1931

1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday in the Gregorian calendar, the 1931st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 931st year of the 2nd millennium, the 31st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1930s decade

• January 27 – Pierre Laval forms a government in France
• February 16 – Pehr Evind Svinhufvud is elected president of Finland
• March 31 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000 people
• April 25 – The automobile manufacturer Porsche is founded by Ferdinand Porsche in Stuttgart
• May 1 – Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City
• June 3 – Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory is put on display for the first time
• July 9 – Irish racing driver Kaye Don breaks the world water speed record at Lake Garda, Italy^[1]
• July 20 – A violent tornado strikes the city of Lublin, Poland.
• August – Warner Brothers releases the first Merrie Melodies cartoon
• September- The 1931 Belize hurricane strikes Belize (then British Honduras), killing over 2,500 people
• September 22 – The United Kingdom abandons the gold standard
• October 5 – American aviators Clyde Edward Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, Jr. complete the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean. They travel from Misawa, Japan to East Wenatchee, Washington in 41½ hours.^[2]
• November 7 – The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong
• December 10 – Niceto Alcalá-Zamora is elected president of the Spanish Republic

• January 2 – Toshiki Kaifu, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 2022)
• January 13 – Charles Nelson Reilly, American actor (d. 2007)
• January 16 – Johannes Rau, President of Germany (d. 2006)
• January 22 – Sam Cooke, American singer (d. 1964)

• February 1 – Iajuddin Ahmed, former President of Bangladesh (d. 2012)
• February 1 – Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia (d. 2007)

• April 7 – Ted Kotcheff, Canadian-Bulgarian film director

• May 19 – David Wilkerson, American pastor, evangelist and author (d. 2011)
• May 27 – Faten Hamama, Egyptian producer and actress (d. 2015)

• September 12 – Sir Ian Holm, English actor
• September 12 – George Jones, American singer (d. 2013)
• September 29 – Anita Ekberg, Swedish actress (d. 2015)

• October 19 – John le Carré, English novelist (d. 2020)
• October 19 – Rubens de Falco, Brazilian actor (d. 2008)
• October 20 – Mickey Mantle, American baseball player (d. 1995)

• November 3 – Monica Vitti, Italian actress (d. 2022)
• November 15 – Mwai Kibaki, President of Kenya (d. 2022)

• January 23 – Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (b. 1881)
• February 11 – Charles Algernon Parsons, British inventor (b. 1854)
• February 26 – Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1847)
• March 7 – Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish painter (b. 1865)
• April 8 – Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
• April 26 – George Herbert Mead, American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist (b. 1863)
• May 9 – Albert Abraham Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
• June 2 – Joseph W. Farnham, American screenwriter (b. 1884)
• July 12 – Nathan Söderblom, Swedish archbishop, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1866)
• August 26 – Hamaguchi Osachi, 27th Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1870)
• September 12 – Joseph Le Brix, French aviator and naval officer (b. 1899)
• October 21 – Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian author and dramatist (b. 1862)
• November 13 – Ivan Fichev, Bulgarian general, minister of defense, military historian, and academician (b. 1860)
• December 9 – Antonio Salandra, Italian statesman, 21st Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1853)
• December 27 – José Figueroa Alcorta, 16th President of Argentina (b. 1860)

• Nobel Prize in Physics – not awarded
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry won by Carl Bosch, German chemist and engineer, and Friedrich Bergius, German chemist
• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine won by Otto Heinrich Warburg, German chemist, (1883 – 1970)
• Nobel Prize in Literature won by Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish poet
• Nobel Peace Prize won by Jane Addams, American activist, and Nicholas Murray Butler, American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

• January 30 – City Lights starring Charlie Chaplin
• February 9 – Cimarron starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne
• February 14 – The original movie version of Dracula with Bela Lugosi is released in the United States
• December 26 – A Free Soul, winning Best Actor for Lionel Barrymore
• November 21 – Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff, the top-grossing movie of the year
• December 12 – Private Lives starring Norma Shearer
• December 26 – Mata Hari starring Greta Garbo