1924

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• In the Soviet Union, Lenin dies on 21 January.

• In Britain, the first minority Labour government is formed on 23 January, under the leadership of James Ramsay MacDonald. Following disputes over the use of soldiers to break strikes and the revelation of the 'Zinoviev Letter', a document inciting revolutionary activity in the army and in Ireland, supposedly written by the head of the Soviet Comintern, Labour loses to the Conservatives at the general election on 29 October. Stanley Baldwin returns as prime minister on 11 November.

• Britain establishes a protectorate over Northern Rhodesia.

• On 10 June, the Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti is abducted, presumably by Fascists. His corpse is discovered on 15 August. Mussolini is implicated.

• On 4 November, incumbent Republican Calvin Coolidge wins the US presidency in his own right.

• In the United States, the Tabulating Machine Company is renamed International Business Machines (IBM).

• The self-winding watch is patented.

• French artist and writer André Breton publishes The First Manifesto of Surrealism, an art movement that draws its inspiration from the illogicality of dreams.

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