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The 1920s

2,172 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 20th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1920 CE244 entries

  • 10 January – The League of Nations is established with Switzerland as one of its founding members and its headquarters established in Geneva.
  • January 17 – Prohibition in the United States begins, with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution which bans the sale of alcohol in all states.
  • August 14–September 12 – Main events of the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium (there have been ceremonies and outlying events since April). The Olympic symbols of five interlocking rings and the associated flag are first displayed at the games.

1921 CE236 entries

  • March 16 – Treaty of Moscow establishes friendly relations between the Government of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.
  • May 31–June 1 – Tulsa Race Massacre (Greenwood Massacre): Mobs of white residents attack black residents and businesses in Greenwood District, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The official death toll is 36, but later investigations suggest an actual figure between 100 and 300. 1,250 homes are destroyed and roughly 6,000 African Americans imprisoned in one of the worst incidents of mass racial violence in the United States.
  • Spring – Russian famine of 1921–22 begins; roughly 5,000,000 die.

1922 CE231 entries

  • June 28 – The Irish Civil War and Battle of Dublin begin when the Irish National Army, using artillery loaned by the British, begins to bombard the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army forces occupying the Four Courts in Dublin. Fighting in Dublin lasts until July 5.
  • October 28 – In Italy, the March on Rome brings the National Fascist Party and Benito Mussolini to power. Italy begins a period of dictatorship that lasts until the end of the Second World War.
  • November 4 – Discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun: in Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to the pharaonic tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings.

1923 CE210 entries

  • 11 January – French and Belgian troops enter the Ruhr in the Occupation of the Ruhr because of Germany’s refusal to pay war reparations, causing strikes and a severe economic crisis.
  • July 24 – The Treaty of Lausanne (1923), settling the boundaries of the modern Republic of Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in the First World War, bringing an end to the Ottoman Empire after 624 years.
  • September 1 – The Great Kantō earthquake devastates Tokyo and Yokohama, killing more than 100,000 people.

1924 CE202 entries

  • March 3 – The Ottoman Caliphate, a remnant of the Ottoman Empire abolished on November 1, 1922, and one of the historical claims of succession to the Islamic State of Muhammad, comes to an end with the deposition of Abdülmecid II, Caliph of the Ottoman dynasty. This marks the end of an era, giving way to the drastic political transformations of Turkey under President Atatürk's reforms.
  • September 15 – November 3 — Second Zhili–Fengtian War: conflict in the Republic of China's Warlord Era between the Zhili and Fengtian cliques for control of Beijing.
  • The Edmonton Grads win their first international basketball tournament held as part of the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. As it was only a demonstration sport, no medals were awarded. The Grads would dominate women's basketball tournaments from 1924 to 1936.

1925 CE198 entries

  • January 27–February 1 – The 1925 serum run to Nome (the "Great Race of Mercy") relays diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled across the U.S. Territory of Alaska to combat an epidemic.
  • March 18 – The Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest in U.S. history, rampages through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing 695 people and injuring 2,027. It hits the towns of Murphysboro, Illinois; West Frankfort, Illinois; Gorham, Illinois; Ellington, Missouri; and Griffin, Indiana.
  • July 10–21 – Scopes trial: in a staged test case (the "Monkey Trial") in Dayton, Tennessee, United States, John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher (technically arrested on May 5 and indicted on May 25) is accused of assigning a reading from a (state-mandated) textbook on Darwinian evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law, the "Butler Act". He is found guilty and fined $100, though the verdict is later overturned on a technicality. The trial makes explicit the fundamentalist–modernist controversy within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, with William Jennings Bryan (who dies on July 26) being challenged by the liberal Clarence Darrow.

1926 CE225 entries

  • 1 May – A lockout of coal miners leads to the declaration of the 1926 United Kingdom general strike. Police and miners clash eighteen times in the course of industrial disputes in the South Wales coalfield.
  • July 1 – The Kuomintang begins the Northern Expedition, a military unification campaign in northern China.
  • September 18 – Great Miami Hurricane: A strong hurricane devastates Miami, Florida, leaving over 100 dead and causing several hundred million dollars in damage (equal to nearly $100 billion today).

1927 CE212 entries

  • April 12 Incident (Shanghai Massacre): Kuomintang troops kill a number of communist-supporting workers in Shanghai. The 1st United Front between the Nationalists and Communist ends, and the Civil War lasting until 1949 begins.
  • April 22–May 5 – The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 strikes 700,000 people, in the greatest natural disaster in American history through this time.
  • May 20–21 – Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo, nonstop transatlantic airplane flight, from New York City to Paris, France, in his single-engined aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis.

1928 CE215 entries

  • June 4 – Huanggutun incident: Zhang Zuolin, a warlord, is killed by Japanese agents in China.
  • July 28 – August 12 – The 1928 Summer Olympics are held in Amsterdam, opening with the lighting of the Olympic flame. Women's athletics and gymnastics debut at these games, and discus thrower Halina Konopacka of Poland becomes the first female Olympic gold medal winner for a track or field event. Coca-Cola enters Europe as sponsor of the games.
  • September 28 – Scottish-born microbiologist Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital, London, accidentally rediscovers the antibiotic which he will call Penicillin.

1929 CE199 entries

  • February 11 – The Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See of the Catholic Church sign the Lateran Treaty, to establish the Vatican City as an independent sovereign enclave within Rome, resolving the "Roman Question".
  • 29 October: Black Tuesday. Wall Street crash triggers the 10-year Great Depression.
  • 23–24 August – 1929 Palestine riots: In the 1929 Hebron massacre, Arab rioters massacre 67 Jews and wound 60 others; 435 Jews survive by virtue of the shelter and assistance offered them by their Arab neighbours, who hid them.