China floods
Three great rivers overflow at once, drowning Wuhan for months
In summer 1931 the Yangtze, Huai and Yellow rivers burst their banks, leaving Wuhan underwater for months. Drowning, famine and disease killed between 400,000 and several million people by various estimates. In September, Japan invaded Manchuria.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 17 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 13 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 8 years later
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 16 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 17 years later
Europe
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 12 years earlier
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 3 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 2 years later
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 5 years later
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 10 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 14 years earlier
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 2 years earlier
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 5 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 10 years later
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 11 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 23 years earlier
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 16 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 15 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 15 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 1 year later
Africa
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 9 years earlier
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 4 years later
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 25 years later
Americas
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 17 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 2 years earlier
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 1 year earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 14 years later
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 16 years later
Oceania
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 20 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 19 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 5 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 10 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 11 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 84)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 75)
- Marie Curie (aged 64)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 62)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 60)
- Winston Churchill (aged 57)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 53)
- Albert Einstein (aged 52)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 50)
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (aged 50)