The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson has his first exhibition, in the Julien Levy Gallery in New York

US poet Archibald MacLeish publishes a narrative epic, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico

Adolf Hitler stands for election as president of the German republic and wins 36% of the vote

The newly formed Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo opens for its first season, with George Balanchine as ballet master

John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton are the first to split an atom, by bombarding it with accelerated protons

Antonio de Oliveira Salazar becomes prime minister of Portugal with dictatorial powers

British author C.S. Lewis publishes a moral parable, The Screwtape Letters, about the problems confronting a trainee devil

French playwright Jean Anouilh has his first play, L'Hermine, produced and published

British physicist James Chadwick shows that the behaviour of subatomic particles can be explained by the existence of neutrons, or particles with no electrical charge

The town of Maxim Gorky's birth, Nizhny-Novgorod, is renamed Gorky in his honour

Fianna Fáil wins enough seats in the Irish Free State's election for Eamon de Valera to form a government

Winning 230 seats in the election, the Nazis become the largest party in the Reichstag (albeit not with a majority)

British author Aldous Huxley gives a bleak view of a science-based future in his novel Brave New World

Unemployment in Britain reaches three million, or more than 25% of the work force

Oswald Mosley holds his first rally in Trafalgar Square, at the head of his British Union of Fascists

John Cowper Powys's novel A Glastonbury Romance is published first in New York

De Valera withholds farmers' annuities from Britain, provoking British tariffs and a trade war

16-year-old Yehudi Menuhin records the Elgar violin concerto, conducted by the composer

The Bluebell Girls, formed by Margaret Kelly ('Miss Bluebell'), give their first performances in Paris

Unemployment in Germany rises during the world-wide depression to the unprecedented level of 6 million

English fast-bowler Harold Larwood causes outrage using the 'body-line' attack, devised by his captain, Douglas Jardine, in Test matches against Australia

English conductor Thomas Beecham founds another orchestra, calling it the London Philharmonic

The British artist Graham Sutherland, after an early career as a printmaker, takes up painting relatively late in life

President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler chancellor of the German republic

German chancellor Adolf Hitler orders the sterilization of carriers of hereditary mental diseases, in one of his government's first pieces of legislation