1931

• January 27 – Pierre Laval forms a government in France
• February 16 – Pehr Evind Svinhufvud is elected president of Finland
• March 31 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000 people
• April 25 – The automobile manufacturer Porsche is founded by Ferdinand Porsche in Stuttgart
• May 1 – Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City
• June 3 – Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory is put on display for the first time
• July 9 – Irish racing driver Kaye Don breaks the world water speed record at Lake Garda, Italy^[1]
• July 20 – A violent tornado strikes the city of Lublin, Poland.
• August – Warner Brothers releases the first Merrie Melodies cartoon
• September- The 1931 Belize hurricane strikes Belize (then British Honduras), killing over 2,500 people
• September 22 – The United Kingdom abandons the gold standard
• October 5 – American aviators Clyde Edward Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, Jr. complete the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean. They travel from Misawa, Japan to East Wenatchee, Washington in 41½ hours.^[2]
• November 7 – The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed by Mao Zedong
• December 10 – Niceto Alcalá-Zamora is elected president of the Spanish Republic

January

• January 2 – Toshiki Kaifu, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 2022)
• January 13 – Charles Nelson Reilly, American actor (d. 2007)
• January 16 – Johannes Rau, President of Germany (d. 2006)
• January 22 – Sam Cooke, American singer (d. 1964)

February

• February 1 – Iajuddin Ahmed, former President of Bangladesh (d. 2012)
• February 1 – Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia (d. 2007)

March

April

• April 7 – Ted Kotcheff, Canadian-Bulgarian film director

May

• May 19 – David Wilkerson, American pastor, evangelist and author (d. 2011)
• May 27 – Faten Hamama, Egyptian producer and actress (d. 2015)

June

July

August

September

• September 12 – Sir Ian Holm, English actor
• September 12 – George Jones, American singer (d. 2013)
• September 29 – Anita Ekberg, Swedish actress (d. 2015)

October

• October 19 – John le Carré, English novelist (d. 2020)
• October 19 – Rubens de Falco, Brazilian actor (d. 2008)
• October 20 – Mickey Mantle, American baseball player (d. 1995)

November

• November 3 – Monica Vitti, Italian actress (d. 2022)
• November 15 – Mwai Kibaki, President of Kenya (d. 2022)

December

• January 23 – Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (b. 1881)
• February 11 – Charles Algernon Parsons, British inventor (b. 1854)
• February 26 – Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1847)
• March 7 – Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish painter (b. 1865)
• April 8 – Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
• April 26 – George Herbert Mead, American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist (b. 1863)
• May 9 – Albert Abraham Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
• June 2 – Joseph W. Farnham, American screenwriter (b. 1884)
• July 12 – Nathan Söderblom, Swedish archbishop, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1866)
• August 26 – Hamaguchi Osachi, 27th Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1870)
• September 12 – Joseph Le Brix, French aviator and naval officer (b. 1899)
• October 21 – Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian author and dramatist (b. 1862)
• November 13 – Ivan Fichev, Bulgarian general, minister of defense, military historian, and academician (b. 1860)
• December 9 – Antonio Salandra, Italian statesman, 21st Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1853)
• December 27 – José Figueroa Alcorta, 16th President of Argentina (b. 1860)

• Nobel Prize in Physics – not awarded
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry won by Carl Bosch, German chemist and engineer, and Friedrich Bergius, German chemist
• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine won by Otto Heinrich Warburg, German chemist, (1883 – 1970)
• Nobel Prize in Literature won by Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish poet
• Nobel Peace Prize won by Jane Addams, American activist, and Nicholas Murray Butler, American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

• January 30 – City Lights starring Charlie Chaplin
• February 9 – Cimarron starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne
• February 14 – The original movie version of Dracula with Bela Lugosi is released in the United States
• December 26 – A Free Soul, winning Best Actor for Lionel Barrymore
• November 21 – Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff, the top-grossing movie of the year
• December 12 – Private Lives starring Norma Shearer
• December 26 – Mata Hari starring Greta Garbo