Britain calls up 2 million men aged 19 to 27 January 1, but the fall of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, and Romania to the Germans leaves Britain dependent on U.S. aid to resist Adolf Hitler's attempt at world domination.
Isolationist U.S. Senator William E. Borah (R. Idaho) dies at Washington, D.C., January 19 at age 74, but other legislators keep up the political pressure against any U.S. involvement in the European war (see 1939). Former Marine Corps commander Smedley Darlington Butler dies of a stomach ailment at Philadelphia June 21 at age 58, having agitated against U.S. intervention. Polls show that 85 percent of Americans want to keep out of the conflict (see America First, 1941).
France's Premier Daladier resigns March 20, finance minister Paul Reynaud, 51, forms a new cabinet and tries to rally French defenses with help from secret agents sent by Britain's Special Operations Executive, established last year by Winston Churchill. Headed by Col. Maurice Buckmaster, the unit's F section (F for France) has recruited bankers, chefs, playwrights, taxicab drivers, and other Britons of French extraction, interviewing prospects in a London hotel room, telling them that they had a 50-50 chance of survival, giving those who agreed to serve despite the odds a commando course in the Scottish Highlands to train them in the use of explosives and firearms, giving them a survival course in Hampshire, and following that with a parachute course outside Manchester. Assisting Buckmaster is Bucharest-born Sorbonne graduate Vera (Maria) Atkins (originally Rosenberg), 33, who came to London with her parents in 1933 and has adopted her mother's maiden name.
German troops seize Oslo March 7 and occupy Denmark and Norway in April, a few weeks after peace is concluded between Finland and the USSR. The 31,000-ton German battleships D.K.M. Scharnhorst 
and D.K.M. Gneisenau 
have covered the Norwegian landing, and they engage the Royal Navy battlecruiser H.M.S. Renown 
April 9. Journalist and League of Nations president Carl Joachim Hambro, 55, acts on his own initiative April 9 to put the royal family, government officials, and all members of the Storting (parliament) aboard a special train out of Oslo early in the morning and moves them to Hamar just hours after the Norwegian foreign minister has told the German ambassador that Norway would fight the invasion. Col. Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, 55, commands the German operation, which has been proposed by Admiral Erich Raeder, now 63, but artillery and torpedo fire from the Norwegian fortress of Oscarsborg sink the German cruiser Blücher in the narrows of the Oslo Fjord; about 1,000 crewmen, troops, and Nazi staff are killed, many of them in flames from a burning oil leak. Danes stage street demonstrations and a general strike to oppose the Germans with passive resistance; the Germans set up a puppet government at Oslo under Norwegian Nazi Vidkun Quisling, 52,
who has met with Hitler through ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but native resistance elements work to frustrate the Quisling regime, which is backed by some 300,000 German troops.
and D.K.M. Gneisenau have covered the Norwegian landing, and they engage the Royal Navy battlecruiser H.M.S. Renown April 9. Journalist and League of Nations president Carl Joachim Hambro, 55, acts on his own initiative April 9 to put the royal family, government officials, and all members of the Storting (parliament) aboard a special train out of Oslo early in the morning and moves them to Hamar just hours after the Norwegian foreign minister has told the German ambassador that Norway would fight the invasion. Col. Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, 55, commands the German operation, which has been proposed by Admiral Erich Raeder, now 63, but artillery and torpedo fire from the Norwegian fortress of Oscarsborg sink the German cruiser Blücher in the narrows of the Oslo Fjord; about 1,000 crewmen, troops, and Nazi staff are killed, many of them in flames from a burning oil leak. Danes stage street demonstrations and a general strike to oppose the Germans with passive resistance; the Germans set up a puppet government at Oslo under Norwegian Nazi Vidkun Quisling, 52, who has met with Hitler through ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but native resistance elements work to frustrate the Quisling regime, which is backed by some 300,000 German troops.
A Croatian government formed in Yugoslavia April 10 supports a fascist Independent State of Croatia headed by dictator Ante Pavelic, but the Ustashe (as the fascist collaborators are called) will encounter opposition from hundreds of thousands of guerrilla resistance fighters (Partisans).
Dublin-born Royal Navy captain Rupert P. (Philip) Lonsdale, 34, takes his submarine Seal into the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden May 4, places 50 mines in German shipping lanes, lies submerged, but sinks to a depth of 100 feet after a German mine explodes, flooding much of his ship, and becomes mired in the mud. Lonsdale manages to free the craft 23 hours later as his oxygen supplies and battery power dwindle, German aircraft bomb the Seal and riddle her with machine-gun fire, her steering gear is inoperative, and Lonsdale surrenders May 5 (his 35th birthday), saving the lives of his 59 crewmen. The only British captain to surrender a warship on the high seas during the war, Lonsdale will be tried in a court martial at Portsmouth in April 1946 and acquitted with honor.
France mobilizes 60 divisions behind the Maginot Line, but the Blitzkrieg (lightning war) that begins May 10 ends the "phony war" (or Sitzkrieg) and rains destruction on the Lowlands from the air as German mechanized divisions under the command of generals Heinz (Wilhelm) Guderian, 51, and Erwin (Johannes Eugin) Rommel, 48, sweep without warning into Belgium and Holland, following a plan proposed originally by Berlin-born general (Fritz) Erich von Manstein, 52, based on his experience last year in Poland and on ideas by British journalist-military writer Basil Henry Lidell Hart, 45. Gen. Guderian is a tank expert who led panzer forces into Poland last year and has helped promote Manstein's plan. British forces and mechanized French units rush to Belgium's aid, but the Germans have come through the heavily wooded, semi-mountainous, and supposedly impassable Ardennes region north of the Maginot Line, cross the Meuse at Sedan May 12, and demand the surrender of Rotterdam; the positive response does not arrive until Lüftwaffe pilots have started on their bombing run, and the downtown part of the city is nearly obliterated May 14 by raids that kill 30,000 in 2 hours. Wilhelmina and her court escape to London; the Dutch armies surrender May 14.
France and her allies have more trained men, more guns, more and better tanks, and more bombers and fighter planes than Germany, but the German offensive through the Ardennes takes French Army commander Gen. Maurice (-Gustave) Gamelin, 67, by surprise; he is dismissed May 19, and the Germans race into Belgium and northern France toward the Channel ports, bypassing the Maginot Line that was to slow their advance and cutting off British and Belgian forces from Gen. Maxime Weygand, now 72, who has taken command of the collapsing French Army.
Winston Churchill succeeds the ailing Neville Chamberlain as Britain's prime minister after Chamberlain's resignation May 7 following bitter attacks in the House of Commons. "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat," Churchill tells the Commons May 13, but he makes clear the British objective: "You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, by land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us . . . You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be: for without victory, there is no survival." Chamberlain had hoped to be succeeded by his foreign minister Edward F. L. Wood, 1st earl of Halifax, who agreed with Chamberlain's policy of appeasement in 1938, accompanied Chamberlain on a visit to Benito Mussolini at Rome in January of last year, was favored by George VI, and advises Churchill to seek an accommodation with Hitler through Mussolini. British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley is taken into custody in May and locked up in Brixton Prison after saying, "I know I can save this country and that no one else can" (see religion, 1936). The former Lady Cynthia Curzon has long since divorced Mosley, and when he married Diana Mitford at Berlin 4 years ago his only guests were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. Prime Minister Churchill rejects Halifax's advice to seek peace but keeps him as foreign minister until December, when the earl is named ambassador to Washington.
Women's Auxiliary Air Force crews of 16 replace 10-man crews to handle Britain's heavy barrage balloons. Other WAAF members train as photographers, radio operators, and bomb plotters.
Amiens and Arras fall to the Germans May 21 as tanks commanded by Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, 64, easily flank the Maginot Line that was built at a cost of 7 billion francs. Boulogne surrenders to German panzer divisions May 25, Calais May 27; Belgium capitulates May 28, but Hitler fails to send in ground troops that could have wiped out more than 340,000 British and French forces trapped on the beach at Dunkirk, accepting Hermann Goering's self-serving assurance that the Lüftwaffe can dispose of those forces; evacuation from Dunkirk begins May 29 under the supervision of Gen. Harold (Rupert Leofric George) Alexander, 48.
"We shall not flag or fail," Prime Minister Churchill tells the Commons June 4: "We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." But the prospects for victory against the Axis grow dimmer day by day. The prime minister sends his businessman friend William S. Stephenson to New York with a mission to oversee espionage activities in the Western Hemisphere and use his political connections to bring America into the war on Britain's side. Now 44, Stephenson will hire young Canadian women to help him operate British Security Co-Ordination offices in Rockefeller Center as he masterminds assassinations of Nazi spies, deciphering of German ciphers, and disruption of German nuclear experiments (see OSS,1942).
The evacuation of Dunkirk is completed by June 4 after 5 days of frenzied efforts to take some 200,000 British troops and 140,000 French from the beaches before they can be captured by the advancing Germans. Ships and small boats of all sorts have ferried the men across the Channel to England, but 30,000 men have been killed or taken prisoner. Gen. Alexander commands the I Corps that represents the rear guard and is the last man to leave; the Channel has been miraculously calm for 9 days but is hit by a storm that would have made the evacuation far less successful had the bad weather come earlier.
The German battleships D.K.W. Scharnhorst and D.K.W. Gneissenhau sink the 23,000-ton Royal Navy aircraft carrier H.M.S. Glorious and her two escorting destroyers in the North Atlantic June 8. The 23-year-old Glorious had been rushing back from Malta; 1,530 men from the three vessels are lost, 39 survive (see 1941).
Italy declares war on France and Britain June 10. "The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of her neighbor," says President Roosevelt.
German troops enter Paris June 14; President Roosevelt rejects a French appeal for U.S. aid June 15 as French forces withdraw from the Maginot Line and the fortress at Verdun falls to enemy forces. Premier Reynaud resigns June 16; Marshal Pétain, now 83, succeeds as head of state and asks for an armistice a day later. A 550,000-man German army has defeated a disorganized French army of 5.5 million men whose commanders have relied on the illusory protection of the Maginot Line. Among the French officers captured is infantry division commander Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, 51, who is imprisoned but will escape to North Africa in October 1943.
Evacuation of British troops and refugees from France continues. The 16,000-ton Cunard liner Lancastria has been converted into a troopship and is five miles off St. Nazaire June 17 when she is hit by bombs from German aircraft. She sinks slowly, and about 2,500 of those on board survive, but at least 3,300 perish (by some estimates the death toll is more than twice that number, and the news of her loss is not reported in Britain until July 26).
France signs an armistice with Hitler June 22 at Compiègne in the same rail car used for the armistice signed in 1918; France signs an armistice with Mussolini June 24 as the French capital moves to the spa city of Vichy, where resort hotels become government buildings with offices for bureaucrats who mostly do the Germans' bidding.
Soviet troops in Finland under the command of Marshal Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko, 44, sustain horrific losses at the hands of Finnish troops under the command of Col. H. J. Siilasvuo in the 27-day Battle of Suomossalmi that ends January 6 (see 1939). The Finns have trapped the Soviet 163rd Division and ambushed the 44th Division marching to relieve it, about 27,500 of the Soviet troops are killed or freeze to death, 1,600 are taken prisoner; the Finns capture 80 tanks, 70 guns, and 400 trucks, while losing 900 killed, 1,770 wounded. But the Russians pierce Finland's Mannerheim Line February 16 and the Finns sign a peace treaty March 13, giving up 16,173 square miles of territory to Moscow.
The Norwegian government moves to London June 7; C. J. Hambro continues on to Washington, where he will represent Norway through the war.
Soviet troops move into the Baltic republics beginning June 17 following an ultimatum that charged the three countries with hostile activities (see 1939). Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are incorporated into the USSR with German concurrence July 21.
Soviet troops invade Romania June 27 after Carol II refuses demands that he cede Bessarabia and Bukovina to the USSR Berlin rejects Carol's appeals for aid. Soviet authorities in Romania arrest Ion Antonescu in July for opposing territorial concessions but release him. Now 50, he is appointed premier September 5 and forces theabdication of Carol II, who flees the country September 6 after a 10-year reign. Carol's son Michael, now 19, will reign until the end of 1947. Soviet troops have arrived at the Bessarabian capital of Kishinev June 28 and set up a Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic August 2.
Libya's (Cyrenaica's) Italian governor Count Italo Balbo dies June 28 at age 44 when his plane is shot down over Tobruk.
A Royal Navy force under the command of Admiral Sir James Somerville, 58, arrives at Mers-el-Kebir near Oran, Algeria, July 3. Sent by Prime Minister Churchill to keep the ships from falling into German hands, Somerville's Operation Catapult force includes the carrier H.M.S. Ark Royal, the battle cruiser H.M.S. Hood, the battleships Valiantand Resolution, and 11 destroyers; he delivers an ultimatum to his French counterpart Admial Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, but when Gensoul refuses to surrender he balks at firing on the French and steps down. Royal Navy commander Andrew B. (Browne) Cunningham, 57, succeeds to command and orders an attack; his guns inflict heavy damage on the battleship Provence, sink the battleship Bretagne, and damage the battlecruiser Dunquerque; the French lose 1,147 men (many from the destroyer Mogador, which loses her stern), a French battleship escapes to a British port, as do three destroyers, six submarines, and dozens of smaller vessels. Adolf Hitler calls the British action "murderous," France's Vichy government breaks off relations with Britain 2 days later, but Churchill's determination to survive impresses President Roosevelt and other U.S. leaders. Gen. Charles (André Joseph Marie) de Gaulle, 49, has escaped to Britain and forms a Free French government in exile.
Italian troops cross from Ethiopia into British Somaliland August 4, challenging the Camel Corps with tanks, artillery, machine guns, and aircraft. The Italians prevail August 19. They advance toward Egypt from Libya (Cyrenaica) September 12, but British troops counterattack in the Western Desert beginning December 9 as the British Eighth Army opens a North African offensive with an attack on Sidi Barrani, which has been in Italian hands since mid-September. Gen. Archibald (Percival) Wavell, 57, Gen. Richard Nugent O'Connor, and Gen. Henry Maitland "Jumbo" Wilson, 59, command British forces; the Italians fall back across the Libyan border December 15, and Mussolini's forces in Italian Somaliland are driven out of El Wak a day later, but totalitarian forces threaten to extend their power across Europe and Asia from the Atlantic to the Pacific as Germany and Italy strengthen their control and the Japanese continue to expand across China, menacing Indochina.
A U-boat torpedoes the British passenger ship Arandora Star 75 miles west of Ireland in July as she carries German and Italian prisoners of war and interned aliens from Liverpool to Newfoundland; 800 people are lost, but Nova Scotia-born Canadian naval officer Harry DeWolf, 37, orchestrates the rescue of about 860 survivors. Subsequent feats will win DeWolf promotion to commander, then admiral, as he becomes Canada's most highly decorated naval officer of the war.
The Royal Air Force begins night bombing of German military targets July 9 as Hitler's Lüftwaffe intensifies air attacks on Britain and tries to shut down shipping in the English Channel. "We shall defend every village, every town, and every city," says Prime Minister Churchill in a radio broadcast July 14. "The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army, and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved." Ninety German Heinkel F-111 bombers are shot down over Britain between July 15 and 21. Hitler gives orders August 1 that the Lüftwaffe is to attack British military targets in force, 180 German planes are shot down August 15 as the Battle of Britain nears its peak, Messerschmidt ME 109s escort the twin-engine bombers across the Channel but carry enough fuel to give them only 20 minutes' flying time over England, and if a German bomber loses an engine it must dump its payload and try to return to base.
Berlin proclaims a naval blockade of Britain August 17.
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," says Churchill August 20 in a speech to the Commons praising the Royal Air Force (RAF) whose Fighter Command, headed by Hugh (Caswall Tremenheere) Dowding, 58, has lost most of its Spitfire pilots in its valiant efforts to stymie the Lüftwaffe. An all-night German air raid on London 3 days later begins the Blitz.
Weather conditions halt Lüftwaffe attacks on Britain from August 19 to 24, but a German bomber then accidentally jettisons its bombs over London, killing nine civilians. Hitler reprimands the crew, Prime Minister Churchill retaliates by ordering an attack on Berlin, 80 British bombers raid factories on the outskirts of the German capital, and although they inflict minimal damage they kill some civilians and the bombing embarrasses Air Marshal Hermann Goering, who has boasted that no enemy planes would ever reach the Fatherland. The RAF conducts further raids September 3 and 4.
Washington hands over 50 U.S. destroyers to London September 3 in exchange for rights to build air and naval bases on British territory in Newfoundland and in the Caribbean, but U-boats sink 160,000 tons of British shipping in September. The fall of France has given Germany new bases from which to launch U-boats, and Hitler's U-boat commander Karl Doenitz, 49, has been building up his submarine fleet (it had only 25 boats at the start of the war but they will soon number in the hundreds as he determines to defeat the British by cutting off their supply lines and starving them). Prime Minister Churchill has been appealing to President Roosevelt for help, FDR has delayed out of fear that isolationist forces would use the destroyer deal to defeat his reelection bid, but Churchill's show of determination to resist Hitler has persuaded Congress to approve the arrangement, and spymaster William S. Stephenson has had a hand in negotiating the deal.
The Lüftwaffe hits London's docks September 7, two attacks kill some 2,000 Londoners, and RAF Spitfires attack Stuka dive bombers (Sturzkampflugzeng), whose wind-whistles terrify the populace but whose slow speed make them vulnerable to fighter attack. German bombs damage the north side of Buckingham Palace September 10, and while George VI has sent his daughters to safety in the country, he and his wife remain in the palace except for visits to bombed out Londoners, thus winning the respect and affection of all Britons. Hitler launches his biggest air attack on Britain September 15 as he prepares an invasion fleet, but his twin-engined Heinkel HE 111s, Dornier Do 17s, and Ju 88s carry only modest-sized bomb loads and are lightly armored by British or U.S. standards; the RAF shoots down 67 German planes, and the British set huge fires in the Channel to discourage any invasion attempt. While Londoners rush to the Underground when air-raid sirens blow, hundreds die each night from aerial bombs. Britain's relatively ineffectual air attacks on German targets have so enraged Hitler that he has ordered the bombing of civilians rather than eliminating airfields and factories. His engineers have been unable to convert barges for use as effective landing craft for tanks, however, so he decides September 17 to cancel his invasion plans, and he vows September 25 to burn British cities to the ground. By the end of September his large-scale night raids have hit London 71 times while targeting also Liverpool, Birmingham, Plymouth, Bristol, Glasgow, Southampton, Hull, Portsmouth, Manchester, Belfast, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, and Cardiff; the Battle of Britain escalates, continuing until October 30, by which time a mere 700 RAF pilots have fought off attacks from some 2,800 Lüftwaffe pilots. The Hurricane fighter introduced 3 years ago has eight .303 caliber machine guns in its wings, and the RAF will use it to shoot down more than 1,500 Lüftwaffe planes before year's end—nearly as many as all of its other fighter planes combined, although the Spitfire introduced 2 years ago gives a good account of itself. Both the Hurricane and Spitfire are powered by Rolls-Royce Merlin engines (see 1941).
The Children's Overseas Reception Board established June 7 as an interdepartmental British government committee arranges to have children evacuated for the duration to Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (see 1939). In addition to British children it includes some from the European war zone now living in Britain plus orphans from the Continent, but 77 out of 90 children are lost the night of September 17 when a torpedo from a German U-boat sinks the S.S. City of Benares 600 miles from land in the North Atlantic en route from Liverpool to Montreal (the destroyer H.M.S. Hurricane picks up survivors but the total death toll is 250). U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull calls the sinking "a most dastardly act," the British government-sponsored Children's Overseas Resettlement Scheme has sent 1,530 children to Canada (plus 577 to Australia, 353 to South Africa, and 202 to New Zealand), the American Committee in London has sent 838 to the United States, but the City of Benares tragedy ends the Resettlement Scheme and CORB gives preference to ships bound for South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand via routes that can be better protected.
London sends emissaries to the United States in September with an order to commission construction of 60 small freighters; U.S. shipyards are all working full blast on warships for the navy, but industrialist Henry J. Kaiser persuades President Roosevelt that he can mass-produce the freighters quickly using mass-production methods pioneered by Henry Ford. Roosevelt overrides objections by the Maritime Commission and East Coast shipbuilders that ships welded together rather than riveted pose hazards in heavy seas, but it can take as long as 4 years to complete a ship using conventional methods, and losses to U-boats on the North Atlantic have heightened demand for bottoms that can deliver food, military equipment, and other goods to the beleaguered British. Kaiser works to build massive new shipbuilding facilities; late in the year he acquires 80 acres of swampland south of San Francisco, uses earthmoving equipment to turn it into a shipyard, hires hundreds of welders, machinists, pipefitters, electricians, and other workers (see transportaton [Liberty ships], 1941).
The Axis created September 27 by the Pact of Berlin joins Germany, Italy, and Japan in a 10-year military and economic alliance. Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka, now 60, has been foreign minister since July and negotiates the tripartite agreement with Germany and Italy. Hitler and Mussolini meet a week later in the Brenner Pass, and German forces seize Romania's Ploesti oil fields October 7.
The P-51 Mustang fighter plane designed by North American Aviation president James H. "Dutch" Kindelberger and J. (John) Leland Atwood, 35, has its maiden flight October 26 (see 1934). Kindelberger visited Heinkel and Messerschmidt factories in Germany 2 years ago and learned how to set up an efficient production line. A British purchasing commission headed by Sir Henry Self has come to New York early in the year to see if any U.S. aircraft could be useful to the RAF, and although the Bell P-39 Airacobra and Curtiss P-40 Warhawk do not meet the production standards of the latest British and German fighters, Self has ordered dozens of them. He has also given North American Aviation an order May 23 for 320 NA-73 Harvard trainers, and since Curtiss Aircraft is behind on orders he has asked Kindelberger to manufacture the Curtiss Hawk (P-40D) under license. Having worked with Atwood since last year on a fighter-plane project, Kindelberger has countered that his company could build a real fighter in the same time that it would take to put the P-40D in production. Designed and produced in 127 days, the P-51 (initially the NX19998) is powered by a water-cooled Allison V-1710 engine and is 25 miles-per-hour faster than the Spitfire that is helping to win the Battle of Britain; the prototype makes a forced landing November 20 when a test pilot forgets to change fuel tanks, runs out of gas, and winds up on its back in a farmer's field, but the British Purchasing Commission sends a letter to North American Aviation December 9 stating that NA-73 aircraft have been given the official designation Mustang (see 1941).
The MiG-1 fighter plane introduced by Moscow's Aircraft Factory No. 1 is named for Soviet mathematician and aircraft designer Mikhail I. Gurevich, 48. Soviet pilots will fly a refined MiG-3 beginning next year.
Mussolini demands strategic points in Greece October 28. The Greeks respond with one word—Ochi! (No!)—and mount a stubborn armed resistance that will stymie the Italians for a year. Britain responds to a Greek appeal for aid by postponing a Middle East offensive and sending troops in early November to occupy Suda Bay, Crete.
Bombs from a German Focke Wulf set fire to the 42,348-ton Canadian Pacific steamship Empress of Britain northwest of the Irish coast October 26. Converted to use as a troopship and bound for Glasgow, she has been carrying troops from South Africa. The flames spread out of control, her master gives the order to abandon ship, and although the Polish destroyer Burza and British destroyer H.M.S. Echo rescue most of the troops, and two naval tugs take her in tow, a U-boat finds the crippled liner October 28 and fires a torpedo that sends her to the bottom with the loss of 45 lives, the largest passenger ship to be lost in the war.
German U-boats have sunk 1.5 million tons of Allied merchant ships by December 1, sending them to the bottom at a rate much too fast for British shipyards to replace them.
The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer sinks the 14,164-ton British cruiser H.M.S. Jervis Bay in the North Atlantic November 4, but the 18-year-old converted Aberdeen & Commonwealth passenger liner has put up enough of a fight with her seven antique six-inch guns to enable 32 ships in her 37-ship convoy from Halifax, N.S., to escape, and although all of her shots fall short, and although her captain and nearly all her officers are killed in the 24-minute battle, 65 members of her 255-man crew are rescued by the Swedish freighter Stureholm, that has turned back in the night to search for survivors. A Royal Navy attack directed by Commander Andrew B. Cunningham on Taranto a week later cripples the Italian fleet: 21 fabric-covered Swordfish biplanes from the Royal Navy carrier H.M.S. Illustrious carry torpedoes and hit the Conti di Cavour, Littorio, and Duilio, and their loss ends Mussolini's dream of making the eastern Mediterranean "Mare Nostrum" (see Cape Matapan, 1941).
Former Spanish Republic president Manuel Azaña y Díaz dies in exile at Montauban, France, November 4 at age 60; former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain at Heckfield, near Reading, November 9 at age 71; Northern Ireland's prime minister James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, at Glencraig in County Down November 24 at age 69, having held office since 1921.
The Lüftwaffe pulverizes Coventry in England's industrial Midlands November 10. November air raids kill more than 4,550 Britons, but the anticipated German invasion of Britain does not materialize. German incendiary bombs set London ablaze on the night of December 29, firefighters run out of water, and much of the central city is destroyed. Londoners survive air raids in underground shelters, force their way into Underground (subway) stations, oblige authorities to keep the stations open all night, and carry on (see 1941).
Hungary joins the Axis November 20, Romania November 23. Rioting spreads across Romania beginning November 27 after Ion Antonescu's Iron Guard executes 64 officials of the crown.
The George Cross established by Britain's George VI is "for acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger." Generally given to civilians, sometimes posthumously, it will also be awarded to military personnel for acts that do not normally merit military decorations.
The Battle of Sidi Barrani on the northern coast of Egypt begins the night of December 8 and continues to December 12, pitting the forces of Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell against Italian forces under the command of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, who has about 50,000 men to Wavell's 31,000. Wavell's Western Desert Force penetrates through a wide gap in the Italian chain of fortified camps, the Matilda tanks of his 4th Indian Division begin storming the northernmost camps, and by December 12 the Italians are in full retreat back into Libya, with 38,000 men having been taken prisoner along with four generals. The British have lost 624 men, the Italians about 2,000, and the British have destroyed or captured 237 guns along with 73 medium tanks and tankettes.
Japan's former prime minister Fumimaro Konoye becomes premier again in mid-July with a mandate to reorganize the government along totalitarian lines (he resigned in January of last year). Britain withdraws garrisons August 9 from Shanghai and northern China, and Japanese forces begin occupying French Indochina September 26 after receiving permission from the Vichy government to use several Indochinese ports and three airfields.
Japanese forces in China set up a puppet government at Nanjing (Nanking) headed by Wang Jing-Wei (Wang Ching-wei) (see 1938). Japanese Army pilots in China begin flying the Mitsubishi A6M (Zero) single-seat fighter plane first tested last year (1940 is known in Japan as the "zero year," because it is thought to be the 2,600th anniversary of the accession of the legendary first emperor). Powered initially by a 14-cylinder Nakajima Sakae radial air-cooled engine that develops 1,020 horsepower, it has a top speed of 350 miles per hour at an altitude of nearly 20,000 feet, is armed with two 7.7-millimeter machine guns plus two 20-millimeter cannons in its wings, has an ejectable 94-gallon external fuel tank that augments its 156-gallon internal tank to extend its range, and can outmaneuver any enemy plane in the sky.
A Japanese plane drops fleas infected with bubonic plague bacteria at Chuhsien in Chechiang province in eastern China October 24, killing 21 people (see Unit 731, 1936). Another 99 die after a plane drops the fleas 5 days later at Ningbo in the same province, but although planes make a large drop of the fleas at Chinhua November 28 there are no reports of deaths (see 1941).
Bordeaux-born Admiral Jean Decoux, 56, becomes governor general of French Indochina July 20, receives demands from the Japanese in early August for permission to move troops through Tonkin (later Vietnam) in order to build air bases and block Allied supply routes to China, cables Vichy for help, but when no help is forthcoming signs a treaty September 20 opening Haiphong harbor to the Japanese and giving them the right to station troops in the region. Decoux works to improve relations between French colonists and the Vietnamese, establishing a grand federal council containing twice as many Vietnamese as Frenchmen and installing Vietnamese in civil-service positions with equal pay to that of French civil servants (see 1945). Vietnamese nationalist Phan Boi Chau dies at Hue September 29 at age 73.
The British stop passage of war matériel through Burma to China in mid-July at the request of Japan, but they resume construction of the Burma Road October 18 in defiance of the Japanese blockade, employing more than 10,000 Chinese laborers (see 1942).
Thailand's military dictator Luang Phibunsongkhram takes advantage of France's defeat to send troops into western Laos and northwestern Cambodia in November (see 1939). Tokyo supports Thai claims to the lands that once belonged to Siam (see 1941).
India's Muslim League votes to establish a separate state (see 1947).
The first peacetime military draft in U.S. history begins October 29 following passage of a Selective Service Act that will remain in effect until January 1973. The U.S. Navy is the world's largest, but the army is smaller than those of at least 15 other countries, including Greece, Portugal, and Peru, and totally unprepared for combat. President Roosevelt promotes Washington, D.C.-born U.S. Army colonel Benjamin O. (Oliver) Davis, 63, to the rank of brigadier general; having become the first black colonel 10 years ago, Davis becomes the first black general.
Canada's governor-general Lord Tweedsmuir (author John Buchan) dies at Montreal February 21 at age 64 and is succeeded April 8 by the 66-year-old earl of Athlone, a brother of the queen mother, Mary.
Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky escapes a raid on his Mexican villa in May when Soviet agents armed with machine guns invade the premises, but NKVD agent Ramon Mercader, 26 (alias Frank Jackson, alias Jacques Mornard), posing as a friend, stabs the 61-year-old Trotsky with an ice pick August 21, killing him. Mercader will serve 20 years in prison.
Mexican voters elect former minister of national defense Manuel Avila Camacho, 43, to the presidency in a government-controlled election that is won, as usual, by the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM). After pacifying the Roman Catholic Church by making a public announcement of his own faith, Avila Camacho will expand the country's school system, build hospitals, sponsor social-security legislation, support limited land reform, and settle long-standing disputes with the United States over oil properties that were expropriated by his leftist predecessor Lázaro Cárdenas in 1934.
The Alien Registration Act (Smith Act) passed by Congress June 28 requires that aliens be fingerprinted; the new measure makes it unlawful to advocate overthrow of the U.S. government or belong to any group advocating such overthrow.
Paraguay's president Gen. José Estigarribia dies in a plane crash September 7 before he can implement a new constitution giving him great authoritarian powers; he is succeeded by Gen. Higinio Morinigo, who begins an immediate persecution of Liberals under a repressive rule that will continue until his overthrow in 1948.
The Popular Democratic Party that will control Puerto Rico until 1977 comes to power with the election of party founder Luis Muñoz Marín, now 42, who is returned to his former senate seat (see Tugwell, 1941).
The Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden nominates New York lawyer Wendell L. Willkie to oppose President Roosevelt in his bid for a third term. Supported by speakers who include playwright Clare Boothe Luce, Willkie wins on the sixth ballot. Now 48, he has attacked the Tennessee Valley Authority as head of the Commonwealth & Southern utilities holding company, but his internationalist views make him a more attractive candidate than isolationists Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, or New York's district attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Few people know that Willkie was a registered Democrat until last year and considered himself a liberal, having spoken out in support of the League of Nations and fought the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans play up his Indiana roots (he delivers his acceptance speech August 17 at his native Elwood), distribute buttons that say, "No Third Term," but disclaim responsibility for buttons that say, "No Triple for a Cripple"; Democrats call Willkie "the barefoot boy from Wall Street," but he has alienated many in the GOP by supporting the Lend-Lease deal and the Selective Service Act. Pro-New Deal Democrats have tried to block a bill pushed through Congress by Republicans and Southern Democrats restricting political contributions by state employees to political candidates (seeHatch Act, 1939), President Roosevelt has signed it with reluctance, but although Republicans have spent nearly $15 million by November and Democrats less than $6 million, the new law has little or no effect on the election results (see 1943).
U.S. ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy flies home from London to express defeatist and anti-Semitic sentiments that doom any political ambitions he may have. Democracy is finished in Europe, he says, and may have no future in America. He announces support of FDR's bid for a third term but will resign his post in February of next year.
President Roosevelt wins a precedent-shattering third term in November with 54 percent of the popular vote, helped in the South by Georgia reformer Ellis G. (Gibbs) Arnall, 33, and in rural areas by his running mate Henry A. Wallace, formerly secretary of agriculture. Willkie wins 44 percent of the popular vote but only 82 electoral votes to FDR's 449, and he does not carry New York, whose state Democratic committee chairman James A. Farley has opposed letting FDR have a third term and quits public life.
Former president Herbert C. Hoover warns against U.S. entry into the European war, saying, "I am certain that the next war will absolutely transform us. I see more power to the government. Less power to the people. That's what I fear. Because once this starts, it is irreversible . . . You can't extend the mastery of the government over the daily life of a people without making government the master of those people's souls and thoughts, the way the Fascists and Bolsheviks have done."
President Roosevelt delivers a "fireside chat" on radio December 29, saying, "The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world . . . We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself."
The Nazis extend persecution of Jews to Poland, Romania, the Netherlands, and other occupied territories. SS troops surround a densely populated Jewish area in Czestochowa in January, herd thousands of half-naked Polish men and women into a large square, beat them bloody, and keep them standing for hours in the frosty night air while young girls are taken into the synagogue, forced to undress, raped, and tortured. Heinrich Himmler orders construction of a concentration camp at Auschwitz March 27 and rounds up Roms (gypsies) as well as Jews. At least one of every 10 Holocaust victims will be a Rom.
The Katyn Forest Massacre in March kills 4,143 Polish officers captured by the Red Army when it entered Poland 6 months ago. Imprisoned 15 miles west of Smolensk, the Poles have their hands bound behind their backs with ropes looped around their necks; they are then gunned down and buried in mass graves.
Oskar Schindler provides refuge for Kraków Jews (see 1939); the Court of Commercial Claims has let him buy an idle factory used some years earlier to make enameled kitchenware. Schindler has reopened it in January with 100 workers, he hires accountant Itzhak Stern to keep the new Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik's books, and with Stern's help he will expand its labor force within a year to 300, including 150 Jews (see 1942).
A Polish concentration camp opens June 15 at Oswiecim (Auschwitz) on a site near Kraków that was selected January 25.
Poet-playwright Nelly Sachs escapes to Sweden through the intercession of novelist Selma Lagerlöf and the Swedish royal family; not every Jewish woman is so lucky.
New York editor Varian M. Fry, 32, volunteers in June to help artists and intellectuals escape from Marseilles. Fry visited Germany in 1935 to observe conditions for a prominent magazine, witnessed Nazi thugs smash up Jewish-owned cafés, and watched in horror as they dragged Jewish patrons from their seats, knocked an elderly man over, and kicked him in the face. He has helped organize an Emergency Rescue Committee, speaks with Eleanor Roosevelt, manages to obtain 200 special visas, arrives at Marseilles, and finds that far more visas are needed. He finds a cartoonist who creates false identity papers and travel documents, bribes government officials, and by the time he is forced to leave in September of next year will have enabled somewhere between 1,500 and 4,000 people to escape the Holocaust, among them mathematician Jacques Hadamard, philosopher Hannah Arendt, historian Konrad Heiden, writers Lion Feuchtwanger, Leonhard Frank, and Heinrich Mann, artists Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Wilfredo Lam, sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, and harpsichordist Wanda Landowska.
Portugal's consul general at Bordeaux personally issues visas from June 17 to 19 to an estimated 10,000 Jews and 20,000 other refugees seeking to flee France's German invaders. A descendant of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in 1497, Aristedes de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches has defied the Portuguese dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar; he is arrested, brought back to Lisbon, stripped of his pension, and barred from practicing law; Salazar will reject his appeal for reinstatement in 1945, giving other diplomats (who, in fact, obeyed orders not to grant visas) the credit for having rescued the Jews; the once-wealthy Mendes will die in poverty in 1954.
A June 26 memorandum from Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long suggests ways to "effectively stop for a period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States" (see 1939). Long is intent on barring entry of Jewish refugees from Europe who seek to enter via Canada, Cuba, or Mexico.
Japanese vice-consul Chiune Sugihara, 40, begins issuing transit visas at Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, July 9 to enable Poles—Jews and non-Jews—to escape from the advancing Germans via Japan. Sugihara acts on his own initiative, defying orders to cooperate with the Germans and their allies in persecuting Jews, Catholics, Roms (gypsies), and homosexuals. The newly-installed Soviet regime orders him to cease August 3, but he continues until September, when he moves to Berlin with his White Russian wife, two children, and newborn infant on instructions from Tokyo. Even as the train begins to depart he continues to sign documents from the window, and before he has finished he has handed out 2,139 visas to Jews, saving them from deportation to concentration camps and almost certain death (2,132 will make it to Japan).
France's new Vichy government takes its first anti-Semitic measures July 17, coming down especially hard on foreign-born Jews who represent a substantial portion of the 330,000 total (far more Jews live in France's North African colonies). The laws are more severe than the Nuremberg laws instituted by the Nazis in 1935 (see 1942).
U.S. Vice Consul Paul H. Dutko at Leipzig cables the U.S. Embassy at Berlin and the State Department at Washington, D.C., October 16 that the Germans appear to have begun a "euthanasia" program at the Grafeneck asylum in Württemberg, killing and cremating patients who have been either mentally retarded, senile, or born grotesquely deformed.
Anti-Semitic demagogue Julius Streicher, now 55, is stripped of his party posts following an investigation of scandalous irregularities in his personal life and business transactions; protected by his friend Adolf Hitler, he continues to edit the paper Der Sturmer that he founded at Nuremberg in 1923.
Warsaw's 360,000 Jews move from their apartments and houses into the city's ghetto October 31 on orders from German occupation authorities. They have been forbidden to enter city parks or sit on public benches, otherwise humiliated, and obliged since December of last year to wear bands on their forearms identifying them as Jews; more than 120,000 Jews from neighboring areas are herded into the ghetto and forced to live in close confinement behind walls, but many will soon be moved to labor and extermination camps (see uprising, 1943).
Maidanek (Lublin-Maidanek) concentration camp opens in November on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland (see 1942).
Quebecois women finally gain the right to vote in provincial elections; most other Canadian women have had voting rights since 1918, and in many other respects the women of Quebec continue to have fewer rights than women in other provinces (see 1964).
Chicago social worker Saul (David) Alinsky, 31, establishes the Industrial Areas Foundation to provide a reservoir of expertise, manpower, and money for organizing community efforts to empower residents of impoverished neighborhoods. Alinsky moved to the city's Back of the Yards district 2 years ago and obtained the support of labor and religious leaders to form a citizens' organization that would use peaceful tactics to push for social improvement.
The $8.4 billion budget submitted by President Roosevelt January 3 has $1.8 billion earmarked for defense. "I should like to see this nation geared . . . to production of 50,000 planes a year," the president says later, and he asks in May for an additional $1.275 billion for defense. Congress appropriates $1.49 billion June 11 in a Naval Supply Act, another $1.8 billion June 26, $4 billion for the army and navy September 9, and another $1.49 billion for defense October 8.
The first U.S. Social Security checks go out January 30 and total $75,844, a figure that will rise into the billions as more pensioners become eligible for benefits (see 1935). The first check goes to retired Ludlow, Vt., legal secretary Ida May Fuller, 65, who has contributed for only 3 years, receives $22.54 and will receive more than $20,000 before she dies in 1975 at age 100.
U.S. unemployment remains above 8 million, with 14.6 percent of the workforce idle.
A Revenue Act passed by Congress June 25 to raise $994.3 million increases U.S. income taxes that heretofore have been levied only on the rich. A second Revenue Act passed October 8 provides for excess profits taxes on corporation earnings. The cost of living has risen on average only 0.2 percent per year since 1800, having actually fallen in 69 of those 140 years, and is only 28 percent higher than it was in 1800, but inflation will increase in the next 5 years (see 1946; OPA, 1941).
An Export Control Act passed by Congress July 2 gives the president power to halt or curtail export of materials vital to U.S. defense. Export of aviation gasoline outside the Western Hemisphere is embargoed July 31, and export of scrap iron and steel to Japan embargoed in October after large quantities of the metals have been shipped to the Axis partner, whose ambassador in Washington calls the action "an unfriendly act."
The U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) is $99 billion, down from $103 billion in 1929. Government spending accounts for 18 percent of the total, up from 10 percent in 1929 (see 1950; Kuznets, 1930).
Former Wall Street speculator Jesse L. Livermore has lunch alone at New York's Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue November 28, goes back to the Squibb Building office that he opened last year, returns to the hotel's bar at 4:30, has a couple of drinks, goes into the men's room at about 5:25, pulls out a Colt .32 revolver, and shoots himself dead at age 63 (see 1934).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average rebounds somewhat from its June 10 low of 111.04 to close December 31 at 131.13, down from 150.24 at the end of 1939.
Tiffany & Co. moves uptown into a large new store at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, New York, after 34 years at 37th Street. The new store is the first fully air-conditioned retail establishment of any kind.
A continuous coal-digging machine developed by Consolidation Coal Co. president Carson Smith and engineer Harold F. (Farnes) Silver, 39, will revolutionize coal mining. Six banks of cutter chains moving at 500 feet per minute will enable the Joy machine to dig out a series of vertical slices 18 inches deep and to bore a tunnel up to 18 feet wide. Joseph Joy, now 56, will purchase the rights in 1947; his Joy Manufacturing Co. will dominate coal-mining equipment production.
A British shipyard completes the world's largest passenger liner and the government puts her to use as a troop transport. Powered by steam turbines that develop 168,000 horsepower and give her a normal sea speed of 28.5 knots (32.8 miles per hour), the 83,673-ton vessel is 1,031 feet in length overall and will go into commercial service for the Cunard Line after the war as the S.S. Queen Elizabeth.
The first commercial flight using pressurized cabins takes off July 8 as a Transcontinental & Western Air Boeing 307-B Stratoliner goes into service between La Guardia Airport and Burbank, Calif., with a stop at Kansas City. The plane carries 33 passengers by day and 25 at night (24 of the seats are in compartments convertible into 16 sleeping berths), and flying time is 14 hours going west, 11 hours, 55 minutes going east.
The Jeep has its beginnings in a lightweight four-wheel-drive, general-purpose (GP) field vehicle designed by Karl K. Pabst, consulting engineer to Bantam Car Co. of Butler, Pa. (Its design will also be credited to English-born U.S. engineer Arthur W. S. Herrington, 49.) Willys-Overland assures the U.S. Army that it can produce the vehicle at the rate of 125 per day, Bantam cannot match that volume, and Willys submits prototype models; code-named Quad, the two prototypes are delivered for testing November 11 at Camp Holabird, Md., and the army promptly orders 1,500 more, each powered by a four-cylinder Willys Continental engine. The U.S. Army places orders for 70 pre-production models, but it tells Willys that it will have to share the work with Ford Motor Company, which has more capacity (see 1941).
Automotive pioneer Walter F. Chrysler dies at his Great Neck, Long Island, estate August 18 at age 65; tire maker Edouard Michelin at his home in Orcines August 25 at age 84, having headed Michelin et Cie. for 51 years; Stanley Steamer co-inventor Freelan Stanley dies at Boston October 2 at age 91.
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge opens July 1 with a two-lane highway that connects the Seattle area with the Olympic Peninsula at the only point on the 20,000-square-mile Puget Sound where the peninsula comes close to the Washington State mainland. Engineer Ralph Modjeski has died at Los Angeles June 26 at age 70, having designed highway bridges, but not this one. The 5,939-foot Tacoma bridge has a 2,800-foot main suspension span that oscillates so much that motorists soon call the bridge "Galloping Gertie," and it oscillates so wildly in an unprecedented 42-mile-per-hour wind November 7 that several suspenders tear loose, the bridge collapses into the water below (one car was stranded, and although its driver scrambled to safety before the collapse his vehicle and his dog were lost). The Federal Works Agency appoints an investigating committee whose members include bridge engineer Othmar H. Ammann and Budapest-born California Institute of Technology research engineer Theodore von Kármán, 59. It will conclude that the collapse was due to "forced vibration caused by random action of turbulent winds"; further investigation will reveal that while its deck was stiffened by plate girders the deck was only eight feet deep, its engineers had understood the aerodynamic behavior of thin decks, they had given the deck little vertical and almost no torsional stiffness, and the failure ends a trend in bridge building toward lightness, grace, and flexibility (see 1950).
The Pennsylvania Turnpike that opens October 1 is the first tunneled U.S. superhighway. Of its seven tunnels, six were drilled in 1883 by William H. Vanderbilt's engineers for a rail line that was never used, but diesel-powered earth-moving equipment has dug out 26 million cubic yards of soil and rock to make way for the turnpike. Begun as a WPA project and built in just 2 years at a cost of $70 million, the four-lane, 160-mile toll road (toll: $1.50) links Carlisle with Irvin, 11 miles east of Pittsburgh, and speeds traffic through the Alleghenies in 2½ hours, bypassing towns. The remaining 40 miles to Pittsburgh takes another hour or more. Some 20,000 cars use the turnpike on opening day; there are no speed limits.
The Arroyo Seco Parkway dedicated in December is the first Los Angeles freeway. In 30 years, some 60 percent of downtown Los Angeles will be taken up with highways and parking lots as the freeways transform the city to make L.A. a sprawling collection of suburbs dependent on the automobile and seemingly doomed to a smoggy environment.
The United States has 1.34 million miles of surfaced road, up from 694,000 in 1930, plus 1.65 million miles of dirt road (see 1950).
New York's Queens-Midtown Tunnel opens November 15 to link Long Island City with East 36th Street in Manhattan. Designed by Ole Singstad, financed by the federal Public Works Administration and the Reconstruction Finance Corp., and built under the East River in just 4 years, it has two 6,300-foot-long tubes for cars and trucks. The 200,000th car goes through December 1, the 500,000th December 25. So many cars pour into Manhattan that Borough President Stanley M. Isaacs bewails the lack of an underground connection between the new tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel.
The privately-owned parts of New York's subway and elevated system become publicly owned June 1, the Ninth Avenue El stops running June 11, and the last sections of the Sixth Avenue El come down beginning December 20 (see 1938). The scrap metal has been sold to Japan before enactment of the Export Control Act.
Some 26,630 trolley cars serve U.S. transportation needs, down from 80,000 in 1917. The number will drop to 1,068 by 1975.
A new Chevrolet coupe sells for $659, a Pontiac station wagon for $1,015, a Studebaker Champion for $660, a Nash sedan for $795, and a Packard for between $867 and $6,300 (lowest prices advertised).
Bell Laboratories puts its Complex Number Calculator (CNC) into operation January 8 (see 1939). Not only can it add, subtract, multiply, and divide complex numbers, as George R. Stibitz demonstrates in September at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society at Dartmouth College, but the prototype computer can also be hooked up to a telegraph system, receive problems at New York, and wire the solutions back to Dartmouth (see Harvard-IBM Mark I Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, 1944).
Michigan-born MIT electrical engineer Claude (Elwood) Shannon, 24, applies Boolean algebraic logic to the problem of electrical switching and lays the groundwork not only for electronic computers (see 1939; Mark I, 1944)but also for information systems based on the binary code, using "bits" for electronic communication.
German girls are reported in May to be saving their hair for production of felt needed in the war effort.
B. F. Goodrich exhibits the first commercial synthetic rubber tires. Its Ameripol tires are made of butadiene synthesized from soap, gas, petroleum, and air.
Goodyear and Dow Chemical form a joint venture to produce synthetic rubber from styrene and butadiene. The only U.S. producer of synthetic rubber has been Du Pont, whose factories make 2,468 long tons of neoprene this year employing research done by the late Julius A. Nieuwland (see 1925; 1942).
President Roosevelt acts to build U.S. natural crude rubber reserves in the event of a cutoff of supplies from the Far East. The Rubber Reserve Co. created by the president in June is an agency of the Reconstruction Finance Corp. (see 1942).
Metallurgist Henry Livingstone Sulman dies at Croydon, Surrey, January 31 at age 79, having helped to develop a froth flotation process for concentrating ores prior to extraction of their minerals; Tommy gun co-inventor Brig. Gen. John Taliaferro Thompson, U.S. Army (ret.) dies of a heart attack at his Great Neck, L.I., home June 21 age 79; metallurgist Sir Robert Abbot Hadfield at London September 30 at age 81 as his factory at Tinsley turns out cast steel shells and projectiles for the military.
A Columbia University research team isolates the rare isotope uranium 235 from its more abundant chemical twin uranium-238 by means of a gaseous diffusion process developed by J. R. Dunning and his colleagues (see 1939; Dempster, 1935). Dunning shows that the isotope is the form of uranium that readily undergoes fission into two atoms of nearly equal size, thus releasing prodigious amounts of energy (the gaseous diffusion process will be the major source of uranium 235 used for fueling atomic reactors).
German-born British physicist Rudolph E. (Ernst) Peierls, 33, and his University of Birmingham colleague Otto Frisch issue a three-page memorandum theorizing (correctly) that a highly explosive but compact bomb could be made from small amounts of the isotope uranium 235 separated from uranium 238. Scientists have heretofore believed that several tons of uranium would be needed for an effective bomb.
University of California, Berkeley, physicist Edwin M. (Mattison) McMillan, 32, and his Tacoma, Wash.-born colleague Philip (Hauge) Abelson, 26, at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory discover the first transuranium chemical element. It is a radioactive element heavier than uranium, they classify it as radioactive element 93 (it will later be called neptunium), and they suggest the existence of another, still heavier, transuranium isotope with a mass of 239 that will be called plutonium (see Seaborg, Segrè, 1941).
The world's first electron microscope is demonstrated April 1 at the RCA Laboratories at Camden, N.J. RCA engineers supervised by Russian-born researcher Vladimir (Kosma) Zworykin, 50, have developed the microscope, which is 10 feet high, weighs 700 pounds, can magnify up to 100,000 diameters, and will permit scientific studies impossible with conventional microscopes.
German-born U.S. biologist Max Delbrück, 34, Italian-born U.S. biologist Salvador Edward Luria, 28, and Michigan-born chemist A. D. (Alfred Day) Hershey, 31, advance knowledge of molecular biology, making basic discoveries in bacterial and viral reproduction and mutation involving nucleic acid in cells (see Watson, Crick, 1953).
The Lascaux caves discovered by French schoolboy Jacques Marsal near Périgueux have wall drawings that show how man lived at least 16,000 years ago.
Archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld dies on the Greek island of Leukas April 25 at age 86, having excavated the Mycenaean palace at Tiryns (later Tirins) and continued the excavations of ancent Troy by the late Heinrich Schliemann in Turkey; anatomist-geologist Eugène Dubois of Java Man fame dies at de Bedlaer in the Netherlands December 16 at age 82.
The carbon-14 isotope discovered by Canadian-born U.S. biochemist Martin D. (David) Kamen, 27, will be a basic tool in biochemical and archaeological research (see Libby, 1947).
Nobel industrial chemist Carl Bosch dies at Heidelberg April 26 at age 65; Nobel biochemist Sir Arthur Harden of a progressive nervous disease at Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, June 17 at age 74; Nobel physicist Sir Joseph John Thomson at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, August 30 at age 83; biochemist Phoebus A. T. Levene at New York September 6 at age 71; physicist Heinrich Kayser at Bonn October 14 at age 87.
"Penicillin as a Chemotherapeutic Agent" in the August 24 issue of The Lancet reports studies by Howard W. Florey, now at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology (see 1939; 1941).
Rochester, N.Y.-born Lederle Laboratories chemist Richard Owen Roblin, 33, develops the sulfa drug sulfadiazine (see sulfanilamide, 1935).
U.S. Blue Cross health insurance programs have 6 million subscribers, up from 500,000 in 1935, but Blue Shield surgical insurance covers only 260,000 (see 1950).
The Rh factor in blood (named for the rhesus monkeys used in research) is discovered by blood type pioneer Karl Landsteiner, now 72, who joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research at New York in 1922 (see 1909). Landsteiner's colleague Alexander S. Wiener has participated in the discovery (see Dausset, 1951).
Edwin J. Cohn at Harvard separates the albumin, globulin, and fibrin fractions of blood plasma (see pernicious anemia, 1930). The American Red Cross and U.S. Navy will use albumin in the next 6 years to treat shock, globulin to treat various forms of infection, and fibrin to stop hemorrhages while serum gamma globulin will be used in years to come for mass immunization against measles, poliomyelitis, and other epidemic diseases.
Swedish biochemist Arne Tiselius at the University of Uppsala begins research into the separation of proteins and other substances by means of adsorption chromatography. Now 37, he has used electrophoretic methods to separate the chemically similar proteins of blood serum.
Blood bank pioneer Bernard M. Fantus dies at Oak Park, Ill., April 14 at age 65. New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital establishes the first blood bank since the one started by Fantus 3 years ago. Washington, D.C.-born surgeon Charles R. (Richard) Drew, 36, is the first black physician with a doctorate in science from Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He has investigated the preservation and storage of blood (see Vaughan, 1939), found that whole blood cannot be shipped safely to Britain where it is needed for transfusions, and inaugurates the bank with Rockefeller Institute pathologist Peyton Rous, now 60, and others, who help him establish uniform procedures for procuring and processing the blood, shipping the plasma (whole blood minus its white and red cells), but racist segregation rules will prevent Drew from donating his own blood.
Celiac patients in Dutch hospitals improve after German occupation authorities requisition all wheat and rye flour. Hospital administrators discover that the disease (also called nontropical sprue) comes from an intolerance for gluten, the major protein in wheat and rye.
Only 37.6 of 10,000 U.S. women die after being delivered of live infants, down from 60.8 in 1915.
Nobel psychiatrist-neurologist Julius Wagner-Jauregg dies at Vienna September 27 at age 83, having developed fever therapy for several mental disorders; English medical missionary Sir Wilfred Grenfell dies at Charlotte, Vt., October 9 at age 75.
Arkansas-born Jewish leader Cyrus Adler dies at Philadelphia April 7 at age 76, having headed the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning since its founding in 1908; French biblical scholar Alfred Firmin Loisy dies at Ceffonds June 1 at age 83, having founded the Modernist movement within the Roman Catholic Church.
American Telephone & Telegraph Co. introduces coaxial circuits that enable a single cable to carry 480 phone conversations at what later will be calculated at 7,680,000 bits per second, up from 30,000 in 1915.
The letter V begins appearing on walls in German-occupied Belgium. Two Belgians working for the BBC in London have instigated the campaign, knowing that for Flemish-speaking Belgians the V stands for vrijheid (freedom), and for French-speaking Belgians the V stands for victoire (victory). The letter is soon scrawled on walls all over Europe, even where the words for freedom and victory do not begin with V. Using a tympani mallet to strike an African membrane drum whose sound is damped with a handkerchief, English percussionist James Blades, 39, records the da-da-da-dum start of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (dot-dot-dot-dash in Morse code) and the BBC transmits a recording of the notes 150 times per day to encourage the French Résistance.
Radio pioneer Edouard Branly dies at Paris March 24 at age 93; radio pioneer Sir Oliver J. Lodge near Salisbury, Wiltshire, August 22 at age 89 (he was knighted in 1902).
The Canadian liner Duchess of Richmond berths at Halifax, Nova Scotia, September 6 carrying a small party of British officers and scientists who include John Cockcroft; they have with them a radar magnetron transmitter that they take immediately to Washington, D.C. (see Watson-Watt, 1935). It uses wavelengths of only 10centimeters and can be fitted onto fighter planes, enabling pilots to find their targets even at night. Alfred Lee Loomis invites the British mission to dinner at Washington's Wardman Park Hotel September 11 and tells them about work he and Arthur Compton have been doing at Tuxedo Park, N.Y., on radio microwave receiving and transmitting tubes, but although they have achieved results superior to those of the British they have, like the British, been stymied by the lack of a high-powered oscillator. The Britons show the Americans their cavity magnetron and agree to work with Loomis and Compton at Tuxedo Park. Physicists who include Isaac I. Rabi, now 42, and San Francisco-born Berkeley physicist Luis W. (Walter) Alvarez, 29, are recruited to develop devices based on the invention that is helping to win the Battle of Britain against the Lüftwaffe (an atomic and molecular beam magnetic resonance method developed by Rabi 3 years ago is used for observing spectra in the radio-frequency range). A secret radiation laboratory is established at MIT in November under the direction of Lee DuBridge to pursue experiments in radar, which will eventually be used for air traffic control, weather forecasting, and magnetic resonance imaging for medical diagnoses (see 1942).
German radio engineers H. J. von Braunmuhl and W. Weber improve magnetic plastic tape recording by applying a high-frequency bias to the oxide-coated tape of the 1935 AEG Magnetophone (see Camras, 1944; Mullin, 1945; telephone answering machine, 1945; music, 1946; Sony, 1950).
Zenith Radio's Eugene McDonald starts an FM radio station that will survive to become the world's oldest (see 1923; Armstrong, 1933). Zenith will produce the lion's share of U.S. FM radio sets (see medicine [hearing aid], 1943).
Radio Corp. of America (RCA) demonstrates a 441-line television system at the New York World's Fair.
Hungarian-born engineer Peter C. (Carl) Goldmark, 34, of CBS pioneers color television, but his system requires special receivers. It will give way in the 1950s to an RCA system whose signals will be compatible with conventional black and white TV signals (see 1939; long-playing records, 1948).
Philco Corp. (formerly Philadelphia Storage Battery Co.) telecasts the University of Pennsylvania-versus-University of Maryland football game October 4 (see automobile radio antenna, 1934). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted it a license for an experimental, all-electronic TV station in 1931, by 1937 it was using an experimental 441-line system that employed a bulky receiver with a 12-inch screen, but there are only about 700 TV sets in the Philadelphia area, and although Philco will operate station WPTZ-TV from 1941 to 1953, the outbreak of war puts a damper on any development of television.
Brazil's president Getulio Vargas seizes the 65-year-old newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo from its Swiss-born publisher Julio de Mesquita Filho; it will not be returned to its owners until 1945.
Publisher John S. Knight acquires the 109-year-old Detroit Free Press but allows it to retain its editorial independence.
In fact begins weekly publication May 20 at New York. Former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent George Seldes, 50 (older brother of Gilbert Seldes), quit the Trib in the late 1920s when publisher Robert R. McCormick suppressed a story he had filed from Mexico. His 31-year career in journalism has been notable for its exposés of conditions in Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, but Seldes has been frustrated by the publishing establishment. His 1938 book Freedom of the Press charged that advertising pressures were responsible for more censorship than government, and he calls his four-page 9" x 12" paper "The Antidote for Falsehood in the Daily Press" (he accepts no advertising and receives more stories than he can use each week from reporters on papers throughout the country who cannot get their pieces past their editors). Startup money has come from the Communist Party, and Party member Bruce Minton has joined Seldes in starting the sheet, but Minton soon finds that Seldes will not parrot the party line and quits. Daring to tell the truth in a shrill voice when the mainstream press is all too ready to bow to pressure from advertisers, In fact has an initial list of 6,000 subscribers (all CIO members) that will soon grow to include Eleanor Roosevelt, Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Sen. Harry S. Truman (D. Mo.), Sen. Sherman Minton (D. Ind.), Supreme Court justices, Secretary of the Interior Harold M. Ickes, and Newspaper Guild members (see 1950).
PM begins publication June 18 at New York. Started by Chicago department store heir Marshall Field III, 46, and others, the evening tabloid carries no advertising and will gain a following with its outspoken editorials, editorial cartoons by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), and its comic strip "Barney and Mr. O'Malley" by Crockett Johnson (see1948).
Newsday begins publication September 3 at Hempstead, L.I., where copper heir Harry F. Guggenheim, now 50, and his third wife, Alicia (née Patterson), have converted a garage into a printing plant and start a daily paper with a name culled from contest submissions. Now 33, publishing heiress Patterson divorced her second husband last year to marry Guggenheim. They have found the equipment of a publication that failed last year for sale at a reasonable price, and their 40-page tabloid rolls off the press with large columns that make it unlike any other tabloid in the country (Capt. Joseph M. Patterson has advised against making it a tabloid). The Guggenheims aim to have a circulation of 15,000, will invest $750,000 in the next 6 years before Newsday begins to show a profit, build a plant on a five-acre tract in Long Island City, and make their paper politically independent, backing some Democratic candidates in a strongly Republican county; by mid-1963 Newsday will have a circulation of 375,000.
"Brenda Starr" by South Bend, Ind.-born Chicago cartoonist Dale (originally Dalia) Messick, 34, debuts June 30 in the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News to depict the comic-strip adventures of a 23-year-old reporter for the Flash. Messick's five-foot-two heroine looks like Rita Hayworth and has an endless wardrobe (but whom feminists will applaud as a role model); Brenda will meet Basil St. John in 1945 and marry him in 1975 without either having aged a day.
"Captain Marvel" makes his debut in biweekly Whiz comic books produced by Fawcett Comics from offices on the 22nd floor of the Paramount Building in Times Square. Rivaling "Superman" in Action Comics, the hero from "Fawcett City, S.D." will make Whiz Comics more popular than Action Comics, with sales of 1.5 million copies per issue. Publishers of Action Comics will sue Fawcett next year, the case will be settled out of court, and Captain Marvel will be terminated in 1953 (although he will occasionally be revived by DC Comics).
Cartoonist Ham Fisher has his comic-strip character "Joe Palooka" turn down a lucrative boxing offer at Havana in November and enlist in the U.S. Army (see 1930). The military gives Fisher access to various facilities for his research, his strip will enjoy wide readership among readers of Yank and Stars and Stripes (and among civilian newspaper readers in 20 countries), Joseph Goebbels will condemn the strip as vicious propaganda, the strip will remain popular after the war, and within 10 years Fisher will be making $250,000 per year from his strips and comic books.
Publisher Wilford H. "Captain Billy" Fawcett dies at Greenwich, Conn., February 7 at age 53; Chicago Defender founder Robert S. Abbott at Chicago February 29 at age 71; British newspaper magnate Harold S. Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, at Hamilton, Bermuda, November 26 at age 72.
Nonfiction: To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson; Not by Arms Alone: Essays on Our Time and The World Must Federate: Isolation versus Cooperation by Hans Kohn; Radio and the Printed Page: An Introduction to the Study of Radio and Its Role in the Communication of Ideas by Vienna-born Columbia University sociologist Paul F. (Felix) Lazarsfeld, 39, who has directed the Office of Radio Research at Princeton since 1937 and next year will head a newly-created Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia; The Origins of Ismailism: A Study of the Historical Background of the Fatimid Caliphate by London-born Middle Eastern scholar Bernard Lewis, 24, whose doctoral thesis is published to great acclaim; A Winter in Arabia by Freya Stark: Race, Language, and Culture by Franz Boas, now 82, crowns a long career in anthropology; Why Men Behave Like Apes and Vice Versa by Earnest A. Hooton.
Paris bookseller Sylvia Beach moves her Shakespeare & Co. collection to the fourth floor of her building to keep the books out of the hands of German occupation forces.
Historian Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher dies at his native London April 18 at age 75; literary critic Walter Benjamin at Port-Bou, Spain, September 26 at age 48 after hearing an erroneous report from the police chief of the Franco-Spanish border town that Jews are to be turned over to the Gestapo (he is found dead of a morphine overdose and it is assumed that he committed suicide, although it will later be suggested that he was killed by order of Josef Stalin); journalist-author Katherine Mayo dies at Bedford, Pa., October 9 at age 73.
Fiction: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Georgia-born novelist Carson Smith McCullers, 23; The Ox-Bow Incident by Maine-born Nevada novelist Walter van Tilburg Clark, 31; For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway; You Can't Go Home Again by the late Thomas Wolfe; The Hamlet by William Faulkner; Native Son by Natchez-born novelist Richard Wright, 31, who moved to New York in 1937 to edit the Daily Worker. His book has sales of 215,000 copies within 3 weeks, making Wright the first black best-selling author in U.S. history; My Name Is Aram (stories) by William Saroyan; The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene; Strangers and Brothers by C. P. Snow, who serves as chief of scientific personnel for the ministry of labor; Holland's Glory (Hollands Glorie) by Dutch novelist Jan de Hartog, 26, is about oceangoing tugboats (the author ran away to sea at age 10) but becomes a symbol of the Dutch resistance, will have sales of 500,000 copies in the Netherlands, and will be banned in 1942;Kallocaine by Karin Boye describes an unbearably oppressive totalitarian regime of the future; The Pool of Vishnu by L. H. Myers; The Bright Pavilions by Hugh Walpole; Owen Glendower by John Cowper Powys; The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead; The Thibaults (eighth of eight volumes) by Roger Martin du Gard; On a Darkling Plain by Wallace Stegner, who teaches English at Harvard; Come Back to Erin by Sean O'Faolain; But Who Wakes the Bugler? by Chicago-born Poetry magazine associate editor Peter De Vries, 30; Angels on Toast by Dawn Powell; 30; The Cross-Eyed Bear by Kansas City-born mystery writer Dorothy B. (Belle) Hughes (née Flanagan), 35;Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler; Ten Little Niggers by Agatha Christie, whose new detective novel will be published in America first as And Then There Were None, later as Ten Little Indians; Last Train Out by E. Phillips Oppenheim, now 73, who gave up his villa on the Riviera when war threatened and resettled on the island of Guernsey.
Novelist E. F. Benson dies at London February 29 at age 72, having written nearly 100 books, includng biographies; author Hamlin Garland dies at Hollywood, Calif., March 4 at age 79; Mikhail Bulgakov at Moscow March 10 at age 48, having been ostracized since 1930 but denied permission to emigrate by Josef Stalin, whom he obliquelyattacked in his writing; DuBose Heyward dies at Tryon, N.C., June 16 at age 54; F. Scott Fitzgerald of a heart attack at Hollywood, Calif., December 21 at age 44; Nathanael West is killed in an automobile accident near El Centro, Calif., December 22, at age 37 along with his wife, Eileen (née McKinney), whom he married in April.
Poetry: East Coker by T. S. Eliot; "The Hours" by John Peale Bishop is an elegy for his late friend F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Man Coming Toward You by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born poet Oscar Williams, 40; In What Hour by South Bend, Ind.-born California avant-garde poet-painter Kenneth Rexroth, 34; Collected Poems by Kenneth Fearing; Spain, Take Thou This Cup from Me (España, aparta de me este caliz) by the late César Vallejo; Clothed in Light (Svetlena odená) by Jaroslav Seifert; Orientations (Prosanatolismoi) by Greek poet Odysseus Elytis (Odysseus Alepoudhelis), 28; Cantos by Ezra Pound; . . . The White Cliffs by Alice Duer Miller, whose love story in verse set in wartime Britain will have sales of 700,000 copies by 1945 and twice be read on radio by actress Lynn Fontanne.
Poet Edwin Markham dies on Staten Island, N.Y., March 7 at age 87; William Henry Davies at Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, September 26 at age 69.
Juvenile: Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss; Pat the Bunny by New York-born author-illustrator Dorothy Kunhardt (née Meserve), 39, who has a felt rabbit and other tactile objects affixed to her pages; The Kid from Tomkinsville and Champion's Choice by John R. Tunis.
Painting: Woman Dressing Her Hair by Pablo Picasso; The Romanian Blouse by Henri Matisse; Sky Blue by Wassily Kandinsky; Circus Caravan by Max Beckmann; Death and Fire by Paul Klee; The Robing of the Bride by Max Ernst; The Red Mask by Mexican painter Ruffino Tamayo, 40; The Dream (or The Bed) by Frida Kahlo; Stump in Red Hills by Georgia O'Keeffe; T.B. Harlem by "bohemian" New York painter Alice Neel, 40; Garden in Sochi by Turkish-born New York painter Arshile Gorky (originally Manoug [or Vostanik] Adoian), 39, who grew up in Armenia and came to New York at age 16, determined to be a painter, recreating himself as a Russian with claims to kinship with the late Maksim Gorky; Madawaska—Acadian Light Heavy by Marsden Hartley. Jean Edouard Vuillard dies at La Baule, France, June 21 at age 71; Paul Klee of scleroderma at Muralto-Locarno, Switzerland, June 29 at age 60.
Sculpture: The Spider and Little Spider (mobiles) by Alexander Calder. Sculptor (and typeface designer) Eric Gill dies at Uxbridge, Middlesex, November 17 at age 58.
Photographs: Promenade des Anglais by Vienna-born documentary photographer Lisette Model (née Seyberg), 33, contains photos taken in 1937 on the French Riviera. She has applied for a darkroom job with the New York daily PM, whose picture editor Ralph Steiner has recognized the quality of her work and arranged for publication of her book, which brings her immediate acclaim.
Photographer Lewis W. Hine dies at Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., November 3 at age 66.
Theater: The Male Animal by James Thurber and Dover, Ohio-born playwright-actor (and film director) Elliott Nugent, now 40, 1/9 at New York's Cort Theater, with Nugent, Brooklyn-born actress Gene (originally Gene Eliza Taylor) Tierney, 19, 243 perfs.: My Dear Children by playwrights Catherine Turney, 33, and Jerry Horwin 1/31 at New York's Belasco Theater, with John Barrymore, 117 perfs.; The Fifth Column by Ernest Hemingway and Benjamin Glazer 3/26 at New York's Alvin Theater, with Lenore Ulric, Lee J. Cobb, Franchot Tone, staged by Lee Strasberg, 87 perfs.; Ladies in Retirement by London-born playwright-director Reginald Denham, 46, and Edward Percy 3/26 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with Florence Edney, Flora Robson, Estelle Winwood, 151 perfs.; There Shall Be No Night by Robert Sherwood 4/29 at New York's Alvin Theater, with Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Sydney Greenstreet, Richard Whorf, Montgomery Clift, 115 perfs.; Johnny Belinda by Chicago-born playwright Elmer Harris, 62, 9/18 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Helen Craig, Horace McNally, Clare Woodbury, 321 perfs.; George Washington Slept Here by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 10/18 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Ernest Truex, Jean Dixon, Mabel Taliaferro, Kendall Clark, 173 perfs.; Old Acquaintance by John Van Druten 12/23 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Jane Cowl, Kent Smith, Peggy Wood, scenic design by Richard Whorf, 170 perfs.; My Sister Eileen by New York-born playwright Joseph A. Fields, 45, and Jerome Chodorov 12/26 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with Shirley Booth, Jo Ann Sayers, Morris Carnovsky in a play based on Ruth McKinney's book, 865 perfs.; Flight to the West by Elmer Rice 12/30 at New York's Guild Theater (to Royale Theater 3/4/1941), with Betty Field, Karl Malden, Hugh Marlowe, 136 perfs.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell dies at Paris April 9 at age 75. She began her acting career in 1886 and continued until 2 years ago; playwright Walter Hasenclever commits suicide in a German internment camp at Les Milles, France, August 15 at age 50 (he fled Nazi Germany in 1933, made his way to southern France, and has been caught by the Germans).
Ice Capades is founded by Pittsburgh theater owner John H. Harris, 42, who organizes a spectacle that will tour the country for years with prominent skaters.
Films: John Cromwell's Abe Lincoln in Illinois with Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon; Edward Cline's The Bank Dick with W. C. Fields; Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent with Joel McCrea, Utah-born actress Laraine Day (Laraine Johnson), 19; John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath with Henry Fonda, Missouri-born actress Jane Darwell (originally Patti Woodward), 61; Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday with Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy; George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart (screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart); Robert Z. Leonard's Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier, Greer Garson, Edna May Oliver, Maureen O'Sullivan; Michael Curtiz's The Sea Hawk with Errol Flynn; Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan, and Michael Powell's The Thief of Baghdad with Sabu, Rex Ingram, June Duprez. Also: Preston Sturges's Christmas in July with Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, William Demarest; Michael Powell's Contraband with Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson; William Dieterle's Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet with Edward G. Robinson, Ruth Gordon, Otto Kruger; Sam Wood's Kitty Foyle with Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, Gladys Cooper; Lloyd Bacon's Knute Rockne, All American with Pat O'Brien, Tampico, Ill.-born actor Ronald (Wilson) Reagan, 29, who urges Notre Dame football players to "win one for the Gipper"; William Wyler's The Letter with Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall; John Ford's The Long Voyage Home with John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell; Rouben Mamoulian's The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power, Dallas-born actress Linda (originally Manetta Eloisa) Darnell, 19; Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm with Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Frank Morgan; King Vidor's Northwest Passage with Spencer Tracy, Robert Young; Sam Wood's Our Town with Illinois-born actor William Holden (originally William Franklin Beedle Jr.), 22, Martha Scott, Frank Craven; Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner with Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan; Raoul Walsh's They Drive by Night with George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, London-born actress Ida Lupino, 22; William Keighley's Torrid Zone with James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien; Mervyn LeRoy's Waterloo Bridge with Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor; William Wyler's The Westerner with Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan.
Silent film comedian Ben Turpin dies at Hollywood July 1 at age 70; cowboy actor Tom Mix is killed in a motorcar accident near Florence, Ariz., October 12 at age 60.
Radio: The Road to Happiness debuts 1/22 on CBS stations; Young Dr. Malone 4/29 on CBS stations. Truth or Consequences has begun 3/23 over four CBS stations; originated, produced, and directed by Ralph L. Edwards, 26, it is a spoof on giveaway quiz shows.
Hollywood musicals: Walt Disney's Pinocchio opens February 7 at New York with music by Leigh Harline, lyrics by Ned Washington, songs that include "When You Wish Upon a Star." (seeFantasia, 1941; Disneyland, 1955).
Stage musicals: Two for the Show 2/8 at New York's Booth Theater, with Eve Arden, Battle Creek, Mich.-born comedienne Betty Hutton (Betty Jane Thornburg), 18, Keenan Wynn, Alfred Drake, songs that include "How High the Moon" by Morgan Lewis, lyrics by Nancy Hamilton, 124 perfs.; Higher and Higher 4/4 at the Shubert Theater, with Jack Haley, Marta Eggert, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, songs that include "It Never Entered My Mind," 84 perfs.; Swinging the Gate (revue) 5/22 at London's Ambassadors Theatre, with Madge Elliott, Hermione Gingold, Peter Ustinov, music and lyrics by various people, 449 perfs. (German bombing raids force an early closing); Louisiana Purchase 5/28 at New York's Imperial Theater, with William Gaxton, Victor Moore, Vera Zorina, Irene Bordoni, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, songs that include "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow," 444 perfs.; Cabin in the Sky 10/25 at the Martin Beck Theater, with Ethel Waters, Todd Duncan, Dooley Wilson, Rex Ingram, J. Rosamond Johnson, music by Vernon Duke, book and lyrics by John Latouche and Ted Felter, songs that include "Taking a Chance on Love," 256 perfs.; Panama Hattie 10/30 at the 46th Street Theater, with Ethel Merman, Arthur Treacher, Betty Hutton, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, songs that include "Let's Be Buddies," 501 perfs.; Pal Joey 12/25 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Gene Kelly, Vivienne Segal, Canadian-born actress June Havoc (June Hovick), 30, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, book based on the new collection of stories by John O'Hara, songs that include "Bewitched," "I Could Write a Book," "Zip," 344 perfs.
First performances: Les Illuminations song cycle by Benjamin Britten 1/30 at London, based on the 1886 poems by Arthur Rimbaud; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Paul Hindemith early in the year at Amsterdam (Hindemith moves to the United States); Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra by Britten 3/30 at New York's Carnegie Hall; Divertimento for String Orchestra by Béla Bartók 6/11 at Basel; Fantasia de Movementos Mixtos for Violin and Orchestra by Heitor Villa-Lobos 11/1 at the Colon Theater, Buenos Aires; Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Arnold Schoenberg 12/6 at Philadelphia; Kammersimphonie No. 2 by Schoenberg 12/15 at New York.
Opera: Licia Albanese makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 2/9 in the title role of the 1904 Puccini opera Madama Butterfly (now 26, she will have her greatest triumph in 1942 as Violetta in La Traviata and will continue at Met until early 1966); Izaht 4/16 at Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Theater with music by Heitor Villa-Lobos; Wheeling, W. Va.-born soprano Eleanor Steber, 24, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/7 singing the role of Sophie in the 1911 Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier (she will continue with the Met until 1963).
Coloratura soprano Luisa Tetrazzini dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at Milan April 28 at age 68; impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza at Udine, Italy, September 2 at age 71.
Eileen Farrell Presents debuts on CBS Radio with Willimantic, Conn.-born soprano Farrell, 20, in a weekly program of operatic arias, light classical works, Irish ballads, and Broadway standards that will continue for 7 years and make Farrell's voice familiar to millions of Americans.
The Metropolitan Opera of the Air begins Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts December 7 with Ezio Pinza, Licia Albanese, and others singing Mozart's Nozze di Figaro (see 1931). The program is sponsored by the Texas Company (later Texaco Inc.), which has saved the broadcasts from being canceled after a succession of other sponsors have given up supporting them.
Popular songs: "You Are My Sunshine" by Louisiana singer James Houston "Jimmie" Davis, 40, and Charles Mitchell. Davis records the song February 4 and will use it to win the Louisiana governorship in 1944 and 1960; "The Last Time I Saw Paris" by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; "Bless 'em All" by English songwriters Jimmie Hughes and Frank Lake; "Strange Fruit" by U.S. songwriter Lewis Allan (the subject is lynching); "Tuxedo Junction" by Birmingham, Ala.-born trumpet player and bandleader Erskine Hawkins, 26, William Johnson, and Julian Dash, lyrics by Buddy Feyne; "Do I Worry?" by Stanley Cowan and Bobby North (for the film Pardon My Sarong); "Frenesi" by Albert Dominguez, English lyrics by Ray Charles and S. K. Russell; "Imagination" by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Johnny Burke; "You're the One (For Me)," by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Johnny Mercer; "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano" by Leon René; "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar" by Don Raye, Hughie Prince, and Eleanore Sheehy; "How Did He (She) Look" by Tin Pan Alley composer Abner Silver, 22, lyrics by Gladys Shelley, 29; "I Hear a Rhapsody" by George Frogos and Jack Baker; "Blueberry Hill" by Al Leurs, Larry Stock, and Vincent Rose; "San Antonio Rose" by Bob Wills; "Back in the Saddle Again" by Ray Whitley and cowboy singer Gene Autry; Billie Holiday records "Loveless Love;" the Andrews Sisters record the 1920 Albert von Tilzer-Neville Fleeson song "I'll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time"; Galveston-born Little Esther (Esther Phillips [originally Esther Mae Jones]), 14, records "Double Crossing Blues" with the Johnny Otis band.
Country singer Minnie Pearl (Sarah Ophelia Colley), 28, joins the cast of Grand Ole Opry at Nashville, Tenn., where she will be a fixture for decades.
Muzak Corp. is acquired by former New York advertising man William Benton, who pays $135,000 to take over a small company that pipes "background music" into restaurants and bars on leased telephone wires under a system originated in 1922 by Brig. Gen. George O. Squier, U.S. Army (ret.) and put into operation in 1925 by a public utility holding company. Squier started at 151 West 46th Street, changed the name of his company from Wired Radio to Muzak (music plus Kodak) shortly before his death in 1934. Now 40, Benton will expand by piping music into factories, retail stores, offices, waiting rooms, hotel lobbies, even elevators, and will sell the company at a $4.2 million profit (it will stop its elevator music in about 1980, leave New York in 1986, relocate to Fort Mill, S.C., and concentrate on individually programmed music for more than 350,000 clients).
Terre Haute, Ind.-born arranger and pianist Claude Thornhill, 31, forms his own dance band, having worked with big bands such as Hal Kemp, Benny Goodman, Ray Noble, Artie Shaw, and Freddie Martin.
Russian-born musician Charlie Spivak, 36, forms his own dance orchestra, having been lead trumpeter with the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey bands, the Ray Noble U.S. Band, and other Big Band groups.
Bandleader Hal Kemp dies at Madera, Calif., December 21 at age 35 of injuries suffered 2 days earlier when his car was struck head-on by another car in a heavy fog while he was en route to play a gig at San Francisco's Mark Hopkins Hotel.
University of California, Berkeley, athlete Cornelius Warmerdam, 19, sets a new pole-vault record April 13, clearing the bar at 15 feet (4.57 meters). He will use a bamboo pole in 1942 to set a world outdoor record of 4.77 meters that will stand until July 1960.
The Olympic Games Committee cancels the games scheduled for Tokyo and Helsinki on account of the war.
Golfer Byron Nelson wins the Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA) championship. Newport, R.I.-born golfer Lawson Little, 30, wins the U.S. Open championship, having turned pro in 1936.
Wimbledon tennis matches are canceled for the duration. W. Donald McNeil, 22, (U.S.) wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Alice Marble in women's singles.
The Cincinnati Reds win their first World Series since the infamous 1919 "Black Sox" Series, defeating the Detroit Tigers 4 games to 3.
Brooklyn, N.Y.-born former Columbia University quarterback Sid Luckman, 24, plays his first season with the Chicago Bears and helps the team beat the Washington Redskins 73 to 0 December 8 in the league's most one-sided championship game.
A fire at the Rhythm Nightclub in Natchez, Miss., April 23 leaves 198 dead (see Cocoanut Grove, 1942).
The first nylon stockings go on sale in the United States May 15 and by year's end somewhere between 35 million and 64 million pairs are sold (figures vary) (see 1937). Competing producers have bought their yarn from E. I. du Pont, which displayed the product last year in hosiery worn by Miss Chemistry at the New York World's Fair but whose nylon production will soon go almost entirely into parachutes (see Britain, 1946).
Cotton fiber constitutes 68 percent of U.S. textile production at the mills, down from 85 percent in 1930 (Source: National Cotton Council of America). Man-made fibers, most of them cellulose fibers such as rayon and acetate, have increased their market share to 10 percent (see 1950).
Architect Peter Behrens dies at Berlin February 27 at age 71.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency agents raid Brooklyn petshops and oblige them to release birds held in violation of a 1913 law (and a more recent treaty with Mexico) that forbids keeping indigenous wild birds in captivity. A songbird of the canary family, the house finch (Carpodacus purpureus) has been taken illegally by nets in the Sierra and sold through the 1930s to petshops at a few dollars per hundred. Brooklyn-born MIT graduate and National Audubon Society conservationist Richard (Hooper) Pough, 36, has seen a Macy's advertisement for "California linnets," gone to the store, recognized the "linnets" as house finches, and alerted federal agents. Many dealers release their birds in advance of any raid in order to avoid fines. The house finch will propagate itself throughout the northeast, move north to Canada, and move south to Mississippi, entertaining listeners with perhaps the most musical call of any wild bird.
Isle Royale National Park is established by act of Congress on the largest island in Lake Superior. The 539,341-acre park has an outstanding moose herd.
Serengeti National Park is created in Tanganyika by the British, who have added land to the 900-square-mile lion sanctuary set aside in 1929 and extended the list of protected species to include giraffes, buffalo, rhinoceroses, and most carnivores. Serengeti is the first national park in East Africa (see 1961).
An earthquake in Romania November 10 registers 7.3 on the Richter scale and leaves 1,000 dead, thousands injured.
An Armistice Day blizzard blows into Wisconsin, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa November 11 on the heels of warm weather.
The New York-New Jersey shad catch is 3,25 million pounds, down from 13.5 million in 1890.
A shrimp trawler fishing in deep water off the Texas Gulf coast returns to Port Isabel with a brown shrimp having a purple-tinged tail. Unlike the common white shrimp that is taken close to shore in shallow water, it is a nocturnal creature that has thus far escaped notice, but by the late 1950s it will have become the leading variety used in the shrimp industry.
The United States exports some 3 million tons of wheat under the export subsidy program started in 1938. The subsidy averages 27.4¢ per bushel to equalize the higher U.S. price with the world price.
Argentina ships wheat and other foodstuffs to Europe. She will become the richest nation in South America in the next 5 years.
Berlin orders wholesale slaughter of Danish livestock to boost German morale with extra "victory rations" and to save on fodder, gambling that the war will be short. Cattle numbers are reduced by 10 percent, hogs by 30 percent, poultry by 60 percent, and by next year Danish output of animal products will fall to 40 percent below 1939 levels.
Soviet authorities arrest geneticist Nikolai Vavilov and imprison him in an underground cell for his opposition to T. D. Lysenko, who will dominate Soviet agriculture until 1964 with his unscientific ideas (see 1936; 1942).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recognizes Santa Gertrudis cattle as a new breed. Developed over the last 18 years by King Ranch boss Robert J. Kleberg Jr., 44, the cattle have the cherry red coloring and beef quality of the English shorthorn first imported in 1834. The genetic stock of the new breed is five-eighths shorthorn, but the animals have the small hump, the heavy forequarters, and the hardiness of the Indian Brahma breed introduced in 1854. Steers reach a weight of 2,300 pounds and give up to 71.9 percent meat (see 1885). The younger Kleberg has made an arrangement with Humble Oil to receive royalties on oil and gas pumped from King Ranch lands that now cover nearly a million acres, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island. The ranch is the largest single beef-cattle producer in America.
An Agricultural Testament by British agronomist Sir Albert Howard, 67, favors use of natural fertilizers. Sir Albert was knighted upon his return to Britain after nearly 30 years in India, where his experience led him to subscribe to Mohandas K. Gandhi's statement that "the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the masses." Farmers in the state of Indore have learned early Chinese techniques of intensive agriculture and water management; having seen them use locally produced vegetable and animal manure for lack of more efficient fertilizers, Howard says that nations rich in labor but poor in capital must use their natural strengths rather than follow Western models and that man must cooperate with nature rather than try to conquer natural forces (see Rodale, 1942).
The U.S. soybean crop reaches 78 million bushels, up from 5 million in 1924 (see 1945). Soybean refiner A. E. Staley dies at Miami, Fla., December 26 at age 73.
The United States has more than 6 million farms, but while 100,000 farms have 1,000 acres or more, some 2.2 million have fewer than 50 acres (see 1959). Farmers have withdrawn from cultivation nearly one-third of the farmland tilled in 1930—some 160 million acres—under programs instituted by the Soil Conservation Administration (see1935).
Britain's Ministry of Food begins rationing January 8 with controls over butter, sugar, and bacon. Rationing follows thereafter of meat, cheese, preserves, and tea in fixed quantities per capita, allocating supplies equally and keeping prices at levels people can afford. Milk and eggs are allocated. The ministry institutes a point system for canned meat, fish, fruit, and dried fruits that can be purchased with special coupons; bread, flour, potatoes, and many other items remain unrationed. U-boats sink 160,000 tons of British shipping in September. The fall of France has left Britain to carry on the fight against Germany and Italy with whatever help she can get from America and the Commonwealth nations.
Black markets flourish in occupied and unoccupied France. Bread and other food staples are rationed, and consumers pay premium prices to obtain more than their allotted rations. Britain has few instances of black markets; food subsidies operate to keep prices stable.
The extraction rate of British bread rises to 85 percent, helping to compensate for shortages of other foods that provide the nutrients ordinarily lost from refined white bread. The Ministry of Food's Food Advice Division prod
uces leaflets, films, and radio broadcasts in an effort to teach catering workers and the general public how to use unfamiliar foods, such as dried eggs and milk, how to make the best use of vegetables, and how to prepare dishes that require few rationed ingredients.
Britons increase consumption of milk, thanks in large part to government schemes to provide cheap milk for expectant mothers and children under age 5, free milk to schoolchildren, and chocolate milk for adolescents. Consumption of cheese, potatoes, carrots, and green vegetables also increases.
Chicago-born Cornell Medical College biochemist Vincent du Vigneaud, 39, isolates the B vitamin biotin. He finds that a substance known as vitamin H is identical with the coenzyme R found in leguminous plants and is, in fact, a B vitamin. Du Vigneaud will elucidate the structure of biotin in the next 2 years, but while two kinds of dermatitisin infants will be found to respond to biotin therapy, no natural biotin deficiency will be observed in humans (see medicine, 1946).
U.S. red meat consumption reaches 142 pounds per capita on an average annual basis. The figure will increase to 184 pounds in the next 30 years.
Nearly 15,000 U.S. retail stores are equipped to sell frozen foods, up from 516 in 1933.
The A&P sells cellophane-wrapped meat for the first time.
A freeze-drying process for food preservation is discovered (see Maxim, 1964).
Controlled atmosphere (CA) storage is used for the first time on McIntosh apples whose ripening is slowed by storage in gas-tight rooms from which the oxygen has been removed and replaced with natural 1941 gas. Cornell University professor Robert M. Smock has developed the process.
Owens-Illinois Glass introduces Duraglas for deposit bottles. The new bottle glass can stand up to repeated use by beer and soft drink bottlers.
An Illinois district court judge enjoins the city of Chicago to stop its 2-year effort to prevent marketing of milk in paperboard cartons rather than bottles. Many consumers remain nervous about buying milk in cartons, believing the charges by various health officials, and bottlers have become more efficient and reliable about sterilizing their bottles. Close to 33 percent of the fluid milk sold in the United States is now homogenized, and by 1946 about half of it will be homogenized (see 1949).
The United States imports 70 percent of the world coffee crop, up from 50 percent in 1934.
Hors d'Oeuvre and Canapes: With a Key to the Cocktail Party by Oregon-born New York caterer James (Andrews) Beard, 37, launches Beard on a career that will make his name a household word.
McDonald hamburger stands have their beginning in a drive-in barbecue restaurant opened at San Bernardino, Calif., by New Hampshire-born movie theater co-owners Richard "Dick" and Maurice "Mac" McDonald of Glendora. Now 31, Dick and his brother Mac have earlier run a hot-dog stand near the Santa Anita race track at Arcadia (see1948).
The first Dairy Queen soft ice cream store opens June 22 between two funeral parlors at Joliet, Ill., with Sherm Noble serving 8¢ sundaes, 5¢ double-decker ice cream cones, and take-home pints and quarts (see 1938). J. F. McCullough and his son Alex last year acquired western U.S. rights to a continuous-type freezer patented by inventor Harry Ortiz; they and Ortiz will franchise the operation, there will be 100 stores by 1947, and by 1950 Dairy Queen will be a nationwide system with 1,446 stores (see Canada, 1953).
Seven out of 10 U.S. blacks still live in the 11 states of the old Confederacy, down from eight out of 10 in 1910 (see 1960).
Birth control receives public endorsement from Eleanor Roosevelt.
The world's population reaches 2.3 billion, up from nearly 2 million in 1930, with roughly 500 million in China. Eighty percent of the world still lives in agricultural villages.
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