This image from 1920, the latest in The Independent's photo-history of the last 98 years, in association with the Hulton Getty Picture Collection, moves into the third decade of the 20th-century. The scene depicts King George V in a horse-drawn carriage at the Epsom Derby, being pursued by a beggar.

In Russia, the Bolsheviks appeared finally to have defeated the White Brigade. The British-supported enemies of the Red Army sustained defeat after defeat in their attempt to wrest political power from their opponents and the long civil war looked to have come to an end with the last stand of Baron Wrangel in the Crimea. The victory enabled the Red Army to concentrate on its mission to spread communism throughout Europe. This proved easier said by the Bolshevik ideologues of Petrogrand than done - the Polish army successfully thwarted Russian attempts to take Warsaw in August.

American Puritans possessed of, in H.L. Mencken's words, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy", finally got the legislation that they had been after for years. The Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol, came into force in January. The Mayor of New York reckons he will need a police force of 250,000 to enforce it in his city.

At home, a state of emergency was declared across the country as the miners' strike bit. Recalling the blackouts of the war, display and advertising lighting has been banned and train services have been cut back drastically. In Ireland, the arrival of the notorious "black and tan" special constables from England provoked yet more deaths in the conflict between British forces and the IRA. Hitherto regarded as a minority revolt by the British government, in November the year's troubles reached a level of violence not witnessed since the 1916 uprising, when the IRA killed 14 British soldiers as they lay in their beds. The massacre quickly became known as Bloody Sunday.