Great Kantō earthquake
Tremors and fire whirls destroy Tokyo and Yokohama
On 1 September 1923, at lunchtime when many cooking fires were lit, an earthquake struck Tokyo and Yokohama. Fires and firestorms completed the destruction, killing over 100,000 people. In the chaos, mobs massacred Korean residents.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 9 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 5 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 16 years later
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 24 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 25 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 18 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 4 years earlier
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 5 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 10 years later
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 13 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 6 years earlier
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 6 years earlier
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 6 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 13 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 15 years earlier
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 8 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 7 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 7 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 9 years later
Africa
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 19 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 1 year earlier
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 12 years later
Americas
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 10 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 9 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 9 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 6 years later
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 7 years later
Oceania
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 12 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 11 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 13 years later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 18 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 76)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 67)
- Marie Curie (aged 56)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 54)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 53)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 52)
- Winston Churchill (aged 49)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 45)
- Albert Einstein (aged 44)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 42)