1932

Nazis lead in German elections with 230 Reichstag seats.
The Great Famine starts in the Soviet Union, notably Ukraine.
US Congress sets up Reconstruction Finance Corporation to stimulate economy.
Veterans, known as the Bonus Marchers, march on Washington—most leave after Senate rejects payment of cash bonuses; others removed by armed troops lead by Douglas MacArthur.
Charles A. Lindbergh's baby son kidnapped and killed. The kidnapper, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, is not arrested until 1934 when he spends some marked bills at a gas station. He is convicted in 1935 and executed in 1936.
Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (May 20-21).
Jazz composer Duke Ellington writes "It Don't Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing", a song that presaged the swing era of the 1930s and 1940s.
Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall opens.
Carl David Anderson discovers the positron, a subatomic particle.
Physicists Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split the atom for the first time.
James Chadwick discovers the subatomic neutron.

U.S. Statistics
President: Herbert C. Hoover
Vice President: Charles Curtis
Population: 124,840,471
Federal spending: $4.66 billion
Consumer Price Index: 13.7
Unemployment: 24.1%

Entertainment Awards
Pulitzer Prize for fiction: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Pulitzer Prize for drama: Of Thee I Sing by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and Ira Gershwin

Academy Award for Best Picture: Grand Hotel (MGM)
Academy Award for Best Actor: Wallace Beery, The Champ and Fredric March, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (tied)
Academy Award for Best Actress: Helen Hayes, The Sin of Madelon Claudet
Academy Award for Best Director: Frank Borzage, Bad Girl

Nobel Prizes: Literature: John Galsworthy (UK)
Chemistry: Irving Langmuir (US), for work in the realm of surface chemistry.
Physics: In 1933, the prize for 1932 was awarded to Werner Heisenberg (Germany), for his work in the field of quantum mechanics.
Medicine: Sir Charles Sherrington (UK) and Edgar D. Adrian (US), for discoveries of the function of the neuron.