1939

1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940

political events

A mutual nonaggression pact signed at Moscow August 23 stuns the world by effecting a rapprochement between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Adolf Hitler has taken over the rest of Czechoslovakia, occupying Bohemia and Moravia (see 1938), and has annexed Memel. Britain's Military Training (Conscription) Act has received royal assent May 26; an Anglo-French mission has arrived at Moscow August 4 to discuss cooperative action against Hitler but is far too late: Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, 46, signs the agreement, as does Josef Stalin's new commissar of foreign affairs V. M. Molotov, now 49, who has replaced the Polish-born Maxim Litvinov May 1; the British sign a pact with Poland August 25 pledging aid in the event of an attack on the Poles. The Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact (Hitler-Stalin pact) contains secret protocols providing for a Soviet takeover of the Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (see 1940).

World War II begins September 1 as German troops and aircraft attack Poland, bombing Warsaw and using well-armored Czech-built tanks to supplement their less substantial German-made machines. Hitler has demanded August 26 that the Poles cede Danzig (whose population is largely German) and mutual assistance pacts with Britain and France be scrapped. The French have evacuated 16,000 children from Paris August 30 in anticipation of the conflict and Paris declares martial law September 1. Britain begins evacuating city children to the countryside, billeting them in the homes of volunteers for the duration (see Children's Overseas Reception Board, 1940). Polish forces who resist the German invasion are quickly overpowered, but some 20 Polish mathematicians have been working to break down the secret German "Enigma" code (see 1938); one of them, Marian Rejewski, has found the key to deciphering the complicated machine-based code, he has offered it to the French and they have shown little interest, but London-based Canadian business tycoon (and World War I RAF ace) William S. Stephenson hears of the coding machine before the German invasion and he alerts British intelligence. The Germans issue new sets of instructions each day on how to set up the wiring for their transmitters and receivers, and it will take the British months even to begin to penetrate Enigma's complexities (see 1940).

Britain and France declare war on Germany September 3, honoring pledges to support Poland, and 10 hours later a German U-boat commander sinks the 13,581-ton Cunard liner Athenia west of Scotland, believing her to be an armed merchant cruiser. She has been carrying evacuees from Liverpool to Canada, the destroyers H.M.S. Electra, Escort, and Fame pick up survivors, as do the freighters City of Flint and Southern Cross, but 118 of the 1,103 passengers and crew from the Athenia are lost, including 28 of the 316 Americans aboard. Adolf Hitler gives orders September 4 that no more passenger ships are to be attacked under any circumstances (but see 1940).

French troops cross into the Saarland September 4 (Britain, like Germany, has since last year been spending 15 percent of her Gross National Product on armaments, but Britain's GNP is larger than Germany's).

Krupp of Essen increases its output of tanks to meet the needs of the Wehrmacht (see 1933). In the next 5½ years it will provide a continuing supply of munitions and armaments, moving entire factories from occupied countries back to Germany, using the labor of more than 100,000 concentration camp inmates (of whom an estimated 70,000 will die), building submarines in the Netherlands, and developing new weapons that will be tested in Sweden.

President Roosevelt declares U.S. neutrality September 5; former president Herbert Hoover spearheads a U.S. nonintervention movement with support from Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Sen. Harry F. Byrd (D. Va.), Sen. William Borah (R. Idaho), Sen. Burton K. Wheeler (R. Mont.), Henry Ford, and Charles A. Lindbergh. Lindbergh makes his first anti-intervention speech on U.S. radio September 17, arguing that Stalin is as much to be feared as Hitler (see 1940; America First, 1941).

Two torpedoes from a German submarine 350 miles west of Lands End hit the 22,500-ton converted British escort carrier H.M.S. Courageous September 17; the first Royal Navy casualty of the war, she goes down in 15 minutes, killing 576 men, including 26 from the Fleet Air Arm and 36 RAF servicing crewmen.

Soviet troops invade Poland from the east September 17, Warsaw surrenders to the Germans September 27, and Poland is partitioned September 28 between Germany and the USSR.

Hungary's pro-fascist, anti-Semitic premier Béla Imrédy resigns February 16 following revelations by the opposition that he himself is of Jewish descent. Minister of education Gróf Pál Teleki, 59, becomes premier and works to dissolve the country's various fascist parties while permitting anti-Semitic laws to stand. A delegate to the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, Teleki has advocated a revision of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon and supported last year's dismemberment of Czechslovakia in hopes of gaining German help to recover territories lost under terms of that treaty. Former premier Kálman Darányi dies at his native Budapest November 1 at age 53.

London and Paris recognize Spain's Franco regime February 28, and the Spanish civil war ends March 28 with the fall of Madrid to Generalissimo Franco. The Second Republic's president Manuel Azaña y Díaz goes into exile in France, Germany and Italy withdraw their forces by late June, and Spain will be neutral in the new European war, having lost upwards of 410,000 in battle or by execution (more than 200,000 have died of starvation, disease, or malnutrition, and some estimates put the total dead at well over 1 million).

Italian forces invade Albania April 7. Victor Emmanuel III has called Benito Mussolini's plan to take over the Balkan nation an unnecessary risk, but Mussolini has demanded that Kong Zog accept occupation in an ultimatum delivered March 25, his troops easily overcome Albanian resistance, the king flees with his family to Greece, and Mussolini sets up a puppet government headed by the richest man in Albania. Brussels-educated law teacher Enver Hoxha, 30, loses his teaching post for refusing to join the newly-organized Albanian Fascist Party and opens a tobacco shop at Tiranë (see 1941).

Romania's premier Armand Calinescu resists his country's Iron Guard, there are reports that he plans to set the Ploesti oil fields ablaze to keep then out of fascist hands, but assassins from Germany kill him at Bucharest September 21 at age 46 (see 1940).

A British expeditionary force of 158,000 is in France by late September. "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," says Winston Churchill in a radio broadcast October 1. Churchill has been first lord of the admiralty since September 3 and has set up the Special Operations Executive "to set Europe ablaze" through sabotage and subversion (see 1940).

The Sten (submachine) gun issued to British Commonwealth troops fires at a rate of 550 rounds per minute (see Bren gun, 1937), but its 32-round box magazine tends to jam if more than 30 rounds are loaded. It weighs just over six pounds unloaded, is 30 inches long, has a 7½-inch barrel, and its readily removable steel-frame butt makes it easy to hide. Hundreds of thousands of the weapons will be distributed to Europe's underground resistance forces in the next few years.

Three torpedoes from a U-boat hit the 31,200-ton Royal Navy battleship H.M.S. Royal Oak at her moorings in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands October 14; the first British capital ship to be lost in the war, she rolls over and sinks within 15 minutes, 391 men of her 1,234-man crew are saved, but the 833 killed include her commander and 24 officers.

British intelligence director Sir Hugh Sinclair dies November 4 at age 66, having used his own money to set up the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park in 1919 and headed SIS (later M16) since 1923.

A new Neutrality Act adopted by Congress November 4 contains a "cash and carry" formula devised by presidential adviser Bernard Baruch that permits belligerent nations to buy U.S. arms and strategic materials if they pay in cash and transport the material in their own ships (see 1937; 1941).

Belgian World War I hero Adolphe Max dies at Brussels November 6 at age 69, still burgomaster of his native city.

Iraq's king Ghazi I is killed in an auto accident April 4 in Switzerland at age 26 (see 1936). Official accounts say the king was drinking, but the country has had seven military coups in this decade, and Iraqi nationalists say the British arranged the accident; the British consul is stoned to death in the ensuing riots at Mosul. Ghazi is succeeded by his 3-year-old son, who will reign until 1958 as Faisal II (see 1941).

Former Iraqi administrative inspector Gen. John B. Glubb of Transjordan's Arab Legion becomes commander of Jordan's internal police force, which he joined in 1930 as a brigadier. Now 42, he will transform the Legion into a disciplined army that will see action in support of the Allies in the war.

A British White Paper issued in May by London effectively repudiates the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration of 1917 (see 1938). Britain has ruled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate since 1922. While the White Paper does authorize admission of 25,000 Jewish refugees, it limits admissions of Jews to 50,000 for the next 5 years, envisioning the establishment of an independent nation that will be predominantly Arab with Jewish immigration restricted; immigration is to cease completely by 1944 (see 1941).

Turkey signs a mutual assistance pact with Britain and France at Ankara October 19 and receives the Syrian province that includes Antioch, which the Turks will call Antakya.

The Women's Royal Navy Service (WRNS) recruits 3,400 "Wrens" by November to serve in antiaircraft batteries and naval command centers. The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women's branch of the British Army, has 24,000 women aged 18 to 35, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), which is linked to the RAF, 8,800 (it has raised its age limit to 50 for women with experience in radar plotting of enemy aircraft), and nursing services 8,000. Some 25,000 women have registered for the Women's Land Army and recruiting has been suspended. Women in all the uniformed services find to their dismay that they have been assigned mostly to menial positions such as cooking, cleaning, and clerical work, but many are pressed into use as drivers and mechanics. The Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence (WVS) founded last year by the Marchioness of Reading has had 500,000 volunteers.

Stalin renounces a Finno-Soviet nonaggression pact November 28 and demands that Finland turn over some territory to safeguard approaches to Leningrad and Murmansk from possible German control, but the Finns refuse. Soviet troops invade Finland November 30, and Soviet planes bomb Helsinki and Viipuri. Former prime minister Väinö Tanner, now 58, becomes foreign minister and supports his government's hard line against Soviet demands. The Finns put up a spirited defense, and their successes expose the vulnerability of the Red Army; Stalin dismisses the general in charge December 23 (see 1940).

Siam's dictator Luang Phibunsongkhram changes his nation's name to Thailand (see 1938; 1940; 1946).

India's British viceroy Linlithgow declares war without consulting India's political leaders. The provincial ministries in Congress resign in protest, and nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose is imprisoned for civil disobedience (see 1938); put under house arrest to await trial, he escapes, makes his way to Berlin by way of Peshawar and Afghanistan, and asks Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to support him in an invasion aimed at ousting the British from India. Bose makes propaganda broadcasts to Britain and India, but although he receives permission to organize prisoners of war into an Indian Legion the legion's command and training remain in German hands (see 1942; Bose, 1943).

Tokyo scraps the anti-Comintern pact of 1936 at news of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact, protesting the German action. Manchurian and Mongolian forces have been fighting since May in a conflict between Soviet Russia and Japan; Japan has taken the international treaty port of Shautou (Swatow) June 21, and Soviet and Mongolian troops have decisively beaten the Japanese August 20 in the Battle of Nomonhan; most of the best Soviet officers have been liquidated in Stalinist purges, but tank commander Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, 43, has survived and defeats the Japanese 6th Army in Outer Mongolia. Former Chinese warlord Wu Peifu dies at Beijing (Peking) December 4 at age 66.

Former Cuban president Gerardo Machado y Morales dies in exile at Miami Beach March 29 at age 67.

Peru has a presidential election in December that ends in victory for Lima banker Manuel Prado Ugarteche, 50, who has been supported by the Apristas. He succeeds Gen. Oscar Benavides and will serve until 1945, supporting the Allies in the war with the Axis powers.

A federal court convicts veteran Kansas City Democratic Party political boss Thomas J. (Joseph) Pendergast, 66, of evading taxes on an income of $443,550 (allegedly including a $315,000 bribe accepted from some fire-insurance companies for siding with them in a rate-increase dispute). Pendergast has run the city's political machine for nearly 25 years; he will serve a year and a day in a federal prison.

The Hatch Act (Federal Corruption Practices Act) passed by Congress August 2 bars U.S. federal employees from taking an active role in political campaigns (see Corrupt Practices Act, 1925). The purpose of the measure is to "prevent pernicious political activities," keep party politics out of government agencies, and prevent a return to the spoils system (see Pendelton Act, 1883); the coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats that has pushed through the bill will adopt another bill early next year restricting political activity on the part of many state employees (see 1940).

Onetime U.S. opera singer Helen Douglas (née Gahagan), 38, becomes chair of the John Steinbeck Committee to Aid Migratory Workers. Wife of Hollywood actor Melvyn Douglas, the Boonton, N.J.-born beauty resigns in September as U.S. communists begin objecting to the anti-fascist stands of liberal organizations. Douglas writes to her friend Congressman H. Jerry Voorhis that she finds herself "in the absurd position . . . of most liberals today. The communists call us reactionary and the reactionaries call us communists" (see 1944).

The U.S. submarine Squalus sinks in about 250 feet of water off Hampton Beach, N.H., May 23, drowning 26 of the 59 men aboard when a valve fails to close (the 33 others remain alive through the efforts of a crewman who keeps the forward compartment relatively dry by shutting a watertight door, some escape by using artificial lungs devised by naval officer Charles Momsen, the others by using a diving bell, or rescue chamber); the British submarine Thetis sinks in Liverpool Bay June 1, killing 99.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler dies at Washington, D.C., November 16 at age 73. The most reactionary member of the court, he has consistently opposed progressive taxes, welfare legislation, and efforts to limit the freedom of large corporations; he has refused to resign.

The Battle of the River Plate December 13 off the South American coast ends with the British cruiser H.M.S. Exeter sustaining heavy damage from the 11-inch guns of the German cruiser (or pocket battleship) Graf Spee, whose guns can fire 670-pound shells 17 miles and whose catapult-launched plane can spot prey. The Exeter's sister cruisers H.M.S. Ajax, commanded by Admiral Charles Woodhouse, 46, and H.M.N.Z.S. Achilles attack the Graf Spee from both sides, making it impossible for her to fight them both off, and drive her into Montevideo Harbor. International law requires that a warship leave any neutral port within 72 hours; the Graf Spee's captain is persuaded by false radio reports that a superior British force is about to arrive, has his crew transferred to other vessels, and orders the ship scuttled in the harbor December 17 to keep her advanced technology from falling into British hands (when he learns that he has been tricked he will commit suicide).

A U.S. Army test pilot takes off from San Diego's Lindbergh Field December 29 in a prototype B-24 bomber. Built by Consolidated Aircraft and powered by four 1,200-horsepower Pratt & Whitney engines, the low-altitude bomber is 67 feet long, has a 110-foot wingspan, weighs 36,500 pounds empty, can reach a speed of 290 miles per hour at 25,000 feet but has a cruising speed of 215 mph, a range of 2,100 miles, and the first tricycle landing gear to be installed on a heavy operational aircraft. The B-24 Liberator is slightly smaller than the B-17 Flying Fortress and will be mass produced from late 1941 through May 1945, not only by Consolidated (at Fort Worth as well as at San Diego), Ford Motor Company (at Willow Run), Douglas Aircraft (at Tulsa), and North American Aviation (at Dallas), with a total of 18,188 coming off the assembly lines.

human rights, social justice

German foreign minister von Ribbentrop sends a circular to diplomatic and consular offices January 25 under the title "The Jewish Question, a Factor in Our Foreign Policy for 1938": "It is not by chance that 1938, the year of our destiny, saw the realization of our plan for Greater Germany as well as a major step towards the solution of the Jewish problem . . . The spread of Jewish influence and its corruption of our political, economic, and cultural life has perhaps done more to undermine the German people's will to prevail than all the hostility shown us by the Allied powers since the Great War. This disease in the body of our people had first to be eradicated before the Great German Reich could assemble its forces in 1938 to overcome the will of the world." Adolf Hitler gives a speech January 30 spelling out the fate that he sees in store for Europe's Jews.

The S.S. St. Louis of the Hamburg-Amerika Line leaves Hamburg May 13 with 937 Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression and is the last major shipload to leave before the war begins. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has approved the passenger list, all passengers hold seemingly valid Cuban visas, but only about 25 are allowed to debark at Havana. The United States accepts 25,957 German immigrants per year under the Immigration Act of 1924, State Department official Breckinridge Long believes he is carrying out administration policy when he refuses admittance to those whom he considers to be radicals and possible foreign agents (see 1940), and the St. Louis heads back for Germany; Britain, France, Belgium, and Holland agree at the last moment to admit the refugees, more than 600 of whom will die in the next 6 years.

Brazil agrees June 24 to permit entry of 3,000 German Jewish refugees.

The Stutthof forced-labor camp is established for Jews from Danzig and other parts of northern Poland (see 1944).

The Jewish population of Europe is 9.5 million but will decline sharply in the next 6 years (see Kristalnacht, 1938). Few will escape the Holocaust (as it later will be called) that begins now for Czechoslovakian and Polish Jews, who suffer at the hands of the Nazis as German and Austrian Jews have suffered for the past year and more. Rabbi Leo Baeck, now 66, brings a trainload of refugee children to England and returns voluntarily to Germany, where he will be arrested five times and then sent to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp (see 1945). The last Kindertransport train leaves August 28 before the war shuts down operations, and few of the rescued children will ever see their families again; 1.5 million children will perish in the Holocaust.

Nazi occupation authorities in Poland require Jews to wear the Star of David beginning December 1, having earlier "Aryanized" the country's factories and offices; Moravian-born Sudeten industrialist Oskar Schindler, 31, pays a visit December 3 on Kraków accountant Itzhak Stern and says he has heard there will be raids on all remaining Jewish property the following day. The gregarious Schindler has ingratiated himself with German military intelligence officials in the Abwehr, they approached him before the war about gathering information on Polish military activities, he has thereby gained exemption from military service (see 1940).

Marian Anderson tries without success to rent Constitution Hall at Washington, D.C., for a concert April 9 and it is reported that she was refused because of her race by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who own the hall. A District of Columbia ordinance bars blacks and whites from commingling in public halls and schools, but the authorities tend not to enforce the law in the case of Constitution Hall because it is privately owned. Now 42, the black contralto has been acclaimed by European critics as the world's greatest, other blacks have sung at Constitution Hall in the past, but it has been booked for a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra. Eleanor Roosevelt and other DAR members resign nevertheless to show support, and Anderson draws an audience of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial Easter Sunday.

Anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman suffers a stroke February 17 and dies at Toronto May 14 at age 70; black nationalist Marcus M. Garvey dies in obscure poverty at London June 10 at age 52; former suffragist Harriet Stanton Blatch at Greenwich, Conn., November 20 at age 84.

The National Woman's Party convenes at Washington December 16 and urges immediate congressional action on an Equal Rights Amendment.

philanthropy

Reformer Grace Abbott dies at Chicago June 19 at age 60; reformer Lillian Wald at Westport, Conn., September 1 at age 73.

commerce

President Roosevelt asks Congress January 16 to extend Social Security coverage to more women and children. Congress amends the 1935 Social Security Act to extend benefits to widows, orphans, and other survivors beginning in 1940 (see 1956).

Britain's upper 10 percent holds 88 percent of the nation's wealth, down from 92 percent in 1912, and commands 34.6 percent of the nation's after-tax personal income (see 1960).

France is hardly any richer than she was in 1914 and ill-prepared to fight a war.

Japan's Ministry of Labor permits mineowners to hire women as the war in China produces manpower shortages. The ministry does not enforce laws protecting women in the workplace.

Seventeen percent of the U.S. workforce remains largely unemployed, but while the actual number of unemployed men and women has fallen from 15 million in 1933 down to 9.5 million, even Americans with jobs have relatively low average incomes. The Emergency Relief Appropriations Act approved by Congress June 30 provides $1.5 billion for the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

More than 4 million Americans declare incomes above $2,000 for the year; 200,000 declare more than $10,000; 42,500 more than $25,000. Only 3 percent have enough income to pay any tax at all, and 670,000 taxpayers account for 90 percent of all income taxes collected.

U.S. Steel reports a net income of $41 million on sales of $857 million after a 1938 deficit (see 1964). The average U.S. Steel employee works just over 25 hours per week at a wage of just under 90¢ per hour, and his annual wage of about $1,600 is $100 more than the average earned by General Motors employees. Both companies employ roughly 220,000 people.

Steel magnate Charles M. Schwab dies insolvent of heart disease at New York September 18 at age 77, having lost a fortune once estimated at $200 million in dubious ventures outside the steel industry.

Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes August 24 at 131.33 but rebounds to close December 30 at 150.24, down from 154.76 at the end of 1938. Former congressman Arsène P. Pujo of Pujo Committee fame dies at New Orleans December 31 at age 78.

retail, trade

Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day November 23—the fourth Thursday in the month rather than the last as it has been for 75 years (see 1863). Retailers have hoped that Christmas shoppers would give them a boost; they are dismayed to see that November this year has five Thursdays and fear that a shortened holiday shopping season could cost them heavily. Federated Department Stores chief Fred Lazarus Jr. of the National Retail Dry Goods Association (NRDGA) has persuaded President Roosevelt that a longer season will help the economy; Roosevelt issues a proclamation making November 23 Thanksgiving Day; 23 states go along with the idea, Massachusetts governor Leverett Saltonstall balks, another 22 states stick with November 30, Colorado and Texas celebrate both days. The NRDGA will find little difference between sales in states that observe Thanksgiving early or late, and FDR will quietly return the holiday to November's last Thursday in 1942.

energy

Commonwealth & Southern Corp. president Wendell L. Willkie sells the utility holding company's assets to the federal government and local municipalities February 4 for $78.6 million (see 1938; politics, 1940).

Former Royal Dutch Co. managing director Henri W. A. Deterding dies in Germany February 4 at age 71, having given financial support to Adolf Hitler since the 1920s; Cities Service Co. founder Henry L. Doherty dies of cancer at Philadelphia December 26 at age 69.

transportation

Greek shipping executive Stavros Spyros Niarchos, 29, sets up his own firm under the name Niarchos Group, competing with his father-in-law, Stavros Livanos, and his brother-in-law Aristotle Onassis. After graduation from Athens University with a law degree 10 years ago, Niarchos worked briefly in an uncle's flour mill, saw how costly it was to pay the freight on Argentine wheat, persuaded his family that owning its own ships would save money, and acquired six freighters at an average price of $20,000 each.

The last prewar grain race by windjammers ends in victory for the 35-year-old Glasgow-built, steel-hulled four-masted Moshulu, designed for carrying nitrates but used since early in the decade to bring Australian wheat to Europe (seePreussen, 1897). Finnish shipowner Gustaf (Adolf Mauritz) Erikson, now 67, went to sea as a cabin boy at age 10, became a captain 10 years later, has competed in the grain races since they began in 1921, and bought the Moshulu 4 years ago, but the Germans will seize her when they take over Norway in 1942.

Commercial transatlantic passenger air service begins June 28 as 22 passengers and 12 crew members take off from Port Washington, N.Y., for Marseilles via the Azores and Lisbon aboard the Pan American Airways Yankee Clipper, a Boeing seaplane powered by four 1,550-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines (see 1935). Pan Am has been providing air service to the Caribbean, South America, and the Pacific, but Anglo-American disputes over airport landing rights have delayed the start of transatlantic service. The plane has separate passenger cabins, a dining salon, ladies' dressing room, recreation lounge, sleeping berths, and a bridal suite; the flight takes 26.5 hours, and the one-way fare is $375.

British Airways has its beginnings in British Overseas Airways (BOAC), created by a merger of Imperial Airways with British Airways under the leadership of former BBC director John C. W. Reith (see Imperial, 1924).

The first turbojet aircraft is tested August 24 at Rostock-Marienehe and demonstrated in October for top Lüftwaffe officials. Hans von Ohain has designed the Heinkel HE-178 with centrifugal flow engine for the 17-year-old Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke at Warnemünde (see politics, 1925), and a patent on his design was issued 4 years ago (see politics [Me 262], 1942).

British aircraft designers work on a jet plane that uses a turbojet engine designed in 1930 by Frank Whittle, 32, whose Gloster-Whittle E.28/39 will be test flown for the first time in mid-May 1941.

The first American-made helicopter capable of sustained flight is demonstrated at Bridgeport, Conn., September 14 by Igor Sikorsky, now 50, who has been in the United States since 1919 and sold his company to United Aircraft in 1929 (see 1913; 1929; Focke, 1936). Sikorsky's VS-300 has a rotor over its cabin and a smaller, vertical rotor at the tail, controlled by foot pedals, for torque and direction control; more than 400 of the craft will be produced by mid-1945 for use in rescue work and to some extent for detecting German U-boats (see Piasecki, 1943).

German aviation pioneer Heinrich Focke establishes a new company under the name Focke, Achgelis to concentrate on helicopter development while the Nazi-controlled Focke-Wulf Co. increases production of its FW-190 fighter planes and FW-200 Condors. Test pilot Hanna Reitsch, 27, demonstrates the helicopter's versatility by flying one inside Berlin's Deutschland Hall, a space more confined than New York's Madison Square Garden. Focke's new company will be incorporated into VFW-Fokker Aircraft Co. in the 1960s.

Howard R. Hughes buys control of Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA) from a Wall Street banking house (see 1931; 1938). Looking for a way to beat Pan American on the transatlantic route, Hughes works with Lockheed engineers to develop a four-engined plane with a pressurized cabin that can fly at high altitudes at speeds exceeding those of Pan Am clippers (see Lockheed Constellation, 1943).

New York's La Guardia Airport (initially the North Beach Airport) opens December 2 on the east shore of Flushing Bay near the World's Fair grounds (see Newark, 1928). Newark has been the nation's largest airport, with more than 30 flights per day, and it remains closer to Manhattan than Floyd Bennet Field, which is eight miles away, so the U.S. Post Office has been delivering New York airmail to Newark, but Mayor La Guardia has pressed for construction of a passenger air facility in New York City. The Board of Estimate has voted in November to name the $40 million facility after the mayor; it has an advanced lighting system, will officially be called La Guardia beginning in August of next year, and by 1942 will be the world's busiest commercial airport, with more than 75 flights taking off and arriving each day (see Idlewild, 1948).

Dutch-born aircraft manufacturer Anthony H. G. Fokker dies at New York December 23 at age 49.

The Trans-Iranian Railway is completed in January after nearly 12 years of construction. Linking the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf, it has been built entirely with Iranian capital.

Spain's new Franco regime nationalizes the country's broad-gauge railway network and organizes Red Nacional de Ferrocariles Espanoles (see RENFE, 1848), but rail lines have suffered heavy damage during the war, and the equipment even on intercity express trains is antique by world standards. Narrow-gauge lines will be nationalized in the 1950s.

The Pacemaker goes into service on the New York Central for the Chicago run with a fare of just over $30 round trip in fancy coaches. The Trail Blazer goes into service on the Pennsylvania Railroad to compete with the New York Central on the Chicago run.

Union Station opens May 7 on Sunset Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles. Last of the great U.S. railway stations, it replaces the city's original Chinatown with a structure built by the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific railroads.

The Union Pacific's City of San Francisco bound for Oakland from Chicago derails near Carlin, Nev., August 12 while traveling at 60 miles per hour; the wreck kills 24 people and injures 115. Investigators discover evidence of sabotage (spikes have been removed and a rail relocated) but the perpetrators will not be found.

U.S. interurban streetcar trackage falls to 2,700 miles as buses supplant trolleys (see 1917; General Motors, 1932; criminal conspiracy conviction, 1949).

New York's Bronx-Whitestone Bridge opens April 30 to connect the Bronx with Queens; designed by Othmar H. Ammann, the bridge is 2,300 feet (701 meters) in length (the world's fourth-longest suspension bridge to date), has been built in 23 months at a cost of nearly $18 million, and facilitates access from Westchester County to the World's Fair and to the new La Guardia Airport.

The General Motors Futurama at the World's Fair in Flushing Meadow is a diorama that depicts the city of 1960. Designed by Norman Bel Geddes, now 46, the display shows crosstown traffic moving smoothly on underpasses; crowds wait in long lines to ride on moving chairs through the fair's most popular exhibit and get what for most of them is the first "aerial" view of the world.

Connecticut's Merritt Parkway opens June 22 with 38 miles of landscaped road winding through Fairfield County to link New York's Hutchinson River Parkway with Milford. Industrialist and banker Schuyler Merritt, 85, represented the state in Congress for nine terms and has headed the state commission that began building the toll road in 1934.

The Lincoln Mercury is introduced by Ford Motor Company's Edsel Ford (see Continental, 1941).

Less than 60 percent of U.S. families own automobiles. The figure will rise to 80 percent by 1964.

The U.S. Department of Justice indicts General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler for attempting to monopolize automobile financing by allegedly coercing dealers to use GMAC, Ford, or Chrysler financing facilities (see GMAC, 1919). Justice drops the indictments against Ford and Chrysler in exchange for promises that they will stop coercing their dealers if GM is convicted, but while that conviction will be handed down in 1941, GM will not be required to give up its GMAC subsidiary, nor will Ford or Chrysler have to divest themselves of their financing subsidiary. By the mid-1950s, GMAC will be the world's largest auto finance company, averaging 18.7 percent per year in net profits.

A new Fiat plant opens May 15 at Mirafori. It is designed to employ 22,000 of the company's 55,000-member workforce in two shifts per day.

The first Volkswagens roll off the assembly line at Wolfsburg (see 1938) and are offered under the name KdF Wagen as part of the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) program to workers who collect enough stamps (a worker can buy a few stamps per week, and when his stamp book is full it is worth 990 Reichsmarks, the equivalent of about 800 hours' pay for a skilled worker, and can be exchanged for a KdF Wagen); the start of war ends this program, the Volkswagen chassis will be used to make military vehicles, notably the Kubelwagen, and the civilian car will not go into mass production for nearly a decade, but more than 20 million of the "beetles" will eventually be sold worldwide, exceeding the Model T Ford's record (see 1947).

technology

Hewlett-Packard is founded January 1 by California engineers William R. (Redington) Hewlett, 26, and David Packard, 27, who set up shop in the garage behind Packard's Palo Alto house to develop an audio oscillator that the two have invented. They have scrounged up about $1,000 in grant money to help fund work on the oscillator, start with $538 in capital, toss a coin to decide whose name will go first on the new partnership, and supply eight 200B oscillators for Walt Disney Studios to test the sound equipment that will be used for the 1940 film Fantasia. The outbreak of hostilities in Europe late in the year brings a stream of government orders, Hewlett-Packard test and measurement products begin to gain acceptance among engineers and scientists, and the partners will move next year from the garage to a rented building as net revenue rises to $34,000 (see 1942).

Bell Laboratories begins construction in April of a prototype computer using the telephone relays employed by mathematician George R. Stibitz in 1937. Under pressure to solve increasingly complex mathematical problems, company executives have agreed to finance the project (see 1940).

Hamilton, N.Y.-born Iowa State University physicist John (Vincent) Atanasoff, 35, and his Iowa-born graduate student Clifford (Edward) Berry, 21, build the world's first electronic calculator. Completed in December and programmed with binary Boolean algebra (see science, 1854), it has a volatile memory that is constantly refreshed; its drum storage device has capacitors that store 30 numbers on each of two drums, with each number stored in two bits, keeping the data temporarily until it can be processed by separate logic circuits (a combination of not, and, or, and nor logic gates) (see 1942).

Cambridge, Mass., chemist Bradley Dewey, now 52, opens a pilot plant for making synthetic rubber (see Semon, 1926). An MIT graduate who cofounded Dewey & Almy in 1919, he has conducted research on rubber-like elastomers and will complete one of the first U.S. synthetic rubber plants in 1942 (see Goodrich tire, 1940).

Union Carbide and Carbon resumes synthetic rubber research, acquiring Bakelite Corp. to pursue studies of butadiene as a source of synthetic rubber (see Bakelite, 1909).

E. I. du Pont introduces nylon on a commercial basis, but most of it goes into parachutes and tents (see Carothers, 1937; first nylon stockings, 1940).

The spectrophotometer invented by industrial chemist Arnold O. Beckman measures the amount of ultraviolet light that a substance absorbs (see pH meter, 1934). Beckman's simple but costly electronic instruments save endless hours of laborious laboratory work.

science

Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, and Lise Meitner publish their work on nuclear reactions in the German scientific journal Die Naturwissenschaften January 6 (see 1938); they identify the elements barium, cerium, and lanthanum as products of the neutron bombardment of uranium, but they do not recognize that fission has occurred.

The cyclotron of Nebraska-born nuclear physicist John R. (Ray) Dunning, 31, produces nuclear fission for the first time in America January 25 in Room 128 of Columbia University's Pupin Physics Laboratory, suggesting the possibility of self-sustaining chain reaction. When the cyclotron is shut down, stable cobalt-59 begets within its disks unstable cobalt-60, which emits gamma rays.

Lise Meitner recognizes that nuclear fission did in fact occur in her work last year with Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann; living in exile in Britain, she states that fact in a letter published in the journal Nature February 11. Enrico Fermi, Hungarian-born U.S. physicist Leo Szilard, 41, Ontario-born U.S. physicist Walter H. Zinn, 32, C. B. Pegram, and John R. Dunning repeat Meitner's experiment at Columbia March 3 with the same result. The nuclear research at Columbia confirms European findings that the absorption of a neutron by a uranium nucleus sometimes causes the nucleus to split into approximately equal parts with the release of enormous amounts of energy. Danish physicist Niels Bohr discusses the findings with Albert Einstein at Princeton, N.J., and Hungarian-born physicist Eugene P. Wigner, 36, and others convince Einstein of the need to warn President Roosevelt that production of an atomic bomb is a real possibility (see Bohr, 1913; Einstein, 1929; U-235, 1935; 1940).

Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt August 2, "Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard which has been communicated to me in manuscript leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the near future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration . . . In the course of the last four months it has been made almost certain . . . that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of radium-like elements would be generated . . . This new phenomenon could lead also to the construction of bombs." FDR appoints an Advisory Committee on Uranium (see first controlled chain reaction, 1942).

San Francisco-born experimental physicist Luis W. (Walter) Alvarez, 28, at the University of California, Berkeley, and Swiss-born physicist Felix Bloch, 33, of Stanford University make the first measurement of a neutron's magnetic moment—a characteristic of the strength and direction of its magnetic field (see Rabi, 1938). Bloch proposed a method 5 years ago for splitting a beam of neutrons into two components corresponding to the two possible orientations of a neutron in a magnetic field; Alvarez last year discovered that some radioactive elements decay by a process of orbital-electron capture, in which an orbital electron merges with its nucleus to produce an element smaller by one atomic number (see particle accelerator, 1946).

Chemist Linus C. Pauling develops a resonance theory of chemical valence that has enabled him to construct models for a number of anomalous molecules, notably the benzene molecule, which have not been explainable by conventional chemical terms (see 1931; Dirac and Schrödinger, 1926). Now 38, Pauling produces a full account of chemical bonding, and his book The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals will win him a 1954 Nobel Prize.

Hanover-born Berlin chemist Isidor Traube, 79, accepts a position at the University of Edinburgh, having founded capillary chemistry and advanced knowledge of critical temperature, osmosis, colloids, and surface tension through his research on liquids.

The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John von Neumann provides a precise formulation and proof of the "ergodic hypothesis" of statistical mathematics (see 1926). Now 28, von Neumann published a definition of ordinal numbers 8 years ago, it has been universally adopted, and he will become a professor next year at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study.

Elements of Mathematics (Elémentes mathématique) by French mathematicians who use the pen name Nicolas Bourbaki will have a powerful influence on the development of algebraic geometry and other areas of mathematical research. Paris-born mathematician André Weil, 33, has encouraged his colleagues to build on work by David Hilbert and Kurt Gödel.

Swedish astrophysicist Hannes (Olof Gösta) Alfvén, 31, publishes a theory of magnetic storms and auroral displays in the atmosphere. Alfvén will join the staff of the Royal Institute of Technology at Stockholm next year.

Mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann dies at Munich March 1 at age 86; archaeologist Howard Carter at London March 2 at age 65; Nobel physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald outside Leipzig April 4 at age 78; mathematician Giuseppe Peano at Turin April 20 at age 73; logician-mathematician Stanislaw Leshniewkski suddenly at Warsaw May 13 at age 55, having pioneered the concepts of protothesis, ontology, and mereology; astronomer Sir Frank Dyson dies at sea while en route from Australia to England May 25 at age 71.

medicine

Tabakmissbrauch und Lungencarcinom by University of Cologne physician F. H. (Franz Hermann) Muller relates smoking to lung cancer, but although the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) carries an abstract in its September 30 issue, newspapers generally do not report the finding (see 1933; Ochsner, 1945). Adolf Hitler has ordered the appropriation of 100,000 Reichmarks to fund a study of the dangers of tobacco and established an institute at Jena to work on the issue as part of a program to improve health, especially among women who may bear sons for the Fatherland. Thuringian officials ban smoking on trolleys, trains, and in many public places, but although high wartime taxes on tobacco will curb use, especially by women, the pressures of war will force the Nazis to provide tobacco to civilians and to the Wehrmacht. The man in charge of Hitler's lung cancer experiment is also responsible for the euthanasia program that will kill 70,000 physically and mentally defective Germans (he will commit suicide, and the association with totalitarianism will taint efforts to discourage smoking).

A rabies epidemic begins in Poland and spreads among foxes, bats, and other mammals, including dogs and cows. By 1950 the disease will be in Germany, it will advance at the rate of about 25 miles per year, and the first case of a rabid dog in more than 50 years in Britain will be reported in 1969 despite the quarantine that has been in place since 1901.

German scientists synthesize the psychotropic drug meperidine (Demerol); only one-tenth as potent as the narcotic analgesic morphine introduced in 1806, it is also less addictive (see codeine, 1832; heroin, 1898).

Australian-born Oxford University pathologist Howard W. (Walter) Florey, 42, and his German-refugee colleague, Ernest B. (Boris) Chain, 34, isolate the antibacterial agent observed in a fungus by Alexander Fleming in 1928 (see 1931). They use it in May and obtain amazing results in mice studies, but although a London police officer close to death from an infected rose-thorn puncture responds to treatment, they find that it takes 3,000 times as much penicillin to treat a human being as a mouse and do not have enough to save the policeman, nor can they save six dying children. Florey asks for a government grant to fund research, but is granted only £50 in September (see 1940).

Ukrainian-born Rutgers University biochemist Selman A. (Abraham) Waksman, 52, and H. Boyd Woodruff isolate actinomycin in pure form from an actinomycete and find that it is an effective bactericide (a French researcher coined the term antibiotic in 1889; Waksman will suggest its use in 1942 after being asked by the editor of Biological Abstracts to recommend a term for compounds and preparations that are produced by microbes and have antimicrobial properties). The isolation of actinomycin will lead to the discovery of many other antibiotics in soil microorganisms (see 1943).

French-born bacteriologist René (Jules) Dubos, 38, at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research isolates two agents from swamp soil that are effective against a broad spectrum of gram-positive bacteria but are too toxic for internal use by humans. In isolating tyrocidine and gramicidine, Dubos establishes procedures that his former teacher Selman A. Waksman will adopt as he focuses his attention on the medicinal uses of antibacterial soil microbes (see 1943).

English pathologist and educator Janet (Maria) Vaughan, 40, establishes an Emergency Blood Transfusion Service in June, anticipating a need for safe blood in the event of war (see Bethune, 1936; Chicago blood bank, 1937). She has worked with the Spanish Medical Aid Committee and become familiar with techniques for preserving and storing whole blood and blood plasma (see Drew, 1940). Canadian physician and humanitarian Norman Bethune operates on a wounded solder at a remote village in China's Heibei Province, nicks his finger (he has no surgical gloves), and dies of blood poisoning November 12 at age 49.

English medical researcher Leonard Colebrook goes to France at the outbreak of war to investigate the treatment of burns (see 1935). Now 56, he will establish the efficacy of sulfa drugs (and, later, of penicillin) in controlling burn-related infections and will urge wider application of skin-grafting techniques to heal burns.

President Roosevelt transfers the 141-year-old U.S. Public Health Service in June from the Treasury Department to a newly created Federal Security Agency (FSA), a noncabinet group that combines a number of New Deal agencies and services related to health, education, and welfare (see 1912; HEW, 1953).

Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic dies at Chicago May 26 at age 73; his brother William at Rochester, Minn., July 28 at age 78; physician-author Havelock Ellis at Washbrook, Sussex, July 8 at age 80; psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler at his native Zollikon, Switzerland, July 15 at age 82; Sigmund Freud of throat cancer at London September 23 at age 83 (he has smoked 20 cigars per day, and the last person to see him alive is novelist H. G. Wells, who has been trying to obtain a special act of Parliament to allow the psychoanalyst to become a British subject without the 5-year residence normally required). Freud's Viennese-born psychoanalyst daughter Anna Freud, 43, carries on her father's work, championing the cause of analysis; physician-educator Harvey W. Cushing dies at New Haven, Conn., October 7 at age 70; surgeon Anton Eiselsberg near St. Valentin, Austria, October 25 at age 79; pharmacist Charles R. Walgreen at Chicago December 11 at age 66.

religion

Pope Pius XI dies at Rome February 10 at age 81 after a 17-year reign in which he has warned of Nazism's evils; he is succeeded by Rome-born Cardinal Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, now 62, who is elected in the shortest conclave since 1623 and will reign until his death in 1958 as Pius XII.

The Oxford Group's Moral Rearmament movement gains a wide following in Britain (see 1921).

The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) is founded at New York to raise funds for Jewish relief.

Chicago's archbishop George Cardinal Mundelein dies at Mundelein, Ill., October 2 at age 67 (the town has been named in his honor).

communications, media

Glamour magazine begins publication at New York in April. Street & Smith has launched the monthly to reach working women above the age of its 4-year-old Mademoiselle's readership.

A federal grand jury at Chicago indicts publisher Moses Annenberg August 11 on charges of having evaded $3,258,809.97 in income taxes between 1932 and 1936 (seePhiladelphia Inquirer, 1936). Annenberg has used his Philadelphia newspaper to attack the New Deal, antagonizing President Roosevelt and Pennsylvania's Gov. George Earl; Roosevelt has asked Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to look into his activities, it has turned out that he owes the government more than $5.5 million in the largest case of tax evasion in history, and the grand jury also indicts his 31-year-old son Walter and two other business associates. Annenberg pleads guilty and agrees to serve 3 years in prison and to pay $9.5 million in taxes, penalties, and interest. Charges against Walter and the others are dropped, but Moses will serve time in federal prison at Lewisburg, Pa. (see 1942; Seventeen, 1944).

NBC televises opening ceremonies of the New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows April 30. About 1,000 viewers see the telecast that is picked up by from 100 to 200 experimental receivers set up in the metropolitan area (see 1945; BBC, 1936).

FM radio receivers go on sale for the first time (see Armstrong, 1933; Zenith, 1940).

The BBC assigns Indian-born former Oxford Union debater David Graham, 27, to its German section in August, and he will be involved for most of the next 6 years in German-language broadcasts to Germany and German-occupied France. Graham drafted and seconded the Union's 1933 pacifist resolution, but many former Oxford Union debaters will fight "for King and Country" against the Axis.

Buffalo-born theater director Worthington C. Miner, 38, gives up his Broadway stage career and joins Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) August 28 as general director of television. Miner will play a major role in the fledgling TV industry.

"This is London," says North Carolina-born CBS correspondent Edward R. (originally Egbert Roscoe) Murrow, 31, who grew up in Washington State and ends his broadcasts with the tagline "Goodnight and good luck." Murrow joined CBS in 1935 and has headed the network's European Bureau at London since 1937; his will become the best known voice on U.S. radio in the next 7 years.

France has 5 million radio sets to serve her population of 41 million; some 27.5 million U.S. families have radios by year's end, up from 10 million in 1929, and 45 million sets are in use in the United States.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T) introduces credit cards for traveling salesmen to use when making phone calls on the road.

The U.S. Post Office introduces "sky hook" service to pick up mail from rural communities, using Stinson Reliant planes to swoop down from the sky and pick up mail positioned at the top of tall poles while dropping mail to a waiting post office representative.

"Batman" makes his debut in the "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate" in the May issue of Detective Comics (DC). National Comics editor Vincent Sullivan has asked New York-born DC cartoonist Bob Kane, 18, and his partner Bill Finger to come up with a character to rival "Superman," launched last year. Working over a weekend they have created the Caped Crusader, who lives in the Batcave, drives a Batmobile equipped with a crime lab and closed-circuit television, owns a Batplane, and will soon be syndicated to newspapers (Finger has suggested the scalloped-edge cape, the cowl, the blank eyes, and the name "Bruce Wayne"). Batman's youthful aerialist sidekick Robin will be added next year and help his guardian battle against such villains as The Joker, The Penguin, and The Riddler.

Foreign correspondent-radio commentator Floyd P. Gibbons dies of a heart attack at his Sailorsburg, Pa., farm home September 24 at age 52; journalist Heywood Broun at Stamford, Conn., December 18 at age 51, having fought for social justice since 1912 and said, "I see no wisdom in saving up your indignation for a rainy day."

literature

Pocket Books, Inc. Americanizes the paperback revolution in publishing begun by Britain's Penguin Books in 1936. Having sent out 1,000 paperback copies of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth and 49,000 questionnaires to determine public interest, the new company founded by Robert F. (Fair) de Graff in partnership with Simon & Schuster puts out its first 10 reprints June 19, pricing them at 25¢ each: Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, five Shakespearean tragedies with an introduction by John Masefield, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, James Hilton's Lost Horizon, Thorne Smith's Topper, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Dorothea Brande's self-help book Wake Up and Live, Dorothy Parker's collection of light verse Enough Rope, and Felix Salten's juvenile classic Bambi. Using enormous and fast new rubber-plate rotary presses that permit printing of paperbacks in large, economical quantities at a unit cost of pennies, the company pays artist Frank J. Lieberman $25 to create a bespectacled wallaby to use as a trademark, names it Gertrude, and goes on to turn out reprints of major and minor literary classics. Most authors, agents, and hardcover publishers agree to permit paperback reprints.

Kenyon Review begins publication at Kenyon College, in Ohio, under the direction of poet John Crowe Ransom, now 49, who left Vanderbilt 2 years ago to become professor of poetry at Kenyon. The literary quarterly will have a wide influence.

Nonfiction: Union Now by California-born New York Times League of Nations correspondent Clarence K. Streit, 43, who calls for the world's leading democratic nations to follow the example of the American colonies in 1787 and create a federal union to avoid war and economic depression; Church and State by Italian priest-political organizer Luigi Sturzo, now 67, who went into exile in October 1924 after opposing the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini; Language in Action by Canadian-born U.S. semanticist S. I. (Samuel Iehiye) Hayakawa, 33, whose lucid popularization will be retitled Language in Thought and Action; Coming Up for Air by George Orwell is a plea for the little man against big business; The New England Mind by Perry Miller, who corrects some long-held notions about the Puritans (a second edition will appear in 1953); Shakespeare's Boy Actors by Ontario-born London teacher and actor (William) Robertson Davies, 26, who joined the Old Vic company last year.

Fiction: Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, who writes in a style that most readers find inaccessible; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, whose novel is based on observations made while traveling with migrant farm families from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and produces a reaction almost comparable to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852; Johnny Got His Gun by Colorado-born novelist and screenwriter (James) Dalton Trumbo, 33, is a stream-of-consciousness account based on a story he has read of a British officer who lost his legs, arms, face, sight, and hearing in the Great War; The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, who portrays the moral degeneration of Hollywood where he has worked as a screenwriter since 1936; The Web and the Rock by the late Thomas Wolfe (Harper Bros. editor Edward Aswell will work his surviving mss. into two further novels); Night Rider by Kentucky-born novelist-poet Robert Penn Warren, now 34; Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; The Unknown Sea (Les Chemins de la mer) by François Mauriac; The Coup de Grace (Le Coup de Grâce) by Marguerite Yourcenar; Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood; How Green Was My Valley by Welsh-born British novelist Richard Llewellyn (Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd), 32; Mrs. Miniver by English novelist-poet Jan Struther (Joyce Mastone Anstruther Graham), 38; Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton; Love and Death by English novelist Llewelyn Powys, 55; On the Marble Cliffs (Auf den Marmorklippen) by Ernst Jünger, whose allegorical novel is a protest against Germany's Nazis; Mister Johnson by Anglo-Irish novelist Joyce Cary, 51; After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley; The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White, who has adapted Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'arthur of the 15th century and begun a fictional quartet whose umbrella title will be The Once and Future King; Alberte (trilogy) by Norwegian novelist Cora Sandel (Jara Fabricius), 59; The Girls (Les Jeunes Filles) by Henri de Montherlant; Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller; Pale Horse, Pale Rider (stories) by Katherine Ann Porter; Night of the Poor by Frederic Prokosch; The Nazarene by Polish-born U.S. Yiddish novelist Sholem Asch, 59; "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber in the March 18 New Yorker; Wickford Point by John P. Marquand; Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden; Woman Diver (Ama) by Japanese novelist Yoko Ota, 36; The Story of an Old Geisha (Rogisho) and River Light (Kawa Akari) by Kanoko Okamoto; poet Akiko Yosano, now 61, publishes a new version of The Tale of Genji (Shinyaku Genji Monogatari) from 1015, translated into modern Japanese; The Outsider and Others (stories) by the late H. P. Lovecraft; "Marooned Off Vesta" by Russian-born New York science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, 29, appears in Amazing Stories magazine. An undergraduate at Columbia University, Asimov receives his bachelor's degree in biochemistry later in the year; Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston; Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver by J. Frank Dobie; Seasoned Timber by Dorothea Canfield Fisher; Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh; Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler (A Coffin for Dimitrios in the United States); The Big Sleep by English-born U.S. detective novelist Raymond Thornton Chandler, 50, introduces the private eye Philip Marlowe.

Mystery writer S. S. Van Dine (Willard H. Wright) dies of a coronary thrombosis at his New York apartment April 11 at age 50; novelist Joseph Roth in exile at Paris May 27 at age 44; Ford Madox Ford at Deauville June 26 at age 65; Zane Grey at his Altadena, Calif., home October 23 at age 64; Llewelyn Powys of tuberculosis at Clavidel, Switzerland, December 2 at age 55.

Poetry: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, who ceases publication of his 17-year-old literary quarterly Criterion because of paper shortages and the outbreak of war (see Stage Musicals [Cats], 1981); Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice; Here Lies by Dorothy Parker; "September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden.

Poet-playwright William Butler Yeats dies at Roquebrunne (Alpes-Maritimes), France, January 28 at age 73 and is buried at Drucliffe, Sligo, as he requested in his poem "Under Ben Bulben"; Rose Hartwick Thorpe of 1870 "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight" fame dies at San Diego July 18 at age 89.

Juvenile: Madeline by Austrian-born New York illustrator-novelist Ludwig Bemelmans, 41, who illustrates his own work (which will outlive his new novel Hotel Splendide); Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton; Ben and Me by Robert Lawson (an account of Benjamin Franklin's life as told by his mouse, Amos).

Adventure writer Richard Halliburton, now 39, leaves Hong Kong in March aboard the 75-foot motorized junk Sea Dragon en route to San Francisco, but the ship and all aboard her disappear in a typhoon the night of March 23 some 2,400 miles west of Midway Island.

art

New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) moves in May into a handsome new building at 11 West 53rd Street with an exhibition entitled "Art in Our Time" (see 1932). Designed by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone, the building replaces the nine-story town house of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and stands out from its town house neighbors. Rockefeller has no taste for contemporary art but has contributed $6 million toward construction of the new museum to please his wife, Abby, on condition that they move into an apartment. The museum will expand in 1951, 1964, 1985, and thereafter.

Grandma Moses gains overnight fame after engineer-art collector Louis Caldor sees work by the primitivist Anna Mary Robertson Moses, 79, displayed in a drugstore window at Hoosick Falls, N.Y. Caldor drives to Robertson's farm, buys all 15 of her paintings, and exhibits three of them at the new Museum of Modern Art in a show entitled "Contemporary Unknown Painters."

Other paintings: Seated Man by Dutch-born New York painter Willem de Kooning, 35; Ubermut by Paul Klee; Woman Leaning on Her Elbows, Woman in a Red Armchair, Portrait of Jaime Sabartés, and Cat and Bird by Pablo Picasso; Poison and Objective Stimulation by René Magritte; Rythme No. 5 by Sonia Delaunay; Persephone, Susannah and the Elders, Threshing Wheat, and Weighing Cotton by Thomas Hart Benton; Three Men (tempera) and Handball by Ben Shahn; The Brooklyn Bridge: Variations on an Old Theme by Joseph Stella; The Dessert by Milton Avery; Retrato de Pita Amor by Diego Rivera; Marbles Champion by Norman Rockwell (cover illustration, Saturday Evening Post, August 2; Rockwell has been using neighbors at Arlington, Vt., as models). Art dealer Joseph Duveen, Baron Duveen (of Millbank), dies at London May 25 at age 69, having persuaded U.S. collectors who included Benjamin Altman, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Huntington, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, and Joseph E. Widener to buy old masters; art dealer Ambroise Vollard dies at Versailles July 21 at age 72 following a motor accident; painter Gwen John falls ill, takes the boat train to Dieppe, collapses on arrival, and dies September 18 at age 63.

German authorities imprison painter-engraver Otto Dix on charges of having conspired in an attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler. Now 48, his antiwar paintings and drawings have aroused the ire of the Nazis, who have ousted him from his position as professor at the Academy in Dresden, canceled his membership in the Prussian Academy, and prevented him from exhibiting his work; Dix will be drafted into the home guard at age 53, captured by the French, and released.

Sculpture: Juggler by Marino Marini.

photography

Photograph: Virginia Woolf by Berlin-born Paris photographer Gisèle Freund, 31.

theater, film

Theater: The Gentle People: A Brooklyn Fable by Irwin Shaw 1/5 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Lee J. Cobb, Roman Bohnen, Sam Jaffe, Elia Kazan, Karl Malden, Martin Ritt, Sylvia Sidney, Franchot Tone, scenic design by Boris Aronson, 141 perfs.; The White Steed by Paul Vincent Carroll 1/10 at New York's Cort Theater, with Dublin-born actor Barry Fitzgerald (originally William Joseph Shields), 50, Jessica Tandy, George Coulouris, 136 perfs.; The American Way by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 1/21 at New York's Center Theater in Rockefeller Center, with Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, 164 perfs.; The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman 2/15 at New York's National Theater, with Tallulah Bankhead, Eugenia Rawls, Carl Benton Reid, Dan Duryea, Patricia Collinge, sets and costumes by Aline Bernstein, 191 perfs.; Family Portrait by Lenore Coffee and William Joyce Cowan 3/8 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Judith Anderson, Philip Coolidge, Tom Ewell, Philip Truex, New York-born actress Margaret Webster, 33, 111 perfs.; Family Reunion by T. S. Eliot 3/21 at London's Westminster Theatre with Michael Redgrave, Robert Harris, Helen Hayes, George Woodbridge, 38 perfs.; The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry 3/28 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Katharine Hepburn, Lenore Lonergan, New York-born actress Shirley Booth (originally Thelma Booth Ford), 31, Van Heflin, Joseph Cotten, 96 perfs.; My Heart's in the Highlands by William Saroyan 4/13 at New York's Guild Theater, with Philip Loeb, Sidney Lumet, Art Smith, Hester Sondergaard, 44 perfs.; No Time for Comedy by S. N. Behrman 4/17 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Katharine Cornell, Laurence Olivier, Margalo Gilmore, 185 perfs.; After the Dance by Terence Rattigan 6/21 at the St. James's Theatre, London, with Martin Walker, Hubert Gregg, 60 perfs.; Ondine by Jean Genet 8/3 at the Théâtre de l'Athenée, Paris; See My Lawyer by Richard Malbaum and Harry Clork 9/27 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with Milton Berle, Millard Mitchell, Hartford, Conn.-born Gary Merrill, 24, 224 perfs.; Skylark by Samson Raphaelson 10/11 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Gertrude Lawrence, Glenn Anders, Donald Cook, Vivian Vance, 256 perfs.; The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 10/25 at New York's Music Box Theater, with Monty Woolley as Sheridan Whiteside and with Cole Porter's song "What Am I to Do," 739 perfs.; The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan 10/25 at New York's Booth Theater, with Eddie Dowling, Julie Haydon, Gene Kelly, New York-born actress Celeste Holm, 20, William Bendix, Reginald Beane, 185 perfs.; Margin for Error by Clare Boothe (Luce) 11/3 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Otto Preminger, Yorkshire-born actor Bramwell Fletcher, 35, Sam Levene, Philadelphia-born actor Hugh Marlowe, 28, 264 perfs.; Life with Father by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse 11/8 at New York's Empire Theater, with Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney in a comedy based on the book by Clarence Day, 3,244 perfs.; Key Largo by Maxwell Anderson 11/27 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with José Ferrer, Paul Muni, Karl Malden, German-born actress Uta Hagen, 30, 105 perfs.; Mornings at Seven by Paul Osborn 11/30 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Dorothy Gish, Russell Collins, Jean Adair, Enid Markey, Effie Shannon, 44 perfs.

Congress cuts off funding of the WPA's 4-year-old Federal Theater Project, which goes out of existence June 30. Most of its presentations have been totally uncontroversial, but a few have raised accusations that Harry L. Hopkins's friend Hallie Flanagan was trying to use the project to engineer social change. The FTP is the first WPA arts project to be terminated.

Playwright Sidney Howard is killed in a tractor accident on his farm near Tyringham, Mass., August 23 at age 48; playwright Fanny Hatton dies at New York November 27 at age 69.

Canada's National Film Board (NFB) has its beginnings in the National Film Commission created by Parliament in May with a mandate to make and distribute films that will help Canadians to understand each other's lives and problems. Scottish-born documentary maker John Grierson, 41, is appointed governor commissioner in October, signs an agreement with the March of Time to distribute NFB films in the United States, and arranges with Famous Players of Canada to show the films in its 800 theaters; within 6 years Grierson will have attracted a team of more than 800 filmmakers (see McLaren, 1941).

Films: Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind with Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara, Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes, Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton, sets by William Cameron Menzies. Produced by David O. Selznick with a screenplay by Sidney Howard based on the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind has its world premiere December 15 at Atlanta, runs 222 minutes, and must be interrupted with an intermission. Gable shocks audiences with his line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Other films: George Marshall's Destry Rides Again with James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich; Zoltan Korda's Four Feathers with Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith, June Duprez, Clive Baxter; George Stevens's Gunga Din with Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Tokyo-born actress Joan Fontaine (originally Joan de Beauvoir De Havilland, Olivia's sister), 20 (she has taken her stepfather's name), Sam Jaffe; Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with James Stewart, Jean Arthur (45 U.S. Senators attend the premiere October 17 at Washington's Constitution Hall and see Stewart's memorable filibuster); Lewis Milestone's Of Mice and Men with Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr.; Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu) with Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor; Mila Parely, Renoir; Monte Banks's Shipyard Sally with Gracie Fields, who is diagnosed with cancer, has a hysterectomy in June at London's Old Chelsea Hospital for Women, is unconscious for 3 days as a million letters and hundreds of bouquets and gifts pour in, but recovers, and ends her 16-year marriage to Archie Pitts in July; John Ford's Stagecoach with John Wayne, Brooklyn-born actress Claire Trevor (originally Wemlinger), 30; Carol Reed's The Stars Look Down with Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood; William Wyler's Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon. Also: Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory and The Old Maid, both with Bette Davis; John Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk with Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert; Sam Wood's Goodbye, Mr. Chips with Robert Donat, Greer Garson; Garson Kanin's The Great Man Votes with John Barrymore; Sidney Lanfield's The Hound of the Baskervilles with Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce; William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton; Marcel Carné's Le Jour Se Lève (Daybreak) with Jean Gabin, Jules Berry, Arletty; Leo McCarey's Love Affair with Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer; Mitchell Leisen's Midnight with Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore; Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka with Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas; Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings with Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess; Michael Curtiz's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Bette Davis, Errol Flynn; George Cukor's The Women with Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard, Lucile Watson, Marjorie Main, now 49, Virginia Weidler, Providence, R.I.-born actress Ruth (Carol) Hussey (originally O'Rourke), 21, Phyllis Povah, Alton, Ill.-born actress Mary Beth Hughes, 21, Los Angeles-born actress Virginia Grey, 23, Butterfly McQueen, and Hedda Hopper; George Marshall's You Can't Cheat an Honest Man with W. C. Fields, Edgar Bergen.

Motion picture pioneer Carl Laemmle dies of a heart attack at his Hollywood home September 24 at age 72; pioneer woman director Lois Weber at Hollywood November 13 at age 58; actor Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) of a heart attack at his Santa Monica beach house December 12 at age 56.

music

Hollywood musicals: Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz with Grand Rapids, Mich.-born actress-singer Judy Garland (Frances Gumm, 17), Ray Bolger (as the Scarecrow), Bert Lahr (as the Cowardly Lion), Jack Haley (as the Tin Woodsman), Frank Morgan (as the wizard), Margaret Hamilton (as the Wicked Witch of the West), music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, songs that include "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," "We're Off to See the Wizard," "If I Only Had a Brain"; Walt Disney's animated Saludos Amigos with songs that include "Brazil" by Brazilian composer Ary Barroso (who has adapted "Arguela do Brasil"), English lyrics by Bob Russell.

Radio music: The Dinah Shore Show 8/6 on NBC Blue Network stations with Tennessee-born singer Dinah (née Frances, or Fanny, Rose) Shore, 23.

Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is founded October 14 by U.S. radio networks to build "an alternate source of music suitable for broadcasting" in competition with the ASCAP monopoly founded in 1914 (see 1917). ASCAP has boosted its license fees and the networks balk at paying the higher fees.

Stage musicals: Dancing Years 3/23 at London's Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, with Ivor Novello, Mary Ellis, book and lyrics by Christopher Hassall, music by Novello, 127 perfs.; The Hot Mikado 3/23 at the Broadhurst Theater, with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (who celebrates his 61st birthday 5/25 by dancing down Broadway from Columbus Circle to 44th Street), 125 black performers who include Hell's Kitchen-born chorus girl Rosetta LeNoire (originally Rosetta Burton), 27, music and lyrics by Gilbert & Sullivan, 85 perfs. (developed originally by the Federal Theatre Project and produced by Minneapolis-born showman Michael "Mike" Todd (originally Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen), 29, the show moves to the World's Fair at Flushing Meadow); Sing for Your Supper (revue) 4/24 at the Adelphi Theater with a Federal Theater Project cast, music by Lee Weiner and Ned Lehac, 44 perfs. All Federal Theater Project productions close nationwide 6/30 following congressional action to cut off funding for that part of the WPA. The House has voted 373 to 21 against continuing it, the Senate has voted 54 to 9, President Roosevelt has signed the measure with reluctance, and the United States will have no more federal sponsorship of theater in this century; The Streets of Paris 6/19 at the Broadhurst Theater, with Portuguese-born Brazilian entertainer Carmen Miranda (Maria Carno da Cunha), 26, singing "South American Way," music by Jimmy McHugh and others, lyrics by Al Dubin and others, 274 perfs.; George White's Scandals 8/28 at the Alvin Theater, with Willie and Eugene Howard, Ben Blue, Ann Miller, Ray Middleton, Scottish-born singer Ella Logan, 26, the Three Stooges in the 13th and final edition of the Scandals, music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Jack Yellen, songs that include "Are You Having Any Fun," 120 perfs.; Too Many Girls 10/18 at the Imperial Theater, with Desi Arnaz, Eddie Bracken, Van Johnson, Richard Kollmar, Marcy Wescott, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," 249 perfs.; Very Warm for May 11/17 at the Alvin Theater, with Grace McDonald, Jack Whiting, Eve Arden, Lucerne, N.Y.-born actress-singer June Allyson (Ella Geisman), 16, Vera-Ellen (Vera Ellen Rohe), 13, music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, songs that include "All the Things You Are," 59 perfs.; Du Barry Was a Lady 12/6 at the 46th Street Theater, with Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman, Betty Grable, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "Friendship," "Do I Love You?" 408 perfs.

Former Broadway musical star Fay Templeton dies at San Francisco October 3 at age 73.

Opera: New York-born baritone Leonard Warren, 27, makes his Metropolitan Opera debut 1/3 singing the role of of Paolo Albiani in the 1857 Verdi opera Simon Boccanegra; New York-born contralto Risë Stevens (originally Risë Steenberg), 26, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in the 1866 Charles Ambroise Thomas opera Mignon.

First performances: Sonata No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra (Concord) by Charles Ives (who wrote it between 1911 and 1915) 1/20 at New York's Town Hall; Symphony No. 3 by Roy Harris 2/24 at Boston's Symphony Hall; Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra by Béla Bartók 4/23 at Amsterdam (Bartók flees the Germans in the fall); Chamber Concerto No. 1 by English composer Elisabeth Lutyens, 33, whose father is the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens; Symphony No. 6 by Dmitri Shostakovich 12/3 at Moscow.

Violinist Jan Kubelik dies at Prague December 5 at age 60.

Oratorio: Joan of Arc at the Stake (Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher) 5/6 at the Théâtre Municipal, Orleans, with music by Arthur Honegger, libretto by Paul Claudel.

Frank Sinatra joins Georgia-born trumpeter-bandleader Harry (Haak) James at age 23 to sing with a new band that James, 33, is assembling. The Hoboken-born New Jersey roadhouse singer will leave within a year to join the Tommy Dorsey band, break his contract with Dorsey in 1942, and take an 8-week engagement at New York's Paramount Theater to begin a career as idol of teenage "bobby-soxers."

Popular songs: "There'll Always Be an England" by London songwriters Ross Parker and Hughie Clark (Charles Hughes) ("There'll always be an England,/ while there's a country lane,/ Wherever there's a cottage small/ beside a field of grain"); "We'll Meet Again" by London songwriter Hugh Charles; "I'll Never Smile Again" by Stephen Weiss and Paul Mann, lyrics by Toronto songwriter Ruth Lowe, 24, a former pianist in an all-girl band who has written the song in memory of her late husband, Emile, who has died at Chicago (Frank Sinatra will record the song next year and make it a hit); "Heaven Can Wait" by Syracuse, N.Y.-born composer James Van Heusen (originally Chester Babcock), 26, lyrics by Eddie De Lange; "And the Angels Sing" by trumpet player Ziggy Elman (Harry Finkelman), who has adapted a Jewish folk tune, lyrics by Johnny Mercer; "Ciribiribin" by composer A. Pestalozza, who has adapted an Italian folk tune, lyrics by New York songwriter Jack Lawrence; "Undecided" by New York-born trumpeter and bandleader Charlie Shavers, 22, lyrics by Sid Robin; "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller, lyrics by Mitchell Parish (see 1938); "In the Mood" by Joe Garland, lyrics by Andy Razaf; "All or Nothing at All" by Arthur Altman, lyrics by Jack Lawrence; "The Lady's in Love with You" by Burton Lane, lyrics by Frank Loesser; "Scatterbrain" by Kahn Keene, Carl Bean, Frankie Masters, lyrics by Johnny Burke; "South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)" by Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr; "Three Little Fishes" by Saxie Dowell. Patsy Montana records "I Love My Fruit."

New York singer-songwriter Carmen McRae, 19, writes "Dream of Life" for Billie Holiday, now 23, who joins with trumpeter Frankie Newton to record "Strange Fruit" by Bronx schoolteacher-songwriter Lewis Allan (Abel Meeropol), who wrote the verses 2 years ago after being horrified by photographs of a lynching and has composed the music himself. First published as a poem in the magazine of the New York teachers' union, the song about bodies "hanging from the poplar trees" has been performed at rallies for the Spanish Loyalists and at left-wing gatherings; Holiday introduces it at New York's Café Society, the city's first integrated nightclub, but it will only rarely be played on the radio and recordings will be hard to find (Holiday will sing briefly with Count Basie and Benny Carter's band in 1944).

Drummer-bandleader Chick Webb dies of spinal tuberculosis at his native Baltimore June 16 at age 30. His lead singer Ella Fitzgerald, now 21, takes over his band.

sports

Golfer Byron Nelson wins the U.S. Open and is awarded the Vardon trophy for low scoring average. He also wins the Western Open over the difficult Medinah No. 3 course near Chicago, remaining on the course for 72 holes without once leaving the fairway.

Los Angeles-born Robert Larimore "Bobby" Riggs, 21, wins in men's singles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills, Alice Marble takes the women's titles.

The Boston Red Sox bring up Ted Williams as outfielder and hitter. San Diego-born Theodore Samuel Williams, 20, started with the San Diego Padres at age 16, the Red Sox acquired him for their farm club 2 years later, and he will play 19 seasons for Boston (see 1941).

Yankee "Iron Horse" Lou Gehrig is stricken with a rare and fatal form of paralysis (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), takes himself out of the lineup April 30, and bids a tearful farewell to Yankee fans July 4, retiring with a lifetime batting average of .340. Appointed parole commissioner by Mayor La Guardia, he will serve until his death in June 1941.

Lundy Lumber beats Lycoming Dairy 23 to 8 at Williamsburg, Pa., June 6 in the first Little League baseball game. Local lumberyard clerk Carl E. Stotz, 29, has shrunk a regulation field to boys' size (bases are 60 feet apart, the pitcher's mound is 40 feet from home plate), introduced lighter-weight bats and balls, and formed the adult-supervised league for youngsters aged 6 to 12. The Little League will have 48 teams in 12 leagues by 1947 and hold its first World Series at Williamsport in 1949.

The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the Cincinnati Reds 4 games to 0. Joe DiMaggio is named the American League's Most Valuable Player, having finished the season with a .381 batting average and a .671 slugging percentage.

A Baseball Hall of Fame established at Cooperstown, N.Y., celebrates the "centennial" of the national pastime (see Spalding, 1876). The hall's initial inductees are Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, the late Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner.

Football helmets become mandatory in U.S. college football competition (see NCAA, 1906). The leather helmets have no face masks.

Basketball inventor James Naismith dies at Lawrence, Kansas, November 28 at age 78.

everyday life

Cup-sizing for brassieres is introduced by Warner Brothers of Bridgeport, Conn., whose designer Leona Gross Lax, 48, has adapted the concept innovated by Maidenform.

Paris couturière Madeleine Vionnet closes her Maison Vionnet at the outbreak of war. Now 63, she ran it for 2 years before the outbreak of World War I, reopened 20 years ago, and has become famous for her bias-cut designs that gave stretch to fabrics. Others will be quick to imitate her designs after the war.

Daisy Manufacturing Co. signs a formal licensing agreement October 6 with cartoonists Stephen Slesinger and Fred Harman to use their Red Ryder comic strip character for promoting a BB gun that looks like a real Western carbine (see 1889). The first Daisy 111-40 Red Ryder Western Carbines will go on sale next year at $2.95 each, and by the time the model is retired in 1954 some 6.5 million of the air rifles will have been sold.

tobacco

Pall Mall cigarettes in a new 85-millimeter length are the first U.S. "king-sized" cigarettes. American Tobacco's George Washington Hill lengthens the 2-year-old brand to make it 15-millimeters longer than other cigarettes and claims that the longer length "travels the smoke, and makes it mild."

crime

Al Capone gains release from Alcatraz, his mind destroyed by syphilis (see 1931). The gangster retires to his estate at Miami Beach and will vegetate there until his death in 1947.

The American Sociological Association hears a speech December 27 from criminologist Edwin H. Sutherland on the subject of "white-collar crime" (see 1924). Now 56 and a member of the University of Indiana faculty since 1935, Sutherland has studied adverse legal decisions against 70 leading U.S. corporations since their founding and discovered that not one had an unblemished record (see 1949).

architecture, real estate

The Johnson Wax Research Tower opens in April at Racine, Wis. Herbert F. Johnson Jr. of the S. C. Johnson Co. has commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design the structure, and it has cost more than $850,000. Its ceiling is supported by 62 tapering concrete columns that resemble giant golf tees or water-lily stems, measuring as little as nine inches in diameter at the bottom and 30 inches at the top. They extend upward to eight disks, each 18 feet in diameter, which form a geometric canopy overhead, but although the tower is an aesthetic triumph it has practical problems.

U.S. motels and tourist courts number 13,500, while the country has 14,000 year-round hotels containing at least 25 guest rooms each (see 1925). The number of motels will increase to more than 41,000 in the next 20 years as America embraces the automobile culture, and the number of year-round hotels will fall to just over 10,000 (see Holiday Inns, 1952).

environment

Parker Dam is completed across the Colorado River near Parker, Ariz., as part of the $220 million Colorado River Aqueduct System that taps 1 billion gallons of water per day from the river, lifts it nearly one-fourth of a mile high, and transports it across 330 miles of desert and mountain to the 3,900-square mile Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles (see 1913). Located 155 miles below the 3-year-old Boulder Dam, the new $13 million project has been built up from 234 feet below the river bed.

Fort Peck Dam is completed with WPA funds to control the Missouri River in northeastern Montana. One of the world's largest earth-filled dams, it rises 249 feet, extends 21,432 feet in length, and produces hydroelectric power and improves navigation in addition to controlling floods.

An earthquake registering 8.3 on the Richter scale shatters Chillan, Chile, January 25, killing 28,000; an earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale shakes Erzincan, Turkey, December 26, killing 30,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

agriculture

London urges British farmers May 3 to plow up grazing land in order to increase domestic food production. Britain has reduced her dependence on imported food through subsidies to farmers and marketing schemes, but she remains the largest buyer of food in the world market, absorbing 40 percent of all food sold in international trade.

Germany has stockpiles of 8.5 million tons of grain as World War II begins. Berlin accuses London of having airlifted Colorado potato beetles onto German fields.

DDT halts an invasion of Colorado potato beetles, whose depredations threaten Switzerland's potato crop. Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller, 40, of the Geigy Co. has taken the low-cost hydrocarbon pesticide synthesized by chemistry student Othmar Zeidler in 1873 and developed it into an insecticide that is far more effective and persistent than anything previously known (see 1943; medicine [typhus], 1944; Osborne, 1948; Carson, 1962).

Japanese beetles menace crops in much of the United States (see 1916).

The drought on the southern plains that has persisted since 1931 finally ends; abundant rainfall produces bumper wheat crops.

Nearly 25 percent of Americans are still on the land, but the average farm family has a cash income of only $1,000 per year.

Harvard plant geneticists Paul C. (Christoph) Mangelsdorf, 40, and R. G. Reeves show that Zea Mays originated from wild maize when winds blew the seeds north to the highlands of Mexico, where they mated with the wild grass Tripsachum, known to the Mexicans as teosinte, or God's grass. The two flourished side by side for centuries before they mated, and from that cross came Zea Mays, which is grown in many varieties—elf corn by the Mexicans for use in tortillas, northern flint corn for cornmeal, dent corn for Southern spoon bread, sweet corn (see 1779), and various hybrids (see Mangelsdorf, 1941).

Russia's August 23 nonaggression treaty obliges her to supply Germany with 1 million tons of wheat per year and expedite delivery of Manchurian soybeans.

food availability

The U.S. Department of Agriculture introduces the first food stamp program in May to feed the needy of Rochester, N.Y. The program will continue until 1943 (see 1964).

Britain establishes a Ministry of Food with nutrition expert Professor J. C. (later Sir Jack) Drummond as scientific adviser. It draws up plans designed not only to maintain adequate supplies but also to improve the nation's nutrition, especially of the poor. Shortages of sweets and sugar are reported at Christmas, but some areas have gluts of the same foodstuffs that in other parts of the country are hard to find, and some shopkeepers will serve only regular customers (see rationing, 1940).

Former president Herbert Hoover organizes a drive for Finnish relief December 5; Congress grants Finland $10 million in credit for agricultural supplies.

nutrition

British biochemist David Keilin, 52, and his colleague T. Mann demonstrate that zinc is an essential trace element, essential to the human enzyme carbonic anhydrase needed by the body to eliminate carbon dioxide waste.

British bread, flour, and margarine are enriched and fortified with vitamins and minerals. Vitamins A and D are added to margarine, calcium carbonate to flour. Britons increase consumption of milk, potatoes, cheese, and green vegetables.

The American Institute of Nutrition revives the idea of fortifying staple foods with vitamins and minerals (see 1936; 1941).

Biochemist Gerald J. Cox of Pittsburgh's Mellon Institute urges fluoridation of U.S. drinking water in areas where it is not fluoridated by nature (see 1931; Dean, 1933; Grand Rapids, Newburgh, 1945).

food and drink

General Foods introduces the first precooked frozen foods under the Birds Eye label, marketing a chicken fricasee and criss-cross steak (see 1931). Competitors come out within the year with "frosted" creamed chicken, beef stew, and roast turkey.

A new 5-minute Cream of Wheat competes with quick-cooking Quaker Oats, which reduced its cooking time in 1922 from 15 minutes to 5.

Elsie the Cow appears at the New York World's Fair (see 1936). The bovine trademark helps Borden Co. to establish national awareness.

The pressure cooker introduced at the New York World's Fair by National Presto Industries is a saucepan-like pot with a locking swivel lid (see 1681). It does in minutes what used to take hours.

Lay's Potato Chips are introduced by Atlanta's H. W. Lay Co., founded by Herman Warden Lay, 30; he has taken over Barrett Food Products, for which he was a route salesman in 1932 (see Frito-Lay, 1961).

Pepsi-Cola challenges Coca-Cola with a radio jingle written for $2,500 by Bradley Kent and Austen Herbert Croom to the old English hunting song "D'ye Ken John Peel": "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/ Twelve full ounces, that's a lot/ Twice as much for a nickel, too/ Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you." Coca-Cola remains dependent on visual imagery, it has nothing to counter the catchy Pepsi jingle, and Pepsi's net earnings for the year reach $5.6 million, up from $2 million in 1936 (see 1959).

G. F. Heublein & Bro. of Hartford, Conn., acquires rights to Smirnoff Vodka for $14,000 (see Smirnoff, 1818). Heublein boss John G. Martin, 33, employs Russian émigré Rudolph Kunett, whose Smirnoff Co. has been grossing $36,000 per year but is close to bankruptcy (see 1948).

China consumes about 900 million pounds of tea, the United Kingdom about 469 million, India 111, the United States 97, Japan 75, Russia 63, Australia 51, Canada 43, the Netherlands 29, Eire 23, the Dutch East Indies 21.

population

Palestine's population reaches 1.4 million, including 900,000 Muslims, 400,000 Jews, 100,000 Christians (see politics [Israel], 1948).

1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940

Astronomy

By comparing photographs taken in 1909, 1921, and 1938, John Charles Duncan at Mt. Wilson Observatory discovers that the Crab Nebula expands. Calculating the initial explosion from the rate of expansion establishes that the nebula is some 800 years old. See also 1054 Astronomy; 1948 Astronomy.

J. Robert Oppenheimer and George Michael Volkoff [b. Moscow, February 23, 1914, d. April 2000] calculate that if the mass of a neutron star is more than 3.2 times the mass of the Sun, the entire mass of the star will collapse to a point, creating what will come to be known as a black hole. This is before the discovery of the first neutron star, however. See also 1917 Astronomy; 1967 Astronomy.

Andrei Belozersky starts his experimental work showing that both DNA and RNA are always present in bacteria.

Edward Adelbert Doisy [b. Hume, Illinois, November 13, 1893, d. St. Louis, Missouri, October 23, 1986] isolates vitamin K. See also 1935 Biology; 1943 Biology.

Chemist Marguerite Perey [b. Villemomble, France, 1909, d. Louveciennes, France, 1975] discovers the chemical element francium (Fr).

Linus Pauling's The Nature of the Chemical Bond and Structure of Molecules and Crystals, subtitled An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry, becomes a classic work of chemistry, still used today. In The Nature of the Chemical Bond, as it is usually called, Pauling details the relationships between chemical resonance and the three types of bonds that hold atoms together in compounds and in molecules. He also calculates bond strengths and how interatomic distances affect the structure of molecules and crystals. See also 1933 Chemistry.

Baron Alexander Robertus Todd [b. Glasgow, Scotland, October 2, 1907, d. Cambridge, England, January 10, 1997] begins the analysis of the nucleotides that are the bases involved in building RNA and DNA, later found to be the "letters" of the genetic code. See also 1957 Chemistry.

Adolf Butenandt of Germany and Leopold Ružička of Switzerland share the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Butenandt for his study of sexual hormones and Ružička for his work with atomic ring structures and terpenes. See also 1934 Chemistry; 1935 Chemistry.

The first commercial system of color photography in which a negative is produced first appears and is a success with skilled amateur photographers and cinematographers. See also 1936 Communication.

Vladimir Zworykin, Harley Iams, and George Morton develop the image iconoscope. The television camera tube has a semitransparent photocathode on which the image to be televised is projected. Electrons are emitted from this photocathode, forming an "electronic" image that subsequently is amplified, resulting in a higher sensitivity. Albert Rose [b. March 30, 1920, d. July 26, 1990] and Harley Iams develop at RCA Laboratories the orthicon, a television camera tube in which the plate on which the image is projected is scanned by an electron beam that resupplies electrons that have been emitted by photoemission. See also 1946 Communication.

George Stibitz and Samuel B. Williams build the Complex Number Computer (also called the Bell Telephone Lab Computer Model 1, or BTL Model 1), consisting of more than 400 relays, and connect it to three telex units, thus introducing the principle of operating a computer via a terminal. See also 1937 Computers; 1940 Computers.

Physicist John Atanasoff receives a grant of $650 from Iowa State College to build the computer he had been thinking about since 1937. He hires electrical engineering student Clifford Berry [b. Gladbrook, Iowa, April 19, 1918, d. New York, October 30, 1963] to work with him to build an electronic computer (or calculator) designed for finding the solutions to systems of linear equations. See also 1937 Computers; 1942 Computers.

Walter Maurice Elsasser [b. Mannheim, Germany, March 20, 1904, d. October 14, 1991] suggests that the liquid iron core of Earth contains eddy currents that set up Earth's magnetic field. See also 1936 Earth science.

Edward Victor Appleton confirms that radio waves are reflected by ionized particles caused as meteors pass through upper atmospheric layers and uses this phenomenon to measure the height of the E layer (sometimes called the Appleton layer) of the ionosphere, which is about 50 km (30 mi). The E layer is also the lower layer that reflects AM radio waves back to Earth, allowing radio transmission beyond the horizon. See also 1932 Astronomy; 1947 Astronomy.

Hannes Olof Gosta Alfvén [b. Norrköping, Sweden, May 30, 1908, d. April 2, 1995] publishes his theory that correctly relates auroras to magnetic storms -- that is, rapid changes in part of Earth's magnetic field. See also 1950 Earth science.

John Turton Randall [b. Lancashire, England, March 23, 1905, d. Edinburgh, Scotland, 1984] and Henry Albert Boot [b. Birmingham, England, July 29, 1914, d. 1983] develop the first practical magnetron, a vacuum tube that produces radio waves of greater power and higher frequency than possible with other means. Their work is based on various other forms of magnetron developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Secretly brought to the United States, the Randall-Boot magnetron becomes the central component of radar systems. See also 1937 Electronics; 1943 Tools.

Paul Müller [b. Olten, Switzerland, January 12, 1899, d. Basel, Switzerland, October 13, 1965] discovers that DDT is a potent insecticide. See also 1874 Food & agriculture; 1972 Ecology & the environment.

Powder metallurgy, the working of metals (and some carbides) by pressure and sintering, is introduced. See also 1925 Materials.

The first volume of mathematics attributed to Nicolas Bourbaki is published. This is the beginning of a project that attempts to synthesize all known mathematics. After this, it will continue to appear in numerous volumes, written by a group of mostly French mathematicians who use Bourbaki as a joint nom de plume. (See essay.)

René Jules Dubos [b. Saint-Brice, France, February 2, 1901, d. February 20, 1982] searches for and finds two compounds produced by a soil bacterium that kill other bacteria. Today such compounds are called antibiotics. These are the first antibiotics to have been deliberately sought for this property. See also 1877 Medicine & health; 1944 Medicine & health.

On June 28 Harold A. Campbell, working with Karl Paul Link, isolates coumadin, which will become used as a blood thinner to prevent clots in several different medical conditions, such as irregular heartbeats. See also 1933 Medicine & health; 1944 Food & agriculture.

Gerhard Domagk of Germany wins the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for discovery of the first sulfa drug, Prontosil. See also 1932 Medicine & health.

In January Otto Hahn publishes the results of his experiments with uranium, but he is too cautious to call it nuclear fission. Also in January, Lise Meitner and Austrian-British physicist Otto Robert Frisch [b. Vienna, October 1, 1904, d. Cambridge, England, September 22, 1979] advance the theory that uranium when bombarded by neutrons breaks into smaller atoms. The term fission is their word for this process. Physicists all over Europe and the Americas immediately repeat and extend the experiments. See also 1938 Physics.

John Ray Dunning [b. Shelby, Nebraska, September 24, 1907, d. August 25, 1975] is the first to confirm Lise Meitner's theory of uranium fission experimentally. Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard [b. Budapest, February 11, 1897, d. La Jolla, California, May 30, 1964] and Walter Henry Zinn [b. Kitchner, Ontario, December 10, 1906] confirm that fission reactions can be self-sustaining because of chain reactions. French scientists Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie also demonstrate that the fission of the uranium atom can lead to a chain reaction. See also 1942 Energy.

Biophysicist Richard Brooke Roberts [b. Titusville, Pennsylvania, December 7, 1910, d. April 4, 1980] discovers that a fissioning uranium atom does not release all its neutrons at the same time. The "delayed neutrons" are an important element in controlling nuclear reactors. See also 1942 Energy.

Philip Hauge Abelson [b. Tacoma, Washington, April 27, 1913) identifies the products of uranium fission: three radioactive isotopes of antimony, six of tellurium, and four of iodine.

Homi Bhabha [b. Bombay, India, October 30, 1909, d. Mont Blanc, France, January 24, 1966] suggests the name meson for the middle-weight exchange particle predicted by Hideki Yukawa. See also 1935 Physics.

Niels Bohr proposes the liquid-drop model of the atomic nucleus independently of Hans Bethe and Carl von Weizsäcker, who had suggested the idea in 1935. Bohr uses the idea to explain atomic fission. See also 1935 Physics; 1949 Physics.

Einstein writes the letter to President Roosevelt, dated August 2, that will lead to the U.S. effort to develop an atomic (fission) bomb.

Ernest Lawrence of the United States wins the Nobel Prize for physics for his invention of the cyclotron. See also 1931 Tools

Igor Sikorsky constructs the first helicopter designed for mass production. It flies for the first time on September 14. See also 1923 Transportation; 1944 Transportation.

German engineer Hans Pabst von Ohain's jet engine becomes the first such engine actually to fly an airplane, the Heinkel He-178. The experimental plane reaches 500 km/hr (360 mph). See also 1937 Transportation.

Drama and Theater

• Maxwell Anderson: Key Largo. Anderson's verse drama concerns an American Loyalist in the Spanish Civil War who deserts his comrades, returns to America, and is given the opportunity to expiate his crimes by confronting gangsters in a Florida hotel.
• Philip Barry: The Philadelphia Story. Barry's comedy about socialite Tracy Lord and her prominent Mainline family on the eve of her remarriage had been written with actress Katharine Hepburn in mind and provides the playwright with his biggest commercial success. Hepburn would reprise her performance in the equally successful 1940 film.
• S. N. Behrman: No Time for Comedy. Considered by many the playwright's greatest achievement, the play concerns a popular author of light comedies (much like Behrman himself) who wishes to write about serious subjects.
• Russel Crouse (1893-1966) and Howard Lindsay: Life with Father. Based on Clarence Day's autobiographical books, this drama about a domineering patriarch of a large New York City family in the 1880s set a record with 3,224 performances, becoming the longest-running nonmusical play in Broadway history. A sequel, Life with Mother, appeared in 1948.
• B. G. De Sylva (1895-1950): Du Berry Was a Lady. This Cole Porter musical about a washroom attendant who dreams that he is Louis XV and that the nightclub singer he loves is Madame Du Berry is one of the biggest hits of the season. De Sylva, a songwriter and librettist, worked with Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and others on several musicals and revues.
• T. S. Eliot: The Family Reunion. Eliot's verse drama attempts to re-create a modern Greek tragedy in an English country home.
• Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur: Ladies and Gentlemen. A lone woman juror is able to convince her fellows of an alleged murderer's innocence in this star turn for MacArthur's wife, Helen Hayes.
• Lillian Hellman: The Little Foxes. The playwright's most acclaimed work anatomizes the rapacious Hubbard clan of New Orleans at the turn of the century as they scramble for the means to prop up their declining fortunes, revealing rivalries and disloyalty in a lacerating power struggle. A "prequel," giving the Hubbards' earlier history, Another Part of the Forest, would appear in 1946.
• DuBose Heyward and Dorothy Heyward: Mamba's Daughters. The authors of Porgy return to black life in Charleston, South Carolina, with this melodramatic adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1929 novel.
• George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart: The American Way. The playwrights set aside their usual style of barbed comedy for an uplifting, patriotic spectacular, employing as many as 250 performers for crowd scenes illustrating American life from the 1890s. The duo also produce The Man Who Came to Dinner, one of the most popular American comedies. It concerns the acid-tongued celebrity (based on writer, actor, and radio commentator Alexander Woollcott) who recuperates from a fall in a middle-class Ohio household.
• Sidney Kingsley: The World We Make. Based on Millen Brand's novel The Outward Room (1937), the play dramatizes a mentally disturbed woman who tries to live a normal life.
• Clare Boothe Luce: Margin for Error. The playwright's comedy about a Jewish American policeman assigned to protect the Nazi consul in New York is called, by critic Burns Mantle, "the first successful anti-Nazi play to reach the stage."
• Paul Osborn: Morning's at Seven. Osborn's most enduring original work is a comedy concerning the complex relationships among four sisters in a Midwestern town. Revived in 1980, it would be hailed by Harold Clurman as "one of the best American comedies."
• William Saroyan: My Heart's in the Highlands. The success of Saroyan's odd-ball drama about a collection of eccentrics in Fresno, California, launches the short story writer's dramatic career. He also writes The Time of Your Life. Set in a San Francisco waterfront bar, Saroyan's most acclaimed play dramatizes the consequences when a wealthy drunk provides the means for the bar's denizens to indulge their fancies. The play is the first to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Saroyan declines the Pulitzer, claiming that the businessmen who determine the award should not judge the arts.
• Irwin Shaw: The Gentle People. Shaw's play depicting Brooklyn life through two characters, a Jew and a Greek, who get mixed up with a racketeer is described by its author as "a fairy tale with a moral." Critics find it muddled and falling between the "two stools of allegory and simple realism."
• Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams III, 1911-1983): American Blues. This group of related one-act plays wins a Group Theatre contest and brings the playwright his first national recognition. The plays would be published in 1948. Born in Mississippi, Williams attended the University of Missouri and Washington University before winning a Theatre Guild contest and enrolling in the playwriting program at the University of Iowa.

Fiction

• Sholem Asch: The Nazarene. The first in a series of Asch's novels on religious figures chronicles the life of Jesus from a variety of perspectives. The Apostle (1943), Mary (1949), and The Prophet (1953) would follow.
• William Attaway (1911-1986): Let Me Breathe Thunder. The first of the African American writer's two novels about two hoboes who befriend a Mexican boy during the Depression evokes comparisons to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and to Hemingway for the novel's minimalist style. His second novel, Blood on the Forge (1941), tells about Southern blacks who compete with whites for steel-mill jobs in Pennsylvania.
• Arna Bontemps: Drums at Dusk. The author's final novel concerns the slave revolt in Haiti and the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture.
• Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep. Chandler's first novel introduces his hard-boiled Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe, in a dark, complex urban intrigue that in the words of one reviewer "makes Dashiell Hammett seem as innocuous as Winnie-the-Pooh."
• Pietro Di Donato (1911-1992): Christ in Concrete. The former bricklayer's first novel is an autobiographical work documenting the life of Italian laborers in New York City. The book is considered by many a classic of the American immigrant experience. A less highly regarded sequel, Three Circles of Light, would appear in 1960.
• John Dos Passos: Adventures of a Young Man. In the first volume of a family saga trilogy that would be followed by Number One (1943) and The Grand Design (1949), Dos Passos dramatizes the story of an idealistic Communist betrayed by the party. Critic Philip Rahv would call the novel "perhaps the most thoughtful and realistic portrait of the radical movement that has so far been produced by an American writer."
• James T. Farrell: Tommy Gallagher's Crusade. Farrell's novella describes a youth selling Fascist newspapers who is beaten up by Communist sympathizers. It features a thinly disguised portrait of Father Charles Coughlin, the popular, radical radio host.
• William Faulkner: The Wild Palms. Two stories centered on the precariousness of love juxtapose a New Orleans doctor's tragic affair with a married woman and a convict's relationship with a pregnant hill woman during a flood.
• Kenneth Fearing: The Hospital. Fearing's first novel treats events in a large metropolitan hospital from multiple perspectives. It would be followed by his first attempt at a thriller, Dagger of the Mind (1941), and Clark Gifford's Body (1942), the story of a modern-day John Brown who attacks a radio station.
• Vardis Fisher: Children of God. Fisher's most famous and acclaimed work chronicles the history of the Mormons from John Smith through the western migration and the settlement of Utah. Clifton Fadiman rates the novel as "one of the most extraordinarily interesting stories I have ever read and... I have rarely encountered a book whose faults one is more eager and easily able to condone."
• Zora Neale Hurston: Moses: Man of the Mountain. This is a retelling of the Exodus story and the myth of Moses as a version of African American experience, which Hurston biographer Robert Hemenway describes as a "noble failure."
• Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986): Goodbye to Berlin. Published in the same year that Isherwood immigrates to the United States (he would become a naturalized citizen in 1946), this collection of autobiographical sketches of Berlin life in the years immediately preceding Hitler's coming to power would be adapted by John Van Druten as I Am a Camera (1951), which in turn became the basis for the musical Cabaret (1966).
• H. P. Lovecraft: The Outsiders and Others. Lovecraft's friends and fellow writers August Derleth and Donald Wandrei set up the publishing firm of Arkham to bring out, posthumously, Lovecraft's horror fiction in book form; this is the first of several volumes.
• J. P. Marquand: Wickford Point. The novelist widens the focus of Boston Brahmin life in The Late George Apley (1937), a chronicle of the well-to-do Brill family and their Massachusetts community.
• Henry Miller: The Cosmological Eye. Miller's first U.S. publication is a miscellany of stories, essays, and excerpts that serves as an introduction to the writer's ideas and methods. Tropic of Capricorn, Miller's assortment of metaphysical speculations, surrealistic comedy, and sexually explicit scenes, is also published in Paris. It would be first published in the United States in 1962.
• Christopher Morley: Kitty Foyle. Morley's best-selling novel describes the life of a working-class Irish American and her affair with the son of a prominent Philadelphia family.
• Anaïs Nin: The Winter of Artifice. Nin's second volume of fiction contains three novellas; one of them, "Djuna," reflects the author's relationship with Henry Miller and his wife, June.
• Katherine Anne Porter: Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Three short novels--the title story about a girl's love affair with a World War I veteran; "Old Mortality," about a Southern belle; and "Noon Wine," about a Swedish hired man on a Texas dairy farm--make up this acclaimed collection.
• William Saroyan: Peace, It's Wonderful. The author's final important short story collection--his eighth since 1934--before turning his attention to drama and the novel.
• Irwin Shaw: Sailor Off the Bremen. A collection of stories, many of which were first published in The New Yorker, demonstrates the writer's skill as capturing, in the words of one reviewer, "City College smarties, taxi drivers, hooligans, and fighting wives."
• John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath. The only social protest novel of the 1930s to reach a mass audience, Steinbeck's dust-bowl saga of the Joad family's forced exodus from Oklahoma to California would be banned, burned, and acclaimed as the decade's defining masterpiece. Winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize, the book is regarded as an American classic, Steinbeck's most enduring work, and the summation of the author's artistic and moral vision.
• James Thurber: The Last Flower. Inspired by the Spanish Civil War and the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland, Thurber presents a parable of the folly of war in which the only survivors of World War XII are a man, a woman, and a flower. From these three love emerges, leading to family, tribe, civilization, and inevitably, another war.
• Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976): Johnny Got His Gun. Trumbo's searing antiwar novel is a stream-of-consciousness account of a soldier without arms, legs, face, sight, and hearing, whose desire to become a physical exhibit on the cruelty and futility of war is prevented by the powerful. Born in Colorado, Trumbo was a screenwriter, novelist, and essayist who would be blacklisted during the 1950s for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
• Waters Turpin: O Canaan! Turpin's second novel, part of an uncompleted series of novels chronicling the black experience in America, documents the great migration of Southern farm laborers to Chicago during the Depression.
• Robert Penn Warren: Night Rider. Warren's first novel concerns the Kentucky Tobacco Wars of the early twentieth century, which took place between the growers and the manufacturers.
• Nathanael West: The Day of the Locust. West's final and most ambitious novel looks at the unglamorous side of Hollywood--its losers and frustrated hangers-on for whom illusion leads to a sense of betrayal and finally apocalyptic violence. Praised in literary circles and called the best Hollywood novel ever written, the book is ignored by the public.
• Thomas Wolfe: The Web and the Rock. Despite the author's contention that this story of George Webber's Southern upbringing, schooling, and travels represents "the most objective novel I have written," reviewer Alfred Kazin and others find only an echo of Wolfe's autobiography already illustrated by Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel: "It is the same Gant career... and always the same Wolfe." A sequel, You Can't Go Home Again, would be posthumously published in 1940.

Literary Criticism and Scholarship

• Cleanth Brooks: Modern Poetry and the Tradition. Brooks's debut solo collection of critical essays, along with Understanding Poetry (1938), establishes his reputation as one of the leading practitioners and theorists of the New Criticism.
• Henry Seidel Canby: Thoreau. The first truly scholarly biography of the writer would remain the standard work until the 1960s. Literary historian Robert Spiller has observed that the book is not only "the sanest biography of Thoreau, but it is one of the sanest I have read of anyone."
• J. Saunders Redding (1906-1988): To Make a Poet Black. One of the earliest important works of African American literary criticism, Redding's study attempts to establish the canon of African American literature, traces the historical development of a black aesthetic, and identifies the major figures who contributed to its development. Redding became a faculty member at Brown University in 1949, the first African American professor at an Ivy League University.

Nonfiction

• Samuel Hopkins Adams: Incredible Era. Adams combines a biographical portrait of Warren G. Harding with a popular assessment of American culture and politics from World War I to Harding's death.
• W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Folk: Then and Now. Subtitled "An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race," Du Bois's outline history of blacks in Africa and America underscores racial kinship and the sources of pride in a black heritage.
• Carey McWilliams (1905-1980): Factories in the Field. Published in the same year as Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, McWilliams's factual study of migratory fieldworkers in California helps substantiate the novel's portrait of widespread exploitation of labor. McWilliams was a California lawyer and sociologist.
• Carl Sandburg: Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. Completing one of the monumental works of the century, Sandburg's four-volume account of the Lincoln presidency picks up where his Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) left off. Historian Allan Nevins calls the book "unlike any other biography or history in the language." Prohibited by rules from awarding the biography prize for any work on Washington or Lincoln, the Pulitzer Prize committee gives the book the award for history.
• Dorothy Thompson: Let the Record Speak. A compilation of the outspoken foreign correspondent's syndicated column, "On the Record," dealing with politics and foreign affairs from 1936 to 1939.
• E. B. White: Quo Vadimus? or, The Case of the Bicycle. Stories and sketches illustrating regrettable developments in modern life. The humorist takes aim at radio broadcasts, long-distance plane flights, advertising, and cellophane.

Poetry

• T. S. Eliot: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Eliot's collection of Edward Lear-like poems about fanciful felines such as Growltiger, Mistoffelees, and Macavity the Mystery Cat displays a playful side of the poet and critic. Andrew Lloyd Webber would adapt the poems into the long-running musical Cats in 1981.
• Paul Engle: Corn. The poet celebrates his native Iowa in this collection. As critic Selden Rodman observes, compared to his earlier work, the collection is "less pretentious, more honest, quieter, it quickens our hope that the Whitman tradition may still give the Wallace Stevenses and Delmore Schwartzes competition."
• Robert Frost: Collected Poems. This new edition of Frost's collected verse includes the introductory essay "The Figure a Poet Makes," which asserts Frost's poetic principles, including "sound is the gold in the ore" and that a poem must be about things that matter: "It begins in delight and ends in wisdom."
• Archibald MacLeish: America Was Promises. A poetic call to action to save democracy. Fellow poet Louise Bogan complains that the work shows an essentially private poet being misled by assuming a public, prophetic role.
• Edna St. Vincent Millay: Huntsman, What Quarry? A collection of lyrics and sonnets recording the poet's feelings on the wars in Czechoslovakia, China, and Spain, as well as her tribute to poet Elinor Wylie. It sells sixty thousand copies within a month.
• Kenneth Patchen: First Will and Testament. Patchen's second collection is self-described as "the legacy of a poet who speaks for a generation which was born in one war and seems destined to perish in another."
• Muriel Rukeyser: A Turning Wind. The poet's third collection continues her social evaluation in a series of highly symbolic New England portraits. The volume prompts reviewer T. C. Wilson to declare that the poet "could be the most abundant of the younger American poets."
• May Sarton: Inner Landscape. Sarton's second volume of introspective meditations evokes comparisons with Elinor Wylie and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
• Edward Taylor: Poetical Verse. Discovered in manuscripts at Yale in 1937 by Thomas H. Johnson, the Puritan minister's poetry is published for the first time, establishing Taylor as seventeenth-century America's greatest poet.
• Mark Van Doren: Collected Poems, 1922-1938. Van Doren's compilation from his six previous volumes and additional new poems wins the Pulitzer Prize.

Publications and Events

• Mark Van DorenEnd of Federal Theatre Project. The project is abolished by Congress after conservatives repeatedly charge that the New Deal program, established in 1935 to provide work for theatrical professionals affected by the Depression, promulgates left-wing propaganda.
• Mark Van DorenKenyon Review. The literary quarterly is founded and edited until 1959 by John Crowe Ransom as a vehicle for writers such as Robert Penn Warren and Allen Tate, as well as a forum for the methods of the textual analysis of poetry that would become known as the New Criticism.
• Mark Van DorenScribner's Commentator. Scribner's Magazine is purchased by the Commentator and becomes Scribner's Commentator. The magazine abandons literary content to advance a political policy, and in 1942 its publisher would be prosecuted for accepting subsidies from Japan for publishing propaganda for the Japanese government.

For the film, see 1939 (film).

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1900s  1910s  1920s  – 1930s –  1940s  1950s  1960s
Years:	1936 1937 1938 – 1939 – 1940 1941 1942

1939 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 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Contents:
Events of 1939 -  Jan. . Feb. . March . April -  May . June . July  .  Aug. -  Sept. . Oct. . Nov. .  Dec. -  Undated . Ongoing . Births Deaths Nobel Prizes See also -  Notes -  External links

Events of 1939

January

• January 1 – The Hewlett-Packard Company is founded.
• January 1 – Texas A&M University wins its only football national championship.
• January 5 – Amelia Earhart is officially declared dead after her disappearance.
• January 6 – Naturwissenschaften publishes evidence that nuclear fission has been achieved by Otto Hahn.
• January 13 – Black Friday: 71 people die across Victoria in one of Australia's worst ever bushfires.
• January 23 – “Dutch War Scare”: Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the Abwehr leaks misinformation to the effect that Germany plans to invade the Netherlands in February, with the aim of using Dutch air-fields to launch a strategic bombing offensive against Britain. The “Dutch War Scare” leads to a major change in British policies towards Europe.
• January 24 – An earthquake kills 30,000 in Chile, and razes about 50,000 sq mi (130,000 km²).
• January 26 – Spanish Civil War: Spanish Nationalist troops, aided by Italy, take Barcelona.
• January 26 – In Paris, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, in response to rumours (which are true) that he is seeking to end the French alliance system in Eastern Europe, gives a speech highlighting his government's commitment to the cordon sanitaire.
• January 27 – Adolf Hitler orders Plan Z, a 5-year naval expansion programme intended to provide for a huge German fleet capable of crushing the Royal Navy by 1944. The Kriegsmarine is given the first priority on the allotment of German economic resources.
• January 30 – Hitler gives a speech before the Reichstag calling for an "export battle" to increase German foreign exchange holdings. The same speech also sees Hitler's “prophecy” where he warns that if "Jewish financers" start a war against Germany, the "...result will be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".

February

February 21: Golden Gate International Exposition opens.

• February 2 – Hungary joins the Anti-Comintern Pact.
• February 6 – British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain states in the House of Commons that any German attack on France will be automatically considered an attack on Britain.
• February 6 – In a response to Georges Bonnet's speech of January 26, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, referring to Bonnet’s alleged statement of December 6, 1938 accepting Eastern Europe as being in Germany’s exclusive sphere of influence, protests that all French security commitments in that region are “now off limits”.
• February 10 – Spanish Nationalists complete their offensive in Catalonia.
• February 21 – The Golden Gate International Exposition opens in San Francisco, California.
• February 27 – The United Kingdom and France recognize Franco's government.
• February 27 – Borley Rectory in England burns.
• February 27 – Sit-down strikes are outlawed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
• February 28 – The first issue of the Serbian weekly magazine Politikin Zabavnik is published.

March

• March – The 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine ends.
• March 1 – A Japanese Imperial Army ammunition dump explosion on the outskirts of Osaka kills 94.
• March 2 – Pope Pius XII (Cardinal Pacelli) succeeds Pope Pius XI as the 260th pope.
• March 3 – In Bombay, Mohandas Gandhi begins to fast in protest of the autocratic rule in India.
• March 3 – Students at Harvard University demonstrate the new tradition of swallowing goldfish to reporters.
• March 3 – In Durban, South Africa the Timeless Test begins between England and South Africa, the longest game of cricket ever played. It was abandoned 12 days later, when the English team had to catch the last ferry home.
• March 13 – Hitler advises Jozef Tiso to declare Slovakia's independence in order to prevent its partition by Hungary and Poland.
• March 14 – The Slovak provincial assembly proclaims independence; priest Jozef Tiso becomes the president of the independent Slovak government.
• March 15 – German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist. The Ruthenian region of Czechoslovakia declares independence as Carpatho-Ukraine.
• March 16 – Princess Fawzia of Egypt marries Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran.
• March 16 – Hungary invades Carpatho-Ukraine; final resistance ends on March 18.
• March 17 – British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gives a speech in Birmingham, stating that Britain will oppose any effort at world domination on the part of Germany.
• March 18 – “Romanian War Scare”: Virgil Tilea, the Romanian Minister in London, spreads false rumours that Romania is on the verge of a German attack.
• March 20 – At an emergency meeting in London to deal with the Romanian crisis, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet suggests to Lord Halifax that the ideal state for saving Romania from a German attack is Poland.
• March 21 – In London: the O.T.O. publish Aleister Crowley's "Eight Lectures on Yoga".
• March 22 – After an ultimatum of March 20, Nazi Germany takes Memelland from Lithuania.
• March 23 – The Slovak-Hungarian War begins.
• March 28 – Dictator Francisco Franco assumes power in Madrid.
• March 28 – American adventurer Richard Halliburton delivers a last message from a Chinese junk, before he disappears on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
• March 31 – Neville Chamberlain gives a speech in the House of Commons offering the British "guarantee" of the independence of Poland.

April

• April 1 – The Spanish Civil War comes to an end when the last of the Republican forces surrender.
• April 3 – Adolf Hitler orders the German military to start planning for Fall Weiss, the codename for the invasion of Poland.
• April 4 – Faisal II becomes King of Iraq.
• April 4 – The Slovak-Hungarian War ends with Slovakia ceding eastern territories to Hungary.
• April 7 – Italy invades Albania; King Zog flees.
• April 9 – African-American singer Marian Anderson performs before 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after having been denied the use both of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and of a public high school by the federally controlled District of Columbia.
• April 11 – Hungary leaves the League of Nations.
• April 13 – Britain offers a "guarantee" to Romania and Greece.
• April 14 – John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath is first published.
• April 14 – At a meeting in Paris, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet meets with Soviet Ambassador Jakob Suritz, and suggests that a “peace front” comprising France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Poland and Romania would deter Germany from war.
• April 18 – The Soviet Union proposes a "peace front" to resist aggression.
• April 20 – Billie Holiday records "Strange Fruit", the first anti-lynching song.
• April 27 – Ely Racecourse in Cardiff closes.
• April 28 – In a speech before the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler renounces the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.
• April 30 – The 1939 New York World's Fair opens.

May

• May 1 – Batman, created by Bob Kane (and, unofficially, Bill Finger) makes his first appearance in a comic book.
• May 2 – Major League Baseball's Lou Gehrig, the legendary Yankee first baseman known as "The Iron Horse", ends his 2,130 consecutive games played streak after contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The record stands for 56 years before Cal Ripken, Jr. plays 2,131 consecutive games.
• May 3
  • Vyacheslav Molotov succeeds Maxim Litvinov as Soviet Foreign Commissar.
  • The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
• May 6 – Carl Friedrich Goerdeler tells the British government that the German and Soviet governments are secretly beginning a rapprochement with the aim of dividing Eastern Europe between them. Goerdeler also informs the British of German economic problems which he states threaten the survival of the Nazi regime, and advises that if a firm stand is made for Poland, then Hitler will be deterred from war.
• May 9 – Spain leaves the League of Nations.
• May 14 – Lina Medina, a 5-year old Peruvian girl, gives birth to a baby boy, becoming the youngest confirmed mother in medical history.
• May 17
  • King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrive in Quebec City to begin the first-ever tour of Canada by Canada's monarch.
  • The British government issues the White Paper of 1939, sharply restricting Jewish immigration to the Palestine Mandate.
  • Sweden, Norway, and Finland refuse Germany's offer of non-aggression pacts.
• May 20 – Pan-American Airways begins trans-Atlantic mail service with the inaugural flight of its Yankee Clipper from Port Washington, New York.
• May 22 – Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel.
• May 29 – Northamptonshire gains (over Leicestershire at Northampton) their first victory for 99 matches, easily a record in the County Championship. Their last Championship victory was as far back as 14 May 1935 over Somerset at Taunton.

June

June 24: Siam is renamed "Thailand"

• June 3 – The Soviet government offers its definition of what constitutes "aggression", upon which the projected Anglo-Soviet-French alliance will come into effect. The French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet accepts the Soviet definition of aggression at once. The British reject the Soviet definition, especially the concept of "indirect aggression", which they feel is too loose a definition and phrased in such a manner as to imply the Soviet right of inference in the internal affairs of nations of Eastern Europe.
• June 4 – The St. Louis, a ship carrying a cargo of 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida after already having been turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later die in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.
• June 12 – The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is officially dedicated in Cooperstown, New York.
• June 14 – Tientsin Incident: The Japanese blockade the British concession in Tianjin, China, beginning a crisis which almost causes an Anglo-Japanese war in the summer of 1939.
• June 17 – In the last public guillotining in France, murderer Eugen Weidmann is decapitated by the guillotine.
• June 23 – Talks are completed in Ankara between French Ambassador René Massigli and Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu, resolving the Hatay dispute in Turkey's favor. Turkey annexes Hatay.
• June 24 – The government of Siam changes its name to Thailand, which means 'Free Land'.^[1]

July

• July 2 – The 1st World Science Fiction Convention opens in New York City.
• July 4 – Lou Gehrig gives his last public speech, following his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In it, he states, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
• July 4 – The Neuengamme concentration camp becomes autonomous.
• July 6 – The last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed by the Nazis.
• July 23 – Mahatma Gandhi the spiritual leader from India writes a personal letter to Adolf Hitler addressing him "My friend", requesting to prevent any possible war.
• July 27 – The only recorded snowfall in Auckland, New Zealand since records began in 1853.

August

• August 2 – Albert Einstein writes to President Franklin Roosevelt about developing the atomic bomb using uranium. This leads to the creation of the Manhattan Project.
• August 4 – Neville Chamberlain dismisses Parliament until October 3.
• August 15 – MGM's classic musical film The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum's famous novel, and starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
• August 19 – Hitler, after evaluating the pace of the non-aggression negotiations with the Soviet Union, orders the Kriegsmarine to begin the opening operations for Fall Weiss, the invasion of Poland. The Graf Spee, along with the Deutschland, as well as dozens of u-boats, cast off for their advance positions. According to William L. Shirer, Hilter spends the next few days worrying that the Russians will not come to terms in time for the rest of the invasion plans to unfold as scheduled.
• August 20 – Armored forces under the command of Soviet General Georgi Zhukov deliver a decisive defeat to Japanese Imperial Army forces in the Japanese-Soviet border war in Inner Mongolia.
• August 23 – Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: Hitler and Stalin agree to divide Europe between themselves (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland and Basarabia (today Moldavia), north-east province of Romania to the USSR; Lithuania and western Poland to Germany).
• August 24 – As details of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact become public, Neville Chamberlain recalls Parliament several weeks early. In a burst of legislation, a War Powers Act is approved; and HMG order the Royal Navy to be put on a war footing, all leaves to be cancelled, and the Naval and coast defense reserves to be called up, especially radar and anti-aircraft units. In addition, the last British and French private citizens in Germany are ordered home by their respective Governments.
• August 25 – Adolf Hitler postpones Fall Weiss for 5 days, due to a message from Benito Mussolini that he will not honor the Pact of Steel if Germany attacks Poland in 1939, and to the failure of Chamberlain's government to fall because of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Hitler cancels the invasion at approximately 1830 Central European time, a few hours after the German Foreign Ministry cuts off all telegraph and telephone communication with the outside world in accordance with the plan for Fall Weiss. Some units already in their forward positions (the attack is to begin at 0430 the next day) do not get the word in time and attack various targets along the border, but such incidents have been occurring sporadically for months and the Poles do not yet mobilize fully. That same day, Neville Chamberlain gives Edward Rydz-Śmigły his "ironclad guarantee" of assistance if Poland is attacked by Germany.
• August 25 – An IRA bomb explodes in the centre of Coventry, England, killing 5 people.
• August 26 – The Kriegsmarine orders all German-flagged merchant ships to head to German ports immediately in anticipation of the invasion of Poland.
• August 27 – A Heinkel 178, the first turbojet-powered aircraft, flies for the first time with Captain Erich Warsitz in command.
• August 30 – Poland begins a mobilization against Nazi Germany.

September

Wieluń destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing the 1st of September 1939

Common parade of Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest at the end of the Invasion of Poland. At the center Major General Heinz Guderian and Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein.

• September 1 – World War II: At 0445 Central European Time, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opens bombardment on the Westerplatte, a Polish military base outside Danzig, firing what are, according to many sources, the first shots of World War II. At the same time, regular Wehrmacht troops begin crossing the border into Poland.
• September 1 – World War II: Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland declare their neutrality.
• September 2 – World War II: Following the invasion of Poland, Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) is annexed to Nazi Germany.
• September 2 – World War II: Spain and Ireland declare their neutrality.
• September 3 – World War II: The United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany.
• September 4 – World War II: Nepal declares war on Germany.
• September 5 – World War II: The United States declares its neutrality in the war.
• September 6 – World War II: South Africa declares war on Germany.
• September 8 – Little Sisters of Jesus founded in Algeria by Little Sister Magdeleine.
• September 8 – World War II: Forward elements of General Hoeppner's XVI Panzerkorps take up positions outside Warsaw. The world is stunned by the rapidity of the German advance and the Polish High Command is effectively isolated, but lack of infantry support and effective civilian resistance cause Hoeppner to halt outside the city itself.
• September 8 – World War II: Polish troops on the Westerplatte are forced, due to lack of food and ammunition, to surrender. The garrison of about two hundred had held out against thousands of German forces (many of them Naval officer cadets from the Schleswig-Holstein,) for seven days.
• September 9 – World War II: Troops of the Polish Poznan Army under the command of General Kutrzeba open the Battle of the Bzura, the largest and best organized counter-attack mounted by the Polish forces in the campaign of 1939. For the first few days all goes well and the Germans are forced to retreat; but quick reaction by mechanized units and the Luftwaffe soon take their toll and the operation bogs down.
• September 10 – World War II: Canada declares war on Germany.
• September 15 – World War II: Diverse elements of the German Wehrmacht surround Warsaw and demand its surrender. The Poles refuse and the siege begins in earnest.
• September 16 – A ceasefire ends the undeclared Border War between The Soviet Union (and Mongolian allies) and Japan.
• September 17 – World War II: The Soviet Union invades Poland and then occupies eastern Polish territories.
• September 19 – World War II: The Poznan pocket collapses, and the Germans capture, according to many sources, over 150,000 men. Many elements of General Kutrzeba's forces work their way into Warsaw under extreme difficulty.
• September 21 – Radio station WJSV in Washington, D.C. records an entire broadcast day for preservation in the National Archives.
• September 22 – World War II: Joint victory parade of Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest-Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland.
• September 28 – World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion.
• September 28 – World War II: Warsaw surrenders to Germany; Modlin surrenders a day later; the last Polish large operational unit surrenders near Kock 8 days later.
• September 29 – Gerald J. Cox, speaking at an American Water Works Association meeting, becomes the first person to publicly propose the fluoridation of public water supplies in the United States.

October

• October 8 – World War II: Germany annexes Western Poland.
• October 11 – Manhattan Project: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is presented a letter signed by Albert Einstein, urging the United States to rapidly develop the atomic bomb.
• October 12 – Jüri Uluots becomes prime minister of Estonia.
• October 14 – The German U-Boat U-47 sinks the British battleship HMS Royal Oak.
• October 15 – The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed La Guardia Airport) is dedicated.
• October 24 – Nylon stockings go on sale for the first time anywhere in Wilmington, Delaware.
• October 25 – The Time of Your Life, a drama by William Saroyan, debuts in New York City.

November

November 6: Hedda Hopper

• November 4 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons to non-belligerent nations.
• November 6 – Hedda Hopper's Hollywood debuts on radio with Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as host (the show runs until 1951, making Hopper a powerful figure in the Hollywood elite).
• November 6 – World War II – Sonderaktion Krakau: Germans take action against scientists from the University of Kraków and other Kraków universities at the beginning of World War II.
• November 8 – In Munich, an attempt to kill Adolf Hitler is made by Georg Elser while Hitler is celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.
• November 9 – Venlo Incident: Two British agents of SIS are captured by the Germans.
• November 15 – In Washington, D.C., U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
• November 16 – Al Capone is released from Alcatraz.
• November 17 – To punish protests against the Nazi occupation of the Czech homeland, the Nazis murder 9 Czech graduate students, send over 1200 to concentration camps, and close all Czech universities.
• November 30 – Winter War: Soviet forces attack Finland and reach the Mannerheim Line, starting the war.
• November 30 – Sweden declares non-belligerency in the Winter War.

December

December 15: Gone with the Wind premieres.

• December 2 – La Guardia Airport opens for business in New York City.
• December 12 – World War II HMS Duchess sinks after a collision with HMS Barham off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 124 men.
• December 13 – World War II – Battle of the River Plate: The German pocket battleship, Admiral Graf Spee is trapped by cruisers HMS Ajax, HMNZS Achilles, and HMS Exeter after a running battle off the coast of Uruguay. Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by its crew off Montevideo harbor on December 17.
• December 14 – The League of Nations expels the USSR for attacking Finland.
• December 15 – The film Gone with the Wind, starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard, premieres at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. It is based on Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel. It is the longest American film made up to that time (nearly four hours).
• December 26 – Miners strike in Borinage, Belgium.
• December 27 – The 1939 Erzincan earthquake in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey, kills 30,000.

Undated

• CBS Television begins transmission.
• Kirlian photography is invented by Semyon Kirlian.
• A logging crew sets off a second forest fire in the Tillamook Burn, which destroys 190,000 acres (769 km²).
• Sandia View Academy, a private Adventist school, is founded in Corrales, New Mexico,
• General Motors introduces the Hydra-Matic drive, the first mass-produced, fully automatic transmission, as an option in 1940 model year Oldsmobile automobiles.

Ongoing

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

Births

1939 in other calendars

Gregorian calendar	1939 MCMXXXIX
Ab urbe condita	2692
Armenian calendar	1388 ԹՎ ՌՅՁԸ
Bahá'í calendar	95 – 96
Berber calendar	2889
Buddhist calendar	2483
Burmese calendar	1301
Byzantine calendar	7447 – 7448
Chinese calendar	戊寅年十一月十一日 (4575/4635-11-11) — to — 己卯年十一月廿一日 (4576/4636-11-21)
Coptic calendar	1655 – 1656
Ethiopian calendar	1931 – 1932
Hebrew calendar	5699 – 5700
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1994 – 1995
- Shaka Samvat	1861 – 1862
- Kali Yuga	5040 – 5041
Holocene calendar	11939
Iranian calendar	1317 – 1318
Islamic calendar	1357 – 1358
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 14 (昭和14年)
Korean calendar	4272
Thai solar calendar	2482
v • d • e

January–February

• January 3 – Bobby Hull, Canadian hockey player
• January 3 – Ruben Reyes, Filipino Supreme Court jurist
• January 6 – Valeri Lobanovsky, Ukrainian footballer and manager (d. 2002)
• January 6 – Murray Rose, Australian swimmer
• January 9 – Jimmy Boyd, American singer, musician and actor
• January 9 – Malcolm Bricklin, American automotive pioneer
• January 10 – Sal Mineo, American actor (d. 1976)
• January 10 – Bill Toomey, American athlete
• January 11 – Ann Heggtveit, Canadian skier
• January 12 – William Lee Golden, American country and gospel singer, member of the Oak Ridge Boys
• January 17 – Maury Povich, American talk show host
• January 17 – Archbishop Christodoulos of Greece
• January 18 – James Gritz, U.S. Presidential candidate
• January 19 – Phil Everly, American rock 'n' roll musician
• January 20 – Chandra Wickramasinghe, British astronomer and poet
• January 22 – Ray Stevens, American musician
• January 25 – Jake O'Donnell, American sports official
• January 29 – Germaine Greer, Australian feminist writer
• February 1 – Paul Gillmor, American politician (d. 2007)
• February 1 – Ekaterina Maximova, Russian ballerina (d. 2009)
• February 6 – Mike Farrell, American actor
• February 10 – Adrienne Clarkson, 26th Governor General of Canada
• February 10 – Peter Purves, British actor and television presenter
• February 12 – Ray Manzarek, American keyboardist (The Doors)
• February 13 – Beate Klarsfeld, German-born Nazi hunter
• February 16 – Adolfo Azcuna, Filipino Supreme Court jurist
• February 20 – Frank Arundel, English footballer
• February 21 – Gert Neuhaus, German artist
• February 26 – Josephine Tewson, British actress
• February 27 – David Mitton, British producer, director, model maker, and author (d. 2008)
• February 28 – Daniel C. Tsui, Chinese-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• February 28 – Tommy Tune, American dancer, choreographer, and actor

March–April

• March 1 – Leo Brouwer, Cuban composer and guitarist
• March 3 – Bill Frindall, celebrated cricket scorer and statistician (d. 2009).
• March 4 – Jack Fisher, former American Major League baseball pitcher
• March 4 – Paula Prentiss, American actress
• March 4 – Carlos Vereza, Brazilian actor
• March 8 – Robert Tear, Welsh tenor
• March 12 – Johnny Callison, American baseball player (d. 2006)
• March 13 – Neil Sedaka, American singer
• March 14 – Raymond J. Barry, American actor
• March 17 – Jim Gary, American sculptor (d. 2006)
• March 20 – Brian Mulroney, 18th Prime Minister of Canada
• March 28 – Leila Kasra, Persian poet and lyricist (d. 1989)
• March 31 – Zviad Gamsakhurdia, President of Georgia (d. 1993)
• March 31 – Volker Schlöndorff, German film director
• April 2 – Marvin Gaye, American singer (d. 1984)
• April 4 – Hugh Masakela, South African musician
• April 7 – Francis Ford Coppola, American film director
• April 7 – David Frost, English television personality
• April 10 – Claudio Magris, Italian author
• April 13 – Seamus Heaney, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• April 13 – Paul Sorvino, American actor
• April 16 – Dusty Springfield, English singer (d. 1999)
• April 20 – Elspeth Ballantyne, Australian actress
• April 22 – Jason Miller, American playwright and actor (d. 2001)
• April 23 – Lee Majors, American actor
• April 25 – Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
• April 27 – Erik Pevernagie, Belgian painter

May–June

• May 1 – Judy Collins, American singer and songwriter
• May 7 – Sidney Altman, Canadian-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• May 7 – Ruud Lubbers, Dutch politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1982 until 1994
• May 7 – Jimmy Ruffin, American singer
• May 7 – Marco St. John, American actor
• May 9 – Ralph Boston, American athlete
• May 9 – Pierre Desproges, French humorist (d. 1988)
• May 11 – Dante Tinga, Filipino Supreme Court jurist
• May 12 – Ron Ziegler, White House Press Secretary (d. 2003)
• May 13 – Harvey Keitel, American actor
• May 19 – Livio Berruti, Italian athlete
• May 19 – Sonny Fortune, American jazz musician
• May 19 – James Fox, English actor
• May 19 – Dick Scobee, American astronaut (d. 1986)
• May 21 – Heinz Holliger, Swiss oboist and composer
• May 23 – Reinhard Hauff, German film director
• May 25 – Dixie Carter, American actress
• May 26 – Brent Musburger, American sports announcer
• May 29 – Al Unser, American race car driver
• May 30 – Michael J. Pollard, American actor
• June 1 – Cleavon Little, American actor (d. 1992)
• June 3 – Ian Hunter (singer), English singer (Mott the Hoople)
• June 3 – Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, American novelist (d. 2007)
• June 6 – Louis Andriessen, Dutch composer
• June 6 – Lawrence Stephen, Nauruan politician
• June 9 – Ileana Cotrubaş, Romanian soprano
• June 9 – Dick Vitale, American basketball broadcaster
• June 11 – Jackie Stewart, Scottish race car driver
• June 15 – Brian Jacques, British writer
• June 16 – Billy Crash Craddock, American country singer
• June 16 – Richard Spendlove, British radio and television presenter and scriptwriter

July–August

• July 5 – Booker Edgerson, American football player
• July 14 – George E. Slusser, American scholar and writer
• July 15 – Aníbal Cavaco Silva, President of Portugal and former Prime Minister
• July 17 – Milva, Italian whore
• July 17 – Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
• July 21 – John Negroponte, U.S. Director of National Intelligence
• July 23 – Raine Karp, Estonian architect
• July 26 – John Howard, 25th Prime Minister of Australia
• July 26 – Bob Lilly, American football player
• July 27 – Michael Longley, Irish poet
• August 2 – John Snow, 73rd United States Secretary of the Treasury
• August 5 – Princess Irene of the Netherlands
• August 12 – George Hamilton, American actor
• August 12 – Skip Caray, American baseball broadcaster (d. 2008)
• August 17 – Luther Allison, American musician (d. 1997)
• August 19 – Ginger Baker, English drummer (Cream)
• August 21 – Clarence Williams III, American actor
• August 22 – Carl Yastrzemski, American baseball player
• August 25 – Robert Jager, American composer and theorist
• August 29 – Joel Schumacher, American film producer and director
• August 30 – John Peel, English disk jockey (d. 2004)
• August 31 – Cleveland Eaton, American jazz musician

September–October

• September 5 – Clay Regazzoni, Swiss Formula One Driver (d. 2006)
• September 5 – George Lazenby, Australian actor
• September 6 – Brigid Berlin, American actress and artist
• September 6 – David Allan Coe, American musician
• September 8 – Carsten Keller, German field hockey player
• September 8 – Susumu Tonegawa, Japanese biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• September 8 – Guitar Shorty, American blues guitarist
• September 9 – Ron McDole, American football player
• September 13 – Richard Kiel, American actor
• September 16 – Breyten Breytenbach, South African writer and painter
• September 17 – Shelby Flint, American singer
• September 18 – Fred Willard, American comedian
• September 23 – Janusz Gajos, Polish actor
• September 26 – Ricky Tomlinson, British actor
• September 29 – Larry Linville, American actor (d. 2000)
• September 30 – Len Cariou, Canadian actor and singer
• September 30 – Jean-Marie Lehn, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• October 1 – George Archer, American golfer (d. 2005)
• October 5 – Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, Filipino Supreme Court jurist
• October 7 – John Hopcroft, American computer scientist
• October 7 – Harold Kroto, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• October 7 – Bill Snyder, American football coach
• October 8 – Paul Hogan, Australian actor
• October 11 – Austin Currie, Irish politician
• October 13 – T. J. Cloutier, American poker player
• October 13 – Melinda Dillon, American actress
• October 18 – Flavio Cotti, Swiss Federal Councilor
• October 18 – Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of President John F. Kennedy (d. 1963)
• October 14 – Ralph Lauren, American fashion designer
• October 22 – George Cohen, English footballer
• October 22 – Joaquim Chissano, President of Mozambique
• October 24 – F. Murray Abraham, American actor
• October 27 – John Cleese, British actor
• October 29 – Malay Roy Choudhury, Bengali poet and novelist who created the Indian Hungry generation literary and cultural movement.
• October 30 – Leland H. Hartwell, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• October 30 – Grace Slick, American singer (The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship)
• October 31 – Ron Rifkin, American actor

November–December

• November 1 – Barbara Bosson, American actress
• November 6 – Athanasios Angelopoulos, Greek academic
• November 6 – Leonardo Quisumbing, Filipino Supreme Court jurist
• November 8 – Elizabeth Dawn, British actress
• November 8 – Laila Kinnunen, Finnish singer (d. 2000)
• November 9 – Paul Cameron, American psychologist
• November 10 – Russell Means, Native American activist
• November 15 – Yaphet Kotto, American actor
• November 16 – Michael Billington, British drama critic
• November 18 – Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer
• November 18 – Brenda Vaccaro, American actress
• November 18 – Amanda Lear, Hong Kong singer
• November 21 – Mulayam Singh Yadav, Indian politician
• November 22 – Stefan Dimitrov, Bulgarian opera basso singer
• November 23 – Bill Bissett, Canadian poet
• November 26 – Tina Turner, American singer
• November 27 – Laurent-Désiré Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (d. 2001)
• November 27 – Ulla Strömstedt, Swedish actress (d. 1986)
• December 1 – Dianne Lennon, American singer (The Lennon Sisters)
• December 2 – Yael Dayan, Israeli writer and politician
• December 2 – Harry Reid, American politician and U.S. Senate Majority Leader
• December 5 – Minita Chico-Nazario, Filipino Supreme Court jurist
• December 8 – James Galway, Irish flautist
• December 11 – Thomas McGuane, American writer
• December 13 – Eric Flynn, British actor and singer (d. 2002)
• December 17 – Eddie Kendricks, American singer (The Temptations)
• December 18 – Alex Bennett, American radio personality
• December 18 – Robert T. Bennett, American politician
• December 18 – Michael Moorcock, English writer
• December 18 – Harold E. Varmus, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• December 22 – Alfred J. Ferrara, American baseball player
• December 27 – John Amos, American actor

Deaths

January–June

• January 2 – Roman Dmowski, Polish politician (b. 1864)
• January 8 – Charles Alexander Eastman, Native American author, physician, reformer, helped found the Boy Scouts of America (b. 1858)
• January 18 – Ivan Mozzhukhin, Russian actor (b. 1889)
• January 23 – Matthias Sindelar, Austrian footballer (b. 1903)
• January 24 – Maximilian Bircher-Benner, Swiss physician and nutritionist (b. 1867)
• January 28 – William Butler Yeats, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1865)
• February 10 – Pope Pius XI (b. 1857)
• February 11 – Franz Schmidt, Austrian composer (b. 1874)
• February 12 – S. P. L. Sørensen, Danish chemist (b. 1868)
• February 22 – Antonio Machado, Spanish poet (b. 1875)
• February 27 – Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Russian Marxist revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin's wife (b. 1869)
• March 2 – Howard Carter, British archaeologist (b. 1874)
• March 5 – Herbert Mundin, British actor (b. 1898)
• March 19 – Lloyd L. Gaines, American civil rights activist
• March 28 – Francis Matthew John Baker, Australian politician (b. 1903)
• April 4 – Ghazi of Iraq, King of Iraq (b. 1912)
• April 6 – Bennie Dickson, American bank robber (b. unknown)
• April 7 – Joseph Lyons, 10th Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1879)
• April 25 – John Foulds, British classical music composer (b. 1880)
• April 25 – Georges Ricard-Cordingley, French painter (b. 1873)
• May 2 – Phillips Smalley, American actor and director (b. 1875)
• May 10 – James Parrott, American actor (b. 1898)
• May 22 – Ernst Toller, German playwright (b. 1893)
• June 4 – Tommy Ladnier, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1900)
• June 6 – George Fawcett, American actor (b. 1860)
• June 9 – Owen Moore, American actor (b. 1886)
• June 16 – Chick Webb, American musician (b. 1905)
• June 19 – Grace Abbott, American social worker and activist (b. 1878)
• June 26 – Ford Madox Ford, English writer (b. 1873)
• June 28 – Bobby Vernon, American actor (b. 1898)

July–December

• July 14 – Alfons Mucha, Czech painter and decorative artist (b. 1860)
• July 28 – Beryl Mercer, Spanish actress (b. 1882)
• August 2 – Harvey Spencer Lewis, American mystic (b. 1883)
• August 11 – Jean Bugatti, German automobile designer (b. 1909)
• August 23 – Sidney Howard, American writer (b. 1891)
• August 30 – Wilhelm Bölsche, German journalist and science writer (b. 1861)
• September 6 – Arthur Rackham, British artist (b. 1867)
• September 18 – Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Polish writer and painter (b. 1885)
• September 23 – Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (b. 1856)
• September 24 – Carl Laemmle, German film producer (b. 1867)
• October 1 – Conway Tearle, American actor (b. 1878)
• October 3 – Fay Templeton, American musical comedy star (b. 1865)
• October 7 – Harvey Cushing, American neurosurgeon (b. 1869)
• October 13 – Ford Sterling, American actor (b. 1882)
• October 23 – Zane Grey, American writer (b. 1872)
• October 28 – Alice Brady, American actress (b. 1892)
• October 29 – Dwight B. Waldo, American educator and historian (b. 1864)
• November 12 – Norman Bethune, Canadian humanitarian (b. 1890)
• November 13 – Lois Weber, American actress (b. 1881)
• November 24 – John Harron, American actor (b. 1903)
• November 28 – James Naismith, Canadian inventor of basketball (b. 1861)
• November 29 – Philipp Scheidemann, Chancellor of Germany (b. 1865)
• December 3 – Princess Louise of the United Kingdom, second youngest daughter of Queen Victoria (b. 1848)
• December 12 – Douglas Fairbanks, American actor (b. 1883)
• December 22 – Ma Rainey, American blues singer (b. 1886)
• December 23 – Anthony Fokker, Dutch-American aircraft manufacturer. (b. 1890)

Nobel Prizes

• Physics – Ernest Orlando Lawrence
• Chemistry – Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt, Leopold Ruzicka
• Physiology or Medicine – Gerhard Domagk
• Literature – Frans Eemil Sillanpää
• Peace – not awarded

Notes

1. ^ "Thailand ( Siam ) History" (overview), CS Mngt, 2005, CSMngt.com webpage: CSMngt-Thai.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1939

External links

• The 1930s Timeline: 1939 — from American Studies Programs at The University of Virginia
• 1939 Coin Pictures

Table of contents

Contents 1 Events of 1939 1.1 January 1.2 February 1.3 March 1.4 April 1.5 May 1.6 June 1.7 July 1.8 August 1.9 September 1.10 October 1.11 November 1.12 December 1.13 Undated 1.14 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 3 Deaths 3.1 January–June 3.2 July–December 4 Nobel Prizes 5 Notes 6 External links 7 Table of contents

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