1938

1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940

political events

Firing squads execute 21 Soviet leaders March 13 after an 11-day show trial in which the men were forced to confess and found guilty of treason. Included is former Third International head Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, 49, whose novel How It All Began, written in prison, will be published years hence.

France's Chautemps government falls March 10 after 9 months in office; Léon Blum tries to form a new Popular Front cabinet but resigns under pressure April 10; Edouard Daladier, now 52, heads a new radical socialist cabinet that is farther to the right. Camille Chautemps refuses to serve in the new government.

Adolf Hitler vows to "protect" the 10 million Germans living outside the Reich, annexes Austria March 14 in what is called the "Anschluss", and engineers an April 10 plebiscite that shows that 99.75 percent of Austrians desire union with the Third Reich (see 1934). The Austrian Anschluss draws protests from Britain and France, but Germanophobic British Foreign Office official Robert G. Vansittart, 57, has been sidelined into an unimportant position January 1 to keep him from pushing his rearmament views. Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden resigns from Prime Minister Chamberlain's cabinet and is succeeded February 25 by Edward F. L. Wood, 1st earl of Halifax, who as lord privy seal last November visited Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering. Nobel pacifist Carl von Ossietzky dies at a Berlin sanatorium May 4 at age 48.

Hungary's premier Kálman Darányi resigns May 13 as pressure increases from right-wing extremists. He becomes president of the legislature and is succeeded as premier by banker Béla Imrédy, who will collaborate closely with the Nazis until his resignation next year. Polish forces occupy the Teschen area of Czechoslovakia October 2, having sent a note September 29 demanding cession of the territory seized by the Czechs in the Polish-Russian war of 1920. Poland champions Hungarian claims in Slovakia and Ruthenia.

"I am convinced that it is wiser to permit Germany eastward expansion than to throw England and France, unprepared, into a war at this time," writes Charles A. Lindbergh September 23 to U.S. Ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy. Lindbergh has been living abroad to escape publicity since the kidnapping and murder of his infant son in 1932; he has visited Nazi Germany six times since 1936, received a decoration earlier this year from Hermann Goering for services to world aviation, and has made surveys of British, German, and Soviet airpower; Britain could not possibly win a war in Europe, he argues, not even with U.S. aid.

The British and French appease der führer at Munich September 29 by permitting him to take the Sudetenland, a 16,000-square-mile territory that covers nearly a third of Czechoslovakia and contains a third of her inhabitants. "This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor," says Prime Minister Chamberlain on his return from Munich. "I believe it is peace for our time." Knowing all too well how woefully unprepared Britain is for a war, he has offered some French, Belgian, and Portuguese colonies in Africa to Hitler (the BBC suppresses that news) and tries to make the best of a humiliating situation, meeting with his supporters at the Cliveden estate of New York-born London Observer proprietor Waldorf Astor, now 59, in Buckinghamshire; Parliament endorses the concessions that Chamberlain has made despite opposition from a small minority that includes Nobel Peace Prize winner Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil, now 73 (see 1939).

British intelligence director Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair prepares a dossier on Adolf Hitler in December at the request of the foreign office (see Sinclair, 1923). Now 65, Sir Hugh says Hitler has the characteristics of "fanaticism, mysticism, ruthlessness, cunning, vanity, moods of exaltation and depression, fits of bitter and self-righteous resentment, and what can only be termed a streak of madness; but with it all there is a great tenacity of purpose, which has often been combined with extraordinary clarity of vision." His suggestion that Hitler may try to get around the Maginot Line and invade France via the Lowlands and Switzerland is communicated to Washington, infuriating the assistant under-secretary of the Foreign Office Sir George Mounsey, who writes, "These secret reports, if accurate, are usually borne out by our own information and therefore, while harmless, of little value, whereas, if inaccurate they may lead to serious consequences. If action is taken on them the whole international atmosphere may be poisoned and the policy of appeasement jeopardised."

British intelligence learns that the Germans have adopted a seemingly "unbreakable" code that employs a machine with a series of electrical rotors that translate Morse code into what appears to be gibberish and can be deciphered only by a similar machine operated by the recipient of the message being sent. Originally devised in 1918, used up to now for commercial purposes, and improved for military use, the "Enigma" code scrambles a message in any of 150 quadrillion ways; the ultra-secret Code and Cipher School established at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, in 1919 recruits chess champions, mathematicians, and crossword puzzle experts through an anonymous letter placed in the Daily Telegraph (the purpose of their work will remain a mystery to the cryptographers for decades). Mathematician Alan M. Turing is among those enlisted to break the Germans' "Enigma" code (see science, 1936), but its complexity defies efforts to decipher it (see 1939).

Lockheed Aircraft Corp. receives a contract to produce Hudson bombers for Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF), the largest single order yet placed with any U.S. aircraft manufacturer (see transportation, 1932). By 1941 Lockheed will have 17,000 employees, a number that will peak at 94,329 in 1943 but fall back to 17,000 in 1946 (see Missile Systems Division, 1954).

Northrop Aircraft is founded by John K. Northrop, now 42, whose company was acquired last year by Douglas Aircraft (see 1928).

McDonnell Aircraft is founded by former Glenn L. Martin project engineer James S. (Smith) McDonnell, Jr., 39, who will make McDonnell a leading producer of military aircraft (see transportation, [McDonnell-Douglas], 1967).

Britain and Ireland resume friendly relations after concluding a 3-year agreement to remove tariff barriers (see 1935). Britain turns over coastal defense installations to Eire, and Dublin agrees to pay £10 million to satisfy land-annuity claims.

Spanish insurgents sever Loyalist territory in Castile from Barcelona and Catalonia, the opposing forces remain deadlocked along the Ebro River through most of the summer, a great insurgent drive begins in Catalonia December 23, and the Loyalists are forced back toward Barcelona. Italy has withdrawn some troops following an Anglo-Italian pact signed April 16, but a force of 40,000 remains to support Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

London announces postponement of any Palestine partition January 4 (see 1930), British authorities execute Jewish terrorist Solomon ben Yosef June 29, Arab markets are bombed in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa either by Jewish or Arab terrorists, 20 Jews are massacred October 2 at Tiberias, and Arab extremists seize Bethlehem and the old section of Jerusalem, which are retaken by British troops October 10 and October 18, respectively. A new British commission reports November 9 that all partition proposals are impractical, and by year's end there are 25,000 to 30,000 British troops in Palestine (see 1939).

Turkey's president Kemal Atatürk dies at Dolmabahce November 10 at age 57 after a 15-year regime in which he has established a modern republic. Unanimously elected to succeed him in a vote by the national assembly is Prime Minister Ismet Inönü, now 54, who has been responsible for many of the reforms accomplished since 1923 and will be president until 1950.

Benito Mussolini demands France's colonies of Corsica and Tunisia in December.

Japanese forces in China follow up their 1937 successes by taking Qingdao (Tsingtao) January 10 after the Chinese have destroyed some Japanese factories in the area. Japanese troops advance along the Hankou (Hankow) Railway and through Shangxi (Shansi) Province, reach the Huanghe (Yellow River) March 6, but suffer several reverses as communist guerrillas retain control of the countryside. The National Mobilization Law enacted by the Diet in March brings new recruits, but the Battle of Tai-er-zhuang (Taierchwang) in April ends with the Japanese suffering their first major defeat in modern times: some 200,000 Chinese regulars and guerrillas under the command of Gen. Li Zong Ren (Li Tsung-jen) trap a 60,000-man Japanese force advancing southward on Xuzhou in Jiangsu Province, killing 20,000 of the enemy and capturing great quantities of equipment before the Japanese can break out to the north. The victory boosts Chinese morale, but Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye appoints Tokyo-born general Hideki Tojo, 53, his minister of war in July and Xiaman (Amoy) falls to the Japanese May 10.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek summons U.S. cryptographer Herbert O. Yardley, now 49, to break the code of the Japanese invaders (see 1929). Police in Shanghai's foreign concessions round up terrorist followers of Sun Yaxing during the summer, concession authorities hand the men over to the city police (who collaborate with the Japanese), the terrorists are taken to police headquarters at 76 Jessfield Road, and Sun Yaxing is among those shot. Japanese and Russian forces clash on the Chinese-Siberian border from July 11 to August 10, Japanese troops land at Bias Bay near Hong Kong October 12, Guangzhou (Canton) falls October 21, Hangkou (Hankow) October 25. Capturing Guangzhou permits the Japanese to cut the Guangzhou-Hankou Railway that supplies Chinese forces in the interior with war matériel from abroad. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," says communist leader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) November 6, and Prince Konoye issues a proclamation in November declaring Japan's aim for "a new order in East Asia."

Indian revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose wins election as president of the Indian National Congress, defeating Mohandas K. Gandhi's nominee. Now 41, Bose matriculated at Cambridge, scored high on civil service exams, returned to India, became a disciple of the late Chittaranjan Das, was arrested by the British in a 1925 roundup of terrorists, contracted tuberculosis in a Mandalay prison, gained release in 1927, worked with Jawaharlal Nehru for complete independence, was arrested again and jailed for civil disobedience, was elected mayor of Calcutta, and has recently traveled for his health in Europe, visiting Indian students and meeting with political leaders who included Adolf Hitler. Seeing that a war in Europe is imminent, he warns against dragging India into any world conflict (see 1939).

Siamese general Luang Phibunsongkhram takes power as a military dictator in December (see 1935). Now 41, he has been minister of defense since 1934, promoted ultranationalist military ideas, adopts a chauvinistic anti-Chinese policy in domestic affairs and a pro-Japanese policy in foreign affairs (see 1940; Thailand, 1939).

The U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1842 ruling in Swift v. Tyson April 25. In Erie Railroad v. Tompkins it upholds a state court's award of $30,000 in damages to a man whose arm was torn off by an open railcar door as he walked beside the tracks; lawyers for the railroad have claimed that the state court had no jurisdiction, Justice Brandeis writes the majority opinion, Justice Cardozo has been absent following a stroke, Justices Butler and McReynolds dissent, and the 6-to-2 decision will stand into the next century, establishing the rule (in Brandeis's words) that "except in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the law of the State . . . There is no Federal General Common Law."

The Dies Committee (to Investigate Un-American Activities) begins in May to study Nazi activities in the United States but soon turns to investigating communist activities. Rep. Martin Dies, 36, (D. Texas) has turned against the New Deal, which he originally supported; while most of his committee's charges will be based on hearsay, circumstantial evidence, or slander, chairman Dies will claim that it is more effective than the FBI in exposing communist subversion (see 1947).

Bolivia and Paraguay sign a definitive peace agreement at Buenos Aires July 21, ending the Chaco War that began in 1928 (see 1935). Carlos Saavedra Lamas has negotiated the pact, under whose terms Bolivia loses even more territory than the most extremist Paraguayans demanded 3 years ago. Argentinian investors profit handsomely from Paraguay's territorial gains.

Puerto Rico's Popular Democratic Party is founded July 22 at Barranquitas by native son Luis Muñoz Marín, 40, whose patriot father, the late Luis Muñoz Rivera, was born in the place. Muñoz Marín grew up in San Juan and Washington, D.C. (where his father was Puerto Rico's resident commissioner until his death in 1916), worked as a freelance writer at New York, and has edited his father's newspaper La Democracia as well as serving in the Puerto Rican senate. He has favored breaking up the island's large estancias for distribution among poorer farmers and has been able through his contacts with the Roosevelt administration to obtain appropriations for Puerto Rico (see 1940).

The Declaration of Lima adopted December 24 by representatives of 21 American nations meeting at a Pan-American conference in Peru pledges the Western Hemisphere neighbors to consult in the event that the "peace, security, or territorial integrity" of any state is threatened; they reaffirm absolute sovereignty in the face of fears that Europe's fascist powers may attempt takeovers in the Americas.

human rights, social justice

The Nazis in Austria deprive Jews of their civil rights and means of livelihood; they plunder Jewish shops and homes. The Gestapo arrests psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna in June but Freud himself is permitted to leave Vienna for London with all his possessions after his friend and patron Princess Marie Bonaparte pays his "refugee tax." (Freud's study, library, and consulting room at Bergasse 19 are recreated at 20 Maresfield Gardens, but he is terminally ill with throat cancer.)

An international conference convened at Evian from July 6 to 15 tries to organize facilities for Jewish emigration; delegates from 29 nations hold discussions, but nothing is accomplished.

Italy's 40,000 to 50,000 Jews come under pressure beginning in the summer, and the leggi antiebraiche enacted by the Fascist regime November 10 require that alien Jews be deported, prohibit marriage with "Aryans," expel Jewish students and teachers from public schools and universities, and bar Jews from owning businesses or holding public office.

German authorities crack down on gypsies (Roma) in response to local pressure (see 1929). A pronouncement from Adolf Hitler in October states, "All means, even if they are not in conformity with existing laws and precedents, are legal if they subserve the will of the Führer." Local communities regard gypsies as a criminal class, and official decrees now begin making references to the Roma's alleged racial inferiority (see 1942).

The worst pogrom in German history begins November 9 following the assassination of Paris embassy official Ernst Edouard vom Rath November 7 by German-born Polish Jew Herschel Grynzpan, 17, who has heard of the mistreatment of some 17,000 Polish Jews (including members of his own family, whom he has not seen in 2 years) following their deportation from Germany. A student who lives with an aunt and uncle in Paris, Grynzpan received a postcard from his sister November 3, purchased a revolver, enters the German embassy, and fires five bullets at point-blank range; two of them hit vom Rath, who dies 2 days later. The Nazis retaliate by smashing Jewish shop windows ("crystal") in a November 9 to 10 Kristallnacht pogrom orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels; shops, homes, and synagogues are looted, demolished, and burned, and 20,000 to 30,000 Jews are carried off to concentration camps (see 1939; Dachau, 1933; Buchenwald, 1937).

The British Committee for the Care of Children from Germany organizes a Kindertransport that will house some 10,000 youngsters aged 5 to 17 in English, Irish, and Scottish homes, with older boys given farm jobs. The first Kindertransport train leaves Vienna for the Channel December 1, and some children are airlifted from Czechoslovakia by planes chartered from KLM and other airlines, but few countries will admit Jews and even Britain does not welcome adult Jews (see 1939).

Civil rights lawyer Clarence S. Darrow dies at Chicago March 13 at age 80; reformer-author-songwriter James Weldon Johnson is killed in an auto accident at Wiscasset, Me., June 26 at age 67; Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo dies at Port Chester, N.Y., July 9 at age 68, having shown in his 6 years on the bench that the Constitution can be interpreted in ways that meet social needs.

The Supreme Court orders equal accommodations for Missouri law students regardless of race December 12 in Missouri ex. rel. Gaines v. Canada, Registrar of the University of Missouri (see 1936). Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes reads the decision, four members of the eight-man court concur, but Justices Butler and McReynolds dissent, predicting that Missouri may "abandon her law school and thereby disadvantage her white citizens without improving the petitioner's opportunities for legal instruction," or may integrate her law school and "as indicated by experience, damnify both races." (McReynolds has turned his chair around so he would not face lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston, but his action has produced no condemnation.) Blacks hail the decision as a victory that achieves Houston's principle of equality in education. He tells the press merely that it will open up new opportunities for blacks in the 16 states that bar them from professional schools, but many Southern papers deplore the decision, the Charleston News and Courier states that it will lower standards and reduce higher education in the South "to a lowly estate in public opinion." Missouri's legislature adopts a law making it virtually impossible for the university to implement the decision, and Lloyd L. Gaines will disappear without a trace next year, having either committed suicide, been murdered by white supremacists, or been bribed to move abroad under an assumed name (see Henderson decision, 1949).

commerce

Soviet authorities review the 1931 prison sentence of economist Nikolai D. Kondratev, sentence him to death, and execute him at age 46 (approximate; date and place of execution unknown; see agriculture, 1928).

Germany's trade balance shows a deficit of 432 million marks. The country has been bankrupt since 1931 by standard capitalist accounting standards, and Reichsbank president Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht, 61, warns that the country's enormous armament program must be curtailed lest the catastrophic inflation of 15 years ago recur.

Economist Jan Tinbergen creates a mathematical model of the U.S. economy for the League of Nations.

Labor leader Andrew Furuseth dies at Washington, D.C., January 22 at age 83.

The Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor issues its annual report February 20 criticizing companies that replace men with women employees to save money.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) calls a strike early in the year against Federal Screw Co., a Ford Motor Company parts supplier that has demanded that its workers accept a wage cut (see Battle of the Overpass, 1937). The workers have refused, Ford dispatches strikebreakers, violence ensues on the picket lines, ambulances rush injured workers and police officers to local hospitals, but the strikers prevail and Federal Screw withdraws its demand (see 1941).

The Fair Labor Standards Act (Wages and Hours Act) signed into law by President Roosevelt June 14 limits working hours of some 12.5 million U.S. workers in the first national effort to place a floor under wages and a ceiling on hours. Sponsored by Sen. Robert F. Wagner (D. N.Y.), it applies to all industries engaged in interstate commerce. Working hours for the first year after the new law takes effect October 14 are limited to 44 per week with the limit to be reduced to 42 for the second year and 40 for every year thereafter. Longer work weeks are permitted only if overtime work is paid for at 1½ times the regular rate. The minimum wage is to be 25¢ per hour for the first year, 30¢ for the next 6 years, but farm workers are not included under the law and domestic servants will not be included until 1974; live-in maids continue typically to earn $30 per month or less plus meals and farm workers often earn even less (see Minimum Wage Act, 1949). The new law wipes out Puerto Rico's 40,000-worker needlework industry, where 25¢ has been the hourly rate for skilled workers.

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organized on a formal basis in November succeeds the Committee for Industrial Organization formed in 1935. John L. Lewis is elected CIO president November 18 (see 1946).

Former New York Stock Exchange president Richard Whitney is indicted March 10 on embezzlement charges. Now 49, he has taken about $1 million worth of bonds from clients' accounts and pledged them as his collateral for personal bank loans. Says the New York Daily News, "Not in our time, in our fathers' time nor in our grandfathers' time has there been such a social debacle." Whitney pleads guilty, receives a 5- to 10-year prison sentence, enters Sing Sing April 12, but will be released for good behavior in August 1941 after his brother George (a partner in J. P. Morgan & Co.) pays all that Richard has borrowed or stolen. The conviction weakens NYSE resistance to reform, and the new Securities and Exchange Commission is soon able to impose new rules on the exchange.

President Roosevelt asks Congress April 14 to appropriate another $3 billion for relief to stimulate the economy as 5.8 million Americans remain unemployed (see 1937).

Congress reduces taxes on corporation profits May 27. Federal bank supervisory agencies agree in June to let banks carry high-grade bonds at amortized book value regardless of market prices.

Congress passes an Emergency Relief Appropriations Act June 21.

Copper baron-philanthropist Adolph Lewisohn dies at New York August 17 at age 89; former Canadian Bank of Commerce president Sir John Aird of a heart attack at his Toronto home November 30 at age 83.

The New York Stock Exchange halts trading in the 105-year-old pharmaceutical firm McKesson & Robbins December 2 upon hearing charges of mismanagement and falsification brought by a stockholder. Its president F. (Frank) Donald Coster is arrested December 14 for violating the Securities Exchange Act and charged in connection with $18 million apparently missing from the assets of the crude drug department, which has been under the exclusive direction of Coster and his assistant, George S. Dietrich, who is a neighbor of Coster and is also arrested. Coster and Dietrich are released on $5,000 bail each and remain at their homes in Fairfield, Conn., but an FBI investigation reveals that "Coster" is in reality former convict Frank Musica, now 61, who borrowed $1 million to buy a controlling interest in McKesson 2 years ago. When police come to arrest him again at his 18-room mansion he goes to the bathroom, puts a gun in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. It turns out that Musica and his three brothers have set up five dummy Canadian suppliers from whom they pretended to purchase crude drugs, pretended to sell them to foreign dealers, drew up false documents to support the scam, hired secretaries in Canada to receive mail and reroute it with Canadian postmarks, and thereby duped Price Waterhouse auditors to steal about $3 million over the course of 12 years.

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 131.33 August 24 but rebounds to close December 31 at 154.76, up from 120.85 at the end of 1937.

retail, trade

Dillard's Department Stores have their beginning at Nashville, Ark., where merchant William T. Dillard, 24, opens an establishment that will grow to rival J. C. Penney and other retail chains. Armed with an M.B.A. from Columbia University, Dillard has borrowed $8,000 from his father to start the store; he will sell it in 1948, use the proceeds to open stores in Texas, and go on to have outlets all over the South.

energy

An oil strike in southeastern Kuwait February 23 begins to revolutionize the emirate's economy (Mikimoto's cultured pearls have ruined its pearl fishery, once its leading industry; see 1893). Kuwait Oil Co. will develop the giant petroleum reserve in the British protectorate under joint ownership of Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. and Gulf Oil.

Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco) strikes oil in Saudi Arabia in March (see 1933). Political events will delay exploitation of the vast deposits, and by 1950 Ibn Saud will have received no more than about $200,000, but by 1953 he will be getting roughly $2.5 million per week as his country becomes the world's leading petroleum producer.

Mexico nationalizes her petroleum industry March 18, revoking licenses granted to British and U.S. oil companies to operate in Mexico. Oil is a natural resource that belongs to all the Mexican people, the Cardenas government says; it expropriates properties valued at $450 million and proposes oil barter agreements with Germany, Italy, and other nations to exchange oil for manufactured goods imported up to now largely from Britain and the United States.

Commonwealth & Southern Corp. president Wendell L. Willkie begins negotiations in January to sell the company's assets to the Tennessee Valley Authority that he and others have charged with unfair competition (see 1939; Supreme Court decision, 1936).

Pickwick Landing Dam is completed on the Tennessee River February 8 a few miles south of Savannah, Tenn., and just north of the Mississippi state line (see Wheeler Dam, 1936). Built in 37 months by the Army Corps of Engineers for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) at a cost of $45.7 million, it rises 113 feet, stretches 7,715 feet in length, has a generating capacity of 228,000 kilowatts, and has required the relocation of 506 Alabama families along with cemeteries and everything of value (see Kentucky Dam, 1944).

A special congressional committee convenes March 11 to hold hearings on allegations of corrupt practices by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), whose rates are half those of private utility companies (see lawsuits, 1937; Lilienthal, 1941).

General Electric introduces fluorescent lighting April 21 after nearly 3½ years of development at Nela Park in East Cleveland by a team headed by George Inman, 43, who will be granted a patent in October 1941 (German freelance inventor Edmund Germer, 36, will later receive a patent on his version of a fluorescent lamp, but GE will buy U.S. rights to Germer's patent in 1941, acquiring also his patent on a high-pressure mercury-vapor lamp). The fluorescent lamp is a glass tube with an electrode (a small, coiled tungsten filament with an oxide coating) at each end; the inside of the tube is coated with phosphors and it contains a drop of mercury plus a small amount of argon gas; as current is applied, the argon gas helps to vaporize the mercury, which becomes the medium through which an electric arc connects the two electrodes, enabling the mercury to produce ultraviolet light concentrated in one particular wavelength (2,537 Angstrom units). GE initially offers the lamps in three lengths—18, 24, and 36 inches—and three wattages (15, 20, and 30), but next year it will introduce a 40-watt, 48-inch lamp whose white light will be considered preferable to daylight for general indoor lighting. Inman's team has included inventor A. (Alfred) Eugene Lemmers, 30, whose Rapid Start Fluorescent Lamp will become the most widely used light of its kind. In addition to being far more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, the new fluorescent lamps are so bright that they will revolutionize office-building construction, making interior spaces as bright as offices with windows, although a windowed office will remain a coveted status symbol (see 1941).

Former utilities magnate Samuel Insull dies of a heart attack while waiting for the Métro at Paris July 16 at age 78; physicist André-Eugène Blondel at Paris November 15 at age 75, having not only pioneered use of the oscillograph and photometry for measuring the intensity of alternating current but also contributed to the development of induction motors and the coupling of AC generators.

transportation

The new Pickwick Landing Dam on the Tennessee River creates a reservoir that extends into northwest Alabama and deepens the Muscle Shoals section of the river that was impassable to barge traffic before construction of the Wilson Dam in 1927.

A Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) created by act of Congress June 23 moves to regulate the growing U.S. aviation industry. Appointed to head the new authority is former Life Savers candy maker Edward J. Noble, now 56.

Howard Hughes sets a new round-the-world speed record July 15, flying a twin-engine Lockheed plane from California to California in 3 days, 19 hours, 14 minutes, 28 seconds. Now 32, Hughes has $3 million per year in Hughes Tool Co. profits to finance his flying exploits and Hollywood film making (see energy, 1908; Post, 1931; Odum, 1947; TWA, 1939).

"Wrong-Way" Corrigan makes headlines July 19. Douglas G. (Gorce) Corrigan, 31, has flown nonstop from Los Angeles to New York July 10 and took off in his 1929 $900 Curtiss Robin July 16, presumably on a return flight. When he lands at Dublin after a 28-hour, 13-minute flight he insists that he intended to fly west but had compass trouble. Authorities say that his flight and landing were illegal, but Corrigan is lionized.

Eastern Airlines is created out of North American Aviation's Eastern Air Transport by World War flying ace E. V. "Eddie" Rickenbacker, who buys into North American with substantial backing from Standard Oil heir and venture capitalist Laurance S. (Spelman) Rockefeller, 28, who last year inherited his grandfather's seat on the New York Stock Exchange, has learned to fly, and is an aviation enthusiast (see North American, 1933). Now 48, Rickenbacker has worked in the auto industry and for several aircraft and airline companies; he will make Eastern a hugely profitable carrier, obtaining routes up and down the East Coast and to Mexico and the Caribbean; Eastern will continue operations until 1991.

Douglas Aircraft has sales of $28.4 million as its DC-3 gains popularity. The company solicits orders for a new four-engine DC-4, but Boeing goes into production with a four-engine 307 that challenges Douglas for leadership in commercial aircraft (see B-17, 1935; TWA, 1940).

El Capitán goes into service February 22 for the Santa Fe between Chicago and Los Angeles. The new once-a-week all-coach express has two chair cars, a baggage-dormitory coach, lunch-counter/tavern car, and chair observation car, carries 192 passengers, and operates on the same schedule as the Super Chief (see 1936).

The San Diegan goes into service March 27 for the Santa Fe. The new express goes between Los Angeles and San Diego in 2½ hours and makes two round-trip runs per day.

The New York Central introduces a streamlined version of its 36-year-old Twentieth Century Limited June 15, and the Pennsylvania Railroad introduces a streamlined version of its Broadway Limited the same day. Henry Dreyfuss has designed the Central's train, Raymond Loewy the Pennsy's.

U.S. railroads struggle to cope with the decline in freight as the Great Depression continues to take its toll: by year's end companies that control 77,500 track miles (one-third of the total) are in receivership.

General Motors joins with Standard Oil of California to organize Pacific Coast Lines, a firm that will convert West Coast electric street railways into motorbus lines (see 1932; 1939).

New York's 60-year-old Sixth Avenue El ceases operations December 4 after the last northbound train from Rector Street arrives at 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue. Ridership has declined sharply during the Depression, Mayor La Guardia wants the elevated train structures removed to increase property values along their rights of way, and demolition will begin next year (see 1940).

Golden Gate Bridge builder Joseph B. Strauss dies at Los Angeles May 16 at age 68.

The Florida Overseas Highway extends U.S. Route 1 by 180 miles and brings Key West to within 5 hours' driving distance of Miami. The new road that opens July 4 employs spans built by Henry Flagler for his Florida East Coast Railway of 1912, which was repaired after the hurricane of 1926 but completely wiped out by the hurricane of 1935. Bulldozers and power shovels have reduced the cost of moving earth to 21 cents per cubic yard, down from 40 cents in 1922.

The Wantagh State Parkway Extension opens on Long Island December 17—3 months ahead of schedule. Robert Moses boasts in a brochure distributed at the ribbon-cutting ceremony that in less than 15 years the metropolitan area transportation system has been augmented by an arterial system that includes 110 miles of new parkway in New York City and on Long Island, three major bridges (Triborough, Henry Hudson, and Marine Parkway), and 191 grade-eliminating bridges, but the growth of automobile ownership, even in a time of economic depression, has made Moses's "arterial system" inadequate despite all the new construction.

The Volkswagen is assembled by hand in Nazi Germany and the cornerstone for a Volkswagen factory dedicated May 26 at Wolfsburg on the Mittelland Canal 40 miles east of Hanover in Lower Saxony. Ferdinand Porsche, now 63, has designed the low-cost vehicle with a rear-mounted engine on commission from Adolf Hitler, who said in 1934 that his regime would support development of the "people's car" as part of its Strength through Joy program, specifying that it should be able to go 62 miles (100 kilometers) per hour, travel 33 miles per gallon of gasoline, have an easily maintained air-cooled engine, and be able to hold four or five people. A New York Times reporter calls the car a "beetle," which will later be translated into der Käfer (see 1939).

Tire maker Harvey S. Firestone dies at his Miami Beach, Fla., winter home February 7 at age 69; former automaker Charles E. Duryea at Philadelphia September 28 at age 76.

Schwinn Bicycle Co. introduces a spring fork mechanism that gives its bikes improved suspension (see 1933). Founder's son Frank Schwinn now heads the company, whose Black Phantom bike with a spring fork for balloon tires will gain popularity in the late 1940s.

technology

Fiberglass is perfected by Owens-Illinois and Corning Glass Works. Made of fine glass filaments, it can be spun into yarn and woven into fabrics or used as insulating material.

Teflon (Fluon) is discovered accidentally by Ohio-born Du Pont chemist Roy J. (Joseph) Plunkett, 28, while working on refrigerants. An excellent electrical insulation material, the polytetrafluoroethylene plastic is stable over a wide range of temperatures and resistant to most corrosive agents. It will be marketed under the name Fluon by Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries and find many industrial uses.

science

French cellular biologist André Lwoff, 36, and a colleague set up a microbial physiology research center (Le Grenier) within the Pasteur Institute. They will determine the manner in which a cell's genetic code may be transcribed and read, providing the foundation for much of modern biology and for subsequent cancer research.

English biochemist Archer (John Porter) Martin, 28, of the Wool Industries Research Association works with Trinity College, Cambridge, student Richard (Laurence Millington) Synge, 23, to develop a technique (partition chromatography) that increases the ability of chemists to separate complex mixtures. Martin has been investigating the amino acids that make up the protein in wool fiber, but the similarity of their chemical structures has made it difficult to separate them using established methods. By exposing them to different solvents, Martin and Synge find that if they add methyl orange dye to an amino-acid mixture and pour the solution down a glass column filled with ground up silica gel and water the amino acids will separate. They will improve the technique in the next 6 years, replacing the separating column with a slip of paper and a stationary liquid; the amino acids will then separate into a series of spots on the paper, and by dissolving a spot a scientist will be able to measure the amounts of particular amino acids in various proteins. Paper partition chromatography will provide a quick and economical means of simplifying the separation of closely related chemicals (such as amino acids) for identification and permit extensive advances in chemical, biological, and medical research.

Dutch physicist Frits Zernike, 50, at the State University of Groningen builds a phase-contrast microscope that enables biologists to see bacteria that were heretofore invisible without staining them (and thereby killing them). Incorporating a principle that Zirnike discovered 4 years ago, the microscope illuminates transparent microorganisms, making them generate a spatial phase pattern of brightness directly proportional to the optical thickness of the object, and when a phase-contrast filter is added to the biologist's eyepiece he or she can view the bacteria.

British authorities in the Sudan appoint abolitionist-turned archaeologist Anthony J. Arkell commissioner for archaeology and anthropology (see human rights, 1920). Now 40, Arkell will undertake several digs in the next 10 years, uncovering a previously unknown area of prehistory in the area (see Nonfiction, 1955).

The Geochemical Laws of the Distribution of the Elements (Geochemische Verteilungesgesetze der Elemente) (eighth of eight volumes) by mineralogist-petrologist Victor M. Goldschmidt, now 50, lays the foundation of inorganic crystal chemistry.

Columbia University physicist Isidor Rabi uses his resonance method to reveal quadrupole moment of the deuteron (see 1937; Alvarez, Bloch, 1939).

German chemist Otto Hahn, 59, produces the first nuclear fission of uranium December 18. Hahn has found that the nucleus of certain uranium atoms can be split into approximately equal halves by bombarding them with neutrons, releasing not only energy but also neutrons that can, in turn, split further uranium nuclei (see Fermi, 1934). Assisting Hahn are his colleague Fritz Strassmann and Austro-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner, 60, whose nephew Otto Frisch, 34, will help her work out the implications of Hahn's observations (see 1939).

Astronomer William H. Pickering dies in Jamaica, British West Indies, January 16 at age 79; astronomer George Ellery Hale at Pasadena, Calif., February 21 at age 69 (see Palomar Observatory, 1948); physicist Charles E. Guillaume at Sèvres June 13 at age 77; astronomer William Wallace Campbell at San Francisco June 14 at age 76; physicist Edwin H. Hall at Boston November 20 at age 83.

An International Gulf Stream expedition headed by German oceanographer Georg Wüst, now 47, follows up on studies made by Wüst's German Atlantic expedition of 1925 to 1927 (see Franklin, 1769). Working aboard the research ship Meteor, the Atlantic expedition produced a massive amount of data about deep-current structure, salinity, and temperature (see Stommel, 1965).

A strange fish brought up in the nets of a trawler December 22 from 40 fathoms in the estuary of South Africa's Chalumna River is identified at a fish market by local natural-history museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, 28, as a coelacanth, believed to have been extinct for at least 70 million years. Nearly six feet long and weighing 150 pounds, the steely-blue, lobe-finned fish will be named Latimeria chalumnae Smith after amateur ichthyologist J. L. B. (James Leonard Brierley) Smith, 41, who lectures in chemistry at Rhodes University College in Grahams, will confirm Courtenay-Latimer's finding, and will take credit for making the initial identification (see 1952).

medicine

The New York legislature at Albany enacts the first U.S. state law requiring medical tests for marriage license applicants April 12 (see Wasserman, 1906).

Liverpool-born biochemist E. (Edward) Charles Dodds, 38, and his colleagues at the University of London create the non-steroidal hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES); the first synthetic estrogen, it will be widely used to prevent miscarriage. Schering Pharmaceutical chemists create an estrogen pill; they find that by replacing one hydrogen atom on the estradiol molecule chain with a group of atoms (called an ethinyl radical) they can produce a compound that can be taken orally instead of being injected for such purposes as relief of painful menstruation (see 1941).

The March of Dimes to finance research into infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) is founded under the name National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis with President Roosevelt's former law partner Basil O'Connor, 46, as its chairman and Rockefeller Institute virologist Thomas M. Rivers as chairman of its virus research committee (see 1933) epidemic. Entertainer Eddie Cantor suggests the new name, which is based on the film series March of Time, and press agent Everett Thoner, 19, comes up with idea of a poster child to promote the cause (he suffered from polio himself and was on crutches from age 6 until last year). The virus continues to create epidemics each summer, leaving thousands of victims crippled or dead, no cure is known, and hot compresses, splints, and manipulation remain the only treatment. Demand escalates for braces, crutches, Iron Lung respirators, and wheelchairs (see 1943).

Babies Hospital pathologist Dorothy Hansine, 37, at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital publishes her findings on cystic fibrosis (CF), a previously unrecognized disease that she has named. She has collected infants' hearts with congenital defects since 1935, will develop a method of diagnosing CF in living patients, describe the genetics of the disease, and, in 1959, publish a paper suggesting guidelines for the care of young adults with CF, which up to now has been invariably fatal in infancy.

Italian psychiatrists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini use electroshock therapy for treating schizophrenia (see Meduna, 1935). They induce convulsions by passing an electrical current through the patient's brain, but the treatment will be found more effective in alleviating severe depression.

Pharmacologist-physiological chemist John Jacob Abel dies at Baltimore May 26 at age 81.

A new U.S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act signed into law by President Roosevelt June 15 is the world's first measure requiring drug manufacturers to test products for safety and efficacy before putting them on the market (see S. E. Massengill's Elixir Sulfanilamide, 1937). Amendments to the new law will further tighten regulation of food, drugs, and cosmetics (see thalidomide, 1962). The Wheeler-Lea Act signed June 27 gives the Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction over advertising that may be false or misleading even if it does not represent unfair competition (see 1931). Advertisers will continue nevertheless to promote products with deceptive claims that they can help users lose weight without eating less or exercising and even help them shed pounds in particular parts of the body.

Phenytoin sodium is the first anticonvulsive treatment for epilepsy since pheonobarbitol; North Carolina-born Harvard neurologist H. Houston Merritt, 37, and his associate Tracy J. Putnam have developed a drug first synthesized by German physician Heinrich Blitz in 1908, the Food and Drug Administration will give approval in January 1953 for using it to control seizures, it will be marketed as Dilantin (Epanutin in Britain), and it will also be used to treat abnormal heartbeats.

education

Psychologist William Stern dies in North Carolina March 27 at age 66, having contributed the concept of "mental age" and refined the I.Q. test for use in education.

communications, media

John L. Baird gives the first demonstration of high-definition color television February 4 at London's Dominion Theatre, Tottenham Court Road (see 1926). He transmits color films, shows them on a nine- by twelve-foot screen via a 120-line-per-inch system, and within 2 weeks transmits live action in color from the Baird Studios at Crystal Palace, but his refusal to consider electronic transmission in place of mechanical transmission blocks commercial development (see Goldmark, 1940).

The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) begins its first foreign-language service with Arabic programming for overseas listeners.

The first true Xerox image appears October 22 at Astoria, Queens (see 1937). The electrophotographic image is imprinted on wax paper that has been pressed against an electrostatically charged two- by three-inch sulfur-coated zinc plate that has been dusted with lycopodium powder. Chester Carlson has been helped by a German refugee physicist; he attends New York Law School night classes, will be admitted to the bar in 1940, and will receive his first patent that year for the process that he will call xerography, using the Greek word xeros for dry, but he will fail in his initial attempts to get financial backing (see 1946).

The ballpoint pen patented by Hungarian chemist George Biro, 41, and his brother Lazlo (or Ladislao), 39, a Budapest proofreader, has a vein-like tube that fits inside its barrel and moistens the ball at its tip by capillary attraction, but their pen will achieve its potential only after Austrian-born chemist Franz Seech in California develops a viscous fluid with a dye that forms a film on any surface when exposed to air (see 1945).

The Italian women's magazine Grazia begins publication at Verona. Publisher Arnoldo Mondadori, now 48, has acquired Italian rights to Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse ("Topolino") and his organization will grow in the next 30 years to employ 3,000 people as circulation of his news magazine Epoca, published since 1915, grows to nearly 400,000.

Paris-Match has its beginnings July 7 as industrialist Jean Prouvost buys the sporting magazine Match, revamps it along the lines of Henry Luce's U.S. photo weekly LIFE, and in 3 months increases its circulation from 80,000 to 450,000. It will be renamed Match de la guerre in September of next year and quickly increase circulation to 1.4 million (see 1949).

Picture Post begins publication at London October 1. British publisher Edward G. W. (George Warris) Hulton, 32, and Stefan Lorant have modeled the photo weekly on Henry Luce's LIFE (see 1936) and it will continue until 1957.

Tennessee-born Atlanta Constitution sports editor Ralph (Emerson) McGill, 40, becomes executive editor; he will campaign in his editorials against political corruption and racial injustice, singling out the Ku Klux Klan as a special target while other Southern editors hold their tongues.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, 22, begins a daily column July 5 that will continue 6 times per week for more than 57 years, pounding it out with two fingers on a Royal typewriter as the Sacramento-born Caen becomes "Mr. San Francisco" in the minds of his many avid readers, coining such terms as "Baghdad-by-the-Bay" and (later) "Berserkeley."

Harvard's first nine Nieman Foundation journalists begin their year at the university under terms of the will left by the late Milwaukee Journal founder Lucius W. Nieman, who died in 1935. Nieman left his 55 percent interest in the newspaper-radio company to his wife, Agnes, and a niece, specifying that it should be sold to those "who will carry out the ideals and principles which I have always attempted to maintain and support during my lifetime" rather than simply to the highest bidder. Agnes died some 6 months later, bequeathing about $1 million to Harvard "to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States and educate persons deemed especially qualified for journalism." Successor Hugh J. Grant established a unique employee-ownership plan that was drafted in mid-May of last year. The Nieman Fellows have been chosen from 309 applicants in 44 states; they may study whatever they like, and the first ones include Dorchester, Mass.-born Boston Globe editorial writer Louis M. Lyons, 41; he will remain with the program as assistant curator, succeed Archibald MacLeish as curator in 1946, and continue until his retirement in 1964.

"Superman" debuts in the June issue of Action Comics. Cleveland cartoonists Jerry Siegel and Joseph Shuster, both 24, developed their superhuman Clark Kent newspaperman hero while in high school and have finally sold it to Detective Comics, Inc., which publishes the first "Superman" episode, paying the two young men $10 per page to give them an income of $15 each per week. "Superman" will appear in newspapers beginning in the early 1940s and be the basis of radio and television serials and endless merchandise spinoffs, but Detective Comics has acquired all rights, and "Superman's" originators will derive little financial reward until the syndicators agree late in 1975 to provide them with pensions.

Cartoonist E. C. Segar dies at Santa Monica, Calif., October 13 at age 43. The "Popeye" character that he introduced in 1929 continues; Postal Telegraph founder Clarence H. Mackay dies at New York November 12 at age 64.

Radio passes magazines for the first time as America's chief advertising medium.

CBS stations broadcast The War of the Worlds October 30 and give a dramatic demonstration of the power of radio. Orson Welles's Mercury Theater of the Air presents a live radio version of the 1898 H. G. Wells novel, and its "news" reports of Martian landings in New Jersey are so realistic that near-panics occur in many areas despite periodic announcements that the program is merely a dramatization (by New York-born lawyer-turned-playwright Howard Koch, 35).

literature

Nonfiction: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell antagonizes British leftists by showing how Stalinists have suppressed Trotskyist and anarchist elements in Spain's independent left. Orwell joined the Republican side after going to Spain as a journalist late in 1936. He was shot through the throat but survived; a left-wing publisher has rejected his manuscript; it will sell only 600 copies in his lifetime, and will not be published in the United States until after his death in 1950; It Is Later Than You Think by Russian-born New York critic Max Lerner, 36; The Anatomy of Revolution by Crane Brinton; Behavior of Organisms by Pennsylvania-born Harvard behavioral psychologist B. F. (Burrhus Frederic) Skinner, 34, will survive as a landmark in its field; Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen; Guide to the Philosophy of Morals and Politics by C. E. M. Joad; The Intelligent Individual and Society by physicist Percy W. Bridgman, who will create a stir next year by announcing that his Harvard laboratory will no longer be open to visitors representing nations controlled by totalitarian regimes; Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel by Arkansas-born historian C. (Comer) Vann Woodward, 29; Alone by polar explorer Richard E. Byrd; The Passing of the Aborigines by Daisy Bates, now 74, is a bestseller in Europe (no Australian edition will appear until 1946), and one critic hails its author as "an entirely heroic woman," combining the qualities of "Father Damien, Florence Nightingale, Miss Edna May Oliver, Miss Cicely Courtneidge, and Dickens's Mrs. Jellyby" (see human rights, 1912); China Fights Back: An American Woman with the 8th Route Army by Missouri-born journalist Agnes Smedley, 46, who went to China 10 years ago and has dedicated herself to the Chinese revolutionary cause; With Malice Toward Some by Yonkers, N.Y.-born writer Margaret Halsey, 28, whose comments on the eccentricities of some British customs are based on observations made during a year in Devon, England, where her husband was an exchange professor.

Philosopher-poet Sir Muhammad Iqbal dies at Lahore April 21 at age 60, having worked for years to encourage the establishment of a separate Muslim state (see politics, 1940). He is buried in front of the city's great Badshahi Mosque; Edmund Husserl dies at Freiburg im Breisgau April 27 at age 79, having founded the philosophical method known as phenomenology.

Fiction: Nausea (La Nausée) by French novelist Jean-Paul Sartre, 33; But the World Must Be Young (Men ung ma verden ennu vaere) by Nordahl Grieg is a novelistic critique of Stalinism; The Capuchin Tomb (Die Kapuzinergruft) by Joseph Roth, who left his native Germany for Paris in 1933; Beware of Pity (Ungeduld des Herzens) by Stefan Zweig, who was driven into exile by the Nazis in 1934 and will move to Brazil in 1940; The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen; Brighton Rock by Graham Greene is his first explicitly "Catholic" novel; Scoop by Evelyn Waugh is a spoof on British foreign correspondents that caricatures Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, and thinly veils actual fact; Tropisms (Tropismes) by Russian-born French novelist Nathalie (née Tcherniak) Sarraute, 36; Out of the Silent Planet by English novelist C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis, 40; Count Belisarius by Robert Graves; You Make Your Own Life (stories) by English writer V. S. (Victor Sawden) Pritchett, 37; The Professor by English novelist-poet-Greek scholar Rex (Ernest) Warner, 33; Over the Frontier by Stevie Smith, who employs the same autographical monologue style that made her 1934 novel a success; The Lady and the Unicorn by English novelist Rumer Godden, 30; The Happy Island by Dawn Powell; "The Great American Novel" by Clyde Brion Davis; The Single Hound by Belgian-born U.S. poet-novelist May (née Eléanor Marie) Sarton, 26, whose father is the science historian George Sarton; Chosen People by Seaforth Mackenzie; The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse; Dynasty of Death by Manchester, England-born novelist (Janet Miriam) Taylor Caldwell (née Holland), 38, who 7 years ago obtained her bachelor's degree at the University of Buffalo, studying nights while working as a court stenographer by day; Young Man with a Horn by Missoula, Mont.-born novelist Dorothy Dodds Baker, 31, has been inspired by the music, if not the life, of the late Bix Beiderbecke, who died in 1931 (see 1924); Epitaph for a Spy and Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler; The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham.

Novelist Owen Wister dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at North Kingston, R.I., July 21 at age 78; Thomas Wolfe of tuberculosis at Baltimore September 15 at age 37.

Poetry: Switch Off the Lights (Zhasnete svetla) by Jaroslav Seifert, who has been depressed by the Munich agreement turning over most of his native Czechoslovakia to Germany; The Odyssey (I Odysseia) by Greek (Cretan) poet Nikos Kazantzakis, 55, whose 33,333-line "modern sequel" has been influenced by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, now 79; Fable of the World (La Fable du monde) by Jules Supervielle; In Dreams Begin Responsiblities by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born poet Delmore Schwartz, 25; Mediterranean and U.S. 1 by Muriel Rukeyser; Dead Reckoning by Kenneth Fearing; Mask and Trefoil (Mascarillo y trébol) by Alfonsina Storni.

Poet-soldier Gabriele D'Annunzio dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at his villa on Lake Garda March 1 at age 74, receives a state funeral, and is buried at his native Pescara; César Vallejo dies in poverty of tuberculosis, malaria, and an acute intestinal infection at Paris April 15 at age 46; Alfonsina Storni commits suicide at Mar del Plata, Argentina, October 25 at age 46 (she has had incurable cancer); Osip Mandelstam is rearrested by Soviet authorities and sent to Vtoraya Rechka outside Vladivistok, where he dies just after Christmas at age 47. He was first arrested in 1934 after saying of Josef Stalin, "After each death, he is like a Georgian tribesman, putting a raspberry in his mouth."

Juvenile: The Yearling by Washington, D.C.-born Florida author Marjorie Rawlings (née Kinnan), 42; The Iron Duke by Massachusetts-born New York Evening Post sportswriter John R. (Roberts) Tunis, 48; The Man of Bronze by former New York telegrapher Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent), 32, whose "Doc Savage" adventure novel will be followed in the next 7 years by another 164 such novels as Dent turns out a new 60,000-word "Doc Savage" adventure almost every month; The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss.

The Caldecott Medal established by R. R. Bowker Publishing Co. chairman Frederic G. Melcher will be presented each year at the conference of the American Library Association together with the Newbery Medal that Melcher established in 1922. Awarded "to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children," the award is named to commemorate the English illustrator and caricaturist Randolph Caldecott, who died in 1886.

art

Painting: Still Life by Bologna abstract expressionist Giorgio Morandi, 48, who wrote 10 years ago, "I have had much faith in Fascism since its first inklings, faith that has never ebbed, not even in the darkest and most tumultuous moments"; Italian Women by Georges Rouault; Still Life with Red Bull's Head, Nude Lying on a Couch, and Seated Woman in a Garden (his mistress Dora Mar) by Pablo Picasso; The Broken Key (oil on burlap) by Paul Klee; Thérèse Dreaming by Balthus; Self-Portrait with a Horn by Max Beckmann, who moved with his wife last year to Amsterdam, going into exile from Nazi Germany, where his paintings have been systematically removed from museums and otherwise confiscated; Cradling Wheat by Thomas Hart Benton; Swing Landscape by Stuart Davis; Apples in Wooden Basket by Walt Kuhn. William Glackens dies at Westport, Conn., May 22 at age 68; Ernst Ludwig Kirchner by his own hand at Davos, Switzerland, June 15 at age 58 (the Nazis last year confiscated more than 600 of his works).

Sculpture: Forms in Echelon (wood) by English sculptor Barbara Hepworth, 35, who attended Leeds School of Art with Henry Moore when she was 16 and he 21 at a time when, as Moore would later observe, a woman studying sculpture was not taken seriously. Hepworth has 4-year-old triplets plus an older son by a previous marriage; Apple Monster (stabile) by Alexander Calder. Sculptor-playwright Ernst Barlach dies at Güstrow, Germany, October 24 at age 68 (his studio at Güstrow will be turned into a museum).

The National Gallery of Art is founded at Washington, D.C., under the direction of David Finley, 47, who will head the institution until 1956. Financed by the late banker-philanthropist Andrew Mellon, its president is his son Paul, 31, who will serve as president again next year and from 1963 to 1975 (he will be chairman from 1979 to 1985; see 1941).

The Cloisters opens in New York's Fort Tryon Park. A gift from the Rockefeller family to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the medieval European nunnery is filled with art treasures that include a unicorn tapestry and the collection of early Gothic and medieval works acquired by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1925 from Pennsylvania-born sculptor George Grey Barnard, who dies at New York April 24 at age 74, leaving unfinished his Memorial Arch, intended for the art center overlooking the Hudson River.

photography

Photography: American Photographs by St. Louis-born photographer Walker Evans, 34, who has been working since 1935 for the U.S. Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration). New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) gave him its first one-man show in 1934, exhibiting pictures that he had taken since 1930 of 19th-century New England architecture. His book does not include his new picture Subway Passengers, New York, which will not be published until 1966.

theater, film

Theater: The Restless Heart (La Sauvage) by Jean Anouilh 1/10 at the Théâtre de Mathurius, Paris; One Third of a Nation by Federal Theatre Project playwright Arthur Arent 1/17 at New York's Adelphi Theater in a Living Newspaper production, 237 perfs.; Bachelor Born by British novelist-playwright Ian Hay (Gen. John Hay Beith), now 61, 1/25 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Peggy Simpson, Helen Trenholme, 400 perfs.; Shadow and Substance by Irish playwright Paul Vincent Carroll, 38, 1/26 at New York's Golden Theater, with Cedric Hardwicke, Irish-born character actress Sara Allgood, 54, Julie Haydon, 274 perfs.; On Borrowed Time by Evansville, Ind.-born playwright Paul Osborn, 36, 2/3 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Dudley Digges, Dorothy Stickney, Jean Adair, Dickie Van Patten, 321 perfs.; Our Town by Thornton Wilder 2/4 at New York's Henry Miller Theater, with Missouri-born actress Martha Scott, 23, Frank Craven, Concord, Mass.-born actor Philip Coolidge, 29, Jay Fassett, 336 perfs.; What a Life by Arizona-born playwright Clifford Goldsmith, 39, 4/13 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with New Bedford, Mass.-born actor Ezra Stone (originally Ezra Chaim Feinstone), 20, as Henry Aldrich, New York-born comedian Edward Vincent "Eddie" Bracken, 23, Betty Field, Butterfly McQueen, directed by George Abbott, 538 perfs.; The Gardener of Toulouse (Der Gärtner von Toulouse) by Georg Kaiser is published but not produced (the Nazis ban further performances of Kaiser's works because of their anti-war sentiments; see 1945); Purgatory by William Butler Yeats, now 73, 8/10 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre; Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith 9/14 at the Queen's Theatre, London, with veteran English actress Dame Marie Tempest, now 74, John Gielgud, Leon Quartermaine 376 perfs.; Thieves' Carnival (Le bal des valeurs) by Jean Anouilh 9/17 at the Théâtre des Arts, Paris; The Corn Is Green by Emlyn Williams 9/20 at London's Duchess Theatre, with Williams, Sybil Thorndike, 394 perfs.; Kiss the Boys Goodbye by Clare Boothe 9/28 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with Millard Mitchell, Helen Claire, Benay Venuta, Sheldon Leonard, 286 perfs.; The Fabulous Invalid by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 10/8 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Jack Norwood, Doris Dalton (as Ethel Barrymore) Stephen Courtleigh, Ernest Lawford, Richard Gordon, and more than 70 other actors playing nearly 250 roles, 165 perfs. (the "invalid" is the still healthy legitimate theater); Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert Sherwood 10/15 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Raymond Massey in the title role, Howard Da Silva, 472 perfs.; Rocket to the Moon by Clifford Odets 11/24 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Morris Carnovsky, Sanford Meisner, 131 perfs.; Here Come the Clowns by Philip Barry 12/7 at New York's Booth Theater, with Eddie Dowling, Madge Evans, Russell Collins, 88 perfs.; Quiet Wedding by English playwright Esther Helen McCracken (née Armstrong), 36, 12/12 at Wyndham's Theatre, London, with Glynis Johns, Frank Lawton, Clive Morton, George Thorpe, 291 perfs.

Theater and Its Double (Théâtre et son Double) by playwright-poet-actor Antonin Artaud is published at Paris in February and will be widely influential. Now 42, Artaud returned last year from travels in Mexico, Belgium, and Ireland; was taken in a strait-jacket to a mental asylum; and will remain confined there until 1946.

Actor-director Konstantin Stanislavski dies at his native Moscow August 7 at age 75, having developed an acting system or method that bears his name (he suffered a heart attack on stage in late October 1928, gave up acting, and has spent the rest of his life directing and teaching other actors and directors); actor-director Johannes Poulsen dies at his native Copenhagen October 14 at age 56; playwright Karel Capek of influenza at Prague December 25 at age 48, having popularized the term robot; Zona Gale dies of pneumonia at Chicago December 28 at age 64.

Radio: Young Widder Brown 7/26 over NBC stations. Created by Frank and Anne Hummert, the soap opera will continue daily until June 1956; Pot O'Gold on NBC stations with bandleader Horace Heidt, now 37, and his 14-piece orchestra (it includes Providence, R.I.-born pianist Frankie Carle [originally Francis Nunzio Carlone], 35, and Oakland-born steel guitarist Alvin McBurney, 27, who will change his name next year to Alvino Rey and form his own band). The show features a spinning telephone dial: whoever answers the phone call receives $1,000.

Films: Sergei Eisenstein's Aleksandr Nevsky with Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov, 35; Howard Hawks's Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn; Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes with Michael Redgrave, Karachi-born actress Margaret Lockwood (originally Margaret Day), 21, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty; Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard's Pygmalion with Howard, Wendy Hiller, 26; Michael Curtiz's The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn. Also: Michael Curtiz's Angels with Dirty Faces with James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Texas-born actress Ann (originally Clara Lou) Sheridan, 23; Marcel Pagnol's The Baker's Wife with Raimu, Ginette Leclerc; Edmund Goulding's The Dawn Patrol with Errol Flynn, South African-born actor Basil Rathbone, 45, David Niven; George Cukor's Holiday with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant; Henry King's In Old Chicago with Tyrone Power, Alice Faye; William Wyler's Jezebel with Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent; Monte Banks's Keep Smiling with Gracie Fields, Roger Livesey; G. W. Pabst's Shanghai Drama with Louis Jouvet; Lloyd Bacon's A Slight Case of Murder with Edward G. Robinson; Frank Borzage's Three Comrades with Robert Taylor, Margaret Sullavan, Franchot Tone; Norman Taurog's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with Tommy Kelly, Jackie Moran; Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You with Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Texas-born tap dancer Ann Miller (Lucille Ann Collier), 15; Richard Wallace's The Young in Heart with Janet Gaynor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Queens, N.Y.-born actress Paulette Goddard (originally Marion Levy), 27 (a former Ziegfeld Follies girl), Roland Young.

Warner Brothers suspends Bette Davis April 1 for refusing to rehearse her role in the new picture called for in her contract, saying the script is "atrocious."

Pearl White of 1914 Perils of Pauline fame dies at Paris August 4 at age 49, having retired to France with $2 million in 1923; silent film star Florence Lawrence dies at Beverly Hills, Calif., December 28 at age 48.

music

Hollywood musicals: Ray Enright's Hard to Get with Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, songs that include "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby"; Wesley Ruggles's Sing You Sinners with Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Donald O'Connor, songs that include the Franke Harling-Sam Coslow title song, "Small Fry" and "Two Sleepy People," by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Frank Loesser; Chuck Jones's animated short Porky's Hare Hunt introduces Bugs Bunny. Spokane-born animator-musician Charles Martin Jones, 26, joined Leon Schlesinger Productions 5 years ago and will continue with Warner Brothers for 50 years, creating other cartoon characters whose lines will become almost as memorable as "What's up, Doc?" Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first full-length animated cartoon feature. The 83-minute film employs 2 million drawings, its $1.5 million cost has nearly bankrupted the studio, it opens December 21 at Hollywood's Cathay Circle Theater, Snow White sings "Some Day My Prince Will Come" and "One Song," dwarfs Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Sneezy, and Bashful sing "Heigh-Ho" and "Whistle While You Work," music by Frank Churchill, lyrics by Larry Morey. Snow White will gross $2 million in its first 6 months.

Stage musicals: Nine Sharp 1/26 at London's Little Theatre, with Cyril Ritchard, Hermione Baddeley, music by Walter Leigh, book and lyrics by Herbert Farjeon, 405 perfs.; Operette 3/16 at His Majesty's Theatre, London, with Peggy Wood, music and lyrics by Noël Coward, songs that include "The Stately Homes of England," 133 perfs.; I Married an Angel 5/11 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Dennis King, Berlin-born Norwegian ballet dancer Vera Zorina (Brigitta Hartwig), 21, Walter Slezak, Vivienne Segal, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Spring Is Here" and the title song, 338 perfs.; Helzapoppin 9/22 at New York's 46th Street Theater, with Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson who delight audiences with their slapstick and sight gags, Mary Boland, music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal and Charles Tobias, songs that include "I'll Be Seeing You," 1,404 perfs.; Knickerbocker Holiday 10/19 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Walter Huston, Chicago-born baritone Ray Middleton, 31, (as narrator Washington Irving), music by Kurt Weill, book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, songs that include "September Song," 168 perfs.; Under Your Hat 10/24 at London's Palace Theatre, with Cicely Courtneidge, Leonora Corbett, and Jack Hulbert, songs by Vivian Ellis; Leave It to Me 11/9 at New York's Imperial Theater, with Texas-born ingénue Mary Martin, 24, doing a simulated striptease to Cole Porter's song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" (other songs include "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love,") 307 perfs. (Porter was injured last year in a fall from a horse and will be crippled for the rest of his life); The Boys from Syracuse 11/23 at New York's Alvin Theater, with Jimmy Savo, Eddie Albert, dancer George Church, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "Falling in Love with Love," "Sing for Your Supper," "This Can't Be Love," 235 perfs.

Broadway librettist Edgar Smith dies at his Bayside, N.Y., home March 8 at age 80; former music hall performer and comedienne May Irwin at New York October 22 at age 76.

Opera: Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter) 5/28 at Zürich's Stadtheater, with music and libretto by Paul Hindemith based on the life of the German painter Matthias Grünewald who died in 1528. The opera had been scheduled to open at Berlin in 1934 but was banned by the Nazis. Polish-born German soprano (Olga Maria) Elisabeth (Friedrika) Schwarzkopf, 23, makes her debut at the Berlin Städtische Oper singing the role of the Flower Maiden in the 1882 Wagner opera Parsifal and is soon moved up from second soprano to singing leading roles.

Bass Feodor Chaliapin dies at Paris April 12 at age 65.

Ballet: St. Francis 7/21 at London's Drury Lane Theatre, with music by Paul Hindemith, choreography by Leonide Massine; Billy the Kid 10/9 at the Chicago Civic Opera House, with music by Aaron Copland, choreography by Eugene Loring.

Illinois-born New York dancer-choreographer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham, 28, receives a Julius Rosenwald Foundation fellowship to study primitive dances in the Caribbean and wins an appointment as dance director of the Federal Theater Project. She will organize her own all-black dance company in 1940.

First performances: Symphony No. 3 by Howard Hanson 3/26 in an NBC Orchestra radio concert; TheIncredible Flutist (ballet music) by Walter Piston 3/30 at Boston's Symphony Hall; Symphony No. 1 by Piston 4/8 at Symphony Hall; Quartet in G minor for Piano and Strings by Ernest Bloch 5/5 at Los Angeles; Concerto No. 1 in D major for Piano and Orchestra by Benjamin Britten in August at Queen's Hall, London.

Pianist Leopold Godowsky dies at New York November 21 at age 67.

Benny Goodman and His Orchestra give the first Carnegie Hall jazz concert January 17 with guest performers who include Count Basie and members of the Basie and Duke Ellington orchestras (see 1935). Pianist Jess Stacy plays "Sing Sing Sing."

Tennessee-born jazz trombonist William "Dickie" Wells, 30, joins the Count Basie band with whom he will perform (with some interruptions) until 1950.

Glenn Miller begins touring with a big band of his own after years of playing trombone and arranging music for Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and for Ray Noble. Now 39, the Iowa-born Miller will achieve enormous success next year with his recordings of "In the Mood," "Sunrise Serenade," (by Frankie Carle and Jack Lawrence) and "Moonlight Serenade" (which will become his theme song) (see 1942).

Pennsylvania-born arranger Lester Raymond "Les" Brown, 26, forms a jazz-oriented dance band that he will promote as "the band of renown" and continue to lead for more than 60 years (see 1944).

Bandleader Artie Shaw hears Atlantic City, N.J.-born singer Helen Forrest (originally Fogel), 21, perform at the Madrillon Club in Washington, D.C., and invites her to replace Billie Holliday, who has quit after suffering racial indignities on the band's road tours (black artists are often unable to stay at the same hotels or eat at the same restaurants as whites). Forrest will record 38 singles with the Shaw orchestra, and when he dissolves his big band briefly next year she will join Benny Goodman and then Harry James.

Woody Guthrie identifies himself with the labor movement and travels the country singing his songs "Hard Traveling," "Blowing Down This Dusty Road," "Union Maid," and "So Long (It's Been Good to Know You)" (see 1936). Guthrie will support the cause of organized labor with his Talking Union album and with personal appearances.

Popular songs: "I Can Dream, Can't I?" by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Irving Kahal (for the short-lived Broadway musical Right This Way); "That Old Feeling" by Fain, lyrics by Kahal (for the film Vogues of 1938); "Love Walked In" and "Our Love Is Here to Stay" by the late George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin (for the film The Goldwyn Follies); "Jeepers Creepers" by Harry Warren, lyrics by Johnny Mercer (for the film Going Places); "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)" by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Jane Brown Thompson; "You Go to My Head" by J. Fred Coots, lyrics by Haven Gillespie; "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Miller, Henry Nemo, John Redmond; "One O'Clock Jump" by Count Basie; "Camel Hop" by Mary Lou Williams; "Sent for You Yesterday (and Here You Come Today)" by Eddie Durham, Count Basie, and vocalist Jimmy Rushing; "F. D. R. Jones" by Harold Rome; "The Flat Foot Floogie" by Detroit-born guitarist Slim (originally Bulee) Gaillard, 23, and Leroy "Slam" Stewart, lyrics by Bud Green (who has been forced to change the word floozie to floogie); "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" by Ella Fitzgerald and Van Alexander; "Cherokee" by Ray Noble (whose song will be the theme for bandleader-tenor saxophonist Charlie Barnet); "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" by Ray Noble; "Thanks for the Memory" by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin (title song for a film starring comedian Bob Hope, who will make it his theme song); "Shops Close Too Early" by Trinidadian Calypso singer-songwriter Aldwyn Roberts, 14, who is named calypso king. His parents have forced him to drop out of school, he has entertained water-company workers as they laid pipes, a promoter hires him at $1 per night to work in a nightclub, and Roberts will gain fame as "Lord Kitchener" (see 1944); Gracie Fields records "The Biggest Aspidistra in the World" by Jimmy Harper, Will Haines, and Tommy Connor.

Song collector Alan Lomax records a series of interviews with jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton for the Library of Congress in August, but Morton will die in 1941, and the interviews will not be released to the public until 7 years later. Morton records "After You're Gone" and "Tiger Rag" at Baltimore in August and in December records his own songs "Creepy Feeling," "Finger Buster," and "Honky Tonk Music."

Songwriter Richard Whiting dies at Beverly Hills, Calif., February 10 at age 46; jazz trumpet pioneer and songwriter Joseph "King" Oliver at Savannah April 8 at age 53 (approximate); Delta Blues songwriter Robert Johnson at Greenwood, Miss., August 16 at age 27 after drinking strychnine-laced whiskey (he has dallied briefly with the wife of a local juke-joint owner and been poisoned); songwriter Con Conrad dies at Van Nuys, Calif., September 28 at age 47.

The samba and the conga are introduced on U.S. dancefloors.

sports

Golfer Harry Vardon dies of pleurisy at his Totteridge, Hertfordshire, home March 20 at age 66; judo founder Jigoro Kano May 4 at age 77 aboard the S.S. Hikawa Maru en route home from Cairo, where he conferred with Olympic Committee officials about making judo an Olympic event (it will be beginning in 1964).

San Francisco-born Stanford University basketball star Angelo Enrico "Hank" Luisetti, 21, ends a 4-year career with a total of 1,596 points. The first player to have scored 50 points in a game, he is credited with having introduced the one-handed shot.

Tennis legend Suzanne Lenglen dies of pernicious anemia at Paris July 4 at age 39.

Don Budge wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Forest Hills, France, and Australia, the first "grand slam" and one not to be duplicated for 24 years; Helen Wills Moody wins in women's singles at Wimbledon, Alice Marble at Forest Hills.

The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the Chicago Cubs 4 games to 0.

Italy wins the third World Cup football (soccer) finals, defeating Hungary 4 to 2 at Colombes, France; no further World Cup games will be held until 1950.

War Admiral starts as a 1-4 favorite over Seabiscuit in a November 1 match race at Pimlico before a crowd of 40,000; Seabiscuit wins (see 1937). Jockey Eddie Arcaro, now 22, has won his first Kentucky Derby in May.

Naval architect-engineer-yacht designer Nathanael Greene Herreshoff dies at his native Bristol, R.I., June 2 at age 90. The Lightning introduced by New York-based Sparkman & Stephens is a 16-foot family raceboat (19 feet in length overall) with a centerboard that will be the firm's most popular design (seeMustang, 1935; Ranger, 1937). Six feet six inches in the beam, the sloop carries 177 square feet of sail and draws four feet 11 inches with her centerboard down (but only five inches when the board is up); some 15,000 will be built, many of them on a home-made basis from kits.

Fiberglass begins to supplant wood in pleasure boat hulls, surfboards, skis, etc.

everyday life

Frederick, Md.-born Hattie Carnegie fashion designer Claire McCardell, 33, creates a tent dress based on an Algerian (or Moroccan) robe. It is included in the fall collection of Townley Sportswear, most buyers reject it, but a Best & Co. buyer orders 100, advertises it in New York's Sunday papers and promptly orders 200 more. Seventh Avenue garment makers copy the "monastic" design, and McCardell soon finds herself famous as the designer of the "American Look" (see 1942).

Fashion is Spinach by former New York designer Elizabeth Hawes, 35, pokes fun at the business that she entered 10 years ago after studying in Paris but has recently quit.

The Hardoy sling chair is introduced by New York's Knoll Associates, which also distributes the 1929 Barcelona chair designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Old Spice aftershave is introduced in time for Christmas by the 4-year-old New York-based Shulton Co., started by former soap and toiletries salesman William (Lightfoot) Schultz with help from the Bowery Savings Bank, whose officers let him use an office in their nearly vacant building on condition that he pay rent if he succeeded.

crime

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the National Firearms Act of 1934 in a decision handed down March 29 in the case of Sonzinsky v. United States.

architecture, real estate

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright is the subject of cover story in Time magazine January 17 and designs a house for LIFE magazine intended for a family with an annual income of $6,000. It includes a swimming pool, an L-shaped double fireplace, and a combination living and recreation room. He builds a house at Falls Church, Va., for a Washington Star employee who earns only $3,000 per year and has an apprentice come from Taliesin to supervise construction, paying him $25 per week plus board. The one-floor dwelling has plate-glass doors from floor to ceiling with no corner posts to block the view; rooms are distributed on two levels to follow the contours of its sloping site. Now 71, Wright goes to Arizona with his wife and apprentices in the fall (he has been advised by his physicians to spend the winter in a warmer climate) and begins construction in the Paradise Valley 26 miles east of Phoenix of a rambling structure that he calls Taliesin West. It is to have sweeping views of the Superstitious and Camelback mountains.

Gropius House is completed by architect Walter Gropius, whose new residence at Lincoln, Mass., gives fresh direction to residential architecture.

Congress establishes the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to buy loans from the U.S. Housing Authority that was established last year by the Wagner-Steagall Act and make Federal Housing Administration (FHA) home mortgages more widely available at a time when commercial banks and thrift institutions make loans only to borrowers with high credit ratings (see Freddie Mac, 1970).

Architect John Russell Pope dies at his native New York August 27 at age 63.

environment

Congress creates Olympic National Park to protect 896,660 acres (1,442 square miles) of Pacific Northwest rain forest, 60 glaciers (most of them on 7,965-foot Mount Olympus), coastal beaches, and meadows that support a herd of rare Roosevelt elk, as well as bears, cougar, deer, and many varieties of birds. Three Native American reservations are within the borders of the park, whose forest floor is carpeted with dense moss and large fungi.

Naturalist-author George Bird Grinnell dies at his New York home April 11 at age 88.

Congress passes the new Flood Control Act June 28, authorizing public works on U.S. rivers and harbors.

A tropical hurricane strikes Long Island and much of New England without warning September 21, and in just 10 hours wreaks more havoc than the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. The storm takes 682 lives (hundreds drown as the sea breaks up substantial beachfront houses and sweeps them away), destroys 9,000 houses and 2 billion trees, causes $400 million in property damage, and inflicts great and lasting environmental damage, but 60 colonies of beavers in New Jersey's Palisades Park busily maintain their dams through the blow, saving 42,000 acres of land and highways from anything more than minimal flooding.

marine resources

An International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling institutes voluntary conservation quotas, but the killing of whales by Japanese, Norwegian, and Russian ships goes on virtually unabated.

Efforts begin to help salmon and steelhead trout ascend the Columbia River via fish "ladders" as the river's fishing industry is threatened by power dams, such as the year-old Bonneville dam, that have cut the fish off from spawning grounds (see 1911; Maine, 1948).

Albacore tuna show up in large schools off the Oregon Coast, and salmon fishermen who have been supplying the Columbia River Packers Association since 1899 turn to tuna fishing. The Association adopts the brand name Bumble Bee for its canned tuna after having used it for years on its canned salmon and builds the first tuna cannery in the Northwest, setting it up alongside its salmon cannery at Astoria, Ore.

agriculture

A revised Agricultural Adjustment Act passed by Congress February 16 eases restrictions on planting most U.S. crops, even providing for lime- and mineral fertilizer to farmers to help them increase yields (see 1936). The new AAA begins direct crop-subsidy "parity" payments to farmers based on 1910-1914 farm prices, and it helps farmers buy crop-insurance coverage that will pay off when weather ruins their harvests (see 1994).

The Commodity Credit Corp. established by the new AAA supports U.S. farm prices by buying up surpluses for an "Ever-Normal Granary" designed to protect the nation against drought and plant diseases, distribute surpluses among the needy, and pay export subsidies that will encourage foreign sales by "equalizing" U.S. farm prices with lower world prices (see wheat exports, 1940; food availability [food stamps], 1939).

Dust storms continue on the drought-stricken southern plains, but the amount of topsoil blown away falls by 65 percent, partly because of government programs that have taken land out of production, partly because of more enlightened cultivation methods that control soil erosion.

Arizona's new 286-foot high Bartlett Dam provides water for irrigation.

Plant geneticist-agronomist Edward Murray East dies at Boston November 9 at age 59.

nutrition

Vitamin B₃ (nicotinic acid, or niacin) is found to prevent pellagra (see 1915; Elvehejm, 1936).

Studies of the chemistry of vision in poor light begun by Harvard biologist George Wald, 31, will show the importance of vitamin A in avoiding nyctalopia (night blindness).

Biochemist Roger J. Williams, 45, synthesizes pantothenic acid, a minor B vitamin present in many foods. Born in India, Williams is a brother of the thiamine pioneer.

Paul Karrer synthesizes vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) and finds it to be an effective antioxidant (see Karrer, 1931; Evans, Emerson, 1935).

A scientific meeting at Toronto hears proposals that bread be enriched with the B₁ vitamin thiamine.

consumer protection

The United States has her last reported case of "the milksick" as dairies virtually wipe out the often fatal disease by pooling their milk from a variety of herds. Also called the slows or the trembles, the disease is transmitted in the milk of cows that have eaten white snakeroot (Eupatorium rugosum).

The new U.S. Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act signed into law June 27 updates the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 (see 1912; 1913; Tugwell, Schlink, 1933). It establishes standards of identity for most food products, requiring that basic ingredients of about 400 such products be listed in the Code of Federal Regulations, but only "optional" ingredients such as salt, sugar, and spices be listed on labels. The new law is stricter than the old one but critics say it is still not sufficiently protective of consumers' health (see Delaney, 1950).

The Federal Trade Commission uses its new powers under the Wheeler-Lea Act to enjoin Standard Brands from making claims that Fleischmann's Yeast is "rich in hormone-like substances" and will help prevent colds, cure constipation, indigestion, and related skin problems. Quaker Oats is enjoined from claiming that its cereal contains the "magical yeast vitamin," alleged to curb nervousness and prevent constipation while stimulating children's appetites and promoted with the claim that one penny's worth contains as much of this B vitamin as three cakes of yeast.

food and drink

Birds Eye Frozen Foods Ltd. is established in England as a joint venture of General Foods and Unilever (see Wisbech, 1937). Lack of cold storage and refrigerated transport limit the marketing of frozen foods initially, but Birds Eye will grow to dominate the United Kingdom's frozen-food business. British farmers will buy seeds from the company to permit uniformity of strain and quality, Unilever will own a majority interest by 1943, by 1946 there will be 100 shops stocking Birds Eye products produced in six plants (at Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Kirkby, Brimsby, Hull, and Eastbourne), and by 1948 there will be 900 such shops.

Dewey and Almy in Boston develop the Cryovac deep-freezing method of food preservation (see Birdseye, 1923).

A can of meat put up in 1824 is discovered and its contents fed to test rats with no observable ill effects.

Teflon has a low coefficient of friction that will make it popular as a coating for nonstick frying pans and other cooking utensils.

Mott's Apple Juice is introduced by the Duffy-Mott Co. (see Sunsweet prune juice, 1933). The company uses juice from Courtland, Golden Delicious, Ida Reds, MacIntosh, Rhode Island Greening, Rome Beauty, Twenty Ounce, York Imperial, and more than a dozen other varieties for its products.

Nescafé is introduced in Switzerland by Nestlé, whose management has been asked by the Brazilian government to help find a solution to Brazil's coffee surpluses (see G. Washington, 1909). Nestlé has spent 8 years in research to develop the instant coffee product (see Instant Maxwell House, 1942).

Grocery chain founder B. H. Kroger dies of a heart attack at his Cape Cod summer home in Wianno July 21 at age 78. When he retired 6 years ago he had 4,844 stores scattered about thousands of Midwestern communities and supplied by his 13 bakeries; three packing plants; his own plants for roasting coffee, blending tea and spices; and his own candy factory.

restaurants

The Dairy Queen fast-food chain has its beginnings August 4 at Kankakee, Ill., where Iowa-born store owner Sherwood Dick "Sherm" Noble, 30, offers semi-frozen soft ice cream produced by J.F. "Grandpa" McCullough, 67, and his son Alex, 40 (see Carvel, 1934). The McCulloughs started their Homemade Ice Cream Co. at Davenport in 1927, moved to the suburbs in the early 1930s, and with Noble's cooperation roll out an "All the Ice Cream You Can Eat for 10 Cents" promotion, dishing out 1,600 portions in 2 hours (see Dairy Queen, 1940).

population

U.S. women rely on so-called "feminine hygiene" products such as douche solutions, foaming tablets, vaginal jellies, and suppositories to avoid pregnancy; they are cheap, not subject to any regulation, easily available without a doctor's prescription, and comprise 85 percent of contraceptive sales.

The case of R. v. Bourne arouses controversy over abortion in Britain. London gynecologist Aleck (William) Bourne, 42, has aborted a 14-year-old girl who was allegedly raped April 27 by four guardsmen at Wellington Barricks; he informed the police before terminating the girl's pregnancy and was charged with violating an 1837 criminal statute that was reenacted in 1861, his defenders argue that there are times when deliberate abortion should be lawful, the judge rules that under certain circumstances the surgeon has not only the right but the duty to terminate a pregnancy, and Bourne is acquitted (see 1967).

1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940

Anthropology

Robert Broom finds a complete hominid skull at Kromdraaii Cave in South Africa. The skull is later recognized as the first known fossil of Paranthropus (a.k.a. Australopithecus) robustus. See also 1936 Anthropology; 1946 Anthropology.

Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper finds the relationship between spectral type and biometric correction for a star, making it possible to determine the luminosity of a star over all wavelengths. (See biography.)

Hans Bethe and, independently, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker propose a new theory of the cause of the energy produced by stars -- nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. Their basic concept, with minor modifications, continues to be accepted today. See also 1925 Astronomy; 1952 Tools.

American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer [b. New York, New York, April 22, 1904, d. Princeton, New Jersey, February 18, 1967] and George Volkoff [b. Moscow, February 23, 1914, d. Vancouver, Canada, April 24, 2000] predict the existence of rapidly rotating neutron stars. These will be discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell and named pulsars. See also 1967 Astronomy.

Arthur Compton shows that cosmic rays begin as the nuclei of atoms, especially hydrogen nuclei (protons) from space that produce other types of particles when they collide with the atoms of the atmosphere. See also 1931 Astronomy.

Captain Hendrik Goosen catches a living coelacanth in the Indian Ocean off the African coast. The fish is recognized as unusual by Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, curator of a local natural-history museum, and identified by ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith. The species had been believed to have been extinct for 65,000,000 years.

Britton Chance, American biophysicist [b. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, July 24, 1912], working with G. Brainerd, uses a mechanical computer to solve nonlinear equations that describe how an enzyme reacts with its substrate. His work with the enzyme peroxidase results in confirmation of the theory that enzymes work by binding briefly to their substrate (the material that the enzyme catalyzes). See also 1904 Biology; 1946 Biology.

Hans Spemann proposes taking the nucleus of a cell from an embryo or an adult and inserting it into an egg, allowing the development of an animal clone. See also 1952 Biology.

Corneille Heymans of Belgium wins the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discoveries in respiratory regulation. See also 1927 Biology.

Archer J.P. Martin [b. London, March 1, 1910, d. July 28, 2002] and Richard Laurence Millington Synge [b. Liverpool, England, October 28, 1914, d. August 1994] begin the work that leads to paper chromatography, using chromatography with a solvent in a column of silica to separate amino acids. Chromatography is analysis of chemicals from color bands that form because chemicals of different molecular weights travel through a medium (such as paper) at different speeds. See also 1930 Chemistry; 1944 Chemistry.

Swiss chemists Arthur Stoll and Albert Hofmann discover lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). See also 1943 Chemistry.

Austrian-German chemist Richard Kuhn [b. Vienna, Austria, December 3, 1900, d. Heidelberg, Germany, July 31, 1967] isolates vitamin B₆ from skim milk and wins the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his carotenoid and vitamin research. See also 1937 Biology.

A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits by Claude Elwood Shannon [b. Gaylord, Michigan, April 30, 1916, d. Medford, Massachusetts, February 24, 2001], his master's thesis, uses Boolean algebra to analyze relay circuits and switches and to determine their optimum arrangement. See also 1927 Communication; 1949 Communication.

Hungarian Lazlo Biró [b. 1900, d. 1985] patents the first ballpoint pen that is commercially successful. See also 1895 Communication.

German scientist Konrad Zuse completes the Z₁. It is the first working computer to use a binary code. See also 1937 Computers; 1940 Computers.

British steam engineer Guy Stewart Callendar determines that human activities are causing an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. See also 1967 Ecology & the environment.

Soviet biologist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko [b. Karlovka, Poltava Oblast (Ukraine), September 29, 1898, d. Kiev, Russia, November 20, 1976] is named president of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences. With Joseph Stalin as his chief supporter, Lysenko gains control of Soviet biological research, imposing his incorrect view that acquired characteristics can be inherited.

Teijiro Yabuta and Yusuke Sumiki extract gibberellin A from a soil fungus and find that it is a potent growth hormone for rice. See also 1952 Food & agriculture.

The Nestlé Corporation after eight years of development, produces the first satisfactory "instant" coffee, or dried coffee powder that can be reconstituted by adding hot water. See also 1903 Food & agriculture.

Nylon, invented in 1934 by Wallace Carothers of DuPont, goes on sale in the United States in the form of toothbrush bristles. By 1939 it is available in limited amounts as yarn for stockings. See also 1935 Materials; 1940 Materials.

German chemist Paul Schlack [b. December 22, 1897, d. 1987] develops "perlon," a synthetic fiber. See also 1892 Materials; 1940 Materials.

DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett [b. New Carlisle, Ohio, June 26, 1910, d. May 12, 1994] on April 6 accidentally discovers the first form of Teflon in the residue of refrigeration gases.

Katherine Burr Blodgett [b. Schenectady, New York, January 10, 1898, d. Schenectady, October 12, 1979] discovers a method for covering glass with an extremely thin film that eliminates reflection of light. Applications include camera and binocular lenses and scientific instruments.

Kurt Gödel proves that if the commonly accepted axioms for set theory, known as the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms, are consistent with each other, they will continue to be consistent if the controversial axiom of choice is added to them. The axiom of choice allows the mathematician to specify one element from each subset of an infinite number of subsets (such as always picking the left shoe out of an infinite set of pairs of shoes). See also 1904 Mathematics.

The Behavior of Organisms by Burrhus Frederick Skinner [b. Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, March 20, 1904, d. Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 18, 1990] is published. The behaviorist school of psychology espoused by Skinner, which emphasizes conditioning responses with reinforcement as the main form of learning, becomes dominant in the United States for several decades.

English surgeon Philip Wiles [b. 1899, d. 1967] develops the first total artificial hip replacement, using stainless steel. See also 1905 Medicine & health.

German physicist Otto Hahn, working with Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassman [b. Boppard, Germany, February 22, 1902, d. Mainz, West Germany, April 22, 1980], is the first to split the atom of uranium, opening up the possibility of a chain reaction and atomic bombs. In March 1938, Meitner flees Hitler-controlled Germany for Sweden, taking the problem of uranium atom-splitting with her. In Sweden she determines that she and Hahn had indeed been splitting uranium. See also 1939 Physics. (See biography.)

Fritz London [b. Breslau (Wrocław, Poland) 1900, d. 1954] proposes that superfluidity in helium is caused by the bosonic condensation of helium atoms; that is, the cold atoms behave as bosons and act together as a single entity. See also 1937 Physics; 1941 Physics.

Ernst C.G. Stückelberg formulates the law of baryon conservation; that is, the number of heavy particles (baryons), such as protons and neutrons, stays the same in any closed system. The purpose is to account for the apparent stability of the proton, which otherwise cannot be explained.

Paul Dirac attempts to link the Hubble constant, which describes the age and size of the universe, to physical constants that describe subatomic particles.

Sir Nevill Francis Mott [b. Leeds, England, September 30, 1905, d. Milton Keynes, England, August 8, 1996] and Ronald W. Gurney formulate a theory explaining image formation in photographic emulsions.

Enrico Fermi of Italy wins the Nobel Prize for physics for his work with thermal neutrons. See also 1934 Physics.

Manfred von Ardenne [b. Hamburg, Germany, January 20, 1907, d. Dresden, Germany, May 26, 1997] gives a demonstration of the scanning electron microscope. See also 1936 Tools.

The radio altimeter is introduced; it reports a plane's altitude on the basis of radio signals from a known source. See also 1904 Tools.

U.S. engineer Thomas Ross develops the first machine that can learn from experience. It is a mechanical mouse that runs on toy-train tracks and learns by trial and error to find its way through mazes. See also 1948 Tools.

Germany's liquid-fueled rocket experiments, under the direction of Wernher von Braun, succeed in producing a rocket that can travel 18 km (11 mi). See also 1934 Transportation; 1942 Transportation.

Drama and Theater

• Maxwell Anderson: Knickerbocker Holiday. As Washington Irving writes his history of New York, he is transported back to seventeenth-century New Amsterdam in this musical fantasy that indirectly satirizes the New Deal with music, including the popular "September Song" by Kurt Weill. Also, the playwright's prefaces to his plays and thoughts on the theater and his dramatic method are collected in The Essence of Tragedy, the first detailed theory of tragedy by an American playwright.
• Arthur Arent: One Third of a Nation. The most successful of the "Living Newspaper" productions of the Federal Theatre Project--theatrical documentaries using newspaper articles and other printed evidence for their text--illustrates the assertion made by President Roosevelt that a third of the nation was ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.
• Philip Barry: Here Come the Clowns. Barry's most experimental play is an often preachy, symbolic drama depicting a group of vaudeville performers confronting the reality of their lives. The play baffles the critics and audiences.
• S. N. Behrman: Wine of Choice. Behrman's social comedy concerns a women courted by several men, including a young left-wing writer.
• Marc Blitzstein (1904-1964): The Cradle Will Rock. Blitzstein's anti-capitalist operetta about the effort to unionize steelworkers is opposed by the U.S. government and Actors Equity. Its New York premiere at the Mercury Theatre is stopped by injunction, and to circumvent this difficulty, John Houseman (1902-1988) and Orson Welles lead the cast and audience to another empty theater, where the cast perform from their seats as paying customers. Houseman became a director in 1935 with the Negro Theatre Project and with Welles founded the Mercury Theatre Company in 1937.
• Clare Boothe Luce: Kiss the Boys Goodbye. The playwright's successful comedy dramatizes the Hollywood search for an actress to play Velvet O'Toole in a Civil War film. Although playgoers enjoy the presumed spoof on Gone with the Wind, Luce claims that she intended the play as an attack on "Southernism"--the "inspiration or forerunner of Fascism."
• Clifford Odets: Rocket to the Moon. Many critics date the decline in the playwright's dramatic ability to this Group Theatre production, concerning a young dentist's unhappy marriage and affair. It is Odets's final play to evoke comparisons with his earlier Marxist works.
• Ole Olsen (1892-1963) and Chick Johnson (1891-1962): Hellzapoppin. The vaudeville team's zany revue would run until 1941, and its 1,404 performances prove to be the third longest in Broadway history (behind Tobacco Road and Abie's Irish Rose) up to that time.
• Paul Osborn: On Borrowed Time. Based on Lawrence Edward Watkin's novel (1937), this dramatic fantasy concerns an aging curmudgeon who holds off the Angel of Death by chasing him up an apple tree until his grandson falls to his death from the same tree. The play establishes the reputation of its young director, Joshua Logan (1908-1988).
• Elmer Rice: American Landscape. Rice continues his series of patriotic works with this drama of a man contemplating selling his estate to a pro-Nazi German American Bund. He is urged to resist by the spirits of Moll Flanders, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Revolutionary War soldier, and the man's son killed in World War I.
• Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart: The Boys from Syracuse. Considered the first musical based on a classic, this Rodgers and Hart collaboration, with book by George Abbott, is derived from Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.
• Robert E. Sherwood: Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Sherwood wins his second Pulitzer Prize for this biographical drama of Lincoln's pre-presidential years. It is the first production of the Playwrights' Company and features a highly praised interpretation of Lincoln by Raymond Massey.
• Theodore Ward (1902-1983): Big White Fog. When the Chicago unit of the Federal Theatre Project performs this play--about a middle-class black family's encounter with racism and the political alternatives available to them in capitalism, black nationalism, and socialism--riot police stand on call on opening night to ward off an anticipated race riot. They would not be needed. The play would be performed in New York in 1940 as the first and last production of the Negro Playwrights Company. The Louisiana-born playwright has been called "the dean of black dramatists" for his contribution to African American drama. His other plays include Our Lan' (1947), The Daubers (1953), and Candle in the Wind (1967).
• Thornton Wilder: Our Town. Wilder's innovative depiction of small-town American life in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, at the turn of the century uses a bare stage and employs a Stage Manager as narrator. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the play, one of the most popular and frequently performed American dramas, establishes Wilder as a distinctive voice in the American theater.

Fiction

• Dorothy Baker (1907-1968): Young Man with a Horn. The Montana-born writer's first novel is inspired by the life of jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke in what is considered the first novel of consequence to document the jazz music scene. It would be dramatized in 1944. Her other books are Our Gifted Son (1948) and Cassandra at the Wedding (1962).
• James Branch Cabell: The King Was in His Counting House. Cabell publishes a satirical romance set in sixteenth-century Italy.
• Erskine Caldwell: Southways. Caldwell's fourth collection of short stories continues his documentation of life among poor blacks and whites in the South. One reviewer remarks, "The picture of the southland which is presented is about as far removed from the old atmosphere of moonlight and honey-suckle as could well be imagined."
• John Dos Passos: U.S.A. Dos Passos collects his trio of novels--The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936)--to form a technically innovative social panorama of American life and history during the first three decades of the century.
• William Faulkner: The Unvanquished. Faulkner groups previously published short stories into a narrative chronicling the Sartoris family of Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
• Ernest Hemingway: The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories. Hemingway's only play is combined with his collected stories, including recent ones such as "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." The Fifth Column, set during the siege of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, would be produced on Broadway in 1940.
• Sinclair Lewis: The Prodigal Parents. Lewis's novel describes the revolt of middle-aged parents from their two selfish and demanding offspring. Seen by many as second-rate Lewis, the novel draws fire from critic Malcolm Cowley, who charges that "From the first page to the last there wasn't a character that rises above the level of a good comic strip."
• John O'Hara: Hope of Heaven. Although a bestseller, this novel recording the unhappy affair between a Hollywood scenario writer and a bookshop clerk is a critical failure. O'Hara then turns his attention to the short story, not publishing another novel until 1949.
• Dawn Powell (1896-1965): The Happy Island. Powell's sardonic look at fashionable Manhattan life concentrates on café society from the perspective of a hard-boiled nightclub singer. Born in Ohio, Powell produced a number of satires on New York City life, including Angels on Toast (1940), The Wicket Pavilion (1954), and The Golden Spur (1962).
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: The Yearling. Rawlings wins the Pulitzer Prize for this novel involving a boy's relationship with his pet fawn in northern Florida's hummock country. Although never intended as a children's book, The Yearling would become a children's classic.
• Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Black Is My Truelove's Hair. The Kentucky regionalist's final novel is a ballad-like story of the betrayal of a simple village girl by a truck driver.
• Damon Runyon: Take It Easy. This story collection dealing with Runyon's characteristic subject, Broadway life, features his specialty: capturing street patois.
• William Saroyan: Love, Here Is My Hat, and Other Short Romances and The Trouble with Tigers. Two story collections display the author's characteristic exuberance and eccentricity, qualities that one reviewer labels "auto-intoxication" and that writer James T. Farrell calls an "exhibitionist act" that has "worn as thin as an old vaudeville gag."
• May Sarton: The Single Hound. Sarton's first novel concerns a young English poet who seeks solace in the work and later the person of an elderly Belgian poet.
• John Steinbeck: The Long Valley. A short story collection mainly dealing with farming life in California's Salinas Valley. It includes highly regarded stories such as "The Snake," "Flight," "The Red Pony," the medieval parable "Saint Katy the Virgin," as well as "Chrysanthemums," widely regarded as Steinbeck's best story and one of the greatest American short stories of the twentieth century.
• Jesse Stuart: Beyond Dark Hills. This is the first of several autobiographical volumes by the Kentucky regionalist. Here he details his pioneer ancestry and his upbringing and education on a Kentucky hill farm.
• Allen Tate: The Fathers. The poet and critic's only novel is set immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War and concerns the cultural conflict between traditional Southern society and contemporary forces.
• B. Traven: The Bridge in the Jungle. Traven's novel set in Central America concerns an explorer who gets involved in a village's tragedy when a boy drowns.
• Edith Wharton: The Buccaneers. Wharton's last and unfinished novel concerns the attempt by socially ambitious American girls to enter English society. Although the novel breaks off before the moral climax, the book does provide the author's characteristically assured depictions of social manners and an accomplished portrait of Gilded Age society.
• William Carlos Williams: Life Along the Passaic River. Williams's second short story collection includes highly regarded works such as "The Use of Force," "The Girl with the Pimply Face," and "Jean Beicke."
• Richard Wright: Uncle Tom's Children. Winner of the Story magazine prize for the best work from anyone connected with the Federal Writers' Project, Wright's first book of long short stories graphically details violent racial conflict in the South. Wright would expand the volume in 1940, adding the essay "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," which helps contextualize the book's theme of the rejection of passive suffering.

Literary Criticism and Scholarship

• Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994) and Robert Penn Warren: Understanding Poetry. The authors' textbook, applying the principles of the New Criticism to the interpretation of poetry, revolutionizes the teaching of literature on American campuses. Arranged by aesthetic categories rather than by author or chronology, with sample analyses and questions to prompt students' similar efforts, the book helps shift the emphasis to text-oriented criticism, which fosters close reading and structural analysis in literary assessment. Brooks was born in Kentucky, educated at Vanderbilt, Tulane, and Oxford, and was an English professor at Louisiana State University from 1932 to 1947.
• Edgar Lee Masters: Mark Twain: A Portrait. Masters's brief critical biography emphasizes Twain's troubled genius and divided nature as a social critic and one who yielded to his society's materialistic influences.
• Ezra Pound: Guide to Kultur. Pound ranges widely over literary, political, and economic subjects in a series of polemical disquisitions, ranging from Benito Mussolini's Italy, to Dadaism, to T. S. Eliot's criticism, employing the same associative logic that operates in his poetry.
• John Crowe Ransom: The World's Body. In this collection of critical essays, the writer articulates a theory of poetry that both bolsters the emerging tenets of the New Criticism and asserts verse's superiority to science in revealing reality.
• Edmund Wilson: The Triple Thinkers: Ten Essays on Literature. Wilson's collection explores the social and political conflict in writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and George Bernard Shaw. It contains essays such as "Marxism and Literature" and "The Historical Interpretation of Literature," discussing the use of Marxist methodology to analyze literature.
• Yvor Winters: Maule's Curse: Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism. In a study of nineteenth-century literature, Winters underscores the deficiencies of James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Henry James in their refusal to confront fully shared human values. Their emphasis on private states of feeling leads, in Winters's view, to obscurity.

Nonfiction

• Robert Benchley: After 1903--What? A collection of the humorist's short pieces on topics such as parlor games, tea shops, and income tax forms, with illustrations by Gluyas Williams.
• Richard E. Byrd: Alone. The polar explorer and aviator recounts his self-imposed isolation at a base camp in Antarctica in 1934.
• John Dewey: Experience and Education. The philosopher assesses both traditional and progressive educational methods and points out the defects of both. His other important work published in 1938 is Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.
• John Dos Passos: Journeys Between Wars. The writer compiles extracts from his previous travel books with new accounts of the Spanish Civil War.
• Ernest Hemingway: The Spanish Earth. Transcript of Hemingway's narration and commentary for the 1937 film documentary on the Spanish Civil War, produced and directed by Joris Ivens with a screenplay by Archibald MacLeish, John Dos Passos, and Lillian Hellman.
• Granville Hicks: I Like America. In an autobiographical account, Hicks offers his defense as a Communist critic and what America stands to lose unless it chooses socialism. Hicks would resign from the Communist Party in 1939 in opposition to the German-Soviet nonaggression pact and the American Communist Party's defense of Stalinism.
• Marquis James (1891-1955): The Life of Andrew Jackson. James wins his second Pulitzer Prize (the first was for his biography of Sam Houston, The Raven, in 1929) for this combination of his two previous volumes on Andrew Jackson's life and career--Andrew Jackson, the Border Captain (1933) and Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President (1937). James was a journalist born in Oklahoma.
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Listen! The Wind. Lindbergh's second book--an account of the 1933 survey flights made with her husband across the Atlantic, exploring possible commercial air routes--solidifies her reputation as an impressive prose stylist and writer of distinction, able to transform a technical account into literature.
• Ruth McKenney (1911-1972): My Sister Eileen. This book consists of humorous autobiographical sketches of the Indiana-born author's life in a Greenwich Village basement apartment with her sister (who would later marry novelist Nathanael West). It would be dramatized by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov in 1940 as a play and in 1953 as the musical Wonderful Town.
• Eleanor Roosevelt: This Troubled World. The First Lady reflects on what is needed for world peace: brotherly love and the establishment of a strong United Nations-like organization to enforce it.
• Gertrude Stein: Picasso. Drawing on her longtime relationship with the painter, Stein offers a brief appreciatory study of Pablo Picasso's artistic development. Stein had written the work in French, and her companion Alice B. Toklas translated it to English.
• Carl Van Doren: Benjamin Franklin. Van Doren's biography wins the Pulitzer Prize and would be long regarded as definitive and a classic of the biographer's art.

Poetry

• E. E. Cummings: Collected Poems. Cummings's most popular and most important work from his previous collections receives mixed reviews, with some critics praising the poet's innovations and others decrying his exhibitionism.
• Kenneth Fearing: Dead Reckoning. Fearing's realistic and satirical poems of modern urban life help solidify his reputation as one of the most significant poets of the Depression.
• John Gould Fletcher: Selected Poems. Fletcher wins the Pulitzer Prize for this selection of published and previously unpublished works written since 1913.
• Archibald MacLeish: Air Raid. Described as a "verse play for the radio," the poem dramatizes the bombing of a city in a series of vignettes.
• Ogden Nash: I'm a Stranger Here Myself. This collection of the poet's winsome light verse, gently exposing human frailties and the absurdities of modern life, prompts contemporary reviewers to compare him with Mark Twain, G. K. Chesterton, P. J. Wodehouse, and Ring Lardner.
• Laura Riding: Collected Poems. Riding collects her early poetry written since the 1920s about which writer Robert Fitzgerald would assert that "Of all the contemporary poems I know, these seem to me the furthest advanced, the most personal and the purest."
• Muriel Rukeyser: U.S. 1. The poet's second collection explores working conditions along the East Coast highway and impressions of the war in Spain derived from Rukeyser's experience there as a journalist.
• William Carlos Williams: Complete Collected Poems, 1906-1938. New Directions brings out the "definitive edition" of the poet's work up to this point.

Publications and Events

• William Carlos WilliamsBroadcast of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds. This play, adapted by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, is broadcast on the radio the night before Halloween as if it were a news report, causing nationwide panic as listeners believe that what they hear is actually happening.
• William Carlos WilliamsDictionary of American English. The appearance of the first of the four volumes (completed in 1944) of the University of Chicago's project to collect distinctively American words, phrases, and usages. It is edited by Sir William Craigie and James R. Hulbert.
• William Carlos WilliamsThe Playwrights' Company. Founded by Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, Elmer Rice, and Robert E. Sherwood as a production company for their works, the company continued until 1960.
• William Carlos WilliamsRocky Mountain Review. This quarterly regional magazine begins publication (it ceased in 1946). Contributors included important western writers such as Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Wallace Stegner, and Vardis Fisher.
• William Carlos WilliamsTwice a Year. This semiannual "journal of literature, the arts, and civil liberties" begins publication. Contributors until its demise in 1948 included Muriel Rukeyser, Henry Miller, William Saroyan, and Kenneth Patchen.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1900s  1910s  1920s  – 1930s –  1940s  1950s  1960s
Years:	1935 1936 1937 – 1938 – 1939 1940 1941

1938 by topic:

Subject:      Archaeology – Architecture – Art

Aviation – Film – Literature (Poetry) Meteorology – Music (Country) Rail transport – Radio – Science

Sports – Television

Countries:   Australia – Canada – Ecuador – India Ireland – Malaysia – New Zealand – Norway – Philippines – Singapore – South Africa Soviet Union –UK – United States – Zimbabwe – Italy

Leaders:    Sovereign states – State leaders

Religious leaders – Law

Categories: Births – Deaths – Works – Introductions

Establishments – Disestablishments – Awards v • d • e

Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Contents 1 Events of 1938 1.1 January–February 1.2 March–April 1.3 May–June 1.4 July–August 1.5 September–October 1.6 November–December 1.7 Undated 1.8 Ongoing 2 Births 2.1 January–February 2.2 March–April 2.3 May–June 2.4 July–August 2.5 September–October 2.6 November–December 2.7 Date unknown 3 Deaths 3.1 January–June 3.2 July–December 4 Nobel Prizes 5 References 6 External links

Events of 1938

January–February

January 20: King Farouk

January 16: Benny Goodman in NYC.

• January 1
  • The new Constitution of Estonia enters into force.
  • Sir Alexander Cadogan succeeds Sir Robert Vansittart as permanent under-secretary at the British Foreign Office; Vansittart is “kicked outstairs” by being given the new and unimportant office of Chief Diplomatic Advisor to the Government.
  • The Merrie Melodies cartoon short Daffy Duck and Egghead is released.
• January 3 – The March of Dimes is established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
• January 11 – Frances Moulton is named the first female president of a U.S. national bank.
• January 12 The German War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg marries Eva Gruhn in Berlin; Hermann Göring is best man at the wedding.
• January 16 – Two landmark live recordings are produced this day: the very first of Mahler's Ninth by the Vienna Philharmonic under Bruno Walter in the face of dire circumstance; and Benny Goodman and his orchestra become the first jazz musicians to headline a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
• January 20 – King Farouk of Egypt marries Queen Farida Zulficar in Cairo.
• January 22 – Thornton Wilder's play Our Town is performed for the first time anywhere in Princeton, New Jersey. It premieres in New York City on February 4.
• January 25 – A brilliant aurora borealis described variously as "a curtain of fire" and a "huge blood-red beam of light" startles people across Europe and is visible as far south as Gibraltar.
• January 27
  • The Niagara Bridge at Niagara Falls, New York collapses due to an ice jam.
  • German War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg resigns, following the revelation that his new wife had previously posed for pornographic photos.
• January 28 – The first ski tow in America begins operation in Vermont.

January 27: Niagara Bridge collapses in ice.

• February 4 – Adolf Hitler abolishes the War Ministry and creates the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces), giving him direct control of the German military. In addition, Hitler sacks political and military leaders considered unsympathetic to his philosophy or policies. General Werner von Fritsch is forced to resign as Commander of Chief of the German Army following accusations of homosexuality, and replaced by General Walther von Brauchitsch. Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath is sacked and replaced by Joachim von Ribbentrop.
• February 6 – Black Sunday at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia: 300 swimmers are dragged out to sea in 3 freak waves; 80 lifesavers save all but 5.
• February 10 – Carol II of Romania takes dictatorial powers.
• 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.
• February 20 – Sir Anthony Eden resigns as British Foreign Secretary following major disagreements with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain over the best policy to follow in regards to Italy, and is succeeded by Lord Halifax.
• February 24 – A nylon bristle toothbrush becomes the first commercial product to be made with nylon yarn.

March–April

• March – Italian mathematician Ettore Majorana disappears.
• March 3
  • The Santa Ana River in California spills over its banks during a rainy winter, killing 58 people in Orange County and causing trouble as far inland as Palm Springs^[1].
  • Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia.
  • Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany, presents a proposal to Hitler for an international consortium to rule much of Africa (in which Germany would be assigned a leading role) in exchange for a German promise never to resort to war to change her frontiers; Hitler rejects the British offer.
• March 12 – Anschluss: German troops occupy Austria; annexation is declared the following day.
• March 14 – French Premier Leon Blum reassures the Czechoslovak government that France will honor its treaty obligations to aid Czechoslovakia in event of German invasion.
• March 15 – Soviet Union announces officially that Nikholai Bukharin has been executed.
• March 17 – Poland presents an ultimatum to Lithuania, to establish normal diplomatic relations that were severed over the Vilnius Region.
• March 18
  • Mexico nationalizes all foreign-owned oil properties within its borders.
  • General Werner von Fritsch is acquitted of charges of homosexuality at his court-martial.
• April 10 – Edouard Daladier becomes prime minister of France. He appoints as Foreign Minister a leading advocate of the policy of appeasement, Georges Bonnet, effectively negating Blum's reassurances of March 14.
• April 24 – Konstantin Päts becomes president of Estonia.
• April 25 – Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins: The U.S. Supreme Court overturns a century of federal common law.
• April 28 – The towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott in Massachusetts are disincorporated to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir.

May–June

• May 5
  • The Vatican recognizes Franco's government in Spain.
  • General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the German Army’s General Staff, submits a memorandum to Hitler opposing Fall Grün (Case Green), the plan for a war with Czechoslovakia, under the grounds that Germany is ill-prepared for the world war likely to result from such an attack.
• May 9 – Kaarel Eenpalu becomes prime minister of Estonia.
• May 14 – Chile withdraws from the League of Nations.
• May 17 – Information Please debuts on NBC Radio.
• May 20 – Czechoslovakia orders a partial mobilization of its armed forces along the German border.
• May 23 – Temporarily frustrated by the Czechoslovak mobilization and international diplomatic unity in the face of German demands over the Sudetenland, Hitler orders the Foreign Office to assure the Czechoslovaks that he has no demands on their territory. The world at large mistakenly believes the crisis is averted.
• May 25 – Spanish Civil War: Alicante, Spain is bombed, resulting in 313 deaths.
• May 28 – In a conference at the Reichs Chancellery, Hitler declares his decision to destroy Czechoslovakia by military force, and orders the immediate mobilization of 96 Wehrmacht divisions.
• June 11 – Fire destroys 212 buildings in Ludes, Latvia.
• June 12–18 – The Roma and Sinti peoples in Germany and Austria are rounded up, beaten up and jailed.
• June 15 – László Bíró patents the ballpoint pen in Britain.
• June 19 – Italy beats Hungary 4–2 to win the 1938 World Cup.
• June 22 – Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis knocks out Max Schmeling in the first round of their rematch at Yankee Stadium in New York City.
• June 23
  • The Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States.
  • Marineland opens near St. Augustine, Florida.
• June 24 – A 450-metric-ton (496-short-ton) meteorite explodes about 12 miles (19 km) above the earth near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
• June 25 – Dr. Douglas Hyde is elected the first President of Ireland.
• June 30 – Action Comics #1 is published, which is the first publication featuring the comic book character Superman.

July–August

• July – The Mauthausen concentration camp is built in Austria.
• July 3
  • The steam locomotive Mallard sets the world speed record for steam by reaching 126 mph.
  • The last reunion of the Blue and Gray commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
• July 5 – The Non-Intervention Committee reaches an agreement to withdraw all foreign volunteers from the Spanish Civil War. The agreement is respected by most Republican foreign volunteers, notably by those from England and the United States, but is ignored by the governments of Germany and Italy.
• July 12 – The Turkish army carries out the Kurdish Genocide in Dersim, Turkey.
• July 14 – Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world.
• July 18 – Wrong Way Corrigan takes off from New York, ostensibly heading for California. He lands in Ireland instead.
• July 24 – First ascent of the Eiger north face.
• July 28 – A revolt against the Ioannis Metaxas dictatorship is put down in Chania, Greece.
• July 30 – The first ever issue of The Beano is published.
• August – In the face of overwhelming Japanese military pressure, Chiang Kai-shek withdraws his government to Chungking.
• August 4 – Lord Runciman arrives in Prague to act as Neville Chamberlain's special envoy in the continuing Sudetenland disturbances.
• August 6 – The Looney Tunes animated short Porky & Daffy is released.
• August 10 At a secret summit with his leading generals, Hitler attacks General Beck’s arguments against Fall Grün, winning the majority of his senior officers over to his point of view.
• August 18
  • The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting the United States with Canada, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  • Colonel General Ludwig Beck, convinced that Hitler's decision to attack Czechoslovakia will lead to a general European war, resigns his position as Chief of the Army General Staff in protest.
  • Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin arrives in London looking for British support for an anti-Nazi putsch, using the looming crisis over the Sudetenland as a pretext. His private mission is dismissed by Neville Chamberlain as unimportant (Chamberlain refers to von Kleist as a "Jacobite"), but he finds a sympathetic if powerless audience in Winston Churchill.
• August 23 – Hitler, hosting a dinner on board the ocean liner Patria in Kiel Bay, tells the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, that action against Czechoslovakia is imminent and that "he who wants to sit at the table must at least help in the kitchen," a reference to Horthy's designs on Carpathian Ruthenia.
• August 27 General Beck leaves office as Chief of the General Staff; he is replaced by General Franz Halder.
• August 28 – Lord Runciman's mission to mitigate the Sudetenland crisis begins to break down. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain recalls the British Ambassador Nevile Henderson from Berlin, to instruct Henderson to set up a personal meeting between Chamberlain and Hitler.
• August 31 – Winston Churchill, still believing France and Britain mean to honor their promises to defend Czechoslovakia against Nazi aggression, suggests in a personal note to Neville Chamberlain that His Majesty's Government may want to set up a broad international alliance including the United States (specifically mentioning U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as possibly receptive to the idea) and the Soviet Union.

September–October

• September – The European crisis over German demands for annexation of the Sudeten borderland of Czechoslovakia heats up.
• September 2 – Soviet Ambassador to Britain Ivan Maisky calls on Winston Churchill, to tell him that Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov has expressed to the French charge d'affaire in Moscow that the Soviet Union is willing to fight over the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia.
• September 4 – During the ceremony marking the unveiling of a plaque at Pointe de Grave, France celebrating Franco-American friendship, American Ambassador William Bullitt in a speech states, "France and the United States were united in war and peace", leading to much speculation in the press that if war did break out over Czechoslovakia, then the United States would join the war on the Allied side.
• September 5 – Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš invites mid-level representatives of the Sudeten Germans to the Hradcany palace, to tell them he will accept whatever demands they care to make, provided the Sudetenland remains part of the Republic of Czechoslovakia.
• September 6 – What eventually proves to be the last of the "Nuremberg Rallies" begins. It draws worldwide attention because it is widely assumed Hitler, in his closing remarks, will signal whether there will be peace with or war over Czechoslovakia.
• September 7 – The Times publishes a lead article which calls on Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Germany.
• September 9 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt disallows the popular interpretation of Bullitt’s speech at a press conference at the White House. Roosevelt states it is “100% wrong” the U.S. would join a “stop-Hitler bloc” under any circumstances, and makes it quite clear that in the event of German aggression against Czechoslovakia, the U.S. would remain neutral.
• September 10 – Hermann Göring, in a speech at Nuremberg, calls the Czechs a "miserable pygmy race" who are "harassing the human race." That same evening, Edvard Beneš, President of Czechoslovakia, makes a broadcast in which he appeals for calm.
• September 12 – Hitler makes his much-anticipated closing address at Nuremberg, in which he vehemently attacks the Czech people and President Beneš. American news commentator Hans von Kaltenborn begins his famous marathon of broadcast bulletins over the CBS Radio Network with a summation of Hitler's address.
• September 13 – The followers of Konrad Henlein begin an armed revolt against the Czechoslovak government in Sudetenland. Martial law is declared and after much bloodshed on both sides order is temporarily restored. Neville Chamberlain personally sends a telegram to Hitler urgently requesting that they both meet.
• September 15 – Neville Chamberlain arrives in Berchtesgaden to begin negotiations with Hitler over the Sudetenland.
• September 17 – Neville Chamberlain returns temporarily to London to confer with his cabinet.
• September 18 – During a meeting between Neville Chamberlain and the recently elected Premier of France, Édouard Daladier, and Daladier's Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, it becomes apparent that neither the English nor the French governments are prepared to go to war over the Sudetenland.
• September 21
  • In the early hours of the day, representatives of the French and British governments call on Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš to tell him France and Britain will not fight Hitler if he decides to annex the Sudetenland by force. Late in the afternoon the Czechoslovak government capitulates to the French and British demands.
  • Winston Churchill warns of grave consequences to European security if Czechoslovakia is partitioned. The same day, Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov makes a similar statement in the League of Nations.
  • The New England Hurricane of 1938 strikes Long Island and southern New England, killing over 300 along the Rhode Island shoreline and 600 altogether.
• September 22
  • Unable to survive the previous day's capitulation to the demands of the English and French governments, Czechoslovak premier Milan Hodža resigns. General Jan Syrovy takes his place.
  • Neville Chamberlain arrives in the city of Godesberg for another round of talks with Hitler over the Sudetenland crisis. Hitler raises his demands to include occupation of all German Sudeten territories by October 1. That night after a telephone conference, Chamberlain reverses himself and advises the Czechoslovaks to mobilize.
  • Olsen and Johnson's musical comedy revue Hellzapoppin' begins its 3-year run on Broadway.
• September 23 – The Czechoslovak army mobilizes.
• September 24 -
  • Sir Eric Phipps, British Ambassador to France, reports to London that "all that is best in France is against war, almost at any price", being opposed only by a "small, but noisy and corrupt, war group". Phipp's report creates major doubts about the ability and/or willingness of France to go to war.
  • At 1:30 AM, Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain conclude their talks on the Sudetenland. Chamberlain agrees to take Hitler's demands, codified in the Godesberg Memorandum, personally to the Czech Government. The Czech Government rejects the demands, as does Chamberlain's own cabinet. The French Government also initially rejects the terms and orders a partial mobilizaton of the French army.
• September 26 – In a vitriolic speech at Berlin's Sportpalast, Hitler defies the world and implies war with Czechoslovakia will begin at any time.
• September 28 – As his self-imposed October 1 deadline for occupation of the Sudetenland approaches, Adolf Hitler invites Italian Duce Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edourd Deladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to one last conference in Munich. The Czechs themselves are not invited.
• September 29
  • Colonel Graham Christie, assistant British military attaché in Berlin, is informed by Carl Friedrich Goerdeler that the mobilization of the Royal Navy has badly damaged the popularity of the Nazi regime, as the German public realizes that Fall Grün is likely to cause a world war.
  • Munich Agreement: German, Italian, British and French leaders agree to German demands regarding annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak government is largely excluded from the negotiations and is not a signatory to the agreement.
  • The Republic of Hatay is declared in Syria
• September 30 – Neville Chamberlain returns to Britain from meeting with Adolf Hitler and declares "Peace In Our Time".
• October – The Japanese Imperial Army largely overruns Canton.
• October 1 – German troops march into the Sudetenland. The Polish government gives the Czech government an ultimatum stating that Zaolzie region must be handed over within twenty-four hours. The Czechs have little choice but to comply.
• October 2
  • Tiberias massacre: Arabs murder 20 Jews.
  • Disgusted with Neville Chamberlain's conduct at Munich, Duff Cooper resigns his post as First Lord of the Admiralty. With his resignation, formal debate begins in Parliament on the Munich Agreement, but with Chamberlain at the peak of his popularity, there can be little doubt His Majesty's Government will receive a vote of confidence.
• October 4 – The Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War begin withdrawing their foreign volunteers from combat as agreed on July 5.
• October 5 – Edvard Beneš, president of Czechoslovakia, resigns.
• October 10 – The Blue Water Bridge opens, connecting Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario.
• 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 18 The German government expels 12,000 Polish Jews living in Germany; the Polish government accepts 4,000 and refuses admittance to the remaining 8,000, who are forced to live in the no-man’s land on the German-Polish frontier.
• October 21 – In direct contravention of the recently signed Munich Agreement, Hitler circulates among his high command a secret memorandum stating that they should prepare for the "liquidation of the rest of Czechoslovakia" and the occupation of Memel.
• October 24
  • The minimum wage is established by law in the United States.
  • French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet carries out a major purge of the Qui d'Orsay, sacking or exiling a number of anti-appeasement officials such as Pierre Comert and René Massigli.
  • At a "friendly luncheon" in Berchtesgaden, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop tells Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Germany, that the Free City of Danzig must return to Germany, that the Germans must be given extraterritorial rights in the Polish Corridor, and that Poland must sign the Anti-Comintern Pact.
• October 27 – Du Pont announces a name for its new synthetic yarn: "nylon".
• October 30 – Orson Welles's radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds is broadcast, causing panic in various parts of the United States.
• October 31 – Great Depression: In an effort to try restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a 15-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public.

November–December

• November 1 – Horse Racing: Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral by four lengths in their famous match race at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.
• November 4 – At a public meeting in Epping, Winston Churchill narrowly survives an attempt by fellow Conservative and constituent Sir Colin Thornton-Kemsley to remove him from Parliament.
• November 7 Ernst vom Rath, the Third Secretary at the German Embassy in Paris, is assassinated by Herschel Grynszpan.
• November 9 – Holocaust – Kristallnacht: In Germany, the "night of broken glass" begins as Nazi activists and sympathizers loot and burn Jewish businesses (the all night affair sees 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned, 91 Jews killed, and at least 25,000 Jewish men arrested).
• November 10 – On the eve of Armistice Day, Kate Smith sings Irving Berlin's God Bless America for the first time on her weekly radio show.
• November 12 – French Finance Minister Paul Reynaud brings into effect a series of laws aiming to undo the economic and social laws of the Popular Front.
• November 13- The people of New York City hold a fruit tasting contest held by managers.
• November 16 – The first reported "attack" of The Halifax Slasher mass hysteria incident.
• November 18 – Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
• November 25 French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet informs Léon Noel, the French Ambassador to Poland, that France should find an excuse for terminating the 1921 Franco-Polish alliance.
• November 30
  • The Czechoslovak parliament elects Emil Hácha as the new president of Czechoslovakia.
  • Benito Mussolini and his Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano order "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, demanding that France cede Tunisia, Nice, Corsica and French Somaliland to Italy. This begins an acute crisis in Franco-Italian relations that lasts until March 1939.
  • Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader of the Romanian fascist Iron Guard, is murdered on the orders of King Carol II. Officially, Codreanu and the 13 other Iron Guard leaders are "shot while trying to escape".
  • A general strike is called in France by the French Communist Party to protest the laws of November 12.
• December – President Roosevelt agrees to loan $25 million to Chiang Kai-shek, cementing the Sino-American relationship and angering the Japanese government.
• December 6 – German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop visits Paris, where he is allegedly informed by French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet that France now recognizes all of Eastern Europe as being in Germany’s exclusive sphere of influence. Bonnet's alleged statement (Bonnet always denied making the remark) to Ribbentrop is a major factor in German policy in 1939.
• December 11 – Kingdom of Yugoslavia parliamentary election: The opposition gains votes but not seats.
• December 13 – The Neuengamme concentration camp opens near Hamburg.
• December 16 – MGM releases its successful film version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. The film is originally intended to star Lionel Barrymore as Ebenezer Scrooge, but Barrymore, ill with arthritis, is replaced by Reginald Owen.
• December 23 – A coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct, is caught off the coast of South Africa near Chalumna River.
• December 27 – A massive avalanche of snow hits a construction worker dormitory site in Kurobe, Japan, killing 87.

Undated

• In West Java, Daeng Soetigna tunes the traditional angklung to play the diatonic scale.
• Adolf Hitler is Time Magazine's "Man of the Year", an award that usually goes to the most influential person of the year.
• The Walther P38 pistol is introduced in Germany.
• The first cartoon to feature a prototypical Bugs Bunny, Porky's Hare Hunt, is released.
• The Schomburgk's Deer becomes extinct by this date.
• Family plots produce 22% of all Soviet agricultural produce on only 4% of all cultivated land.
• Women are limited by law to a maximum of 10% of the better-paying jobs in industry and government in Italy.

Ongoing

• Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
• Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).
• The Great Depression (1929 – Late 1930s, Early 1940s)

Births

1938 in other calendars

Gregorian calendar	1938 MCMXXXVIII
Ab urbe condita	2691
Armenian calendar	1387 ԹՎ ՌՅՁԷ
Bahá'í calendar	94 – 95
Berber calendar	2888
Buddhist calendar	2482
Burmese calendar	1300
Byzantine calendar	7446 – 7447
Chinese calendar	丁丑年十一月三十日 (4574/4634-11-30) — to — 戊寅年十一月初十日 (4575/4635-11-10)
Coptic calendar	1654 – 1655
Ethiopian calendar	1930 – 1931
Hebrew calendar	5698 – 5699
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1993 – 1994
- Shaka Samvat	1860 – 1861
- Kali Yuga	5039 – 5040
Holocene calendar	11938
Iranian calendar	1316 – 1317
Islamic calendar	1356 – 1357
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 13 (昭和13年)
Korean calendar	4271
Thai solar calendar	2481
v • d • e

January–February

• January 1
  • Robert Jankel, British coachbuilder (d. 2005)
  • Frank Langella, American actor
• January 2 – Hans Herbjørnsrud, Norwegian author
  • Ian Brady, British serial killer
  • Goh Kun, Mayor of Seoul
• January 5 – King Juan Carlos I of Spain
• January 6 – Mario Rodríguez Cobos, Silo, Argentine author and spiritual guide
• January 7 – Roland Topor, French illustrator (d. 1997)
• January 8 – Bob Eubanks, American game show host
• January 10
  • Donald Knuth, American mathematician and computer scientist
  • Willie McCovey, American baseball player
• January 11 – Fischer Black, American economist (d. 1995)
• January 12
  • Noel McNamara, Australian justice campaigner and commentator
  • Lewis Fiander, Australian actor
• January 13 – Shivkumar Sharma, Indian musician
• January 14 – Jack Jones, American singer and actor
• January 17 – John Bellairs, American writer
• January 18 – Curt Flood, American baseball player (d. 1997)
• January 20 – Derek Dougan, Northern Irish footballer (d. 2007)
• January 21 – Wolfman Jack, American disc-jockey and actor (d. 1995)
• January 23 – Georg Baselitz, German painter and sculptor
• January 25
  • Etta James, American singer
  • Vladimir Vysotsky, Russian singer-songwriter, poet, actor (d. 1980)
• January 31 – Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands
• February 1 – Sherman Hemsley, American comedian and actor
• February 2 – Max Alvis, American baseball player
• February 8 – Prentice Gautt, American football player
• February 11
  • Bevan Congdon, New Zealand cricketer
  • Simone de Oliveira, Portuguese actress and singer
  • Manuel Noriega, Panamanian general and dictator
• February 12 – Judy Blume, American author
• February 13 – Oliver Reed, English actor (d. 1999)
• February 14 – Lee Chamberlin, American film and television actress
• February 18 – Istvan Szabo, Hungarian director
• February 19 – René Muñoz, Cuban actor, screenwriter of telenovelas and the cinema of Mexico (d. 2000)
• February 24
  • James Farentino, American actor
  • Phil Knight, American sportswear entrepreneur
• February 25 – Herb Elliott, Australian runner
• February 27 – Jake Thackray, English singer-songwriter (d. 2002)

March–April

• March 4
  • Don Perkins, American football player
  • Angus MacLise, original drummer for the Velvet Underground (d. 1979)
• March 7
  • David Baltimore, American biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
  • Janet Guthrie, American race car driver
• March 13 – Erma Franklin, American singer (d. 2002)
• March 17
  • Rudolf Nureyev, Russian-born dancer and choreographer (d. 1993)
  • Keith Michael Patrick O'Brien, Northern Irish clergyman
• March 18 – Charley Pride, American baseball player and country musician
• March 23 – Maynard Jackson, American mayor of Atlanta, Georgia (d. 2003)
• March 25 – Hoyt Axton, American actor and country music singer-songwriter
• March 26 – Anthony James Leggett, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• March 31 – Joel Godard, American announcer
• April 1 – John Quade, American actor
• April 2 – John Larsson, the 17th General of The Salvation Army
• April 3 – Jeff Barry, American record producer and songwriter
• April 4 – A. Bartlett Giamatti, American president of Yale University and baseball commissioner (d. 1989)
• April 7 – Freddie Hubbard, American jazz trumpeter
• April 8 – Kofi Annan, Ghanaian Secretary General of the United Nations, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• April 10
  • Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russian politician
  • Don Meredith, American football player and broadcaster
• April 11
  • Michael Deaver, Reagan Administration Deputy White House Chief of Staff (d. 2007)
  • Kurt Moll, German bass
• April 12 – Roger Caron, Canadian author
• April 15 – Claudia Cardinale, Tunisian-born Italian actress
• April 17 – Kerry Wendell Thornley, American counterculture figure, writer, and co-founder of Discordianism
• April 22
  • Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Palestinian chairman of TAGorg
  • Adam Raphael, English journalist and editor
  • Issey Miyake, Japanese fashion designer
• April 26
  • Duane Eddy, American musician
  • Maurice Williams, American musician
• April 29 – Larry Niven, American author

May–June

• May 2 – Paramount Chief Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho (d. 1996)
• May 17 – Jason Bernard, American actor (d. 1996)
• May 22 – Richard Benjamin, American actor
• May 26
  • William Bolcom, American composer
  • Teresa Stratas, Canadian soprano
  • Pauline Parker, New Zealand murderess
• May 28 – Jerry West, American basketball player and executive
• May 31 – Johnny PayCheck, American country singer (d. 2003)
• May 31 – Peter Yarrow, American singer
• June 5 – Karin Balzer, German athlete
• June 6 – Prince Luís of Orléans-Braganza, pretender to the Brazilian throne
• June 7 – Goose Gonsoulin, American football player
• June 12 – Tom Oliver, Australian actor
• June 15 – Billy Williams, American baseball player
• June 16 – James Bolam, British actor
• June 19
  • Wahoo McDaniel, American football player and professional wrestler (d. 2002)
  • Ian Smith, Australian actor
• June 28 – Moy Yat, Chinese martial artist

July–August

• July 3 – Bolo Yeung, Hong Kong actor
• July 4 – Bill Withers, American singer and songwriter
• July 6 – Tony Lewis, English cricketer
• July 6 – Luana Patten, American Actress (d. 1996)
• July 12 – Wieger Mensonides, Dutch swimmer
• July 18 – Paul Verhoeven, Dutch film director
• July 19 – Jayant Narlikar, Indian astrophysicist
• July 20
  • Natalie Wood, American actress (d. 1981)
  • Diana Rigg, English actress
  • Roger Hunt, English footballer
• July 23
  • Juliet Anderson, American actress
  • Bert Newton, Australian actor and television show host
• July 24 – Eugene J. Martin, American painter, artist
• July 27 – Gary Gygax, American author and game designer (d. 2008)
• July 28 – Alberto Fujimori, President of Peru
• July 29 – Peter Jennings, Canadian-born television news reporter (d. 2005)
• August 3 – Terry Wogan, British/Irish TV and radio broadcaster
• August 8 – Connie Stevens, American actress and singer
• August 9
  • Ezola B. Foster, American U.S. Vice Presidential Candidate
  • Rod Laver, Australian tennis player
  • Leonid Kuchma, former President of Ukraine
• August 15 – Janusz A. Zajdel, Polish writer
• August 16 – Bill Masterton, Canadian hockey player (d. 1968)
• August 19 – Diana Muldaur, American actress
• August 20 – Alain Vivien, French politician
• August 21 – Kenny Rogers, American country singer
• August 22 – Paul Maguire, American football player
• August 24
  • Halldór Blöndal, Icelandic politician
  • David Freiberg, American musician (Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Starship)
• August 28
  • Maurizio Costanzo, Italian television news reporter
  • Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada
• August 29 – Robert Rubin, American banker who served as the 70th United States Secretary of the Treasury
• August 31 – Martin Bell, British journalist and politician

September–October

• September 1 – Per Kirkeby, Danish artist
• September 2
  • Clarence Felder, American actor
  • Giuliano Gemma, Italian actor
• September 3 – Ryoji Noyori, Japanese chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• September 8 – Kenichi Horie, Japanese adventurer
• September 10
  • David Hamilton, British radio and TV personality
  • Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer and photographer
• September 13 – John Smith, Scottish politician (d. 1994)
• September 18 – Poornachandra Tejaswi, Kannada writer (d. 2007)
• September 22 – Gene Mingo, American football player
• September 23 – Tom Lester, American actor and evangelist
• September 25 – Jonathan Motzfeldt, Prime Minister of Greenland
• September 28 – Ben E. King, American singer
• September 29 – Wim Kok, Dutch politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1994 until 2002
• October 3 – Eddie Cochran, American rock 'n' roll singer (d. 1960)
• October 4 – Kurt Wüthrich, Swiss chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• October 9 – Heinz Fischer, Austrian politician
• October 14
  • Farah Diba, Empress of Iran
  • Ron Lancaster, Canadian Football League quarterback and coach
• October 15 – Fela Kuti, Nigerian musician and activist (d. 1997)
• October 16 – Carl Gunter Jr, Louisiana State Representative (d. 1999)
• October 17 – Evel Knievel, American motorcycle daredevil (d. 2007)
• October 20 – Iain Macmillan, Abbey Road photographer (d. 2006)
• October 22 – Christopher Lloyd, American actor
• October 23 – H. John Heinz III, U.S. Senator (d. 1991)
• October 28 – Anne Perry, English-born novelist
• October 29
  • Ralph Bakshi, Israeli cartoonist, film director, and video producer
  • Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia

November–December

• November 2 – Patrick Joseph Buchanan, American conservative journalist and Presidential candidate
• November 5
  • Joe Dassin, French singer (d. 1980)
  • Enéas Carneiro, Brazilian politician (d. 2007)
• November 6
  • Mack Jones, American baseball player (d. 2004)
  • Dumitru Rusu, Romanian painter
• November 13 – Jean Seberg, American actress (d. 1979)
• November 16 – Robert Nozick, American philosopher (d. 2002)
• November 17 – Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk singer
• November 19 – Ted Turner, American entrepreneur
• November 26 – Porter J. Goss, American politician and Central Intelligence Agency director
• December 2 – Luis Artime, Argentine footballer
• December 4
  • Andre V. Marrou, U.S. Presidential candidate
  • Yvonne Minton, Australian soprano
• December 5 – J. J. Cale, American singer
• December 8 – Ken Delo, American singer
• December 12 – Connie Francis, American singer and actress
• December 15 – Billy Shaw, American football player
• December 16
  • Liv Ullmann, Norwegian actress
  • Frank Deford, American sportswriter
• December 17
  • Peter Snell, New Zealand athlete
  • Carlo Little, British drummer (d. 2005)
• December 20 – John Harbison, American composer
• December 23 – Bob Kahn, American Internet pioneer
• December 24 – Bobby Henrich, American baseball player
• December 25 – Duane Armstrong, American painter
• December 28 – Lagumot Harris, Nauruan politician and former President (d. 1999)
• December 29 – Jon Voight, American actor

Date unknown

• Neila Sathyalingam, Singaporean classical Indian dancer, choreographer and instructor

Deaths

January–June

• January 8 – Johnny Gruelle, American cartoonist and children's book author (b. 1880)
• January 20 – Émile Cohl, French caricaturist and animator (b. 1857)
• January 21 – Georges Méliès, French film director (b. 1861)
• January 28 – Bernd Rosemeyer, German racing driver (b. 1909)
• February 2 – Frederick William Vanderbilt, American railway magnate (b. 1856)
• February 7 – Harvey Firestone, American tire manufacturer (b. 1868)
• February 10 – Richard A. Whiting, American composer (b. 1890)
• February 18 – David King Udall, American politician (b. 1851)
• February 19 – Edmund Landau, German mathematician (b. 1877)
• March 1 – Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian writer, war hero, and politician (b. 1863)
• March 2 – Ben Harney, American composer and pianist (b. 1871)
• March 12 – Lyda Roberti, Polish actress (b. 1906)
• March 13
  • Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, Soviet politician (b. 1888)
  • Clarence Darrow, American attorney (b. 1857)
• March 21 – Oscar Apfel, American actor and director (b. 1878)
• April 8 – Joe "King" Oliver, American jazz musician (b. 1885)
• April 12 – Feodor Chaliapin, Russian bass (b. 1873)
• April 14 – Gillis Grafstrom, Swedish figure skater (b. 1893)
• April 16 – Steve Bloomer, English footballer (b. 1874)
• April 21 – Allama Iqbal, Indian philosopher and poet (b. 1877)
• April 25 – Aleksander Świętochowski, Polish writer (b. 1849)
• April 26 – Edmund Husserl, Austrian philosopher (b. 1859)
• May 4 – Carl von Ossietzky, German pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1889)
• May 9 – Thomas B. Thrige, Danish industrialist (b. 1866)
• May 13 – Charles Edouard Guillaume, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1861)
• May 22 – William Glackens, American painter (b. 1870)
• May 26 – John Jacob Abel, American pharmacologist (b. 1857)
• June 15 – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German painter (b. 1880)
• June 26 – James Weldon Johnson, American author and politician (b. 1871)

July–December

November 10 : Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

• July 4
  • Otto Bauer, Austrian Social Democratic politician (b. 1881)
  • Suzanne Lenglen, French tennis champion (b. 1899)
• July 9 – Benjamin N. Cardozo, United States Supreme Court Justice (b. 1870)
• July 17 – Robert Wiene, German director (b. 1873)
• August 1 – Edmund Charles Tarbell, American artist (b. 1862)
• August 4 – Pearl White, American actress (b. 1889)
• August 6 – Warner Oland, Swedish actor (b. 1879)
• August 7 – Constantin Stanislavski, Russian theatre practitioner (b. 1863)
• August 14 – Hugh Trumble, Australian test cricketer (b. 1876)
• August 16 – Robert Johnson, American blues singer (b. 1911)
• August 29 – Bela Kun, Hungarian Communist leader (b. 1886)
• September 1 – Nikolai Bryukhanov, Soviet statesman and political figure who served as People's Commissar of Finances (b. 1878)
• September 15 – Thomas Wolfe, American author (b. 1900)
• September 17 – Bruno Jasieński, Polish poet (b. 1901)
• September 19 – Pauline Frederick, American stage & screen actress, (b. 1883)
• September 25 – Paul Olaf Bodding, Norwegian missionary to India and creator of the Santali latin alphabet (b. 1865)
• September 28 – Con Conrad, American composer (b. 1891)
• October 2 – Alexandru Averescu, Romanian soldier and politician (b. 1859)
• October 13 – E.C. Segar, American comics artist and creator of Popeye
• October 17 – Karl Kautsky, Austrian Marxist theoretician (b. 1854)
• October 22 – May Irwin, Canadian actress and singer (b. 1862)
• October 24 – Ernst Barlach, German sculptor and poet (b. 1870)
• October 27
  • Lascelles Abercrombie, English poet and critic (b. 1881)
  • Alma Gluck, American soprano (b. 1884)
• October 28 – Fred Kohler, American actor (b. 1888)
• October 30 – Robert Woolsey, American film comedian (b. 1888)
• November 9
  • Vasily Blyukher, Soviet military commander (b. 1889)
  • Ernst vom Rath, German diplomat (b. 1909)
• November 10 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, President of Turkey (b. 1881)
• November 20 – Maud of Wales, queen of Haakon VII of Norway (b. 1869)
• November 30 – Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Romanian fascist, leader of the Iron Guard (executed along other Guard activists) (b. 1899)
• December 11 – Christian Lous Lange, Norwegian pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1869)
• December 20 – Annie Armstrong, American missionary leader (b. 1850)
• December 25 – Karel Čapek, Czech author (b. 1890)
• December 28 – Florence Lawrence, Canadian actress (b. 1886)

Nobel Prizes

• Physics – Enrico Fermi
• Chemistry – Richard Kuhn
• Physiology or Medicine – Corneille Jean François Heymans
• Literature – Pearl S. Buck
• Peace – Nansen International Office For Refugees, Geneva

References

1. ^ "Daily Pilot - Serving Newport Beach & Costa Mesa, California". Archived from the original on 2009-05-20. http://www.webcitation.org/5gujSnck0. Retrieved 2009-05-18. 

External links

• The 1930s Timeline: 1938 – from American Studies Programs at The University of Virginia
• 1938 Coin Pictures

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1938

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