Decades: 1880s - 1890s - 1900s - 1910s - 1920s - 1930s - 1940s - 1950s - 1960s - 1970s - 1980s
Years: 1926 - 1927 - 1928 - 1929 - 1930 - 1931 - 1932 - 1933 - 1934 - 1935 - 1936
Events:
- January 6 - Thomas Edison submits his last patent application.
- January 22 - Sir Isaac Isaacs sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia
- February 10 - New Delhi becomes the capital of India
- February 20 - California gets the go-ahead by the United States Congress to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
- March 1 - Henry Pu Yi, former Emperor of China, is proclaimed King of the puppet state of Manchukuo by Japan.
- March 17 - Nevada legalizes gambling
- March 25 - The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
- April 14 - 2nd Spanish Republic proclaimed in Spain
- March 3 - "The Star-Spangled Banner" is adopted as the United States National anthem.
- Deuterium discovered by Harold Clayton Urey.
- Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City.
- 1931 in film
- Cimarron
- Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff
- 1931 in literature
- 1931 in music
- 1931 in sports
- 1931 in television
- May 1 - The first wedding is broadcast on television, on New York's W2XCR.
- July 21 - CBS's New York station begins broadcasting the first regular seven days a week television schedule in the U. S.. The first broadcast included Mayor James J. Walker, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin.
- October 30 - NBC installs a television transmitter on top of the Empire State Building
- December 22 - NBC begins broadcasting from the Empire State Building transmitter
- Canada's first television station, VE9EC, begins broadcasting in Montreal
- January 5 - Alvin Ailey, choreographer
- January 5 - Alfred Brendel, pianist
- January 5 - Robert Duvall, actor and director
- January 6 - E.L. Doctorow, author
- January 8 - Bill Graham, rock music entrepreneut (+ 1991)
- January 10 - Viktor Liebermann, violinist (+ 1999)
- January 14 - Caterina Valente, singer, actress
- January 16 - Johannes Rau, President of Germany
- January 17 - James Earl Jones, actor
- January 19 - Tippi Hedren, actress
- January 19 - Robert MacNeil, journalist
- January 22 - Sam Cooke, singer (+ 1964)
- January 27 - Mordecai Richler, author (+ 2001)
- January 30 - Allan W. Eckert, historian, naturalist and author
- January 31 - Ernie Banks, Baseball Hall of Famer
- February 1 - Boris Yeltsin, Russian president 1991-1999
- February 6 - Rip Torn, actor, director
- February 8 - James Dean, actor (+ 1955)
- February 10 - Thomas Bernhard, author (+ 1989)
- February 11 - Larry Merchant, author/boxing commentator.
- February 18 - Toni Morrison, writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature 1993
- February 18 - Bob St. Clair, American football star
- February 18 - Johnny Hart, cartoonist
- March 2 - Mikhail Gorbachev
- March 2 - Tom Wolfe, author
- March 11 - Rupert Murdoch, publisher, entrepreneur
- March 22 - William Shatner, (actor)
- March 26 - Leonard Nimoy, actor, director
- April 1 - Rolf Hochhuth, writer
- April 29 - Frank Auerbach, painter
- April 29 - Lonnie Donegan, musician (+ 2002)
- June 7 - Malcolm Morley, painter
- July 1 - Leslie Caron, French actress
- August 12 - William Goldman, author
- November 21 - Malcolm Williamson, composer (+ 2003)
- December 24 - Mauricio Kagel, composer
- January 23 - Anna Pavlova, ballerina
- February 11 - Charles Algernon Parsons, British inventor of the steam turbine
- March 11 - F.W. Murnau, director
- March 31 - Knute Rockne, American football coach
- August 6 - Bix Beiderbecke, jazz trumpeter
- August 27 - Frank Harris, author and editor,
- October 13 - Ernst Didring, swedish writer,
- October 18 - Thomas Edison, Inventor.
- Wilhelm von Gloeden, photographer.