January 21 – Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin immediately begins to purge his rivals to clear the way for his leadership.
January 22 — Ramsay MacDonald becomes the first Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
January 25 — The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics open in Chamonix, in the French Alps.
January 27 — Lenin is buried in Lenin’s Mausoleum, in Moscow’s Red Square.
March 3 – The 407-year-old Islamic caliphate is abolished, when Caliph Abdülmecid II of the Ottoman Caliphate is deposed. The last remnant of the old regime gives way to the reformed Turkey of President Kemal Atatürk.
March 8 — The Castle Gate Mine disaster kills 172 coal miners in Utah, United States.
April 1 – Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in jail, for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch (he serves only 8 months).
April 6 — Fascists win the elections in Italy with a â…” majority.
April 16 — American media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) is founded in Los Angeles.
April 23 — The British Empire Exhibition opens; it is the largest colonial exhibition, with 58 countries of the empire dramatically represented.
April 26 — Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his ”death ray” in London, but fails to convince the British War Office.
May 4 — The 1924 Summer Olympics opening ceremonies are held in Paris, France.
May 10 — In the United States, J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
May 24 — The Immigration Act of 1924 is signed into law in the United States, including the Asian Exclusion Act.
June 8 — George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are last seen ”going strong for the top” of Mount Everest by teammate Noel Odell at 12-50 P.M. The two mountaineers are never seen alive again.
June 10 — Fascists kidnap and kill Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
June 30 — J. B. M. Hertzog becomes the third Prime Minister of South Africa.
July 12 — United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916—24) comes to an end. The constitutional government headed by General Horacio Vázquez, elected in the elections held in March, is established.
August 16 — The Dawes Plan is accepted.
August 28 — The August Uprising – Georgia rises against rule by the Soviet Union in an abortive rebellion, in which several thousands die.
September 9—September 11 — The Kohat riots break out in India.
September 28 — U.S. Army pilots John Harding and Erik Nelson complete the first aerial circumnavigation. It has taken them 175 days and 74 stops before their return to Seattle.
October 12—15 — Zeppelin LZ-126 makes a transatlantic delivery flight from Friedrichshafen, Germany, to Lakehurst, New Jersey.
October 15 — The first Surrealist Manifesto is published, in which André Breton defines the movement as ”pure psychic automatism”
October 24 – The British Foreign Office publishes the fraudulent Zinoviev letter, which is then printed on the cover of the Daily Mail, the day before the general election.
November 4 – In the U.S. presidential election, Republican Calvin Coolidge defeats Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
December 30 — Astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that Andromeda, previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe.