1934 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January-April

• January 1 - Alcatraz becomes a federal prison.
• January 7 - First Flash Gordon comic strip is published.
• January 10 - Execution of Marinus van der Lubbe
• January 24 - Einstein visits White House
• January 26 - The Apollo Theater opens in Harlem, New York City.
• February 9 - Gaston Boumerque forms a new government in France
• February 12 - The Export-Import Bank is incorporated.
• February 23 - Leopold III becomes King of Belgium.
• March 1 - Manchuria becomes Manchukuo
• March 8 - Prince Sigvard of Sweden loses his titles because of his marriage
• March 20 - All the police forces in Germany come under command of Heinrich Himmler
• April 1 - Bonnie and Clyde kill two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas.
• April 6 - Rudyard Kipling and William Butler Yeats are awarded the Gothenburg Prize for Poetry.
• April 19 - Surgeon R.K. Wilson allegedly takes a photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.

May-June

• May 11 - Dust Bowl: A strong two-day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl.
• May 15 - The United States Department of Justice offers a $25,000 reward for John Dillinger.
• May 15 - Karlis Ulmanis establishes an authoritarian government in Latvia.
• May 23 - Near their hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana, bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are ambushed and shot dead by Texas Rangers.
• May 24 - Tomás Masaryk re-elected president of Czechoslovakia
• May 28 - Near Callender, Ontario , the Dionne quintuplets are born to Olivia and Elzire Dionne later becoming the first quintuplets to survive infancy.
• June 6 - New Deal: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act into law, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• June 9 - Release of the animated short The Wise Little Hen, directed by Bert Gillett for the Silly Symphonies series, featuring the debut of Donald Duck.
• June 12 - Political parties banned in Bulgaria
• June 27 - Emir of Yemen and ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia form a peace treaty
• June 30 - The Nazi SA camp Oranienburg becomes national camp, taken over by the SS.
• June 30 - Night of the Long Knives - Nazis purge the SA

July-September

• July 10 - German social democrat and author Erich Mühsam killed in Otanienurg concentration camp
• July 19 - Francisco Sá Carneiro, Prime Minister of Portugal (1980; died in office).
• July 22 - Outside Chicago, Illinois's Biograph Theatre, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.
• July 25 - Austrians Nazis assassinate chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss during a failed coup attempt.
• August 2 - Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany, becoming head of state as well as Chancellor.
• August 19 - The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.
• September 8 - Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner Morro Castle kills 134 people.
• September 19 - Soviet Union joins the League of Nations
• September 21 - Hurricane in Honshu, Japan - 4000 dead
• November 27 - A running gun battle between FBI agents and bank robber Baby Face Nelson results in the death of one FBI agent and the mortal wounding of special agent Sam Cowley , who is still able to mortally shoot Nelson.
• September 28 - Afghanistan joins the League of Nations
• September 28 - Trial for the custody of young Gloria Vanderbilt begins - it lasts seven weeks and ends with a compromise

October-December

• October 2 - Tornado in Osaka and Kyoto and destroys the rice harvest - 1660 dead, 5400 injured
• October 6 - Catalonian separatists rebel
• October 9 - King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French foreign minister Louis Barthou are assassinated during the king's state visit in Marseilles
• October 16 - The Long March of Chinese communists begins
• November 13 - Italian government decrees that teachers must use a military or party uniform in a class
• December 1 - In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergei Kirov is shot dead at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad by Leonid Nikolayev (it is widely thought that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered this murder).
• December 14 - Female suffrage in Turkey
• December 18 - Low-key fascist conference in Moreaux
• December 27 - Persia becomes Iran
• December 29 - Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

unknown dates

• The sonoluminescence effect is discovered.
• First Jay Gordon record is made.
• GPU becomes NKVD
• Maginot Line finished
• Abidjan becomes capital of the French colony of Côte d'Ivoire.

Year in topic

• 1934 in film
  • January 26 - Samuel Goldwyn finally purchased the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Frank Baum for $40,000.00.
  • It Happened One Night
  • Cleopatra
  • The Thin Man
• 1934 in literature
• 1934 in music
• 1934 in sports
  • July 4 - Boxer Joe Louis wins his first professional boxing match.
  • Italy wins Football World Cup on home ground.
  • British Empire Games held in London, United Kingdom.
  • December 29 - The first college basketball game is played, between Notre Dame University and New York University at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
• 1934 in television
  • December - Philo Farnsworth demonstrates a non-mechanical television system.

Births

January

• January 7 - Charlie Jenkins, American runner
• January 9 - Bart Starr, American football star, two-time Super Bowl MVP
• January 11 - Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada
• January 16 - Marilyn Horne, American mezzo-soprano
• January 20 - Tom Baker, actor
• January 22 - Bill Bixby, television actor (d. 1993)
• January 24 - Stanisław Grochowiak, Polish poet and dramatist (d. 1976)

February

• February 5 - Hank Aaron, Baseball Hall of Famer
• February 11 - Tina Louise, actress
• February 11 - Francesco Pennisi , composer
• February 11 - Mary Quant, fashion designer
• February 11 - Patrick Holmes Sellors , ophthalmologist
• February 11 - John Surtees, British race car driver
• February 12 - Bill Russell, basketball star
• February 13 - George Segal, actor
• February 14 - Michel Corboz, Swiss conductor
• February 14 - Florence Henderson, American television actress
• February 15 - Niklaus Wirth, Swiss computer scientist
• February 17 - Alan Bates, actor
• February 17 - Barry Humphries (aka "Dame Edna Everage"), actor, comedian
• February 18 - Paco Rabanne , fashion designer
• February 20 - Bobby Unser, automobile racer
• February 21 - Rue McClanahan, actress
• February 22 - Sparky Anderson, Baseball Hall of Fame manager
• February 24 - Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister of Italy (d. 2000)
• February 24 - Renata Scotto, Italian soprano
• February 27 - Ralph Nader, American consumer activist

March-April

• March 1 - Joan Hackett, US actress
• March 4 - Janez Strnad, Slovene physicist
• March 7 - Willard Scott, television broadcaster
• March 9 - Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut, first human in space (d. 1968)
• March 11 - Sam Donaldson, reporter
• March 13 - Barry Hughart, fantasy author
• March 16 - Ray Hnatyshyn, former Canadian Governor-General
• March 20 - Willie Brown, mayor of San Francisco, California
• March 22 - Orrin Hatch, US senator
• March 26 - Alan Arkin, actor
• March 31 - Shirley Jones, singer, actress
• April 1 - Rod Kanehl, Major League Baseball player (d. 2004)
• April 2 - Paul Joseph Cohen, mathematician
• April 2 - Brian Glover, British actor, wrestler (d. 1997)
• April 3 - Jane Goodall, zoologist
• April 29 - Otis Rush, blues musician

May-August

• May 3 - Henry Cooper, British boxer
• May 13 - Adolf Muschg , author
• May 13 - Leon Wagner, Major League Baseball player (d. 2004)
• May 14 - Siân Phillips, actress
• May 15 - Alvin F. Poussaint , physicist, psychiatrist, and educator
• May 19 - Jim Lehrer, journalist, co-anchor
• May 22 - Peter Nero , American pianist
• May 23 - Dr. Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesizer
• May 27 - Harlan Ellison, American writer
• May 28 - Dionne quintuplets, world's first surviving quintuplets
• May 30 - Aleksei Leonov, cosmonaut and first person to walk in space
• June 3 - Rolland D. McCune, American theologian, Fundamentalist
• June 6 - Albert II of Belgium
• June 26 - Jeremy Wolfenden, British journalist (d. 1965)
• July 11 - Giorgio Armani, fashion designer
• July 12 - Van Cliburn, American pianist
• July 13 - Aleksei Yeliseyev, cosmonaut
• July 15 - Harrison Birtwistle, English composer
• August 2 - Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
• August 18 - Roberto Clemente, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1972)

September-December

• September 2 - Dominic Chianese, actor
• September 7 - Little Milton , blues musician
• September 8 - Peter Maxwell Davies, composer
• September 17 - Maureen Connolly, tennis star (d. 1969)
• September 20 - Sophia Loren, Italian actress
• October 15 - John Bigelow, pilot
• October 17 - Rico Rodriguez, Jamaican trombonist
• October 18 - Chuck Swindoll, American evangelist
• October 30 - Frans Brüggen, Dutch flutist, recorder player, and conductor
• November 9 - Carl Sagan, US astronomer (d. 1996)
• November 24 - Alfred Schnittke Russian classical composer (d. 1998)
• December 2 - Andre Rodgers, Major League Baseball player (d. 2004)
• December 3 - Viktor Gorbatko, cosmonaut
• December 4 - Wink Martindale, game show host and disc jockey.
• December 9 - Junior Wells
• December 16 - Elgin Baylor, basketball great
• December 18 - Boris Volynov, cosmonaut
• December 19 - Al Kaline, Baseball Hall of Fame
• December 27 - Larissa Latynina, USSR gymnast
• December 30 - Joseph P. Hoar, former commander of U.S. Central Command

unknown dates

• Jayakanthan, Tamil writer, Jnanpith awardee

Deaths

• January 10 - Marinus van der Lubbe, Dutch communist accused of setting fire to the Reichstag (executed) (b. 1909)
• February 17 - Albert I of Belgium (b. 1875)
• February 23 - Edward Elgar, English composer (b. 1857)
• March 29 - Otto Hermann Kahn, millionaire and benefactor (b. 1867)
• May 23 - Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, outlaws
• May 25 - Gustav Holst, English composer (b. 1874)
• July 4 - Marie Sklodowska-Curie, co-discoverer of radium and polonium
• July 22 - John Dillinger, American criminal
• July 25 - François Coty, French perfume manufacturer (b. 1874)
• July 25 - Englebert Dolfuss, Austrian Chancellor (assassinated)
• July 25 - Nestor Makhno, Ukrainian anarchist
• July 26 - Winsor McCay, United States comic creator and animator
• July 28 - Marie Dressler, Academy Award winning actress
• August 2 - Paul von Hindenburg, German general and politician
• September 2 - Alcide Nunez, jazz musician (b. 1884)
• November 2 - Edmond James de Rothschild, philanthropist
• November 16 - Alice Pleasance Liddell, inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• December 1 - Sergei Kirov, Soviet leader

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - not awarded.
• Chemistry - Harold Clayton Urey.
• Medicine - George Hoyt Whipple, George Richards Minot, William Parry Murphy.
• Literature - Luigi Pirandello.
• Peace - Arthur Henderson.