Timeline 1940
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1940 Jan 3, The
Southland Shuffle was recorded on Bluebird Records by Charlie Barnet
and his orchestra. A young trumpet player named Billy May was featured.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1940 Jan 8, Britain began
rationing sugar, meat and butter.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1940 Jan 10, German planes
attacked 12 ships off the British coast; three sank and 35 were dead.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1940 Jan 11, Sergei Prokofiev's
ballet Romeo and Juliet premiered in Leningrad.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1940 Jan 12, Soviet bombers raided
cities in Finland.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1940 Jan 14, Julian Bond, civil
rights leader and Georgia state senator, was born.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1940 Jan 16, Hitler canceled an
attack in the West due to bad weather and the capture of German attack
plans in Belgium.
(HN, 1/16/99)
1940 Jan 21, Jack Nicklaus, golfer
(Player of Yr 1967,72,73,75,76), was born in Columbus, Ohio.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1940 Jan 23, Pianist Jan Ignaz
Paderewski became premier of Polish government in exile.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1940 Jan 25, Nazis established a
Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland.
(MC, 1/25/02)
1940 Jan 26, The Museum of Modern
Art in New York received works by Botticelli, Raphael and Michelangelo
on loan from Italy.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1940 Jan 26, Nazis forbade Polish
Jews to travel on trains.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1940 Feb 1, Frank Sinatra sang
"Too Romantic" and "The Sky Fell Down" in his first recording session
with the Tommy Dorsey Band on this day. The session was in Chicago, IL.
Frankie replaced Jack Leonard as lead singer with the band.
(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1940 Feb 3, Fran Tarkenton, NFL
quarterback, was born.
(Internet)
1940 Feb 5, Glenn Miller and his
orchestra recorded "Tuxedo Junction" for RCA Victor's "Bluebird" label.
(AP, 2/5/99)
1940 Feb 6, Tom Brokaw, NBC News
anchorman and best-selling author of "The Greatest Generation," was
born.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1940 Feb 7, Walt Disney's 2nd
feature-length movie, "Pinocchio," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1940 Feb 8, Ted Koppel, American
television journalist, was born in Lancashire, England, as Edward James
Koppel. His family came to the United States in 1953, and he was
naturalized as a US citizen in 1963.
(http://www.biography.com/articles/Ted-Koppel-9368366)
1940 Feb 10, "In The Mood" by
Glenn Miller hit #1.
(MC, 2/10/02)
1940 Feb 12, The radio play "The
Adventures of Superman" debuted on the Mutual network with Bud Collyer
as the Man of Steel.
(AP, 2/12/98)
1940 Feb 12, The USSR signed a
trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1940 Feb 14, Britain announced
that all merchant ships would be armed.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1940 Feb 15, Hitler ordered that
all British merchant ships would be considered warships.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1940 Feb 16, The British destroyer
HMS Cossack rescue British seamen from a German prison ship, the
Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
(HN, 2/16/99)
1940 Feb 19, Smokey Robinson,
American singer and songwriter, was born. He was famous for his songs
"Tears of a Clown" and "Tracks of My Tears."
(HN, 2/19/99)
1940 Feb 19, Saparmurad Niyazov,
later president of Turkmenistan (1992-2006), was born.
(www.turkmenistanembassy.org/turkmen/gov/presbio.html)(WSJ, 12/29/06,
p.A8)
1940 Feb 20, The Tom and Jerry
cartoon “Puss Gets the Boot,” created by Hanna & Barbera, debuted
by MGM. It went on to win 7 Academy Awards.
(WSJ, 6/28/08, p.W6)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0032953/)
1940 Feb 20, Christoph Eschenbach,
pianist, conductor, was born in Breslau, Germany.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1940 Feb 21, The Germans began
construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz. Hans Munch was an SS
doctor at the camp and later reported his experiences there in detail
for the 1998 TV documentary "People’s Century." [see Mar 27]
(HN, 2/21/98)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)
1940 Feb 22, German air force sank
2 German destroyers killing 578.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1940 Feb 23, Peter Fonda, actor
(Easy Rider, Lilith, Wild Angels, Trip), was born.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1940 Feb 23, Walt Disney's
animated movie "Pinocchio" was released.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1940 Feb 23, Woody Guthrie dated
his song "this Land Is Your Land" to this day. His original title was
"God Bless America."
(SFC, 11/27/98, p.c11)
1940 Feb 25, A hockey game was
televised for the first time, by New York City station W2XBS, as the
New York Rangers defeated the Montreal Canadiens, 6-2, at Madison
Square Garden.
(AP, 2/25/00)
1940 Feb 26, The U.S. Air Defense
Command was established at Mitchell Field, Long Island, NY.
(AP, 2/26/98)(SC, 2/26/02)
1940 Feb 28, Mario Andretti,
race-car driver (1969 Indianapolis 500), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1940 Feb 28, The first televised
college basketball games were broadcast, by New York City station
W2XBS, as Pittsburgh defeated Fordham, 57-37, and New York University
beat Georgetown, 50-27, at Madison Square Garden.
(AP, 2/28/98)
1940 Feb 28, The Superliner Queen
Elizabeth was launched in Britain.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1940 Feb 28, In Egypt King Farouk
arrived at Tanis for the opening of the sarcophagus of the 21st Dynasty
King Psusennes I, recently discovered by French archeologist Pierre
Montet.
(Arch, 5/05, p.24)
1940 Feb 29, "Gone with the Wind"
won eight Academy Awards, including best picture of 1939. Victor
Fleming was named best director, Vivien Leigh best actress, and Hattie
McDaniel best supporting actress, the first black performer to receive
an Oscar. Best actor went to Robert Donat for "Goodbye, Mr. Chips."
(HN, 2/29/00)(AP, 2/29/04)
1940 Feb, George Avakian, jazz
aficionado, was hired by Columbia records to research Columbia jazz
masters and assemble a series of albums. His efforts produced the "Hot
Jazz Classics," a cornerstone of the basic jazz canon.
(WSJ, 6/03/97, p.A20)
1940 Feb, The Manhattan project
was initiated with a research allocation of six thousand dollars.
(V.D.-H.K.p.327)
1940 Mar 1, "Native Son" by
Richard Wright (1908-1960) was first published. This
launched him as America’s 1st best-selling black author.
(AP, 3/1/00)(SSFC, 8/12/01, DB p.61)
1940 Mar 1, In the 12th Academy
Awards: "Gone with the Wind", Robert Donat and Vivien Leigh won.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1940 Mar 1, U.S. envoy, Sumner
Welles met with Hitler in Berlin.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1940 Mar 2, The first televised
intercollegiate track meet was seen by TV viewers in New York City as
W2XBS presented the action live from Madison Square Garden. New York
University won the meet.
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)
1940 Mar 2, Soviet armies
conquered Tuppura Island, Finland.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1940 Mar 3, Artie Shaw and his
orchestra recorded "Frenesi" for RCA Victor.
(AP, 3/3/98)
1940 Mar 3, A Nazi air raid killed
108 on a British liner in the English Channel.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1940 Mar 5, The British surprised
Mussolini by taking seven Italian coal ships.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1940 Mar 5, Stalin among others
signed an Order for the massacre at Katyn, Poland. Soviet agents shot
21,768 Polish military officers, intellectuals and priests who had been
taken prisoner during the invasion. Between April and May some 25,700
(15,000) Polish citizens were massacred by the Soviets in the Katyn and
Miednoje (Mednoye) forests on the outskirts of Moscow and at Kharkov in
western Russia (later Ukraine). Some 14,700 Polish officers were
identified by their uniforms. Excavations of the sites began in 1994.
6,313 Polish officers were all shot in the back of the head near
Mednoye. 9,000 Russians were also massacred at the site. In 2008
Andrzej Wajda directed the film “Katyn.” In 2004 Russia's top military
prosecutor closed the investigation after concluding that the massacre
did not constitute genocide. In 2009 Russia's Supreme Court rejected
appeals to re-open the investigation.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.16)(SFEC, 9/3/00, p.A18)(AP,
3/6/05)(Econ, 6/21/08, p.65)(AP, 1/29/09)
1940 Mar 9, Britain freed captured
Italian coal ships on the eve of German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop’s
visit to Rome.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1940 Mar 10, David Rabe,
playwright (Sticks and Bones, Hurlyburly), was born.
(HN, 3/10/01)
1940 Mar 10, 1st US opera was
telecast in NYC: "Pagliacci."
(MC, 3/10/02)
1940 Mar 10, Mikhail Bulgakov
(b.1891), Russian author, died in Moscow. His novel “The Master
and Margarita,” which satirized life under Stalin, was written between
1928 and the author’s death. It was not published until 1966-67 in the
Russian journal Moskva, with some 60 pages cut.
(Econ, 3/13/04, p.86)(WSJ, 1/3/09, p.W6)
1940 Mar 12, Finland surrendered
to Russia. Finland and the Soviet Union concluded an armistice during
World War II. Fighting between the two countries flared again the
following year.
(HN, 3/12/98)(AP, 3/12/98)
1940 Mar 13, The war between
Russia and Finland ended with the signing of a treaty in Moscow.
Finland capitulated conditionally to Soviet terms, but maintains its
independence.
(HN, 3/13/98)(HN, 3/13/01)
1940 Mar 14, Rita Tushingham,
actress (Green Eyes, Dr Zhivago), was born in Liverpool, England.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1940 Mar 14, A truck full of
migrant workers collided with a train outside McAllen, Texas. 27 people
were killed and 15 injured.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1940 Mar 15, Reichsmarshal Herman
Goering said 100-200 church bells are enough for Germany and smelted
the rest.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1940 Mar 16, Germany launched an
air raid on British fleet base at Scapa Flow.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1940 Mar 18, Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass across the Alps
during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany’s war
against France and Britain.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1940 Mar 20, The British RAF
conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1940 Mar 23, 1st radio broadcast
of "Truth or Consequences" on CBS.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1940 Mar 23, The All-India Muslim
League called for a Muslim homeland.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1940 Mar 25, Anita Bryant,
homophobe, singer (George Gobel Show), was born in Barnsdall, Okla.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1940 Mar 25, The U.S. agreed to
give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1940 Mar 26, Nancy Pelosi,
(Representative-Democrat-CA), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1940 Mar 27, Himmler ordered the
building of Auschwitz concentration camp. [see Feb 21]
(MC, 3/27/02)
1940 Mar 30, The Japanese set up a
puppet government called Manchuko in Nanking, China.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1940 Mar 31, The New York
Municipal Airport, opened in October, 1939, was renamed La Guardia
airport, after the mayor, who had been a bomber pilot in World War I
and whose interest in aviation lasted throughout his lifetime, barely a
month after it opened.
(www.arcadiapublishing.com/news_article.html?id=1816)
1940 Apr 4, Richard Rodgers' and
Lorenz Hart's "Higher & Higher," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1940 Apr 8, German battle cruisers
sank British aircraft carrier Glorious.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1940 Apr 8, British troops landed
at Narwik to mine Norway’s territorial waters.
(ON, 11/05, p.3)
1940 Apr 9, The Nazi army invaded
and occupied Denmark and Norway. German forces landed along the
Norwegian coast and made a paratrooper assault on Oslo and Stavanger.
After the Nazi invasion most of Denmark’s police were killed.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.A14)(AP,
4/9/97)(ON, 11/05, p.3)
1940 Apr 10, Vidkun Quisling
formed a Norwegian pro-Nazi "national government."
(MC, 4/10/02)
1940 Apr 10, The HMS Hunter, a
British destroyer, went down with 110 men in the fist Battle of Narvik
as the Royal Navy tried to keep German forces from overrunning a
strategic Norwegian port. Germany lost 4 destroyers in the battle. In
2008 a Norwegian minehunter found the wreck
(AP, 3/9/08)
1940 Apr 12, Italy annexed Albania.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1940 Apr 13, In the 2nd battle of
Narvik, 8 German destroyers were destroyed.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1940 Apr 14, Allied troops landed
in Norway.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1940 Apr 15, Jeffrey Archer,
English novelist and politician (Kane and Abel, Honor Among Thieves),
was born.
(HN, 4/15/01)
1940 Apr 15, French and British
troops landed at Narvik, Norway.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1940 Apr 16, The 1st televised
baseball game on WGN-TV featured the White Sox vs. Cubs in exhibition.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1940 Apr 17, In Egypt King Farouk
arrived at Tanis and ordered French archeologist Pierre Montet to open
the tomb of King Amenemope, son of 21st Dynasty King Psusennes I.
(Arch, 5/05, p.25)
1940 Apr 18, Ed Garvey, labor
leader for the Major League Baseball Players Association, was born.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1940 Apr 20, RCA publicly
demonstrated its new and powerful electron microscope in Philadelphia,
Pa.
(AP, 4/20/97)(HN, 4/20/98)(MC, 4/20/02)
1940 Apr 21, The quiz show that
asked the "$64 question," "Take It or Leave It," premiered on CBS Radio.
(AP, 4/21/97)
1940 Apr 22, Rear Adm. Joseph
Taussig testified before US Senate Naval Affairs Committee that war
with Japan is inevitable.
(MC, 4/22/02)
1940 Apr 23, Some 200 people died
in a fire at the Rhythm Night Club in Natchez, Miss.
(AP, 4/23/08)
1940 Apr 25, Al Pacino, actor (And
Justice For All, Godfather, Scorpio), was born in NYC.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1940 Apr 28, Glenn Miller and his
orchestra recorded "Pennsylvania 6-5000" for RCA Victor.
(AP, 4/28/97)
1940 Apr 28, Rudolf Hoess became
commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1940 Apr 29, Robert Sherwood's
"There Shall be No Night," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1940 Apr 29, Norwegian King Haakon
and government fled to England.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1940 Apr, The Germans sealed the
Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, with barbed wire. Lodz at this time had
some 231,000 Jews, about one-third of the city’s population. Some
45,000 Jews from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe were forced into
the ghetto as well as some 5,000 Gypsies. Many died under forced labor
and horrific conditions. Those remaining were killed in August, 1944.
(SSFC, 8/30/09, p.A17)
1940 May 1, Bobbie Ann Mason,
American writer (Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country), was born.
(HN, 5/1/01)
1940 May 1, The 1940 Olympics were
cancelled.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1940 May 1, 140 Palestinian Jews
died as German planes bombed their ship.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1940 May 4, Commander Rupert
Lonsdale (d.1999 at 93) took his submarine, the Seal, into the Kattegat
Strait between Denmark and Sweden, to place mines in the German
shipping lanes. One mine exploded and sent the vessel to the bottom.
They managed to refloat after 23 hours and Lonsdale (35) surrendered
the ship and 59 weary crewmen to a German seaplane. Aside from a few
coastal craft and abandoned ships, the Seal was the only British
warship to fall into enemy hands during WW II.
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.A17)
1940 May 5, Norwegian government
in exile formed in London.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1940 May 6, A Pulitzer prize was
awarded to John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1940 May 7-1940 May 8, The British
House of Commons debated the disastrous Norwegian campaign.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Debate)
1940 May 8, Peter Benchley,
novelist (Jaws, The Deep), was born.
(HN, 5/7/02)
1940 May 8, Ricky Nelson, rock
star (Hello Mary Lou, It's Late, Garden Party), was born in NJ.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1940 May 8, British PM Neville
Chamberlain resigned.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7nhtr)
1940 May 8, German commandos in
Dutch uniforms crossed the Dutch border to hold bridges for the
advancing German army.
(HN, 5/8/99)
1940 May 9, James L. Brooks,
producer, director (Broadcast News, Taxi, Critic), was born.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1940 cMay 9, The Germans made
their panzer attack across the Ardennes.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1940 May 10, Winston Churchill
took office as PM. Churchill formed a new government and served as the
Conservative head of a coalition government with the opposition Labor
Party. The debate over the Norway campaign led directly to Churchill
replacing Chamberlain.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)(PCh, 1992, p.864)(Econ, 11/4/06,
p.67)
1940 May 10, British Local Defense
Volunteers, the Home Guard, formed.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1940 May 10, German forces began a
blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting
France's "impenetrable" Maginot Line. Belgium was invaded by Germany
and maintained resistance for 18 days.
(WSJ, 8/1/95, p.A-8)(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)(HN,
5/10/02)
1940 May 12, The Nazi blitz
conquest of France began with the crossing at the Meuse River.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/98)
1940 May 13, Bruce Chatwin, travel
writer (Patagonia), was born.
(HN, 5/13/01)
1940 May 13, The completed
Maryhill Museum in Washington state opened on founder Sam Hill’s
(d.1931), birthday. Much of the art collection was donated by Alma de
Bretteville Spreckels, wife of the California sugar magnate.
(AM, 9/01, p.10)
1940 May 13, Igor Sikorsky made
the 1st free flight of his new VS-300 helicopter, the world’s first
fully functional helicopter.
(ON, 3/06,
p.5)(www.firstflight.org/shrine/igor_sikorsky.cfm)
1940 May 13, In his first speech
as prime minister of Britain, Winston Churchill told the House of
Commons, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
(AP, 5/13/97)(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1940 May 13, British bombed a
factory at Breda, Netherlands.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1940 May 13, Dutch Queen
Wilhelmina fled to England.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1940 May 14, German breakthrough
at Sedan, France.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 14, The Netherlands
(Holland) surrendered to Nazi Germany after the bombing of Rotterdam
that left 600-900 dead.
(HN, 5/14/98)(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 14, Emma Goldman,
anarchist revolutionary, author (Living My Life), died in Toronto and
was buried in Chicago. In 1974 Carol Bolt wrote a play on the formative
years of Emma titled: "Red Emma: Queen of the Anarchists." In 1995 Ms.
Bolt wrote a libretto based on the play for an opera with music by Gary
Kulesha. In 1961 Richard Drinnon authored "Rebel In Paradise: A
Biography of Emma Goldman." In 1971 Alex Shulman authored "To the
Barricades: The Anarchist Life of Emma Goldman."
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.A-1)(ON, 4/00, p.5)(MC, 5/14/02)
1940 May 15, Nylon stockings went
on general sale for the first time in the United States. [see Oct 24,
1939]
(AP, 5/15/97)
1940 May 15, German troops
occupied Amsterdam. Gen Winkelman surrendered.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1940 May 15, German armor division
moved into Northern France.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1940 May 16, Bernardo Bertolucci,
director (1900, Last Emperor), was born in Parma, Italy.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1940 May 16, Jacques Goudstikker,
Dutch art dealer, fell on a staircase of the SS Bodegraven as the ship
was refused entry at Dover. He died from a broken neck. His inventory
in Amsterdam totaled some 1,400 works, which Reichsmarschall Herman
Goring, Hitler’s 2nd in command, soon snapped up.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.D7)
1940 May 17, Germany occupied
Brussels, Belgium, and began the invasion of France. [See May 12]
(AP, 5/17/97)(HN, 5/17/98)
1940 May 18, German forces under
Field Marshal Georg von Kuchler (1881-1968) occupied Antwerp,
Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_K%C3%BCchler)
1940 May 19, Amsterdam time became
MET (Middle European Time).
(DT, 5/19/97)
1940 May 20, Igor Sikorsky
unveiled his helicopter invention.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1940 May 20, Gen. Guderian's
British expeditionary army tanks reached The Channel.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1940 May 21, Nazis surrounded the
British Army at Dunkirk.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1940 May 21, British tank forces
attacked General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing
his blitzkrieg of France.
(HN, 5/21/99)
1940 May 22, Premier Winston
Churchill flew to Paris.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1940 May 23, Tommy Dorsey and His
Orchestra, the Pied Pipers and featured soloist Frank Sinatra recorded
"I’ll Never Smile Again" in New York for RCA.
(AP, 5/23/97)
1940 May 23, The 1st great
dogfight between Spitfires took place.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1940 May 24, Joseph Brodsky,
author (Less than 1, Nobel 1987), was born in the USSR.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1940 May 24, Hitler ordered a halt
to his forces converging on Dunkirk and the British, who were backed to
the sea. This event and the next 4 days were described in the 1999
book: "Five Days in London, May 1940" by John Lukacs.
(WSJ, 11/8/99, p.A48)
1940 May 24, Hitler affirmed Gen.
von Rundstedt's "Stopbevel."
(MC, 5/24/02)
1940 May 24, German tanks reached
Atrecht, France.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1940 May 25, The Golden Gate
International Expo reopened.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1940 May 25, German troops
conquered Boulogne.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1940 May 26, Operation Dynamo was
launched for the evacuation of British, French and Belgian soldiers
from the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France. The new British
Spitfire fighters helped provide air cover. The operation continued to
June 4.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)(AP, 5/26/97)
1940 May 28, Maeve Binchy, Irish
writer (Circle of Friends, The Copper Beach), was born.
(HN, 5/28/01)
1940 May 28, Irving Berlin's
musical "Louisiana Purchase," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1940 May 28, During World War II,
the Belgian army surrendered to invading German forces.
(AP, 5/28/97)(HN, 5/28/98)
1940 May 28, Walter Connolly (53),
actor (It Happened One Night, Good Earth), died.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1940 May 29, Germans captured
Ostend and Ypres in Belgium and Lille in France.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1940 May 29, Arthur Seyss-Inquart
was installed as Reich Commissioner of Hague, Netherlands.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1940 May 31, General Bernard
Montgomery left Dunkirk.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1940 May 31, Winston Churchill
flew to Paris.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1940 May, Hansel Mieth (d.1998),
photojournalist for Life Magazine, married Ott Hagel (d.1973),
free-lance photographer.
(SFC, 2/17/98, p.B8)
1940 May, Winston Churchill faced
down the apostles of appeasement in his War Cabinet. In 2000 John
Lukacs authored "Five Days in London, May 1940," which told of struggle
in the English cabinet.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.8)
1940 Jun 1, Rene Auberjonois,
actor (Clayton-Benson, Star Trek Deep Space 9), was born. (MC, 6/1/02)
1940 Jun 2, Constantine II, the
deposed king of Greece (-1967), was born.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1940 Jun 3, In a special Maine
election Margaret Chase Smith was elected to serve out the unexpired
term of her late husband, Clyde Smith. At the next regular election,
held 3 months later, Smith was voted to a full term in the House. She
was elected to the Senate in 1948.
(http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=s000590)
1940 Jun 3, Last British and
French troops left Dunkirk.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1940 Jun 3, The German Luftwaffe
hit Paris with 1,100 bombs.
(HN, 6/3/98)
1940 Jun 4, A synthetic rubber
tire was unveiled.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1940 Jun 4, The Allied military
evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended.
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)
1940 Jun 4, German forces entered
Paris.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1940 Jun 5, The Battle of France
began during World War II. Germany attacked French forces along the
Somme line.
(HN, 6/5/99)(AP, 6/5/07)
1940 Jun 7, Tom Jones, singer
(What's New Pussycat), was born in Pontypridd, Wales.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1940 Jun 9, Norway surrendered to
the Nazis during World War II, effective at midnight.
(AP, 6/9/07)
1940 Jun 10, Marcus Garvey
(b.1887), Jamaica-born US black leader (Back to Africa Movement), died
in London. In 1964 his remains were transferred to Jamaica, where he
was proclaimed Jamaica’s first national hero. In 2008 Colin Grant
authored “Negro With a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey)(SSFC,
5/11/08, Books p.5)
1940 Jun 10, Italy declared war on
France and Britain; Canada declared war on Italy.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1940 Jun 11, Joey Dee, actor (Hey
Let's Twist, 2 Tickets to Paris), was born in Passaic, NJ.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1940 Jun 11, Princess Juliana of
the Netherlands arrived in Canada as an exile.
(AP, 6/11/03)
1940 Jun 11, The German invasion
of France was under way and the British had been forced to abandon
their defense of northwestern France and Belgium at Dunkirk.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.C-1)
1940 Jun 11, The Italian Air Force
bombed the British fortress at Malta in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1940 Jun 13, Paris was evacuated
before the German advance on the city.
(HN, 6/13/98)
1940 June 14. The Nazis opened
their concentration camp at Auschwitz. In German-occupied Poland the
first inmates arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. They were
all Polish political prisoners.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-10)(AP, 6/14/97)(AP,
6/14/98)
1940 Jun 14, German troops
occupied Paris and Marshal Philippe Petain became the head of the
French government and sued for peace. Gertrude Stein translated
Petain’s speeches and hailed him as a hero of the French nation.
(WUD, 1994, p.1683)(SFC, 6/9/96, Z1 p.5)
1940 Jun 14, The Soviets presented
an ultimatum to Lithuania that demanded the free entry of an unlimited
number of troops. The government surrendered and Pres. Smetona left the
country.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1940 Jun 15, The French fortress
of Verdun was captured by Germans.
(HN, 6/15/98)
1940 Jun 15, The Soviets invaded
Lithuania.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1940 Jun 16, Dubose Heyward, US
writer (Porgy, Star Spangled Virgin), died.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1940 Jun 16, French Chief of
State, Henri Petain, asked for an armistice with Germany. [see Jun 17]
(HN, 6/16/98)
1940 Jun 16, Soviet Foreign
Minister Molotov presented August Rei, Estonia’s envoy in Moscow, an
ultimatum to allow an unlimited number of Soviet troops, which was
accepted. Latvia received a similar ultimatum.
(DrEE, 10/26/96,
p.4)(www.historycommission.ee/temp/conclusions_frame.htm)
1940 Jun 17, France asked Germany
for terms of surrender in World War II. Marshal Henri Petain replaced
Paul Reynaud, who chose to resign over surrender, as prime minister and
announced his intention to sign an armistice with the Nazis. In 2000
Ernest R. May authored "Strange Victory," an account of the French
defeat.
(AP, 6/17/97)(WSJ, 9/14/00, p.A24)(MC, 6/17/02)
1940 Jun 17, Gen. Charles de
Gaulle flew to London.
(WSJ, 8/3/00, p.A12)
1940 Jun 17, The Soviet Union
occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1940 Jun 18, During World War Two,
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged his countrymen to
conduct themselves in a manner that would prompt future generations to
say, "This was their finest hour."
(AP, 6/18/00)
1940 Jun 18, Charles de Gaulle,
future president of France, broadcast to his nation from London, urging
it to rally to him and fight Hitler's invading army.
(AP, 6/18/99)
1940 Jun 18, Soviet occupation was
completed in the Baltics. For the Soviet intrusion into the German
sphere of influence, Stalin compensated Germany with a payment of 7.5
million gold dollars.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1940 Jun 18, At a meeting of the
Amer. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, a USGS geologist named
Joseph Thomas Pardee presented evidence that the large Glacial Lake
Missoula had long ago burst its ice dam and was the source for the
floodwaters that J. Harlen Bretz said formed the Scablands.
(Smith., 4/1995, p.54)
1940 Jun 19, "Brenda Starr," first
cartoon strip by a woman, appeared in Chicago.
(DT, 6/19/97)
1940 Jun 19, German 7th Armour
division under gen-maj Rommel occupied Cherbourg.
(MC, 6/19/02)
1940 Jun 21, German occupiers
disbanded the Dutch States-General, Council of State.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1940 Jun 21, Estonia’s Pres.
Päts appointed a new government led by PM Johannes Vares under
pressure from Andrei Zhdanov, head of the Leningrad branch of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
(www.historycommission.ee/temp/conclusions_frame.htm)
1940 Jun 22, During World War II,
Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an
armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris. France and
Germany signed an armistice at Compiegne, on terms dictated by the
Nazis. Alsace again became part of Germany.
(AP, 6/22/97)(HN, 6/22/98)(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T4)
1940 Jun 23, Wilma Rudolph
(d.1994), the first African American to win three gold medals in a
single Olympiad, was born. At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, she
became the first American to win three gold medals. Her athleticism was
remarkable since Rudolph contracted polio as a small child and spent
six years in a steel brace. With therapy and hard work, Rudolph
overcame her handicap to excel in basketball and track. As a celebrity,
she worked to break many gender and racial barriers. Rudolph died of
brain cancer in 1994.
(HN, 6/23/98)
1940 Jun 24, France signed an
armistice with Italy after the axis country attacked a portion of
southern France during Germany's blitzkrieg.
(AP, 6/24/97)(HN, 6/24/99)
1940 Jun 24, The Republican
Convention, opened in Philadelphia. In 2005 Charles Peters authored
“Five Days in Philadelphia.” An account of the convention and how it
freed FDR to move against Hitler.
(WSJ, 7/6/05, p.D10)(http://tinyurl.com/e3xrw)
1940 Jun 25, Adolf Hitler viewed
the Eiffel tower and tomb of Napoleon in Paris.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1940 Jun 27, USSR returned to the
Gregorian calendar.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1940 Jun 27, Soviet Army attacked
Romania. Before the end of the month the Soviet Union delivered an
ultimatum to Romania and 2 days later occupied Bessarabia and North
Bukovina.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)(MC, 6/27/02)
1940 Jun 28, The Republican
Convention, held in Philadelphia, nominated Wendall Willkie (d.1944)
for US president. In 2005 Charles Peters authored “Five Days in
Philadelphia.” An account of the convention and how it freed FDR to
move against Hitler.
(WSJ, 7/6/05, p.D10)(http://tinyurl.com/e3xrw)
1940 Jun 29, In the Batman Comics,
mobsters rubbed out a circus highwire team known as the Flying
Graysons, leaving their son Dick (Robin) an orphan.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1940 Jun 29, Paul Klee (b.1879),
Swiss-German painter, tutor (Modern Art), died in Switzerland. In 2005
the Klee Center, designed by Renzo Piano, opened in Bern.
(www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/klee/)(Econ, 7/23/05,
p.79)
1940 Jun, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt named Vannevar Bush director of the newly formed National
Defense Research Committee to continue U.S. nuclear research. In
response to a plea by scientists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, FDR
initiated a modest program of uranium research in 1939. By June 1940,
interest in uranium and its properties had increased to the point that
the president created a larger organization, the National Defense
Research Committee, with a broader scope of activity. He named as
director Vannevar Bush, the president of the Carnegie Institution in
Washington, D.C. The slowly growing effort gained further impetus in
mid-1941 from a startling British document code-named the "MAUD
Report." Based on British nuclear research, the report stated that a
very small amount of uranium-235 could produce an explosion equivalent
to that of several thousand tons of TNT. Roosevelt responded by
creating a still larger organization, the Office of Scientific Research
and Development, which, directed by Bush, would mobilize scientific
resources to create an atomic weapon.
(HNQ, 5/30/01)
1940 Jun, Hitler confided to
Mussolini his plan to ship Jews to Madagascar.
(WSJ, 3/23/04, p.D8)
1940 Jun, The Germans began to
loot the artwork of Paris and more than 70,000 residences were
plundered. A lot of artwork was sold to the Emil Buhrle Foundation in
Switzerland, the largest buyer of confiscated French art. The story is
told by Hector Feliciano in his 1997 book: "The Lost Museum." The best
book on the fate of European art in WW II was reported to be "The Rape
of Europa" by Lynn Nicholas.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.7)
1940 Jul 1, The Tacoma Narrows
Bridge in Washington state opened to the public. The initial design by
Clark Eldridge had been redesigned by NYC consultant Leo Moisseiff, who
replaced a 25-foot deep stiffening truss with an 8-foot truss to reduce
costs.
(ON, 6/09, p.8)
1940 Jul 1, Australia refused
entry to Dutch Jewish refugees.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1940 Jul 2, Georgi Ivan Ivanov,
1st Bulgarian space traveler (Soyuz 33), was born.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1940 Jul 2, The Lake Washington
Floating bridge in Seattle was dedicated.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1940 Jul 3, British Royal Navy
sank a French fleet in North Africa, ten days after France had signed
an armistice with Nazi Germany.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1940 Jul 4, British destroyed
French battle fleet at Oran, Algeria, 1267 died.
(Maggio)
1940 Jul 5, During World War II,
Britain and the Vichy government in France broke diplomatic relations.
(AP, 7/5/97)
1940 Jul 7, Ringo Starr, drummer
for the Beatles, was born. He went on to a solo career and acting.
(HN, 7/7/99)
1940 Jul 9, German Evangelist
Church protested against euthanasia programs.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1940 Jul 10, During World War II,
the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking
southern England by air. By October 31, Britain managed to repel the
Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses. Reginald Mitchell (1895-1937),
the designer of the Spitfire, and Sydney Camm, the designer of the
Hurricane, were both saviors. Both fighters were necessary to win the
battle. The R.A.F.’s Fighter Command began the Battle of Britain with
about 650 Hurricanes and Spitfires, and lost over 900 of same during
the course of the battle; enormous production of replacements made good
the losses to such an extent that at times during the battle, Fighter
Command had over 900 operational Hurricanes and Spitfires. In his book
"The Air War 1939-1945," Richard J. Overy wrote, ". . . the Spitfire
took two and a half times the man hours that it took to produce a
Hurricane fighter." In overall performance the Spitfire was slightly
better than the Hurricane, but the above production figures give some
clue to the Hurricane’s importance. Re the Luftwaffe heavy bomber: The
Luftwaffe had a couple of four-engine bombers, the Heinkel He-177 and
the Focke Wulf FW-200, but neither were produced in large numbers, and
neither were in the same league as the American B-17, B-24, or B-29, or
the British Lancaster. Hitler was fascinated by high-tech "super
weapons" and attempted to produce them at the expense of more
worthwhile, conventional ones. This was a guy who, when nearly everyone
else knew Germany was finished, wanted to build a 1,500-ton tank and a
long-range rocket to attack the United States!
(AP, 7/10/97)(ON, 3/07, p.2)(ExH, 3/23/98)
1940 Jul 10-1940 Oct 31, The
Battle of Britain in July-October of 1940 was an earth-shakingly
decisive campaign (not just a battle). Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe
gathered over 2,500 combat planes for a bombing campaign that would be
a prelude to "Operation Sea Lion" (an invasion of Britain). British Air
Marshall Hugh C. Dowding’s Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command could
muster about 650 decent fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires). The
Luftwaffe came perilously close to wearing down the R.A.F., but at
about that time, a German bomber accidentally dropped bombs on London,
Churchill bombed Berlin, and Hitler switched the Luftwaffe’s attack
from the R.A.F. to London, giving the R.A.F. a breather. The
Luftwaffe’s bombers carried too small a bomb load for a strategic
bombing campaign and were inadequately armed to defend themselves
against R.A.F. fighters. The Luftwaffe’s Me-109 fighter lacked the
range to provide sufficient escort for the bombers, which were
massacred by Hurricanes and Spitfires. The Germans knew that the
British radar installations existed, and did launch some attacks upon
them, but never realized how vital radar truly was in directing R.A.F.
fighters to intercept raiding aircraft. In 1969 the film “Battle of
Britain” starred Laurence Olivier as Hugh C. Dowding.
(ExC, JWL, 3/20/98)(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)
1940 Jul 12, Rufus Robinson and
Earl Cooley jumped out of a Travelair plane to fight the a forest fire
in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest. The were the first smoke-jumpers.
(SFC, 9/14/96, p.B5)
1940 Jul 13, Patrick Stewart,
actor (Picard-Star Trek Next Generation), was born in England.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1940 Jul 14, Due to beanball wars,
Spalding advertised batting helmet with earflaps.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1940 Jul 14, A force of German
Ju-88 bombers attacked Suez, Egypt, from bases in Crete.
(HN, 7/14/98)
1940 Jul 14, Lithuania became
Lithuanian SSR.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1940 Jul 16, Adolf Hitler ordered
the preparations to begin on the invasion of England, Operation Sea
Lion.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1940 Jul 18, The Democratic
national convention in Chicago nominated President Roosevelt for an
unprecedented third term in office.
(AP, 7/18/00)
1940 Jul 18, The 1st successful
helicopter flight was made at Stratford, Ct.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1940 Jul 19, Hitler ordered Great
Britain to surrender.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1940 Jul 21, The new
USSR-organized parliaments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania held
simultaneous sessions. They declared their countries to be soviet
socialist republics and applied for admission to the USSR.
(www.historycommission.ee/temp/conclusions_frame.htm)
1940 Jul 23, German bombers began
the "Blitz," the all-night air raids on London.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1940 Jul 23, Don Imus, later radio
personality, was born in Riverside, Ca.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, Par p.22)
1940 Jul 23, John Nichols,
novelist and essayist (The Milagro Beanfield War), was born.
(HN, 7/23/02)
1940 Jul 25, John Sigmund began
swimming for 89 hrs 46 mins in the Mississippi River.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1940 Jul 26, Mary Jo Kopechne
(d.1969), killed while driving with Ted Kennedy, was born.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1940 Jul 26, In Iran the Shah's
police squad unexpectedly arrived at the residence of opposition
politician Mohammad Mossadegh (1888-1967), searching and ransacking his
house. Although no incriminating evidence against him was found, he was
taken to the central prison in Tehran nonetheless. Mossadegh was
released in November, but was kept under house arrest until 1941 when
Mohammad Reza, ascended to the throne.
(www.mohammadmossadegh.com/biography/)
1940 Jul 27, Bharati Mukherjee,
Indian novelist (The Middleman and Other Stories), was born.
(HN, 7/27/01)
1940 Jul 27, Bugs Bunny made his
official debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon "A Wild Hare." This
marked the beginning of the Bugs Bunny series by Fred "Tex" Avery along
with the rhetorical "What’s up, Doc?"
(AP, 7/27/97)(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.6)
1940 Jul 28, Phil Proctor,
comedian (Firesign Theater), was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1940 Jul 30, A bombing lull ended
the first phase of the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 7/30/98)
1940 Jul 31, Reich's Kommissar
Seyss-Inquart banned homosexuals.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1940 Jul, In Japan Mount
Mijakejima erupted and left 11 people dead.
(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.A17)
1940 Jul,
Jan Zwartendijk, a Dutch diplomat, and Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese
diplomat, worked together to save some 2,000 thousand Polish Jews, who
had fled to Lithuania by issuing them visas for Japan, China and the
Dutch colonies in South America. Zwartendijk wrote out the so called
Curacao visas, while Sugihara issued the transit visas. The Sugihara
family was later captured by the Russians and placed in a concentration
camp for 1 1/2 years.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A13)(SFC, 9/9/96,
p.A16)(www.remember.org/witness/righteous.html)
1940 Jul, Avila Camacho was
elected president of Mexico. He agreed to compensate the
multi-nationals for their oil losses and a new market for Mexican oil
opened, i.e. the US.
(www.mexconnect.com)
1940 Aug 1, The idea of the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was formally announced by
Japan’s Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke, in a press interview, but had
already existed in various forms for many years. Japan urged the
nations of the region to unite in one economic sphere, ousting the
colonial powers and enjoying economic prosperity together. The concept
was used to justify Japan's seizure of raw materials from throughout
Southeast Asia to further its drive for economic, political and
military domination of East Asia. The Sphere was intended to include,
in addition to Japan, China, Manchukuo, Southeast Asia and the Pacific
mandates islands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-prosperity_Sphere)(HNQ,
2/8/00)(Econ, 4/11/09, p.43)
1940 Aug 2, Clermont-Ferrand
sentenced Gen. Charles de Gaulle to death. [see Aug 4]
(MC, 8/2/02)
1940 Aug 3, John W. Carlin,
Gov-D-KS, was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1940 Aug 3, Martin Sheen, actor
(Subject Was Roses, Wall St), was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1940 Aug 3, The Supreme Soviet
officially registered the acceptance of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
into the USSR.
(SC,
8/3/02)(www.historycommission.ee/temp/conclusions_frame.htm)
1940 Aug 4, The Paris Soir
reported that Gen. Charles de Gaulle had been condemned to death in
absentia for treason by a Vichy military court.
(WSJ, 8/3/00, p.A12)
1940 Aug 7, Churchill recognized
the De Gaulle government in exile.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1940 Aug 8, The German Luftwaffe
attacked Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of
Britain.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1940 Aug 11, 38 German aircrafts
were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1940 Aug 11, Italian forces
attacked Observation Hill in British Somaliland. Capt. Wilson and
Somali gunners under his command beat off the attack and opened fire on
the enemy troops attacking Mill Hill, another post within his range.
The enemy finally overran the post at 5 p.m. on the 15th August when
Capt. Wilson, fighting to the last, was reportedly killed. 2 months
later he was awarded a Victoria Cross. In April 1941, however, Wilson
was found alive in a prisoner of war camp in Eritrea. Wilson died at
age 96 on Dec 23, 2008.
(AP, 12/30/08)
1940 Aug 12, Luftwaffe bombed
British radar stations and lost 31 aircraft.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1940 Aug 13, Der Adler Tag (Eagle
Day) was the name given to the day the German Luftwaffe launched an
all-out offensive against the Royal Air Force and the British aircraft
industry in southern England. With this action, Adolf Hitler hoped to
knock out any aerial resistance to his planned invasion of the British
Isles. RAF fighter pilots successfully held off the numerically
superior Luftwaffe, in spite of the loss of 415 pilots out of a force
of 1,500.
(HNPD, 8/13/98)
1940 Aug 15, In the largest–scale
raids in the history of aerial warfare, hundreds of Germany planes
struck against London and its suburbs. Hitler’s planned Operation Sea
Lion was to have commenced on this day. However it was cancelled on Aug
17 following heavy German air raid losses. In 2008 Michael Korda
authored “With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain.”
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)
1940 Aug 16, Bruce Beresford,
Australian film director, was born. His films include "Breaker Morant"
and "Driving Miss Daisy."
(HN, 8/16/00)
1940 Aug 16, 45 German aircrafts
were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1940 Aug 17, President Roosevelt
and Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie King met in Ogdensburg,
N.Y., where they agreed to set up a joint defense commission.
(AP, 8/17/97)
1940 Aug 17, Wendell Willkie, a
former Democrat, delivered his formal acceptance speech as the
Republican nominee for president from his home in Elwood, Indiana.
(WSJ, 7/22/96, p.A12)(SFEC, 7/30/00,
p.C17)(http://tinyurl.com/e3xrw)
1940 Aug 18, Walter Chrysler
(b.1875), the founder of Chrysler Corporation, died. He was a
locomotive mechanic who founded Chrysler in 1924 with money and
experience gained as general manager of Buick and executive VP of GM.
He oversaw the purchase of Dodge Brothers, which was much bigger than
Chrysler at the time. In 2000 Vincent Curcio authored "Chrysler: The
Life and Times of an Automotive Genius."
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(HNQ, 8/21/99)(WSJ,
8/10/00, p.A16)
1940 Aug 18, 71 German aircraft
were shot down above England.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1940 Aug 20, Radar is used for the
first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/20/00)
1940 Aug 20, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying,
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so
few."
(AP, 8/20/97)
1940 Aug 20, Ramon Mercador
(Mercader) del Rio, a Spanish Communist, posed as a Canadian
businessman (aka Frank Jackson) and fatally wounded Leon Trotsky with
an alpine ax to the back of the head in Mexico City. Trotsky died the
next day.
(WSJ, 3/29/96, p.A-14)(TMC, 1994, p.1940)(SFC,
7/19/96, p.B1)(HN, 8/20/01)
1940 Aug 21, Leon Trotsky, exiled
Communist revolutionary, died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by
an assassin the day before.
(AP, 8/21/08)
1940 Aug 23, German Luftwaffe
began night bombing on London.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1940 Aug 24, Luftwaffe bombed
London.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1940 Aug 25, The first parachute
wedding ceremony was performed by Rev. Homer Tomlinson at the New York
City World’s Fair for Arno Rudolphi and Ann Hayward. The minister,
bride and groom, best man, maid of honor and four musicians were all
suspended from parachutes.
(HN, 8/25/00)
1940 Aug 25, Jose Van Dam,
bass-baritone, was born in Brussels, Belgium.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1940 Aug 25, The 1st (British)
night bombing of Germany was over Berlin.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1940 Aug 25, The ‘parliaments’ of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania declared themselves ‘provisional Supreme
Soviets’ and adopted new constitutions that were composed according to
the example of the constitutions of already existing union republics of
the USSR.
(www.historycommission.ee/temp/conclusions_frame.htm)
1940 Aug 31, US National Guard
assembled.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1940 Aug 31, Jack Thompson of
Australia, actor (Breaker Morant), was born.
(YN, 8/31/99)
1940 Aug 31, Joseph Avenol stepped
down as Secretary-General of the League of Nations.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1940 Aug 31, 56 U-boats were sunk
this month (268,000 ton).
(MC, 8/31/01)
1940 Aug 31, Fighter Command lost
39 and the Luftwaffe lost 41 airplanes.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1940 Aug, The Armies of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania were reorganized as territorial rifle corps of the
Red Army and placed under the control of the political leaders of the
Red Army.
(www.historycommission.ee/temp/conclusions_frame.htm)
1940 Aug, US Army cryptoanalysts
under William F. Friedman succeeded in breaking Japan's top secret
Purple Code, which was used for diplomatic communications.
(WSJ, 12/7/99, p.A24)
1940 Aug, In France Jacques Robert
(d.1998 at 83) joined the French Resistance. He set up the Resistance
group named Phratrie in 1942. In 1943 he was arrested in Nice, but
escaped to London. He parachuted back to France to lead guerrilla
operations in 1944 during the Normandy invasion.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)
1940 Sep 1, Gen. George Marshall
was sworn in as chief of staff of US army.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1940 Sep 2, The US Great Smoky
Mountains National Park dedicated.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1940 Sep 3, Artie Shaw and his
Gramercy Five recorded "Summit Ridge Drive," "Special Delivery Stomp,"
"Keepin’ Myself for You" and "Cross Your Heart" in Hollywood for RCA
Victor.
(AP, 9/3/98)
1940 Sep 3, The 1st showing of
high definition color TV.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1940 Sep 3, US gave Britain 50
destroyers in exchange for Newfoundland base lease.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1940 Sep 3, In France more than
700,000 books were seized from bookshops and destroyed. The "Otto
lists," or liste Otto, were comprised of books banned by the German
occupying authorities in Vichy France. By September, 1940, 1,060 titles
were on the list. The list aimed to ban anti-German, antifascist,
pro-Marxists books, works by Jewish authors and British and American
books.
(HNQ, 8/16/98)(AP, 8/15/98)
1940 Sep 3, In Germany the SS
banned Free Masons, Rotary & Red Cross.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1940 Sep 5, Raquel Welch, Chic
Ill, (Myra Breckenridge, 1,000,000 BC, 100 Rifles), was born.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1940 Sep 7, Nazi Germany began its
initial blitz on London during the World War II Battle of Britain. The
German Luftwaffe blitzed London for the 1st of 57 consecutive nights.
Nazi Germany launched the aerial bombing of London that Adolf Hitler
believed would soften Britain for an invasion. The invasion, "Operation
Sea Lion," never materialized. The Luftwaffe lost 41 bombers over
England. The blitz only strengthened Britain's resistance. The defense
of London was for the Royal Air Force what Churchill called
"their finest hour."
(AP, 9/7/97)(HN, 9/7/98)
1940 Sep 9, 28 German aircraft
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1940 Sep 11, Brian DePalma, film
director (Body Double, Dressed to Kill), was born in Newark, NJ.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1940 Sep 12, The Lascaux Caves in
France, with their prehistoric wall paintings, were discovered in the
Dordogne region. 4 teens, following their dog down a hole near Lascaux
France discover 17,000-year-old drawings now known as Lascaux Cave
Paintings. The paintings consisting mostly of animal representations
(horses), are among the finest examples of art from the Paleolithic
period.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T4)(HN, 9/12/00)(MC, 9/12/01)
1940 Sep 12, Italian forces began
an offensive into Egypt from Libya.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1940 Sep 13, Buckingham Palace was
hit by German bombs causing superficial damage.
(http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/september13.html)
1940 Sep 13, Italian troops under
Marshal Graziani attacked Egypt.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1940 Sep 14, Congress passed the
Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime draft in U.S.
history. It passed by one vote.
(AP, 9/14/97)(SFEC, 8/27/00, BR p.4)
1940 Sep 15, The tide turned in
Battle of Britain in WW II. A reported 185 German planes were shot down
by Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots, forcing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to
abandon his invasion plans.
(AP, 9/15/97)
1940 Sep 15, Sergeant Ray Holmes
(1915-2005) slammed his Hurricane into a German Dornier bomber to
prevent it attacking Buckingham Palace. The date of 15 September has
come to be known as Battle of Britain Day and has been commemorated
every year since.
(AP, 11/1/05)
1940 Sep 16, President Roosevelt
signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up
the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.
(AP, 9/16/97)(HN, 9/16/98)
1940 Sep 16, Samuel T. Rayburn of
Texas was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
(AP, 9/16/97)
1940 Sep 16, The Luftwaffe bombed
the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
(http://www.fishponds.freeuk.com/nluftbri1.htm)
1940 Sep 17, Nazis deprived Jews
of possessions.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1940 Sep 18, 19 German aircraft
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1940 Sep 19, A Nazi decree forbade
gentile woman to work in Jewish homes.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1940 Sep 24, Luftwaffe bombed the
Spitfire factory in Southampton. [see Sep 25]
(MC, 9/24/01)
1940 Sep 25, German High
Commissioner in Norway set up the Vidikun Quisling government.
(SFC, 6/25/97, p.A10)(MC, 9/25/01)
1940 Sep 25, Luftwaffe bombed the
Spitfire factory in Southampton. [see Sep 24]
(MC, 9/25/01)
1940 Sep 26, During the London
Blitz, the underground Cabinet War Room suffered a hit when a bomb
exploded on the Clive Steps.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1940 Sep 26, Japanese troops
attacked French Indochina (Vietnam).
(MC, 9/26/01)
1940 Sep 27, Black leaders
protested discrimination in US armed forces.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep 27, 55 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep 27, Nazi-Germany, Italy
and Japan signed a formal alliance called Tripartite Pact, a 10 year
military and economic alliance strengthening the Axis alliance.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep 30, 47 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1940 Sep, 59 U-boats were sunk
this month.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1940 Sep, Frank B. Rowlett (d.1998
at 90), cryptographer, supervised a team of code-breakers, who after 18
months work, cracked the chief Japanese diplomatic cipher machine,
called PURPLE by US officials.
(SFC, 7/4/98, p.C2)
1940 Autumn, Maurice Schumann
(d.1998 at 86), "the voice of France," began wartime broadcasting "The
French Speak to the French" from London as the official spokesman for
Gen’l. de Gaulle.
(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A24)
1940 Oct 1, The first section of
the Pennsylvania Turnpike, 160 miles in length, was opened to the
public.
(AP, 10/1/00)
1940 Oct 2, 17 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1940 Oct 2, The British liner
Empress, loaded with refugees for Canada, sank.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1940 Oct 3, U.S. Army adopted
airborne, or parachute, soldiers.
(HN, 10/3/98)
1940 Oct 3, In France a law was
passed that placed great restrictions on French Jews.
(SFC, 10/2/97, p.A9)
1940 Oct 4, Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi
leader sought Italy’s help in fighting the British.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1940 Oct 5, Silvestre Revueltas,
Mexican composer: Cuauhnahuac/Planos, died at 40.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1940 Oct 7, Artie Shaw and his
Orchestra recorded Hoagy Carmichael’s "Stardust" for RCA Victor.
(AP, 10/7/97)
1940 Oct 8, German troops occupied
Romania.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1940 Oct 9, John Winston Lennon
(d.1980) was born in Liverpool, England. Composer; musician; one fourth
of the idolized rock group, The Beatles; 2nd wife was Yoko Ono he had
two children Julian (from his first wife who he mostly abandoned
emotionally and financially) and Sean. On December 8, 1980, John Lennon
was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building. "The
unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends
everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace,
love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown
and it's plain sailing."
(HN, 10/9/98)(AP, 12/8/98)(MC, 10/9/01)
1940 Oct 15, Charles Chaplin's
first all-talking comedy, "The Great Dictator," a lampoon of Adolf
Hitler, opened at two theaters in New York with Chaplin and his wife,
co-star Paulette Goddard, making appearances in both locations.
(AP, 10/15/02)
1940 Oct 15-16, London's Waterloo
Station was bombed by Germans. The bombing continued on London for 2
days and killed 400 people.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1940 Oct 16, Benjamin O. Davis
became the U.S. Army’s first African American Brigadier General.
(HN, 10/16/98)
1940 Oct 16, The 1st lottery for
US WW II draftees was held; #158 drawn 1st.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1940 Oct 16, The Warsaw Ghetto was
formed by Nazi SS troops.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1940 Oct 18, Kaufman's & Harts
"George Washington Slept Here," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1940 Oct 18, Britain reopened the
Burma Road linking Myanmar with China, three months after closing it.
(AP, 10/18/06)
1940 Oct 20, Robert Pinsky, former
U.S. Poet Laureate, was born.
(HN, 10/20/00)
1940 Oct 20, German troops reached
the approaches to Moscow.
(HN, 10/20/98)
1940 Oct 21, Ernest Hemingway's
novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was published.
(HN, 10/21/00)
1940 Oct 23, Pele, legendary
Brazilian soccer player who scored 1,281 goals in 22 years, was born.
(HN, 10/23/98)
1940 Oct 24, F. Murray Abraham,
actor (Amadeus, Mad Man), was born in Pittsburgh, Pa.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1940 Oct 24, The 40-hour work week
went into effect in the US under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.
(AP, 10/24/97)
1940 Oct 24, Hitler met Marshal
Petain.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1940 Oct 24, Protestant churches
[in Germany?] protested against the dismissal of Jewish civil servants.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1940 Oct 25, The musical play
“Cabin in the Sky” opened with an all black cast at the Martin Beck
Theater on Broadway. It featured Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) and her
dance troupe.
(http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/dunham/dunham-notes-cabininthesky.html)
1940 Oct 25, Col. Benjamin O.
Davis Sr. (1877-1970), commander of the 369th Infantry of New York, was
promoted to brigadier general. In 1955 his son became the first black
brigadier general in the Air Force. In 1989 Biographer Marvin Fletcher
authored “America's First Black General, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr.,
1880-1970.” Fletcher presented evidence of Davis’ birth records
indicating that he was born in May 1880 and later lied about his age so
that he could enlist in the Army without the permission of his parents.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_O._Davis,_Sr.)(www.kansaspress.ku.edu/fleame.html)
1940 Oct 25, German troops
captured Kharkov and launched a new drive toward Moscow.
(HN, 10/25/98)
1940 Oct 25, Hitler visited
Mussolini in Florence.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 25, The Greek Army beat
back an invasion by Mussolini’s forces.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)
1940 Oct 26, Mario Orosco, the 1st
victim of NYC's Zodiac killer (survives), was born.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1940 Oct 27, Maxine Hong Kingston,
writer, was born. Her work included "The Woman Warrior" and "China
Men."
(HN, 10/27/00)
1940 Oct 28, Italy invaded Greece,
launching six divisions on four fronts from occupied Albania. Greece
successfully resisted Italy's attack.
(AP, 10/28/97)(HN, 10/28/98)(MC, 10/28/01)
1940 Oct 28, A meeting between
Hitler and Mussolini took place in Florence.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1940 Oct 29, John Gotti, mafia
head, was born.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1940 Oct 29, Secretary of War
Henry L. Stimson drew the first number -- 158 -- in America’s first
peacetime military draft.
(AP, 10/29/97)
1940 Oct 30, Cole Porter musical
"Panama Hattie," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1940 Oct 31, 63 U boats were sunk
this month (325,000 ton).
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Oct 31, In the Battle of
Britain, the German and British duel for control of English Channel,
ended.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Oct 31, This was the deadline
for Warsaw Jews to move into the Warsaw Ghetto.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Oct, The 634-page "Ohio
Guide" was published by Oxford Univ. Press. It was a product of the
Ohio branch of the Federal Writer’s Project.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.6)
1940 Nov 1, 1st US air raid
shelter was made in Fleetwood, Pa.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1940 Nov 1, The Iceland skating
rink opened in Berkeley, Ca., with an appearance by Sonya Henie, the
former Olympic champion and Hollywood actress. The facility closed in
2007.
(SFC, 1/19/07, p.B2)
1940 Nov 4, Lewis Hine, American
social-documentary photographer, died. Hine, a former geography
teacher, had quit his job in 1908 to become a full-time photographer
for the National Child Labor Committee.
(WSJ, 11/12/99, p.W10)(ON, 3/07, p.6)
1940 Nov 5, President Roosevelt
won an unprecedented third term in office, beating Republican
challenger Wendell L. Willkie along with Surprise Party challenger
Gracie Allen.
(AP, 11/5/97)(HN, 11/5/98)(WSJ, 10/27/04, p.B1)
1940 Nov 7, The middle section of
the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, nicknamed "Galloping
Gertie," collapsed during a windstorm. In 1950 a new fortified bridge
was built on the original piers.
(AP, 11/7/08)(ON, 6/09, p.9)
1940 Nov 8, The MV City of
Rayville, an American freighter carrying a cargo of lead, wool and
copper from Australia to New York, sank in the Bass Strait after
striking a German mine, a year before the United States entered the
war. One seaman drowned while trying to recover personal items from the
sinking vessel but 37 other crew survived. In 2009 the wreck was found
off of Australia’s southeastern coast.
(AP, 4/1/09)
1940 Nov 10, Arthur Neville
Chamberlain (71), British premier (1937-40), died.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1940 Nov 11, Willys unveiled its
General Purpose vehicle, the "Jeep." The Willys Quad, featuring 4-wheel
drive, was one entry in a US government competition for a small
military utility vehicle.
(MC, 11/11/01)(WSJ, 9/16/05, p.W12)
1940 Nov 11, Blizzard struck
midwestern US killing over 100.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1940 Nov 11, Frank Taussig
(b.1859), former president of the American Economic Association
(1904-1905) and Harvard professor, died. In 1911 he authored the
“Principles of Economics.” In 1912 he stated: “We must accept the
consumer as the final judge.”
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9071417)(Econ,
1/14/06, p.76)
1940 Nov 11, Britain’s Royal Navy
attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1940 Nov 12, Walt Disney released
"Fantasia."
(MC, 11/12/01)
1940 Nov 12, Blizzard struck the
Midwest. 154 died including 69 on a boat on the Great Lakes.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1940 Nov 13, The Walt Disney
animated movie "Fantasia" had its world premiere in New York.
(AP, 11/13/97)
1940 Nov 13, U.S. Supreme Court
ruled in Hansberry v. Lee that African Americans cannot be barred from
white neighborhoods.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1940 Nov 14, Coventry, England,
was devastated by German bombers in the worst air raid of World War II,
killing 1,000.
(AP, 11/14/97)(HN, 11/14/98)
1940 Nov 15, The first US 75,000
men were called to Armed Forces duty under peacetime conscription.
(AP, 11/15/97)
1940 Nov 15, NY Midtown tunnel
linking Manhattan and Queens opened to traffic.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1940 Nov 17, The Wisconsin Green
Bay Packers became the 1st NFL team to travel by plane.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1940 Nov 19, A German air raid on
Birmingham failed.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1940 Nov 22, Terry Gilliam, comedy
author-animator (Monty Python), was born in Minneapolis.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1940 Nov 25, Woody Woodpecker
debuted with the release of Walter Lantz's "Knock Knock."
(MC, 11/25/01)
1940 Nov 25, The ship Patria,
carrying illegal immigrants, sank in port of Haifa, 200 died.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1940 Nov 26, The half-million Jews
of Warsaw, Poland, were forced by the Nazis to live within a walled
ghetto.
(AP, 11/26/97)
1940 Nov 27, Bruce Lee, [Lee Yuen
Kam], karate star and actor (Green Hornet), was born in SF, Calif.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1940 Nov 27, Astonescu's Iron
Guard massacred over sixty aides of the exiled king, including Nicolae
Iorga, a former minister and acclaimed historian. Two months prior
General Ion Antonescu seized power in Romania and forced King Carol II
to abdicate.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1940 Dec 1, Richard Pryor Ill,
comedian and actor (Lady Sings the Blues, Stir Crazy), was born.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1940 Dec 5, Jan Kubelik (60),
composer, died.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1940 Dec 6, The Gestapo arrested
Helen Ernst, German resistance fighter and poster artist.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1940 Dec 8, During the Battle of
Britain, the German Luftwaffe launched a massive attack on London as
night fell. For nearly 24 hours, the Luftwaffe rained tons of bombs
over the city, causing the first serious damage to the House of Commons
and Tower of London.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1940 Dec 9, British troops opened
their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II and
seized 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
(AP, 12/9/97)(HN, 12/9/98)
1940 Dec 9, Illegal Jewish
immigrants to Haifa were deported to Mauritius.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1940 Dec 16, British carried out
an air raid on Italian Somalia.
(HN, 12/16/98)
1940 Dec 18, Hitler dictated
Directive No. 21 to crush Russia in a quick campaign. Adolf Hitler
signed a secret directive ordering preparations for a Nazi invasion of
the Soviet Union. (Operation "Barbarossa" was launched in June 1941.)
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)(AP, 12/18/97)
1940 Dec 19, Phil Ochs, anti-war
folk singer (Joe Hill, War is Over), was born in El Paso, Tx.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1940 Dec 21, Frank Zappa, rocker
(Mothers of Invention, Catholic Girls), was born in Baltimore.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1940 Dec 21, F. Scott Fitzgerald
(44), American author (Zelda, The Great Gatsby), died of a heart attack.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald)
1940 Dec 22, Nathanael West
(b.1902), [Weinstein], US writer (Cool Million), died in an auto
accident at age 37. In 1970 Jay Martin wrote his biography: "Nathanael
West: The Art of His Life."
(WUD, 1994, p.1623)(WSJ, 8/11/97, p.A12)(MC,
12/22/01)
1940 Dec 23, Chiang Kai-shek
dissolved all Communist associations in China.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1940 Dec 26, J.A. Fields' and J.
Chodorov's "My Sister Eileen," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1940 Dec 29, In a radio interview,
President Roosevelt proclaimed the U.S. is the ‘arsenal of democracy.’
(HN, 12/29/98)
1940 Dec 29, During World War II,
Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London, setting off what
came to be known as "The Second Great Fire of London." In 2006 Margaret
Gaskin authored “Blitz: The Story of December 29, 1940.”
(AP, 12/29/97)(SSFC, 12/17/06, p.M3)
1940 Dec 30, In California the
Arroyo Seco Parkway, connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena, officially
opened as the first freeway in the Western US.
(AP, 12/30/97)(SFC, 3/7/98, p.A18)
1940 Martin Sheen, actor, was born
as Ramon Estevez in Dayton, Ohio.
(SSFC, 12/2/01, Par p.4)
1940 A group of 14 bronze
sculptures by Swedish sculptor Carl Miles were installed in St. Louis
to celebrate the meeting of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.
(SFC, 10/12/97, p.T5)
1940 Max Beckman (d.1950),
German-American painter, painted his oil "Acrobat on a Trapeze."
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.F3)
1940 Andre Breton held the Int’l.
Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City. Included was the photograph "The
Good Reputation Sleeping" by Alvarez Bravo.
(WSJ, 3/12/97, p.A16)
1940 Alexander Calder created his
mobile sculpture "Little Spider" from sheet metal and wire.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.D1)
1940 Frederick C. Flemister
painted his self-portrait "Man With a Brush." It was used as the cover
painting for the 1999 book "To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from
Historically Black Colleges and Universities."
(SFEC, 9/26/99, Par p.13)
1940 Frido Kahlo created her
"Self-Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird."
(SFC, 1/7/99, p.D3)
1940 Eric Ambler wrote his spy
thriller "Journey into Fear."
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1940 The photography book
"California and the West" was written by Chris Wilson with photos by
Edward Weston. It was the first really successful book of photographic
reproductions.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, BR p.7)
1940 Mortimer Adler (d.2001),
philosopher and author, authored "How to Read a Book."
(SFC, 6/30/01, p.A18)
1940 Gracie Allen, with the help
of a ghostwriter, authored “How to Become President.”
(WSJ, 10/27/04, p.B1)
1940 Jean Potter Chelnov wrote
"Alaska Under Arms."
(SFC, 1/8/96, p.A17)
1940 Wang Chi-ch’ien, aka C.C.
Wang, wrote "Seals of Chinese Painters and Collectors of the Ming and
Ch’ing Periods" with German art historian Victoria Contag.
(WSJ, 7/24/97, p.A16)
1940 The misleadingly titled "An
Outline of Psychoanalysis" by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was published
posthumously.
(WSJ, 5/5/06, p.A16)
1940 Arthur Koestler (1905-1983)
authored "Darkness At Noon." The novel introduced to the public the
dark side of Stalinism.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.5)
1940 "Pat the Bunny" by Dorothy
Kunhardt was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1940 Maud Hart Lovelace (d.1980)
published her first "Betsy-Tacy" book for children. The last of 10
books in the series with 3 satellite volumes was published in 1955.
(SFC, 10/6/97, p.A24)
1940 Anne Morrow Lindbergh
authored "The Wave of the Future" in which she spoke on behalf of
anti-democratic movements and against American involvement in WW II.
(WSJ, 11/29/99, p.A26)
1940 Denis de Rougemont
(1906-1985), Swiss writer who wrote in French, authored “Love in the
Western World,” a sweeping history of 8 centuries of romantic passion.
(WSJ, 1/5/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_de_Rougemont)
1940 Fred Schwed Jr. authored
"Where Are the Customer’s Yachts?," a book on investment advice.
(SFC, 4/10/01, p.C8)
1940 Prof. Orson Shepard
(1902-1997) published his basic textbook on fire assaying. He served as
the first Stanford chairman of the new Materials Science Dept. from
1960-1967.
(SFC,10/27/97, p.C2)
1940 Gertrude Stein published her
memoir "Paris France." A limited edition was reprinted in 2000 by Yolla
Bolly Press with illustrations by Ward Schumaker.
(SFC, 5/20/00, p.E1)
1940 John Steinbeck journeyed
aboard a sardine boat to the Sea of Cortez and wrote "The Log from the
Sea of Cortez." He traveled with Edward "Doc" Ricketts, a marine
biologist, who wrote "Between Pacific Tides," a classic field guide to
the Pacific Coast intertidal zone.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, p.T8)(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.6)
1940 Rebecca West authored “Black
Lamb and Grey Falcon,” an account of her travels in Yugoslavia
beginning in 1936.
(West, BLGC, single volume 1943 ed.)
1940 The play "Long Day’s Journey
Into Night" by Eugene O’Neill was published posthumously. It was about
the Tyrone family on an August day in 1912.
(WSJ, 3/30/98, p.A16)
1940 The show "Morning Star" by
Sylvia Regan was first produced on Broadway. The show tracked 3
generations of the Felderman family.
(WSJ, 5/17/99, p.A24)
1940 Randolph Carter produced on
Broadway a dramatization of "Wuthering Heights."
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1940 The blues opera "De
Organizer," written by Langston Hughes and James P. Johnson, was
performed in NYC.
(SFC, 12/30/02, p.D3)
1940 The "Dead End Kids" moved to
the Warner Bros. Studio and became the "East Side Kids." The group
included Huntz Hall (d.1999), Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop,
and Bobby Jordan. After WW II the group moved to Monogram Pictures and
made 49 films as the "Bowery Boys."
(SFC, 2/2/99, p.A19)
1940 Bela Bartok, Hungarian
composer, fled Budapest, Hungary, and arrived in New York.
(WSJ, 8/18/95, p.A-1)
1940 Nancy Hamilton wrote the hit
song "How High the Moon."
(WSJ, 2/2/00, p.W8)
1940 The Ink Spots made a hit with
their song Java Jive: “I like coffee, and I like tea, I love the java
jive and it loves me."
(AP, 8/28/05)
1940 Prokofiev composed the opera
"Betrothal in a Monastery." It was based on Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s
1775 work "The Duenna."
(WSJ, 5/7/98, p.A21)
1940 Richard Strauss composed the
opera "Die Liebe der Danae." The libretto by Joseph Gregor was based on
a scenario by Hugo von Hoffmanstahl and conflated two stories, the love
affair of Jupiter and Danae and the story of King Midas.
(WSJ, 1/31/00, p.A42)
1940 Igor Stravinsky composed his
"Symphony in C."
(WSJ, 4/17/01, p.A18)
1940 The Spanish song
"Bésame Mucho" was written Mexican Consuelo Velázquez
before her sixteenth birthday. The phrase "besame mucho" can be
translated into English as "kiss me a lot". She wrote this song even
though she had never been kissed yet at the time. She was inspired by
the aria "Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor" from the Spanish 1916
opera Goyescas by Enrique Granados. The lyrics were translated into
English by Sunny Skylar.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9same_Mucho)
1940 Thomas Chinn founded the
Chinese News in San Francisco, the first English language weekly for
Chinese Americans, which he published and edited.
(SFC, 9/16/97, p.A18)
1940 John Sengstacke (d.1997 at
84) took over the Defender newspaper after the death of his uncle,
Robert Abbott. It was the largest black-owned newspaper in the country
with a circulation of some 200,000 and was a major voice in luring
Southern blacks to factory jobs in Northern cities.
(SFC, 5/30/97, p.A26)
1940 Forrest Mars Sr. (d.1999),
son of Frank C. Mars, created the M&Ms candies.
(SFC, 7/3/99, p.A21)
1940 The 1990 Atlanta-based
International Time Capsule Society, established at Oglethorpe Univ. to
promote the study of time capsules, planted a time capsule called the
"Crypt of Civilization" that was scheduled to be opened May 28, 8113.
Souvenir medals were sold for $1 granted holders free admittance to the
8113 opening.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.D4)(WSJ, 1/5/05, p.B1)
1940 In Kansas City, Mo., the
Winstead’s restaurant opened and established a reputation for the
world’s best hamburgers. They were commonly served with a chocolate
frostie.
(WSJ, 4/15/98, p.A20)
1940 Joyce Matthews won the Miss
America pageant. In 1953 she married Milton Berle.
(SFC, 5/29/00, p.E4)
1940 Hugh Mulcahy was the first
Major League baseball player called up by the Army after U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Service Act in 1940. During
the 1940 baseball season, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Hugh "Losing
Pitcher" Mulcahy won 13 games but lost a league-leading 22. He was
called up by the Army later that year. The drafting of Detroit Tigers
slugger Hank Greenberg 19 games into the 1941 season had a far greater
impact. Tiger pitching ace Hal Newhauer was declared 4-F (physically
deferred from the draft) because of a heart murmur. Bert Shepard, a
former Army pilot who had part of his right leg amputated in a German
prison camp, pitched 5 1/3 innings on August 4, 1945 for the Washington
Senators. On June 10, 1944, 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall pitched for the
Cincinnati Reds against the St. Louis Cardinals, becoming the youngest
player in major-league history. He did not make another appearance with
the Reds until called up from the minors in 1952.
(HNQ, 6/1/01)
1940 A college all-star team with
Ralph Giannini (1918-1996) defeated the Harlem Globetrotters, 44-42, in
overtime before 22,000 fans in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
(SFC, 7/14/96, p.C8)
1940 Art Rooney renamed the
Pittsburgh Pirates football team to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
(WSJ, 7/8/08, p.A17)
1940 Pres. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt began recording presidential meetings to ensure that he was
quoted accurately.
(AH, 6/03, p.10)
1940 The US Hatch Act limited
political gifts to candidates to $5,000 annually and total expenditures
by a political committee to $3 million.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.D9)
1940 The US helped Britain by
providing 50 overage destroyers and started its first peacetime draft.
(TMC, 1994, p.1940)
1940 The US government established
a civilian pilot training program that accepted women.
(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A20)
1940 The Immigration and
Naturalization Service abandoned its California Angel Island Station
after a fire destroyed the administration building.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)
1940 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
began to compile a "Security Index," a secret list of people considered
potentially dangerous to national security during an crises and who
would be detained without judicial warrant. A 1943 order to destroy the
list was ignored. In 1954 the list contained the names of 26,174 people.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F3)
1940 The US Marine Corps published
it "Small Wars Manual."
(WSJ, 4/8/04, p.A1)
1940 The US census categorized the
population as "White, Negro, Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Filipino,
Korean, Indian and Mexican. Other nationalities or races could be
written in."
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A21)
1940 The Bob Marshall Wilderness,
an area of a million acres in two national forests in northwest Montana
was designated.
(NG, May 1985, M. Edwards, p.667)
1940 Congress enacted the Bald
Eagle Protection Act.
(SFC, 6/18/99, p.A3)
1940 The United States Weather
Bureau, a division of the Dept. of Agriculture, was moved to the Dept.
of Commerce. In 1967 it was renamed the National Weather Service.
(ON, 2/06, p.7)
1940 The US Investment Company Act
(IAA) included a requirement for the disclosure of debt. The act also
defined mutual fund operations.
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.D1)(Econ, 2/19/05, p.63)
1940 The SEC recommended that
corporate boards establish audit committees elected by shareholders at
annual meetings.
(WSJ, 1/14/08, p.R2)
1940 In Tennessee the Great Smokey
Mountains National Park was dedicated.
(SFC, 6/9/97, p.A3)
1940 King’s Canyon wilderness was
added to Sequoia National Park, the nation’s 2nd oldest.
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.T3)
1940 In Washington DC the
Dumbarton Oaks mansion was donated to Harvard Univ.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.T10)
1940 In Chicago Moses Annenberg,
father of Walter Annenberg, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for tax
evasion. In 1999 Christopher Ogden published "Legacy: A Biography of
Moses and Walter Annenberg."
(WSJ, 6/18/99, p.W6)
1940 The first US turnpike opened
in Pennsylvania.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1940 The first of the Ford "Family
Pickups" was manufactured.
(SFC, 9/1/96, Par. p.3)
1940 The Mountain Dew beverage, a
lemon-lime mixer, was trademarked by Barney and Ally Hartman of
Knoxville, Tenn. In 1948 a cartoon drawing of Willy the Hillbilly was
trademarked and used on bottles until the early 1970s. Pepsi bought
Mountain Dew in 1964.
(SFC, 6/25/08, p.G3)
1940 Packard introduced
air-conditioning in cars. The units were huge with evaporator and
blower units installed in the trunk. [see 1939]
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(F, 10/7/96, p.69)
1940 Industry experts in 1996
picked the 1940 Lincoln Zephyr as the number 3 favorite car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1940 Max Factor invented Tru-Color
lipstick, an indelible lip rouge that did not smear or change color.
(SFC, 6/9/96, p.B-6)
1940 Gov. Earl Warren of
California signed a $2 million appropriation for Moffitt Hospital, a
teaching facility in San Francisco. It was completed 16 years later at
a cost of $24 million.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-10)
1940 Georges de Latour, owner of
Beaulieu Vineyard in Napa Valley, Ca., died. BV Burgundy was renamed by
his wife and released as Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet
Sauvignon, California’s first private reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.
(SFC, 10/10/08, p.F3)
1940 The term "genetic
engineering" was coined in Poland, by Danish microbiologist A. Jost
while giving a lecture on the sex life of yeast at the Technical
Institute in Lwow, Poland.
(Internet)
1940 B. Edlen, Swedish physicist,
solved the mystery of spectral lines that were not understood as being
due to highly ionized atoms of common elements.
(SCTS, p.88)
1940 Martin Kamen (d.2002 at 89)
discovered carbon-14. Kamen was fired in 1944 from his position at UC
Berkeley due to suspicions arising from a dinner with 2 officials from
the Russian consulate.
(SFC, 9/14/02, p.A19)
1940 Rupert Wildt, American
astrophysicist, theorized that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of
Venus kept heat from escaping and raise the temperature of the planet.
This phenomena came to be called "the greenhouse effect."
(SFEC, 12/19/99, Par p.16)
1940 Philip H. Abelson (1913-2004)
and Edwin McMillan discovered Neptunium, element No. 93. They named it
after the planet Neptune.
(NH, 7/02, p.36)(SFC, 8/9/04, p.B6)
1940 Plutonium was first isolated
during research on the atomic bomb. Glenn Seaborg (d.1999 at 86) and
Edwin Mullen discovered plutonium and together received the Nobel Prize
in Chemistry in 1951.
(WUD, 1994, p.1108)(SFC, 2/27/99, p.A1,19)
1940 The Los Angeles Water Dept.
began diverting water from Mono Lake. The diversion was stopped in Sep
1994 with the lake 40 feet shallower.[see 1941]
(Pac. Disc., summer, ‘96, p.52)
1940 The population of Mesa,
Arizona, was about 7,000. this roughly doubled in each of the next 5
decades and by 2008 Mesa numbered almost half a million residents.
(Econ, 12/6/08, p.42)
1940 The mummy, known as the
Spirit Cave Man, was found in Nevada in 1940, but in 1996 was dated to
be more than 9,400 years old. The mummy was discovered by archeologists
S.M. and Georgia Wheeler in a cave 13 miles east of Fallon. The mummy
was wrapped in a skin robe and sewn into two mats woven of a marsh
plant called tule.
(SFC, 4/27/96, p.A-5)
1940 Some 2,000 Jews, who fled to
England from Austria and Germany, were put on the passenger ship Dunera
and sent to Australia, where they were interned in camps until 1942.
Their story was the subject of the 1988 Australian film “The Dunera
Boys.”
(SFC, 10/8/05, p.B5)
1940 British soldiers found bones
on Gardner Island, later renamed Nikumaroro Island, in Kiribati that
they suspected might be the remains of Amelia Earhart. A report
identifying the remains as those of a male was forwarded to England but
not to America. In 1998 the bones were identified as belonging to a
woman about 5 foot 7, of northern European extraction.
(SFC, 12/2/98, p.A4)
1940 Isaac Babel, Russian-Jewish
author, was killed by a Soviet firing squad. In 2001 Nathalie Babel
edited the "Complete Works of Isaac Babel," translated by Peter
Constantine.
(SSFC, 11/25/01, p.M3)
1940 Charles Frye, Seattle
meat-packing mogul, died. He earmarked a fortune to the Frye Art Museum
stipulating that his collection remain intact, that it be displayed
under natural light, and that it be free to the public.
(WSJ, 3/19/97, p.A16)
1940 John Monk Saunders, Hollywood
screenwriter and former husband to actress Fay Wray (1928-1939), hanged
himself.
(SFC, 8/10/04, p.B7)
1940 The Brazilian Reinsurance
Institute, later called IRB, was founded by Pres. Getulio Vargas. The
self-regulating institution remained a state monopoly into 2006.
(Econ, 1/7/06, p.68)
1940 Churchill took over power in
Britain and the French general, De Gaulle, moved to London.
(TMC, 1994, p.1940)
1940 Britain formed the Special
Operations Executive (SOE) to organize agents abroad. In 1942 the SOE
began recruiting women. In 2005 Sarah Helm authored “A Life in Secrets:
The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of the SOE.”
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.69)
1940 Britain’s PM Winston
Churchill sent a handful of young British officers to Washington, DC,
to ingratiate themselves on the social scene and advance the British
cause through good manners. They included Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and
David Ogilvy. In 2008 Jennet Conant authored “The Irregulars: Roald
Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.
(WSJ, 9/11/08, p.A13)
1940 P.A. Wodehouse (d.1975),
British writer, was put into an internment camp after Germany defeated
France, where he and his wife, Edith, were living. He was released the
following year and made five lighthearted radio broadcasts to England
and America from Berlin.
(AP, 8/16/02)
1940 The Belgian colonial
government in Leopoldville (later Kinshasa), Congo, ordered private
mining companies to turn over their records to help the Allies find
resources to help the war effort against Germany. Millions of tons of
copper and tin, as well as some uranium, were shipped to the US. After
the war records were shipped to Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central
Africa in Brussels.
(WSJ, 3/20/07, p.A13)
1940 A Cuban constitution offered
the promise of a democratic government.
(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.D8)
1940 In France Aristides de Sousa
Mendes (1885-1954), a Portuguese diplomat posted in Bordeaux, issued
30,000 visas to Jews and 20,000 to other refugees against the
instructions of his government. Dictator Antonio Salazar responded by
removing him from the diplomatic corps, denying him a pension and
blacking out his actions from official state records.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A13)(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A16)(SFC,
2/19/09, p.B5)
1940 Francois Lehideux (d.1998 at
95), the minister of industrial production, agreed that Renault would
furnish parts to the German army, repair tanks and provide technical
assistance in the war effort. He was arrested and jailed after
liberation, but was freed in 1946. He went on to head Ford of France
until 1953.
(SFC, 6/26/98, p.D4)
1940 Following the fall of France
Claude Peri commandeered the merchant ship Le Rhin and placed it at the
disposal of British naval intelligence. Peri got his mistress,
Madeleine Bayard, the job of cipher officer on the ship. It was renamed
the HMS Fidelity and got torpedoed in 1942. In 2005 Edward Marriot
authored “Claude and Madeleine: A True Story of Love War and Espionage.”
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.69)
1940 Vichy authorities appointed
Prof. Bernard Fay (1893-1978) as head of France’s Bibliotheque
Nationale. In 1941 Fay was responsible for the imprisonment of some
6,000 Freemasons and for more than 500 of them being sent to their
deaths during the German occupation. In 1946 Fay was tried and
convicted for collaboration and sentenced to life in prison. In 1951
Gertrude Stein helped to finance his escape from a prison hospital. He
fled to Switzerland and lived there until he was granted pardon
in 1958.
(WSJ, 9/25/07,
p.D6)(http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/fay_b/fay_b.html)
1940 Germany overran most of
Western Europe.
(TMC, 1994, p.1940)
1940 From Greece the occupying
Germans started transporting the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki to
Auschwitz. Up to 1943 there were 36 synagogues in the city. In 1997
there was one.
(WSJ, 4/29/97, p.A20)
1940 In Germany James Helmuth von
Moltke set about to establish what has come to be know as the Kreisau
Circle. It was a collection priests, professors and members of the
German foreign office that stressed a form of passive resistance to the
Nazi regime. [see Helmuth von Moltke]
(WSJ, 11/7/95, p.A-21)
1940 In Germany Gen’l. Eduard
Dietl led a surprise capture of Narvik, the Norwegian Atlantic ice-free
port.
(SFC, 3/19/97, p.A12,14)
1940 In India the Muslim League
demanded a separate homeland for the Muslim-majority regions of India.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)
1940 Japan joined the Axis powers.
(TMC, 1994, p.1940)
1940 Japanese warplanes dropped
plague-infected fleas over southwest China. In 2001 Chinese doctors
testified in a Tokyo trial and said at least 109 people died as a
result. In 2002 a symposium of historians reported that the Japanese
killed at least 440,000 Chinese in the 1930s and 1940s by dropping
disease carrying fleas and cholera-coated flies from planes.
(WSJ, 1/25/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/22/07, p.B12)
1940 The German occupiers of
Jersey set a maximum tax rate of 20%. The low tax rate later attracted
the bank deposits of British expatriates.
(Econ, 2/24/07, SR p.5)
1940 In Tecate, Mexico, at the
foot of Mt. Kuchumaa Rancho, La Puerta was opened as a fitness spa, the
first in North America.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.24)
1940 Moldova was formed from the
former Republic of Moldavia and the ceded Romanian territory of
Bessarabia.
(WUD, 1994 p.922)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.60)
1940 In Poland "the Nazis packed
450,000 human beings into 75 square blocks of the Warsaw ghetto, then
walled it off and left them to starve."
(SFC, 7/10/97, p.A7)
1940 In Poland a mass murder of
Polish Jews took place at Lublin. A report of the killings to the Red
Cross was discounted.
(SFC, 10/8/97, p.A8)
1940 Russia imposed the Cyrillic
alphabet over the Roman alphabet upon Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
(SFC, 1/2/97, p.A10)
1940 The Soviet Union and Iran
signed more agreements concerning the Caspian Sea.
(SFC, 8/11/98, p.A8)
1940 Swiss police chief Paul
Grueninger was convicted of falsifying immigration documents to rescue
up to 3,000 Austrian Jews fleeing the Nazis. He was fired and stripped
of pension rights and died in poverty in 1972. In 1995 he was granted a
full pardon.
(WSJ, 12/1/95, p.A-1)
1940s Anthony Boucher was a
mystery reviewer for the SF Chronicle under his book editor Joseph
Henry Jackson. Boucher moved on to write the "Criminals at Large"
column in the New York Times in the 1950s.
(SFEC,10/26/97, BR p.2)
1940s In Los Angeles adolescent
Mexican-Americans known as los pachucos established the zoot suit dress
style. The War Production Board outlawed the zoot suit. The "Sleepy
Lagoon Murder" of several Americans of Mexican descent led to the Zoot
Suit Riots where American sailors stripped and beat zoot suiters as
white LA police stood by. Luis Valdez later authored the play "Zoot
Suit."
(WSJ, 7/111/00, p.A24)
1940s The Albert and Mary Lasker
Foundation was set up as a way to raise awareness of the value of
biomedical research. Albert Lasker was a pioneering advertising
executive.
(SFEC, 9/17/00, p.A16)
1940s The US Navy acquired
two-thirds of Vieques, Costa Rica, a 20-by-4-mile island for $1.4
million.
(AP, 5/1/03)
1940s Part airplane, part boat,
the Grumman J2F Duck was as agile in the air as it was comfortable in
the water. The Navy Department had requested Grumman to free its
facilities for the manufacture of vitally needed F6F Hellcat fighters,
and to transfer the production of 330 J2F-6 Ducks to Columbia Aircraft.
The amphibious Duck not only was capable of taking off and touching
down on land or water but also was sturdy enough to be used with an
arresting gear for aircraft carrier landings.
(HNQ, 7/3/01)
1940s US Sec. Henry Morgenthau
held that every country should have its own central bank and unique
currency. He deemed it a clever way to tap into nationalist sentiments.
(WSJ, 11/7/03, p.A10)
1940s The US Army Corps of
Engineers, at the behest of state and federal governments, drained the
area to the south of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee to create vast sugar
fields.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.31)
1940s The Associated Sportsmen of
California repeatedly warned of damage to the salmon population in the
north and urged the government to release water from Shasta Lake to
dilute the poisons from Iron Mountain.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1940s Cloud seeding to produce
rain was discovered by Vincent J. Schaefer. He used dry ice to induce
water droplet formation. His colleague, Bernard Vonnegut (d.1997 at
82), brother of novelist Kurt Vonnegut, improved the process using
silver iodide.
(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A20)
1940s Karl von Frisch, Austrian
ethologist, first described the method by which honeybees describe the
source of gathered pollen to their fellow bees. The bees perform a
dance is that integrates information about the orientation of the sun
and the distance to the pollen source.
(WUD, 1994, p.569)(NH, 9/97, p.60)
1940s In the late 1940s Gordon L.
Harwell and a partner started Uncle Ben’s Inc. under the name Converted
Rice. The namesake was a Texas rice grower who lived near Houston many
years ago.
(BS, 5/3/98, p.6F)
1940s George Rochester (d.2002),
English physicist, discovered the kaon, a type of meson particle that
became the 1st in the "strange" category.
(SFC, 1/21/02, p.B5)
1940s Moshe Feldenkrais, a
Russian-born Israeli physicist, developed a methodology of therapeutic
body movement.
(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.B3)
1940s Some time before Fidel
Castro took over Cuba, the mayor of Santiago was the father of Desi
Arnaz, later husband to Lucille Ball.
(SFC, 9/23/96, D3)
1940s The Formosa termite was
probably imported to the US aboard military cargo ships. By 2000 it had
spread to 11 states and caused an estimated $1 billion in annual damage.
(SFEC, 5/14/00, p.A4)
1940s The brown tree snake arrived
on Guam and began to feed on the native bird population. By 1998 an
estimated 9 of 11 native birds were eliminated.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A8)
1940-1941 Jun-Jul, After a Communist coup leading
Estonian Republic officials were mass-murdered in Tallinn.
(BN, 10/97, p.3)
1940-1941 A 59-man team under Adm. Richard E. Byrd
spent the winter on Antarctica. Dr. Harrison Holt Richardson (d.1999 at
80), was the youngest member of the team and took the first color
movies there. This was Byrd's 3rd mission there.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.D8)
1940-1941 In France the Emergency Rescue Committee,
led by New York writer Varian Fry, saved some 2,000 cultural elite. The
group operated out of the Villa Air-Bel in Marseille. In 2006 Rosemary
Sullivan authored “Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape and a House in
Marseille.
(SSFC, 12/3/06, p.M3)
1940-1941 Japan extended war into Southeast Asia.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)
1940-1941 A secret Nazi program, code-named T4,
killed an estimated 70,000 disabled or mentally ill adults in specially
established death camps during this period.
(SFC, 10/7/06, p.A9)
1940-1941 German paratroopers were decimated in the
battle for Crete.
(SFC,10/29/97, p.A23)
1940-1942 U Saw served as prime minister of Burma. As
head of the Myochit party, U Saw became prime minister of the then
British colony in 1940. When the British entered the war against
Japan, U Saw pressed the British for full independence, while secretly
negotiating with the Japanese. Upon learning of his contacts with
Japan, the British arrested him and removed him from office. U Saw was
responsible for the assassination of his rival Aung San after the war.
(HNQ, 4/18/00)
1940-1943 George Metesky plagued New York City’s
electrical utility with bombs and accusatory notes over this period. As
a token to the war effort he left a note promising not to plant any
more bombs till after the war. He kept his word and resumed planting
bombs after the war until 1950. He remained at large for some 16 years
until company records identified similar notes from a former employee.
His story was depicted in a NOVA PBS show commemorating the Oklahoma
City bombing of 1995.
(WSJ, 4/15/96, p.A-16)
1940-1944 Britain’s Special Operations Executive, an
agency set up by Winston Churchill, carried out operations in Albania
to support anti-German partisans. In 2008 Roderick Bailey authored ”The
Wildest Province: SOE in the Land of the Eagle.”
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.97)
1940-1944 Germany occupied France. In 1998 Ian Ousby
published "Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-1944." In 2009
Frederic Spotts authored “The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and
Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation.” In 2009 Charles glass
authored “American in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation
1940-1944.”
(SFEC, 8/16/98, Par p.8)(WSJ, 1/3/09, p.W6)(Econ,
5/2/09, p.84)
1940-1944 Members of the Lithuanian Security Police
persecuted Jews and other civilians in collaboration with the Nazi
government. In 1998 in New York Aloyzas Balsys, suspected of
collaboration, refused to answer questions on his wartime activities
based on the US 5th amendment and fear of foreign prosecution. He
claimed to have lived in hiding in Plateliaia at the time and filed to
enter the US in 1961. The case was to be heard by the US Supreme Court.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A3)
1940-1945 Willys-Overland Motors was a principal
manufacturer of Jeeps during World War II. In the late 1930s, the
U.S. military wanted a lightweight, four-wheel drive,
general-purpose vehicle. Although Willys submitted a design, the
government chose one by the Bantam Car Company. However, Bantam
was unable to meet the military demand and so the government contracted
multiple suppliers, including Willys-Overland and Ford. Willys-Overland
produced around 360,000 Jeeps for the military between 1940 and 1945.
As a smaller automotive manufacturer, most of its production facilities
had been retooled to produce Jeeps and so it was decided to continue
making Jeeps for the military and also the civilian market. The company
was bought out and renamed numerous times. Today it is a part of
Daimler-Chrysler.
(HNQ, 10/22/00)
1940-1945 The Benes decrees were issued by Pres.
Edvard Benes, head of the Czechoslovak government in exile. Part of the
decrees later dealt with the status of Germans and Hungarians in
postwar Czechoslovakia. From 1945-1948 they were used to legalize
brutal measures against the country’s German and Hungarian populations.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene%C5%A1_decrees)(Econ, 3/29/08, p.67)
1940-1945 In 2006 the 2002 German book “The Fire: The
Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945” by Jorg Friedrich (b.1944), was made
available in English.
(Econ, 12/2/06, p.85)
1940-1945 Turkey supplied Germany and the Allies with
chromite ore, an essential metal for stainless steel.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A13)
1940-1945 Turkey placed a wealth tax on all
non-Muslims during WW II; those who could not pay were sent to labor
camps.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.46)
1940s-1950s Alberto Vargas made air-brushed pictures
of pin-up girls in Esquire and Playboy magazines.
(WSJ, 8/14/98, p.W10)
1940s-1950s Radiation spiked cereal produced by
Quaker Oats and Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fed to
residents of the Fernald State School in Waltham, Mass., without their
knowledge. A 1995 suit, filed by 15 plaintiffs, resulted in a 1997
settlement of $1.85 million to over 100 residents.
(SFC,12/31/97, p.A3)
1940s-1950s Civilian and military medical
practitioners commonly used nasal applicators containing 50 milligrams
of radium to shrink tissues at the entrance of the eustachian tubes to
help drain and balance pressure on the inner and outer ear. The
treatment was later associated with nasopharyngeal cancer.
(SFC, 4/26/99, p.A2)
1940-1953 John W. Nason (d.2001 at 96) served as
president of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. From 1942-1945 he
served as chairman of the National Japanese American Student Relocation
Council and helped over 3,000 students out of detention camps and into
institutions of higher learning.
(SFC, 11/24/01, p.A21)
1940-1953 The radio game show "The Quiz Kids"
featured exceptional children answering questions from the audience.
Vanessa Brown (born as Smylla Brind in Vienna) began her acting career
on the show. Brown later authored the play "Europa and the Bull," and
the nonfiction work "The Manpower Policies of Secretary of Labor
Willard Wirtz."
(SFC, 5/24/99, p.C4)
1940-1954 Virgil Thomson worked as the music critic
for the New York Herald-Tribune.
(WSJ, 6/16/97, p.10)
1940-1955 The Age of Churchill. Andrew Roberts
published a book in 1995 titled: "Eminent Churchillians," in which he
examines how some of Churchill’s contemporaries rose in the world while
easing the decline of England. Lord Mountbatten, Sir Walter Monckton,
and Sir Arthur Bryant are featured.
(WSJ, 8/15/95, p. A-14)
1940-1957 This period is covered in the book by John
Charmley: "Churchill’s Grand Alliance: the Anglo-American Special
Relationship" published in 1995.
(WSJ, 10/16/95, p. A-12)
1940s-1950s In Quebec, Canada, thousands of poor or
illegitimate children were falsely labeled as mentally deficient and
sent to church-run psychiatric institutions under the government of
Maurice Duplessis. More federal funds were thus secured for their
assistance. In 2001 some 1000 surviving victims accepted a government
offer of $16,650 each in compensation for mistreatment.
(SFC, 7/2/01, p.B1)
1940s-1986 In Maryland Building E5625, the "Pilot
Plant," at the US Army Aberdeen Proving Ground was built and used for
experiments and production of agents in chemical and biological warfare.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A11)
1940-1996 The history of gay life in America over
this period is documented by Charles Kaiser in his book: "The Gay
Metropolis, 1940-1996."
(SFEC,11/16/97, BR p.6)
Go to 1941