Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes his influential study of the philosophy of logic, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

Taras Bulba, a rhapsody for orchestra by Leos Janacek, is first performed in Brno

Janacek's opera Kátya Kabanová, based on Ostrovsky's play The Storm, has its premiere in Brno

James Joyce's novel Ulysses is published in Paris, by Sylvia Beach, because of censorship problems elsewhere

Ambrogio Ratti is elected pope and takes the name Pius XI

The Marconi company in England pioneers a regular broadcasting service from its 2MT radio station near Chelmsford

French fashion designer Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel introduces a very successful perfume, calling it Chanel No. 5

Lenin creates a powerful new post for Joseph Stalin, as General Secretary of the Communist Party

Lenin has a stroke, removing him for five months from active control of party and state

Wassily Kandinsky takes up a teaching post at the Bauhaus in Weimar

Marina Tsvetaeva completes an anti-Soviet cycle of poems, The Encampment of the Swans

William Walton and Edith Sitwell give a private performance of their entertainment Façade, setting poems by Sitwell

In elections to the Dáil the pro-treaty faction of Collins and Griffith defeats the opposition, led by de Valera

Germany is the first nation to re-establish full diplomatic relations with Russia

US golfer Walter Hagen wins the first of his four victories in the British Open

Bitter war breaks out between factions of the IRA supporting and opposing the Anglo-Irish Treaty

Boris Pasternak makes his name with his third volume of poems, My Sister Life

Stalin devises the structure for a new federal state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

Thomas Mann publishes a fragment of his Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man

John Galsworthy publishes his novels about the Forsyte family as a joint collection under the title The Forsyte Saga

The Irish Free State takes stringent measures against rebel terrorism, making possession even of a pistol a capital offence

After Michael Collins is killed in an ambush, William Cosgrave and Kevin O'Higgins emerge as leaders of the Irish Free State

The German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler is appointed to the Berlin Philharmonic, and spends most of the rest of his life with the orchestra

American-born poet T.S. Eliot publishes The Waste Land, an extremely influential poem in five fragmented sections

Mussolini gives orders for armed squads to congregate around Rome, in preparation for a march to seize power in the capital