• Builds busy law practice.

"... the practice of the law in court was and remains my first love. A large practice at the Bar means much concentrated and hard work. For some years before I took silk at the age of thirty-four, and for some years thereafter, my weekly hours of work would average not less than eighty. Either in court or in his Chambers, the advocate must never lose his concentration upon the job in hand."
Sir Robert Menzies, Afternoon Light, 1967 p 316.

• January: First Cabinet meeting in Canberra.
• Compulsory voting for non-indigenous people in Federal elections is introduced.
• In Sydney, the Australian Aborigines' Progressive Association is formed to campaign for Aboriginal rights.
• Airmail services begin between Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne; first flight is 20 hours late.

• Death of Lenin, the founder of Soviet Russia: The provincial lawyer turned political agitator, dies after a long illness, aged 54. His body is to be embalmed for permanent public display. Joseph Stalin succeeds him.
• Mussolini introduces press censorship in Italy.
• Excavations in Egypt uncover the earliest surviving stone buildings on earth.