1920s Timeline

Beyond the Veil is set in the real world of the 1920s, with a weird and dark twist. All the events that really took place in the years preceding our games took place in the game-world too - but possibly for different reasons. When the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912, did it sink because of a design flaw? Or was there a more sinister reason for the 'unsinkable' liner's demise? What secret cargo did she carry over forbidden submerged ruins?

This timeline runs from 1900 to 1921, and you can use it in a couple of ways. Firstly, any character can be assumed to have heard of any of these events. So it's a handy selection of source material which might turn up during games. And secondly, you can choose to have these events relevant to your character's background. Soldiers will almost certainly have taken part in the Great War; perhaps psychologists will have heard of Rorschach's revolutionary new ink-blot test for the diagnosis of the pathologically insane. A little reading can add a lot of depth to your character.

This timeline draws on the following sources: The Timetables of History by Bernard Grun; Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium Games. If you think that something is missing, mail us.

How To Use This Timeline

Each year is broken down into descriptions of three groups of events. To make things easy we've coloured them for ease of recognition. Browse through them at your leisure, or use the quick-jumps below to skip to a year which interests you:
1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909
1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919
1920 1921

1900 - Mafeking releived; the first Zeppelin flies

 In the Boer War, Mafeking and Ladysmith are releived and Pretoria and Johannesburg captured by the British; King Umberto I of Italy is murdered by an anarchist; von Bulow is appointed Chancellor of Germany; McKinley is re-elected; Tolstoy writes The Living Corpse and Chekov writes his play Uncle Vanya; Freud publishes his landmark Interpretation of Dreams; Puccini writes the opera Tosca; the first Zeppelin, 420 feet long, takes to the air; Radon is discovered; Max Planck formulates quantum theory, shaking conventional physics; Browning revolvers are manuactured for the first time; the World Exhibition opens in Paris; W G Grace retires from cricket.

A number of people appear across the world who speak no known language; there are many reports of sea monsters.

Hoboken, New Jersey: A pier fire kills 326 and causes $10 million damage.

1901 - Queen Victoria dies; Marconi's transatlantic radio

 Queen Victoria dies and is succeeded by her son, Edward VII; Cuba becomes a US protectorate; US President McKinley assassinated by an anarchist - he is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt; Social Revolutionary Party founded in Russia; Rudyard Kipling writes Kim; Walt Disney is born; Picasso's Blue Period begins (lasting until 1905); Composer Verdi dies aged 88; Ragtime jazz develops in the US; Max Planck publishes the Laws of Radiation; Adrenalin is isolated; Marconi transmits a radio message across the Atlantic; Wilhelm Roentgen wins the Nobel Prize for Physics; Oil drilling begins in Persia; Boxing is legalised in Britain; the Mombasa-Lake Victoria railway is completed.

Rudolf Steiner founds anthroposophy; Alaskan indians report sightings of a flying city in the clouds.

The pacific steamer Rio de Janeiro is wrecked in San Francisco harbour with the loss of 128 lives.

1902 - Boer War ends; Aswan Dam opens

 Portugal declared bankrupt; the Boer War ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging; the US acquires perpetual control over the Panama Canal; Arthur Balfour becomes British Prime Minister; Cecil Rhodes dies; Leon Trotsky moves to London after escaping from a Siberian prison; Arthur Conan Doyle writes The Hound of the Baskervilles; A E W Mason writes The Four Feathers; Beatrix Potter publishes her Peter Rabbit collection of childrens' stories; Elgar composes his first Pomp and Circumstance march; anaphylaxis, the abnormal sensitivity to substances, is discovered by Charles Richet in France; J M Bacon crosses the Irish Channel in a balloon; the Aswan Dam opens; powdered milk and puffed cereals hit the market; the safety razor is developed.

The Freya is discovered, unmanned and missing her mast. There is no sign of any other damage and the crew are never found.

Volcanic eruptions in Martinique destroy the town of St. Pierre with a pyroclastic cloud; the steamers Primus and Hansa collide on the Elbe in Germany with the loss of 112 lives.

1903 - Wright Brothers take to the air

 The British finish the conquest of northern Nigeria; King Edward VII and President Loubet establish the Anglo-French 'entente cordiale'; George Bernard Shaw publishes Man and Superman; Jack London writes The Call of the Wild; Pope Leo XIII dies and is succeeded by Pope Pius X; Anti-Jewish pogroms occur in Russia; The Great Train Robbery is released, the longest film to date at 12 minutes; Oscar Hammerstein builds the Manhattan Opera House; Orville and Wilbur Wright fly the first powered airplane; Curie and Arrhenius are awarded Nobel prizes (Arrhenius conceived the 'Arrhenius Spore', a means of seeding life between planets); the motor-car speed limit is set at 20 MPH; the Ford Motor Company is founded; Steiff designs the first teddy bears, named after US president 'Teddy' Roosevelt; the Tour de France bicycle race is run for the first time; the first fluorescent light is invented.

Mud, ash and fireballs fall across southeast Asia.

Fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago kills 602, the worst theatre fire in US history. As a result, new fire codes are drawn up across the nation.

1904 - World Exhibition in St. Louis

 The Russo-Japanese War breaks out, running from February to October; Hottentots revolt in German South-West Africa (the revolt continues until 1908); Theodore Roosevelt wins the US presidential election; playwright Anton Chekov dies aged 44; Jack London writes The Sea-Wolf; James Barrie writes Peter Pan; Freud publishes another milestone in psychology with The Psychopathology of Everyday Life; French film Le Damnation de Faust is released; Anton Dvorak dies aged 63; Puccini's Madame Butterfly is first performed; the London Symphony Orchestra gives its first concert; Rutherford postulates the general theory of radioactivity; the first photoelectric cell and ultraviolet lamp are invented; work begins on the Panama Canal following the eradication of yellow fever in the construction area; the Rolls Royce Company is founded; Mme. Curie publishes Recherches sur les Substances Radioactives; alcohol licensing laws are passed in Britain; the World Exhibition and Olympic Games are held at St. Loius, US; The Lindstrom Company produces the first commerical phonograph records; deaf/blind Helen Keller graduates from Radcliffe College; the Thermos flask is patented; caterpillar tracks first appear on farm machinery.

An intense and inexplicable darkness covers Wimbledon for ten minutes on April 17. No eclipse is due.

The General Slocum catches fire off Manhattan Island and sinks with the loss of 1000 lives.

1905 - Russian Revolution; Einstein publishes E=mc2

 'Bloody Sunday' in Russia as a demonstration is brutally crushed by police, followed by a general strike and mutiny on the battleship Potemkin in an abortive revolution which prompts reforms; Cretan Greeks revolt against the Turks; Sinn Fein founded in Dublin; President Roosevelt inaugurated for a second term; F T Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto, E M Forster'sWhere Angels Fear To Tread and Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel are published; Lenin publishes Two Tactics; Picasso ends his blue period, moving to paris and beginning his pink period which will last until 1906; Debussy writes La Mer; Albert Einstein has a busy year, creating Special Relativity, formulating E=mc2, the Brownian theory of motion and the photon theory of light; Freud publishes Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex; Rayon is manufactured; the AA is founded in London; the Picadilly and Bakerloo underground lines open; neon signs appear; the Mount Wilson observatory is completed; the Cullinan diamond, at 3000 carats, is found; steam turbines become standard for the Royal Navy.

Badminton, Gloucestershire: Sheep are killed and the blood drained from their bodies.

The Japanese warship Mikasa is sunk in an explosion with 599 lives lost.

1906 - San Francisco earthquake; Typhoid Mary captured

 France and Spain gain control of Morocco; a British ultimatum forces Turkey to cede the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt; US President Roosevelt visits the Panama Canal works; Cezanne dies; Greta Garbo is born; Clemens von Pirquet coins the term 'allergy'; the first Grand Prix motor car race is run; HMS Dreadnought launched; US troops occupy Cuba (not to leave until 1909); the liners Lusitania and Mauretania are launched, each 31,000 tons.

Typhoid Mary, unknowing carrier of the disease, is found and incarcerated.

An earthquake in San Francisco kills 700 and causes $400,000,000 damage, destroying over 28,000 homes.

1907 - Rasputin's influence waxes; Pavlov's dogs

 Oklahoma becoems the 47th state of the USA; Lenin leaves Russia and founds The Proletarian newspaper; panic causes a run on US banks stopped only when $100,000,000 in gold is imported from Europe; novelist J K Huysmans dies aged 59; Rudyard Kipling wins the Nobel Prize for Literature; the United Methodist Church is established in Britain; the first Cubist exhibition opens in Paris; titles replace the commentator in motion pictures; Ivan Pavlov studies conditioned reflexes; tissue culture technique is developed; Baden-Powell founds the boy-scout movement.

Grigoriy Rasputin's influence in the Russian court of Czar Nicholas II reaches its height; balls of light fall from the sky, exploding near Burlington, Vermont on 2nd July.

An explosion on the French battleship Jena kills 117.

1908 - Ford Model T goes into production; Asquith becomes Prime Minister

 Civil war in Morocco instates Abdul Hafid as Sultan; King Carlos I of Portugal assassinated; Asquith becomes British Prime Minister with Lloyd George as his Chancellor; Belgium acquires the Congo from their mad King Leopold; E M Forster publishes A Room With a View; Lucy Montgomery publishes Anne of Green Gables; the first steel and glass building, the AEG turbine factory in Berlin, is built; French physicist Bequerel dies aged 50; Hermann Minkowski formulates four-dimensional geometry; Bakelite invented; London hosts the Olympic Games; Cairo University opens; Ford produces the Model T, which is instantly popular.

In Blythe, England, a woman burns to death in her bed without the bed-sheets being damaged or scorched.

An earthquake in southern Italy kills 150,000; the steamer Ying King founders off Hong Kong with the loss of 300 lives.

1909 - Freud's lecture tour; the North Pole reached

 King Leopold II of Belgium dies aged 74; Lenin publishes Materialism and Empiric Criticism; Freud lectures in the USA on psycholanalysis; the first newsreels are shown in cinemas; Picasso paints the Harlequin and Kandinsky shows the first abstract paintings; Frank Lloyd Wright builds the Robie House in Chicago; the Cinematograph Licensing Act is passed in Britain; Bleriot crosses the Channel in an airplane; US explorer Robert E Peary reaches the North Pole; Marconi wins the Nobel Prize for Physics; the Anglo-Persian Oil Company is formed; the first permanent waves (perms) are offered by London hairdressers; Selfridge's opens in Oxford Street.

A glowing airship is repeatedly sighted across New England from 14th to 23rd December.

More nautical catastrophe: The steamers Seyne and Onda collide off Singapore. The Seyne sinks with the loss of 100 lives.

1910 - George V ascends the throne; Cnossus excavated

 China abolishes slavery; King Edward VII dies and is succeeded by George V; Revolution in Portugal (King Manuel II flees to Britain) and Mexico; Mark Twain dies aged 75; Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, dies aged 89; E M Forster publishes Howard's End; Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence begins the controversy over Shakespeare with Bacon in Shakespeare; a post-Impressionist exhibition in London includes the artists Cezanne, van Gogh and Matisse; the Tango sweeps America and Europe; Arthur Evans completes excavations of Cnossus, Crete; Murray and Hjort go on the first deep-sea research expedition; paper cups are invented; Halley's comet observed; H H Crippen is exectued in Britain for wife-poisoning.

Fresh blood falls from the sky in South America.

A landslide buries many miners in the Norman open-cast pit in Virginia, Maine.

1911 - People's Revolution in China; the Mona Lisa stolen

 The Mexican Civil War ends; the NHS is founded by Lloyd George; Revolution in China leads to the formation of the People's Republic; H G Wells publishes The New Machiavelli; Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is stolen from the Louvre, Paris; Emile Jaques-Dalcroze founds institute for teaching eurhythmics in Hellerau, Germany; Roald Amundsen reaches the South Pole; Marie Curie wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry; Rutherford formulates his theory of atomic structure; British Official Secrets Act becomes law.

Summer temperatures in London reach an unprecedented 100oF; the ground around Eton, England found covered with pea-sized jellies containing fish and amphibian larvae which soon hatched.

Railway carriages carrying forty tons of dynamite explode at a terminal in Communipaw, New Jersey, killing thirty.

1912 - The Titanic sinks; fundamental particles discovered

 Raimond Poincare becomes French Prime Minister; Arizona and New Mexico become states of the USA; Woodrow Wilson elected President in USA; Lenin establishes connection with Stalin and takes over editorship of Pravda; general strikes in London; Alfred Adler and Carl Gustaf Jung publish psychological work deviating from Frued's; cellophane patented and mass produced; R F Scott reaches the South Pole; Wilson's cloud-chamber experiments photograph proton and electron traces; Royal Flying Corps (later to becomes the RAF) is established; Olympic games held in Stockholm; first successful parachute jump; Saville Row creates the heavy overcoat to become known in the Great War as a 'trench-coat'.

Piltdown Man found; on January 27th an intensely black object is seen on the Moon, estimated to be 250 miles long and 50 miles wide.

RMS Titanic sinks on her maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg, 1513 drowned.

1913 - The Balkan War; the Rockefeller Institute

 Poincare elected French President; Suffragette demonstrations in London, Emilia Pankhurst arrested; Balkan War between Greece and Turkey fought and resolved; Mahatma Ghandi arrested in India; D H Lawrence publishes Sons and Lovers; Freud publishes Totem and Taboo; Grand Central Station opens in New York; Geiger invents the alpha-ray counter; Neils Bohr formutales is theory of atomic structure; H N Russell proposes a method of stellar formation; zippers become generally popular; the foxtrot comes into fashion; the Rockefeller Institute founded.

Ambrose Bierce prepares for Mexico.

The British steamer Calvadas is lost with 200 passengers in a blizzard in the Sea of Marmora, Canada.

1914 - Start of the Great War

 The Great War begins when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated in Sarajevo; Serbia refuses Austro-Hungarian ultimatum and war begins; German forces occupy Western France and Poland; the battle of Ypres is fought; the first air-raids, with bombs dropped from zeppelins, take place; E R Burroughs publishes Tarzan of the Apes; Pope Pius X dies, succeeded by Pope Benedict XV; Charlie Chaplin's first movie, Making a Living, is released; Robert H Goddard begins rocket experiments; Panama Canal opens; international incident in Vera Cruz, Mexico brings US fleet into Tampico Bay.

A spindle-shaped object is reported transiting the Sun in Manchester, Britain.

Canadian Pacific steamer Empress of India is sunk in a collision with the Storstad on the St. Lawrence River with the loss of 1024 lives.

1915 - Gallipoli landings; Lusitania sunk; millionth Ford produced

 The first submarine attacks are carried out by the German Navy; Anglo-French landings at Gallipoli; Zeppelin air-raids on London; German Navy sinks the Lusitania bringing British shipping losses to date to over 1,000,000 tons; Erich Muenter bombs the US Senate Rooms and later commits suicide; Dadaism emerges with artist Marcel Duchamp; classic jazz booms in New Orleans; Einstein formulates General Relativity; Ford releases a farm tractor and produces their millionth car; George Cantor proposes a theory of transfinite numbers; W G Grace dies aged 67; Lord Beaverbrook buys the Daily Express; Kellogg's corn flakes are first marketed.

In December, bright spots appear on the Moon.

German attack on the Lusitania kills 1199; an epidemic of tetanus sweeps the trenches.

1916 - Military service in Britain; Jazz sweeps the USA; Rasputin dies

 Zeppelin raids on Paris; Military service in Britain; Sinn Fein lead the Easter Rebellion in Dublin; Anzacs arrive in France; first use of tanks on the Western Front; Lloyd George becomes British Prime Minister; James Joyce publishes Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Dadaist cult active in Zurich; jazz sweeps America; Shell-shock postulated by F W Mott; Sir Arthur Eddington investigates the physical properties of stars; British Summer Time introduced; American National Parks created; 24 US States vote aainst alcohol; Pancho Villa leads Mexican raid into New Mexico; Theodore Dresier's The Genius is suppressed by censors in New York; United States enters the Great War.

Grigoriy Rasputin dies, murdered by a clique of aristocrats, but before finally dying he is poisoned, stabbed, shot and drowned; red tides reported along American coasts.

French cruiser Provence is sunk in the Mediterranean killing 3100.

1917 - The Russian Revolution; Battle of Paschendaele

 Revolution in Russia forces the Czar to abdicate; Albania declares independence; the battle of Passchendaele is fought; Pope Benedict XV sends a peace note to all combatants; food is rationed in Britain; starvation in Germany; the Allies execute Mata Hari as a spy; the first Pulitzer prizes are awarded; Jung publishes The Psychology of the Unconscious and Freud Introduction to Psychoanalysis; Ferdinand, Count Zeppelin dies; the Trans-Siberian railroad is completed; bobbed hair becomes fashionable for women.

Luminous objects are seen moving on the Moon; trench soldiers report legions of angels descending from the clouds and aiding stricken British soldiers at Passchendaele; two young girls take photographs of fairies at the bottom of their garden - the photographs defy analysis and appear to be genuine.

At least 300,000 men die in the Battle of Passchendaele, a futile offensive which was known to be hopeless even before it commenced.

1918 - The Great War ends; influenza epidemic sweeps world

 Royal Air Force inaugurated in response to Luftwaffe attacks; Allied offensive on the Western Front opens; Germany suspends submarine warfare; Allied conference at Versailles establishes terms for German surrender; armistice signed 11th November; Czar Nicholas II and his family exectued by Bolsheviks; Women over 30 get the vote in Britain; Arthur Dinter publishes Die Sunde wider das Blut, the first Nazi novel; Aldous Huxley publishes The Defeat of Youth; Wilfred Owen, war poet, dies aged 56; US post office burns copies of James Joyce's Ulysses; Lutheran Church established in US; Bartok's opera Bluebeard's Castle produced; Claude Debussy and Georg Cantor die; Leonard Woolley begins excavating ancient Babylon; Harlow Shapley determines the true size of the Milky Way; Max Planck wins the Nobel Prize for Physics; airmail introduced on mainland US.

Unusual weather is reported in many parts of the world; USS Cyclops leaves Barbados and is never seen again.

Hong Kong Jockey Club grandstand collapses killing 600; global influenza epidemic strikes, to kill 22,000,000 by 1920; total casualties of the Great War: 8,500,000.

1919 - The world recovers after the Great War; Fascism begins to stir in Europe

 Theodore Roosevelt dies; Benito Mussolini founds the Italian Fascist Party; German fleet scuttled at Scapa Flow; War between British, Indian and Afghan forces; War between Finland and the new USSR; race riots in Chicago; the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to US President Woodrow Wilson for his decisive part in ending the Great War; The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie's first novel, is published; the first Dr. Doolittle stories appear; new Universities open in Hamburg, Posen, Bratislava and Cologne; Bauhaus revolutionises teaching of the industrial arts; W M Rossetti, last of the Pre-Raphaelites, dies; Jazz arrives in Europe; mass-spectrograph invented; observations of a total eclipse bear out Einstein's Theory of Relativity; sub-atomic particles suggested by Rutherford; Alcock and Whitten fly across the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland; Babe Ruth hits a 587-foot home run; F W Woolworth, founder of the five-and-dime, dies; mechanical hare invented for greyhound racing.

Captain James and his aircraft disappear whilst flying over New York.

The French steamer Chaonia sinks in the Straits of Messina with the loss of 460 lives.

1920 - League of Nations formed; Prohibition in America

 The League of Nations forms in Paris and subsequently moves to Geneva; conscription is abolished in Britain; American women gain the vote; the Russian Civil War comes to an end with the Bolsheviks' Red Army victorious; Adolf Hitler announces his 25-point programme in Munich; Warren G Harding elected US President; Edith Wharton wins Pulitzer prize for The Age of Innocence; Jung and Adler resume their pre-War work; Bertrand Russell publishes The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism; dadaism and cubism reach their peak; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a box-office movie smash; the first complete performance of Holst's The Planets is given in London; the stratosphere is identified; Alfredo Codona performs the first triple somersault; Olympic Games held in Antwerp; the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution brings prohibition into force.

Shafts of light are seen to project from the Moon.

An earthquake in China's Kansu province kills 200,000; a bomb in Wall Street, New York, kills 35 and wounds 130.

1921 - Beginning of Hitler's rise to power; Einstein wins Nobel Prize

 The first Indian parliament meets; Germany's reparation fixed at $33 billion; Hitler's storm troopers begin to terrorise his opponents; German hyperinflation begins; Britain and Ireland sign peace treaty; Aldous Huxley writes Chrome Yellow; E Stern-Rubarth publishes Propaganda as a Political Weapon; Chaplin's film The Kid a huge success; the first tuberculosis vaccine developed; chromosome theory of heredity postulated by T H Morgan; paleontology is rearranged phylogenetically; Einstein receives the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect; first indications of a positive and negative subatomic particle; Australia wins the Ashes; BBC founded at Alexandra Palace; table tennis revived; Ku Klux Klan activity becomes violent, sweeping the Southern US in a wave of property destruction, branding and whipping; Unknown Soldier interred at Arlington Cemetery, Washington; Rorschach devises his ink-blot test.

Millions of tiny frogs appear in North London; over a dozen ships disappear during the year.

A bridge collapse in Pennsylvania kills 21.

This page was last updated on 16 September 1997