events
• February 2 – The Reconstruction Finance Corporation begins operations in Washington, D.C.
• March 25 – Tarzan the Ape Man opens, with Olympic gold medal swimmer Johnny Weissmuller in the title role.
• May 2 – Comedian Jack Benny's radio show airs for the first time.
• May 20–21 – Amelia Earhart flies from the US to Derry, Northern Ireland in 14 hours 54 minutes.
• May 25 – Goofy makes his appearance in the Disney animated short Mickey's Revue.
• July 8 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average in the United States reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression.
• July 30–August 14 – The 1932 Summer Olympics take place in Los Angeles.
• August 7 – Raymond Edward Welch becomes the first one-legged man to scale 6,288 feet (1,917 m) New Hampshire.
• November 24 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens.
• December 27 – Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.
Worldwide Events
• January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.
• January 26 – British submarine HMS M2 sinks with all 60 hands.
• February 2 - A general World Disarmament Conference begins in Geneva.
• March 18 – Peace negotiations between China and Japan begin.
• May 16 – Massive riots between Hindus and Muslims in Bombay leave thousands dead and injured.
• June 20 – The Benelux customs union is negotiated.
• July 12 - Norway annexes northern Greenland.
• September 20 – Mahatma Gandhi begins a hunger strike in Poona prison, India.
• October 15 – Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight.
• December 27 – Internal passports are introduced in the Soviet Union.