Italy invades Ethiopia
Mustard gas against spears, and a powerless League of Nations
In October 1935 Mussolini, avenging the defeat at Adwa, sent his army into Ethiopia, which with Liberia was Africa's last independent state. The Italians used mustard gas on soldiers and civilians, and Addis Ababa fell in May 1936. Emperor Haile Selassie's speech to the League of Nations indicted Europe's inaction. Sanctions failed; the country was freed only in 1941.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 17 years earlier
- 1939–1945 World War II — 4 years later
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 12 years later
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 13 years later
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 14 years later
Europe
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 16 years earlier
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 7 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 2 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 1 year later
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 6 years earlier
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 1 year later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 6 years later
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 7 years later
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 10 years later
Middle East
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 20 years earlier
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 19 years earlier
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — 19 years earlier
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 3 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 13 years later
Asia
- 1931 China floods — 4 years earlier
- 1934–1935 Long March — 1 year earlier
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 10 years later
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — 10 years later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 18 years later
Americas
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 21 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 6 years earlier
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — 5 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 10 years later
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 12 years later
Oceania
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 23 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 1 year later
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 6 years later
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 7 years later
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 19 years later
Alive at the time
- Nikola Tesla (aged 79)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 66)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 64)
- Winston Churchill (aged 61)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 57)
- Albert Einstein (aged 56)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 54)
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (aged 54)
- Adolf Hitler (aged 46)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 46)