Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1931.

'Lo!' by Charles Fort is published in New York by Claude Kendall. The forward to 'Lo!' was written by Tiffany Thayer who along with Aaron Sussman would found the 'Fortean Society' in the same year.

January

  • January 2: South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics.
  • January 6: Thomas Edison submits his last patent application.
  • January 6: At San Juan, Porto Rico, from ten o'clock in the morning until noon, a strange star was seen in the western sky. (Books832)
  • January 22: Sir Isaac Isaacs is sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia.
  • January 25: Mohandas Gandhi is released again in India.
  • January 26: Foundation of the Fortean Society at the Savoy-Plaza in New York City under the initiative of Tiffany Thayer and Aaron Sussman.
  • January 30: The release of the movie City Lights starring Charlie Chaplin.
Lo! by Charles Fort
Lo! by Charles Fort

February

  • February 3: Hawke's Bay earthquake: Much of the New Zealand city of Napier is destroyed in an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale.
  • February 9: 'Lo!' by Charles Fort is printed in New York by Claude Kendall. Tiffany Thayer wrote an introduction whilst Alexander King provided a small number of dark but humorous illustrations.
  • February 14: The original film version of Dracula with Bela Lugosi is released.
  • February 20: California gets the go-ahead by the U.S. Congress to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
  • February 21: Peruvian revolutionaries hijack a Ford Trimotor aeroplane and demand that the pilot drop propaganda leaflets over Lima.

 

March

  • March 2: In Union Square, New York City, an unoriental fakir named Brawman, from the unoriental Bronx, lay upon a bed of 1200 nails. Ten men were invited to walk upon his body. He stood up to reveal deep red marks that soon faded away. (Books1023)
  • March 3: The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the United States National anthem.
  • March 4: The British viceroy of India and Mohandas Gandhi negotiate.
  • March 5: 15,000 worshippers were kneeling at a pontifical high mass, in the Municiple Plaza, at San Antonio, Texas. From a palm tree, the topmost tuft fell into the kneeling congregation. Six persons were taken to hospital. (Books1001)
  • March 17: Nevada legalizes gambling.
  • March 23: Indian revolutionary leaders Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev are hanged by the British Government.
  • March 25: The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
  • March 27: British writer Arnold Bennett dies in Paris when he drinks local water to prove it is safe to drink, but is poisoned.
  • March 31: An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000 people.

 

April

  • April: Peter Kurten is put on trial charged with nine mureders and seven attempted murders. At his trail, he made no defence, and described himself as a vampire. (Books881)
  • April 6: The Portuguese government declares martial law in Madeira and in the Azores because of an attempted military takeover in Funchal.
  • April 9: Argentinian anarchist Severino Digiovanni is executed.
  • April 14: The Second Spanish Republic is proclaimed in Madrid.
  • April 15: The Castellemmarese War ends with the assassination of Joe "The Boss" Masseria, briefly leaving Salvatore Maranzano as capo di tutti i capi ("boss of all bosses") and undisputed ruler of the American Mafia. Maranzano is himself assassinated less than 6 months later, leading to the establishment of the Five Families.

 

May

  • May 1: Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City.
  • May 4: Kemal Atatürk is re-elected president of Turkey.
  • May 11: The Creditanstalt, Austria's largest bank, goes bankrupt, beginning the banking collapse in Central Europe that causes a worldwide financial meltdown.
  • May 11: Fritz Lang's drama-thriller film 'M' is released in Germany, it draws heavily upon the crimes of Peter Kurten, known as 'The Dusseldorf Vampire', for influence. (Books881)
  • May 13: Paul Doumer is elected president of France.

 

June

  • June 5: German Chancellor Dr. Heinrich Brüning visits London, where he warns the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald that the collapse of the Austrian banking system, caused by the bankruptcy of the Creditanstalt, has left the entire German banking system on the verge of collapse.
  • June 12: Charlie Parker equals J.T. Hearne's record for the earliest date to reach 100 wickets.
  • June 14: The overloaded pleasure craft Saint-Philibert, carrying trippers home to Nantes from Île de Noirmoutier, sinks at the mouth of the river Loire in France; over 450 drown.
  • June 14: When a policeman named Talbot went to awaken an apparently sleeping man upon a bench in Mt. Morris Park, New York, he discovered that he was dead. And, that soon after the finding of this body on a bench, another dead man was found on a bench near by. (Books849)
  • June 19: In an attempt to stop the banking crisis in Central Europe from causing a worldwide financial meltdown, President Herbert Hoover issues the Hoover Moratorium.
  • June 23: Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to accomplish the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane.
  • June 27: New York Herald Tribune - Mrs E.H. Tandy, of Star Cliff Drive, Malverne, called to police to report a lion in her back yard. (Books903)
  • June 30: New York Times - "Police at Mineola hunt ape-like animal - hairy creature, about four feet tall." (Books902)

 

July

  • John Haven Emerson of Cambridge, Massachusetts perfects the Emerson iron lung just in time for the growing polio epidemic.
  • The Huang He floods kill between 850,000 and 4,000,000 people (the deadliest historic natural disaster).
  • July 1: Milan Central Station officially opens in Italy.
  • July 2: Peter Kürten, 'The Vampire of Dusseldorf', is executed on by guillotine in Cologne after being found guilty of nine murders and seven attampted murders. (Books881)
  • July 14 & 15: Rain all over Saskatchewan, Canada, following an "ancient rain dance" performed by the Northern Saskatchewan Indians acting against the orders of government agents. (Books1000)
  • July 16: Emperor Haile Selassie signs the first constitution of Ethiopia.
  • July 18: A nursery-man named Stockman called police, saying his family had seen an ape-like creature, running through shrubbery at Huntington, Long Island. (Books903)
  • July 24: New York World Telegram - A boy at the Medical Centre Hospital, New York, is cured of paralysis by the touch of a piece of bone belonging to Saint Anne. (Books1001)
  • July 26: The millennialist Bible Student movement adopts the name Jehovah's Witnesses at a meeting in Columbus, Ohio.

 

August

  • August 2: The death of Angelo Faticoni, known as 'The Human Cork' - he could sleep in water, roll up in a ball, lie on his side or assume any shape asked of him and still stay boyant. (Books1031)
  • August 24: The Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald resigns in Britain, replaced by a National Government of people drawn from all parties, also under MacDonald.
  • August 31: The Yangtze River floods, leaving 23 million homeless.

 

September

  • September 10: The worst hurricane in Belize history kills an estimated 1,500 people.
  • September 15: Invergordon Mutiny: Strikes are called in the Royal Navy due to decreased salaries.
  • September 16: Hanging of Omar Mukhtar.
  • September 18: Japan stages the Mukden Incident as a pretext to occupy Manchuria.
  • September 18: Geli Raubal is found shot dead in Hitler's apartment.

 

October

  • The Caltech Department of Physics Faculty and graduate students meet with Albert Einstein as a guest.
  • October 17: American gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion in Chicago, Illinois.
  • October 24: The George Washington Bridge is dedicated; it opens to traffic the following day.

 

November

  • November: A 'puzzling crime wave' in Bogota, Colombia. In the hospitals lay forty-five persons, suffering with stab wounds. "The police were unable to explain what appeared to be a general attack, but they arrested more than 200 persons. (Books894)
  • November 7: The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong.
  • November 8: The Panama Canal is closed for a couple of weeks due to damage caused by a number of earthquakes.
  • November 19: ".....tried that again, (reading notes upon falling pictures aloud to his wife in an effort recreate an previous synchronus/coincidental experience see October 18, 1930). Nothing moved. Well, then, if I'm not a wizard, I'm not going to let anybody else tell me that he's a wizard." (Charles Fort - Wild Talents, Books980)
  • November 29: John D. Reese, a healer, died in his home, in Youngstown, Ohio. Physicians could not explain his art, and, after satisfying themselves that he was not a charlatan, would shrug, and say simply that he had 'divine power.' (Books1038)

 

December

  • December 8: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler is appointed Reich Price Commissioner in Germany to enforce the deflationary policies of the Brüning government.
  • December 10: Niceto Alcalá-Zamora is elected president of the Spanish Republic.
  • December 11: The British Parliament enacts the Statute of Westminster, which establishes a status of legislative equality between the self-governing dominions of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada, the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa.
  • December 13: Wakatsuki Reijiro resigns as Prime Minister of Japan.