1929
This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a British high court, ruled that Canadian women are persons in the Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) case.
The 1st Academy Awards for film were held in Los Angeles, while the Museum of Modern Art opened in New York City.
In the Soviet Union, General Secretary Joseph Stalin expelled Leon Trotsky and adopted a policy of collectivization.
The rioting, initiated in part when British police tore down a screen the Jews had constructed in front of the Wall,[1] continued until the end of the month.
Russia counterattacked and took the cities of Hailar and Manzhouli after issuing an ultimatum demanding joint control of the railway to be reinstated.
On July 24, French prime minister Raymond Poincaré resigned for medical reasons; he was succeeded by Aristide Briand.
The Kellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, went into effect in this year (it was first signed in Paris in 1928 by most leading world powers).
[18] The French began work on the Maginot Line in this year, as a defense against a possible German attack, and on September 5 Briand presented a plan for the United States of Europe.
[20] Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in Spain experienced growing dissatisfaction among students and academics, as well as businessmen who blamed the government for recent economic woes.
[23] In November, Stalin declared that it "The Year of the Great Breakthrough" and stated that the country would focus on industrial programs as well as on collectivizing the grain supply.
Upon Voldemaras' removal from office, Geležinis Vilkas went underground and received aid and encouragement in its activities from Germany.
[30] In October 1929, the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overturned a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that women could not be members of the legislature.
[32] Ross-Loos Medical Group is established in downtown Los Angeles by two physicians, Donald E. Ross and H. Clifford Loos - the first HMO in the United States.
The Mexican Cristero War continued in 1929 as clerical forces attempted an assassination of the provisional president in a train bombing in February.
[33] The last group of rebels was defeated on June 4, and in the same month US Ambassador Dwight Morrow initiated talks between parties.
[34] The major event of the year for the United States was the stock market crash on Wall Street, which was to have international effects and be widely regarded as the inciting incident of the Great Depression.
[35] On December 3 U.S. President Herbert Hoover announced to the U.S. Congress that the worst effects of the recent stock market crash were behind the nation, and that the American people had regained faith in the economy.
Another 1929 book reflecting on World War I was Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, as well as Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves.
The arts were in the midst of the Modernist movement, as Pablo Picasso painted two cubist works, Woman in a Garden and Nude in an Armchair, during this year.
The surrealist painters Salvador Dalí and René Magritte completed several works, including The First Days of Spring and The Treachery of Images.
The latest in modern architecture was also represented by the Barcelona Pavilion in Spain, and the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, at its completion the tallest building in the British Empire.
On June 27 the first public demonstration of color TV was held by H. E. Ives and his colleagues at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York.
On November 29, Bernt Balchen, U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd, Captain Ashley McKinley, and Harold June, became the first to fly over the South Pole.
