| 1930 | Start of the Great Depression. Mahatma Gandhi starts the Salt March in India. |
| 1931 | Empire State Building completed in New York. Japanese invasion of Manchuria begins. |
| 1932 | Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to make a solo air crossing of the Atlantic. Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected President of the United States. |
| 1933 | Adolf Hitler comes to power in Germany. The New Deal begins in the U.S. |
| 1934 | Dust Bowl begins in the U.S. and Canada. Mao Zedong begins the Long March in China. |
| 1935 | Social Security Act passed in the U.S. Mussolini invades Ethiopia. |
| 1936 | Spanish Civil War begins. Summer Olympics held in Berlin, Germany. |
| 1937 | Hindenburg disaster occurs in New Jersey. Japan invades China, initiating the Second Sino-Japanese War. |
| 1938 | Hitler annexes Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Orson Welles’ “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast causes panic. |
| 1939 | World War II begins with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. Soviet Union invades Finland. |
