OCTOBER 21 2011
Standard graph:
1938:
January 12 – The German War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg marries Eva Gruhn in Berlin; Hermann Göring is best man at the wedding.
January 16 – Two landmark live recordings are produced this day: the very first of Mahler's Ninth by the Vienna Philharmonic under Bruno Walter in
the face of dire circumstance; and Benny Goodman and his orchestra become the first jazz musicians to headline a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York
City.
January 20 – King Farouk of Egypt marries Queen Farida Zulficar in Cairo.
January 22 – Thornton Wilder's play Our Town is performed for the first time anywhere in Princeton, New Jersey. It premieres in New York City on
February 4.
January 25 – A brilliant aurora borealis described variously as "a curtain of fire" and a "huge blood-red beam of light" startles people across
Europe and is visible as far south as Gibraltar.
January 27
The Niagara Bridge at Niagara Falls, New York collapses due to an ice jam.
German War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg resigns, following the revelation that his new wife had previously posed for pornographic
photos.
January 28 – The first ski tow in America begins operation in Vermont.
January 27: Niagara Bridge collapses in ice.February 4
Adolf Hitler abolishes the War Ministry and creates the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces), giving him direct control of
the German military. In addition, Hitler sacks political and military leaders considered unsympathetic to his philosophy or policies. General Werner
von Fritsch is forced to resign as Commander of Chief of the German Army following accusations of homosexuality, and replaced by General Walther von
Brauchitsch. Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath is sacked and replaced by Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first cel-animated feature in motion picture history, is released in the United States.
February 6 – Black Sunday at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia: 300 swimmers are dragged out to sea in 3 freak waves; 80 lifesavers save all but 5.
February 10 – Carol II of Romania takes dictatorial powers.
February 12 – Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg of Austria meets Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden and, under threat of invasion, is forced to yield to
German demands for greater Nazi participation in the Austrian government.
February 14 – The British naval base at Singapore begins operations.
February 20 – Sir Anthony Eden resigns as British Foreign Secretary following major disagreements with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain over the
best policy to follow in regards to Italy, and is succeeded by Lord Halifax.
February 24 – A nylon bristle toothbrush becomes the first commercial product to be made with nylon yarn.
[edit] March–AprilMarch – Italian mathematician Ettore Majorana disappears.
March 3
The Santa Ana River in California spills over its banks during a rainy winter, killing 58 people in Orange County and causing trouble as far inland as
Palm Springs[1].
Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia.
Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany, presents a proposal to Hitler for an international consortium to rule much of Africa (in which
Germany would be assigned a leading role) in exchange for a German promise never to resort to war to change her frontiers; Hitler rejects the British
offer.
March 12 – Anschluss: German troops occupy Austria; annexation is declared the following day.
Correlations with 1944: June 7 1944 - June 7 – WWII:
The steamer Danae (Greek: Δανάη) carrying 350 Cretan Jews and 250 Cretans on the first leg of their way to Auschwitz was sunk without survivors
off the shore of Santorini.
Bayeux is liberated by British troops.
OCTOBER 21 2011
Original graph:
1944:
February 29 – WWII – Battle of Los Negros and Operation Brewer: The Admiralty Islands are invaded by U.S. forces.
[edit] March
The March 1944 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.March
WWII: The Japanese launch an offensive in central and south China.
Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek publishes his book The Road to Serfdom (in London).
March 1 – WWII:
The USS Tarawa and USS Kearsarge are laid down.
An anti-fascist strike begins in northern Italy.
March 2 – WWII: A train stalls inside a railway tunnel outside Salerno, Italy; 521 choke to death.
March 2 – The 16th Academy Awards ceremony is held.
March 3 – WWII: The Order of Nakhimov and the Order of Ushakov are instituted in the USSR.
March 4 – In Ossining, New York, Louis Buchalter, the leader of 1930s crime syndicate Murder, Inc., is executed at Sing Sing, along with Emanuel
"Mendy" Weiss, and Louis Capone.
March 6 – WWII: Soviet Army planes attack Narva, Estonia, destroying almost the entire old town.
March 9 – WWII: Soviet Army planes attack Tallinn, Estonia.
March 10 – WWII: In Britain the Education Act lifts the ban on women teachers marrying.
November 11 – WWII An Allied bombing destroys the frescoes by Andrea Mantegna and other Italian masters in the Renaissance Ovetari Chapel, Church of
the Eremitani, Padua, northern Italy
March 12 – WWII: The Political Committee of National Liberation is created in Greece.
March 15
WWII: Battle of Monte Cassino: Allied aircraft bomb German-held monastery and stage an assault.
WWII: The National Council of the French Resistance approves the Resistance programme.
In Sweden, the law of 1864 that criminalizes homosexuality is abolished.
March 17 – WWII: The Nazis execute almost 400 prisoners, Soviet citizens and anti-fascist Romanians at Rîbniţa.
March 19 – WWII: German forces Operation occupy Hungary.
March 18 – The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy kills 26 and causes thousands to flee their homes.
March 20 – WWII: RAF Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade's bomber is hit over Germany, and he has to bail out without a parachute from a height of
over 4,000 meters. Tree branches interrupt his fall and he lands safely on deep snow.
March 23 – WWII: Members of the Italian Resistance attack Nazis marching in Via Rasella, killing 33.
March 24 – WWII:
Fosse Ardeatine massacre: 335 Italians are killed, including 75 Jews and over 200 members of the Italian Resistance from various groups, in Rome.
In the Polish village of Markowa, German police kill Józef and Wiktoria Ulm, their 6 children and 8 Jews they were hiding.
[edit] AprilApril 5 – Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from Auschwitz-Birkenhau.
April 25 – WWII: The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.
April 28 – WWII: 749 American troops are killed in Exercise Tiger at Start Bay, Devon, England.
Correlations with 1944: July 12 1944 - July 12 – Laurence Olivier's film Henry V, based on Shakespeare's play, opens in London. It is the most
acclaimed and the most successful movie version of a Shakespeare play made up to that time, and the first in Technicolor. Olivier both stars and
directs, as Kenneth Branagh was to do over forty years later in his successful remake.
OCTOBER 28 2011
Standard Graph
1939:
April 4
Faisal II becomes King of Iraq.
The Slovak-Hungarian War ends with Slovakia ceding eastern territories to Hungary.
April 7 – Italy invades Albania; King Zog flees.
April 9 – African-American singer Marian Anderson performs before 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after having been
denied the use both of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and of a public high school by the federally controlled District
of Columbia.
April 11 – Hungary leaves the League of Nations.
April 13 – Britain offers a "guarantee" to Romania and Greece.
April 14
John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath is first published.
At a meeting in Paris, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet meets with Soviet Ambassador Jakob Suritz, and suggests that a "peace front"
comprising France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Poland and Romania would deter Germany from war.
April 18 – The Soviet Union proposes a "peace front" to resist aggression.
April 20 – Billie Holiday records "Strange Fruit", the first anti-lynching song.
April 25 – The Federal Security Agency (FSA) is founded in the USA, along with the Civilian Conservation Corps and Public Health Service.
April 27 – Ely Racecourse in Cardiff closes.
April 28 – In a speech before the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler renounces the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.
April 30 – The 1939 New York World's Fair opens.
[edit] MayMay 1 – Batman, created by Bob Kane (and, unofficially, Bill Finger) makes his first appearance in a comic book.
May 2 – Major League Baseball's Lou Gehrig, the legendary Yankee first baseman known as "The Iron Horse", ends his 2,130 consecutive games played
streak after contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The record stands for 56 years before Cal Ripken, Jr. plays 2,131 consecutive games.
May 3
Vyacheslav Molotov succeeds Maxim Litvinov as Soviet Foreign Commissar.
The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
May 6 – Carl Friedrich Goerdeler tells the British government that the German and Soviet governments are secretly beginning a rapprochement with the
aim of dividing Eastern Europe between them. Goerdeler also informs the British of German economic problems which he states threaten the survival of
the Nazi regime, and advises that if a firm stand is made for Poland, then Hitler will be deterred from war.
May 9 – Spain leaves the League of Nations.
May 14 – Lina Medina, a 5-year old Peruvian girl, gives birth to a baby boy, becoming the youngest confirmed mother in medical history.
May 17
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrive in Quebec City to begin the first-ever tour of Canada by Canada's monarch.
The British government issues the White Paper of 1939, sharply restricting Jewish immigration to the Palestine Mandate.
Sweden, Norway, and Finland refuse Germany's offer of non-aggression pacts.
May 20 – Pan-American Airways begins trans-Atlantic mail service with the inaugural flight of its Yankee Clipper from Port Washington, New York.
May 22 – Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel.
May 29
Northamptonshire gains (over Leicestershire at Northampton) their first victory for 99 matches, easily a record in the County Championship. Their last
Championship victory was as far back as 14 May 1935 over Somerset at Taunton.
Albanian fascist leader Tefik Mborja is appointed as member of the Italian Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.
[edit] June
June 24: Siam is renamed "Thailand".June 3 – The Soviet government offers its definition of what constitutes "aggression", upon which the
projected Anglo-Soviet-French alliance will come into effect. The French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet accepts the Soviet definition of aggression
at once. The British reject the Soviet definition, especially the concept of "indirect aggression", which they feel is too loose a definition and
phrased in such a manner as to imply the Soviet right of inference in the internal affairs of nations of Eastern Europe.
Correlations with 1944: June 14 1944
OCTOBER 28 2011
Original graph:
1945:
May 23 – President of Germany Karl Dönitz and Chancellor of Germany Count Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk are arrested by British forces at
Flensburg. They are respectively the last German Head of state and Head of government until 1949.
May 23 – Heinrich Himmler, former head of the Nazi SS, commits suicide in British custody.
May 28 – William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") is captured. He is later charged with high treason in London for his English-language wartime broadcasts
on German radio, convicted, and then hanged in January 1946.
May 29
German communists, led by Walther Ulbricht, arrive in Berlin.
Dutch painter Han van Meegeren is arrested for collaboration with the Nazis, but the paintings he had sold to Hermann Göring (Koch) are later found
to be his fakes.
May 30 – The Iranian government demands that all Soviet and British troops leave the country.
[edit] JuneJune 1 – The British take over Lebanon and Syria.
June 5 – The Allied Control Council, military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power.
June 6 – King Haakon VII of Norway returns to Norway.
June 11
William Lyon Mackenzie King is re-elected as Canadian prime minister.
The Franck Committee recommends against a surprise nuclear bombing of Japan. [3]
June 12 – The Yugoslav Army leaves Trieste, leaving the New Zealand Army in control.
June 21 – WWII: The Battle of Okinawa ends.
June 24 – WWII: A victory parade is held in Red Square in Moscow.
June 25 – Seán T. O'Kelly is elected the second President of Ireland.
June 26 – The United Nations Charter is signed.
June 29 – Czechoslovakia cedes Carpathian Ruthenia to the Soviet Union.
[edit] July
July 16: Trinity Test at night in New Mexico.July 1 – WWII: Germany is divided between the Allied occupation forces.
July 5 – WWII: The Philippines are declared liberated.
July 8 – WWII: Harry S. Truman is informed that Japan will talk peace if it can retain the reign of the Emperor.[4]
July 9 – A forest fire breaks out in the Tillamook Burn (the third in that area since 1933).
July 15 – The Scott Morrison Award of Minor Hockey Excellence was first given out to recipient Gordie Howe
July 16 – The Trinity Test, the first of an atomic bomb, using about six kilograms of plutonium, succeeds in unleashing an explosion equivalent to
that of 19 kilotons of TNT.
July 16 – WWII: A train collision near Munich, Germany kills 102 war prisoners.
July 17–August 2 – WWII – Potsdam Conference: At Potsdam, the three main Allied leaders hold their final summit of the war.
July 21 – WWII: President Harry S. Truman approves the order for atomic bombs to be used against Japan.[4]
Correlations with 1944: July 19 1944
NOVEMBER 6 2011
Standard graph:
1940:
NovemberNovember 5 – U.S. presidential election, 1940: Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican challenger Wendell Willkie and
becomes the United States' first and only third-term president.
November 6 – Agatha Christie's mystery novel And Then There Were None is published in book form in the US.
November 7 – In Tacoma, Washington, the 600-foot (180 m)-long center span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (known as Galloping Gertie) collapses.
November 9 – Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez premieres in Barcelona, Spain.
November 10 – An earthquake in Bucharest, Romania kills 1,000.
November 11 – WWII: The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian battleship fleet anchored at Taranto naval
base.
November 11 – WWII: The German Hilfskreuzer (commerce raider) Atlantis captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan.
November 11 – Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in U.S. Midwest.
November 13 – Walt Disney's Fantasia is released. It is the first box office failure for Disney, though it eventually recoups its cost years later,
and becomes one of the most highly regarded of Disney's films.
November 14 – WWII: The city of Coventry, England is destroyed by 500 German Luftwaffe bombers (150,000 fire bombs, 503 tons of high explosives, and
130 parachute mines level 60,000 of the city's 75,000 buildings; 568 people are killed).
November 16 – WWII: In response to Germany levelling Coventry 2 days before, the Royal Air Force begins to bomb Hamburg (by war's end, 50,000
Hamburg residents will have died from Allied attacks).
November 16 – An unexploded pipe bomb is found in the Consolidated Edison office building (only years later is the culprit, George Metesky,
apprehended).
November 16 – The Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers is founded.
November 18 – WWII: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion
of Greece.
November 20 – WWII: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
November 27 – In Romania, coup leader General Ion Antonescu's Iron Guard arrests and executes over 60 of exiled king Carol II of Romania's aides.
Among the dead is former minister and acclaimed historian Nicolae Iorga.
November 27 – WWII: The Royal Navy and Regia Marina fight the Battle of Cape Spartivento.
[edit] DecemberDecember – Timely Comics' Captain America Comics #1 (cover dated March 1941), first appearance of Captain America and Bucky, hits
newsstands.
December 1 – Manuel Ávila Camacho takes office as President of Mexico.
December 8 – The Chicago Bears, in what will become the most one-sided victory in National Football League history, defeat the Washington Redskins
73–0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game.
December 9 – WWII: Operation Compass – British forces in North Africa begin their first major offensive with an attack on Italian forces at Sidi
Barrani, Egypt.
December 12 & December 15 – WWII: "Sheffield Blitz" – The City of Sheffield is badly damaged by German air-raids.
December 14 – Plutonium is first isolated chemically in the laboratory.
December 16 – WWII: Operation Abigail Rachel – RAF bombing of Mannheim.
December 17 – President Roosevelt, at his regular press conference, first sets forth the outline of his plan to send aid to Great Britain that will
become known as Lend-Lease.
December 23 – WWII: Winston Churchill, in a broadcast address to the people of Italy, blames Benito Mussolini for leading his nation to war against
the British, contrary to Italy's historic friendship with them: "One man has arrayed the trustees and inheritors of ancient Rome upon the side of
the ferocious pagan barbarians."
December 24 – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian spiritual non-violence leader writes his second letter to Adolf Hitler addressing him "My friend", requesting
him to stop the war Germany had begun.
December 29 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a fireside chat to the nation, declares that the United States must become "the great arsenal of
democracy."
December 29 – WWII: "Second Great Fire of London" – Luftwaffe carries out a massive incendiary bombing raid, starting 1,500 fires. Many famous
buildings, including the Guildhall and Trinity House, are either damaged or destroyed.
December 30 – California's first modern freeway, the future State Route 110, opens to traffic in Pasadena, California, as the Arroyo Seco Parkway
(now the Pasadena Freeway).
Correlations with 1944: June 23 1944 - June 22 – WWII:
Operation Bagration: A general attack by Soviet forces clears the German forces from Belarus, resulting in the destruction of German Army Group
Centre, possibly the greatest defeat of the Wehrmacht during WWII.
Burma Campaign: The Battle of Kohima ends in a British victory.
NOVEMBER 6 2011
Original graph:
1946- 1947
December 19 – Martial law is declared in Vietnam.
December 20
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, featuring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Travers, and Thomas Mitchell, is released in New
York.
At least 1,362 people are killed in an earthquake and associated tsunami in Japan.
December 22 – The Havana Conference begins between U.S. organized crime bosses in Havana, Cuba.
December 24 – France's Fourth Republic is founded.
December 26
The Flamingo Hotel opens on the Las Vegas Strip.
David Lean's Great Expectations, based on the Charles Dickens novel, and featuring John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Martita Hunt, Alec Guinness, Francis
L. Sullivan, Jean Simmons, and Finlay Currie, is released to great acclaim in the UK.
December 31 – President Harry Truman delivers Proclamation 2714, which officially ends hostilities in World War II.
January and February 1947 are remembered for the worst snowfalls in the UK in the 20th century, with extensive disruption of travel.[1] Given the low
car ownership this is mainly remembered in terms of the effects on the railway networks.[2][3]
[edit] JanuaryJanuary 1
British coal mines are nationalized.
Nigeria gains limited autonomy.
The Canadian Citizenship Act comes into effect.
January 3 – Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.
January 10 – The United Nations takes control of the free city of Trieste.
January 15 – Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", is found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The
case remains unsolved to this day.
January 16 – Vincent Auriol is inaugurated as president of France.
January 19 – A shipwreck near Athens, Greece kills 392.
January 24 – Dimitrios Maximos founds a monarchist government in Athens.
January 25 – A Philippine plane crashes in Hong Kong, with $5 million worth of gold and money.
January 30–February 8 – A heavy blizzard in Canada buries towns from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Calgary, Alberta.
January 31 – The Communists take power in Poland.
[edit] FebruaryFebruary 3
The lowest air temperature in North America (-63 degrees Celsius) is recorded in Snag, Yukon Territory.
Percival Prattis becomes the first African-American news correspondent allowed in the United States House of Representatives and Senate press
galleries.
February 5 – Bolesław Bierut becomes the President of Poland.
February 6 – South Pacific Commission (SPC) founded.
February 8 – A dance hall fire in Berlin, Germany, kills over 80 people.
February 10 – In Paris, France, peace treaties are signed between the World War II Allies and Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland. Italy
cedes most of Istria to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
February 12
A meteor creates an impact crater in Sikhote-Alin, in the Soviet Union.
Christian Dior introduces The "New Look" in women's fashion, in Paris.
February 17 – Cold War: The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
February 20
An explosion at the O'Connor Electro-Plating Company in Los Angeles, California, leaves 17 dead, 100 buildings damaged, and a 22-foot-deep (6.7 m)
crater in the ground.
U.S. Army Ordnance Corps Hermes project V-2 rocket Blossom I launched into space carrying plant material and fruitflies, the first animals to enter
space.
Correlations with 1944: July 28 1944