1937/38 Cusp of Cancer Leo

April 26 - Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain is bombed. In his report of the Falangist attack on Guernica, British journalist George Steer reports that he had found German bomb casings, connecting Luftwaffe planes with the attack.
July 7 - Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Lugou Bridge - Japanese forces invade China. Often seen as the beginning of World War II in Asia
October 3 - Japanese troops advance toward Nanking.

December 13 - Battle of Nanjing ends and the Nanjing Massacre begins. Japanese troops would slaughter over 250,000 civilians and prisoners over three months.
February 12 - Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg of Austria meets Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden and, under threat of invasion, is forced to yield to German demands for greater Nazi participation in the Austrian government.
February 14 - The British naval base at Singapore begins operations.
March 3 - Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia.
March 18 - Mexico nationalizes all foreign-owned oil properties within its borders.

September 29 Munich agreement of German, Italian, British and French leaders agrees to German demands regarding annexation of Sudetenland.
September 30 - Neville Chamberlain returns to Britain from meeting with Adolf Hitler and declares "Peace In Our Time”
October 1 - German troops march into Sudetenland
October 16 - Winston Churchill, in a broadcast address to the United States, condemns the Munich Agreement as a defeat and calls upon America and western Europe to prepare for armed resistance against Hitler.
October 31 - Great Depression: In an effort to try restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public.

November 9 - Holocaust: Kristallnacht begins - In Germany, the "night of broken glass" begins as Nazi troops and sympathizers loot and burn Jewish businesses (the all night affair saw 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned, 91 Jews killed, and at least 25,000 Jewish men arrested)

January 13 - Black Friday: 71 people die across Victoria in one of Australia's worst ever bushfires.

January 26 Spanish Civil War: Spanish Nationalist troops, aided by Italy, take Barcelona.

March 15 - German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist. The Ruthenian region of Czechoslovakia declares independence as Carpatho-Ukraine.

March 28 Dictator Francisco Franco assumes power in Madrid.
April 1 - The Spanish Civil War comes to an end when the last of the Republican forces surrender.

April 3 - Adolf Hitler orders the German military to start planning for Fall Weiss, the codename for the invasion of Poland.

April 18 - The Soviet Union proposes a "peace front" to resist aggression.
May 7 - Spain leaves the League of Nations.

June 14 - Tientsin Incident: The Japanese blockade the British concession in Tianjin, China, beginning a crisis which almost causes an Anglo-Japanese war in the summer of 1939.

August 23 - Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: Hitler and Stalin agree to divide Europe between themselves (Finland, Estonia, Latvia and eastern Poland to the USSR; Lithuania and western Poland to Germany).

September 1 - World War II: Nazi Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II in Europe.

September 3 - World War II: The United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany.