Decades: 1880s - 1890s - 1900s - 1910s - 1920s - 1930s - 1940s - 1950s - 1960s - 1970s - 1980s
Years: 1927 - 1928 - 1929 - 1930 - 1931 - 1932 - 1933 - 1934 - 1935 - 1936 - 1937
Events
- January 12 - Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.
- January 28 - Japan occupies Shanghai
- February 4 - Japan occupies Harbin, China
- February 4 - 1932 Winter Olympics open in Lake Placid, New York
- February 18 - Japan declares Manzhouguo (Japanese name for Manchuria) independent from China
- March 1 - Charles Lindbergh's baby boy is kidnapped
- March 19 - Sydney Harbour Bridge opens
- November - Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover in the U.S. presidential election
- In a bloodless revolution, Thailand becomes a constitutional monarchy.
- The Generalitat reinstaurated, Catalonia regains political autonomy inside the 2nd Spanish Republic.
- Second Polar Year, an international scientific collaboration.
- 1932 in film
- Grand Hotel
- Shanghai Express
- One Hour with You
- Shirley Temple's film career begins
- 1932 in literature
- 1932 in music
- 1932 in sports
- 1932 in television
- January 3 - Dabney Coleman, actor
- January 4 - Carlos Saura, director
- January 5 - Umberto Eco, author
- January 5 - Raisa Gorbachev, political consort, (+ 1999)
- January 16 - Dian Fossey, zoologist (+ 1985)
- January 18 - Robert Anton Wilson, author
- January 22 - Piper Laurie, actress
- February 3 - Peggy Ann Garner, actress (+ 1984)
- February 6 - François Truffaut, French film director (+ 1984)
- February 7 - Gay Talese, author
- February 8 - John Williams, composer, conductor
- February 9 - Gerhard Richter, painter and graphic artist
- February 11 - Jerome Lowenthal, pianist/professor
- February 14 - Alexander Kluge, actor and film director
- February 18 - Milos Forman, film director
- February 22 - Edward Kennedy, politician and brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy
- February 24 - Michel Legrand, composer
- February 25 - Faron Young country music singer (+ 1996)
- February 26 - Johnny Cash, country music singer
- February 27 - Elizabeth Taylor, actress
- March 4 - Miriam Makeba, singer
- March 12 - Andrew Young, civil rights activist, politician, ambassador to the United Nations
- March 18 - John Updike, author
- April 1 - Debbie Reynolds, actress
- April 4 - Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian movie director (+ 1986)
- April 4 - Anthony Perkins, actor (+ 1992)
- April 12 - Tiny Tim, musician
- April 25 - Meadlowlark Lemon, basketball star, member of the Harlem Globetrotters
- April 27 - Gian-Carlo Rota, Italian-born American mathematician and philosopher
- June 25 - Peter Blake, artist
- July 2 - Dave Thomas - founder of Wendy's International
- July 9 - Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence (2001-present)
- August 2 - Peter O'Toole, Irish film and stage actor
- August 6 - Howard Hodgkin, painter and print-maker
- August 17 - V. S. Naipaul, writer
- September 18 - Nikolai Rukavishnikov, cosmonaut
- September 25 - Glenn Gould, Canadian pianist
- September 27 - Oliver E. Williamson , american economist
- November 29 - Jacques Chirac, president of France
- December 28 - Roy Hattersley, British politician
- March 6 - John Philip Sousa, band leader, conductor, composer
- March 7 - Aristide Briand, diplomat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1928)
- March 14 - George Eastman, inventor
- April 3 - Wilhelm Ostwald, chemist
- April 20 - Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician
- The Kennedy-Thorndike experiment shows that measured time as well as length are affected by motion, in accordance with the theory of special relativity.
- Chadwick discovers the neutron.
- Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane publishes The Causes of Evolution and thereby unifies the findings of Mendelian genetics with those of evolutionary science.
- Physics - Werner Karl Heisenberg
- Chemistry - Irving Langmuir
- Medicine - Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, Edgar Douglas Adrian
- Literature -John Galsworthy
- Peace - Not awarded.