Timeline May 1931

Events in May 1931 6

• 1852 – 1931 Albert A. Michelson (1852-1931) Died 9 May 1931, aged 78 American physicist known for precise measurements of the speed of light and for the Michelson-Morley experiment. In 1907 he became the first American to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences. His interferometer remains a basic tool of physics.
• 1853 – 1931 David Belasco (1853-1931) Died 14 May 1931, aged 77 American theatrical producer, playwright and impresario, known for lavish, realistic stagecraft. His plays Madame Butterfly and The Girl of the Golden West were adapted by Puccini as operas. He died in New York City.
• 1931 Collapse of the Creditanstalt Failure of Austria's largest bank spreads the banking crisis across Europe The Vienna bank Creditanstalt announced huge losses and had to be rescued by the Austrian state. Its failure set off bank runs in Germany, Hungary and elsewhere in Central Europe. This turned the Great Depression into a Europe-wide financial crisis.
• 1931 M premieres Fritz Lang's thriller about a child murderer opens in Berlin Fritz Lang's first sound film stars Peter Lorre as a serial killer hunted by both the police and the criminal underworld. It made innovative use of sound, including a whistled leitmotif for the killer. It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of German cinema.
• 1931 Quadragesimo anno issued Pius XI's encyclical on the social order Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical on the fortieth anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum novarum. It criticised both unrestrained capitalism and socialism. It set out the principle of subsidiarity as a basis for Catholic social teaching.
• 1931 Piccard's first stratosphere balloon flight Auguste Piccard reaches about 15,780 metres in a pressurised gondola The Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and his assistant Paul Kipfer took off from Augsburg in a sealed aluminium gondola. They became the first people to reach the stratosphere. They landed safely on a glacier in the Austrian Alps.