1940's - THOSE WERE THE DAYS MY FRIEND

Begin the Beguine

from

"Broadway Melody of 1940"

1940
Battle of Britain

Leon Trotsky Assassinated

Nylons on the Market

Stone Age Cave Paintings Found in France

1941

Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor

Jeep Invented

Manhattan Project Begins

Mount Rushmore Completed

Nazi Rudolf Hess Flies to Britain on a Peace Mission
Siege of Leningrad

1942

Battle of Midway
Battle of Stalingrad

Japanese-Americans Held in Camps

Nazis Raze Town in Retaliation for Reinhard Heydrich's Death

T-shirt Introduced

1943

French Resistance Leader Jean Moulin Killed

Grave of Katyn Forest Massacre Found
Italy Joins the Allies

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

1944

Ballpoint Pens Go On Sale

D-Day

First German V1 and V2 Rockets Fired
Hitler Escapes Assassination Attempt

1945

FDR Dies

First Computer Built

Germans Surrender

Hitler Commits Suicide

Microwave Oven Invented

United Nations Founded

U.S. Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1946

Bikinis Introduced

Dr. Spock Publishes The Common Book of Baby and Child Care

Juan Perin Becomes President of Argentina

Nuremberg Trials

Winston Churchill Gives His "Iron Curtain" Speech

1947

Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier

Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered

Jewish Refugees Aboard the Exodus Turned Back by British

Marshall Plan

Polaroid Cameras Invented

1948

Berlin Airlift

"Big Bang" Theory Formulated

"Dewey Defeats Truman" in the Paper

Gandhi Assassinated

Policy of Apartheid Begun

State of Israel Founded

1949

China Becomes Communist

First Non-Stop Flight Around The World

George Orwell Publishes Nineteen Eight-Four

NATO Established

Soviet Union Has Atomic Bomb

 *

FACTS about this Decade 

Population 132,122,000 

Unemployed in 1940 - 8,120,00

 National Debt $43 Billion 

Average Salary $1,299. Teacher's salary $1,441 

Minimum Wage $.43 per hour 

55% of U.S. homes have indoor plumbing 

Antarctica is discovered to be a continent 

Life expectancy 68.2 female, 60.8 male 

Auto deaths 34,500 

Supreme Court decides blacks do have a right to vote

  

World War II changed the order of world power

 The  United States and the USSR become super powers 

Cold War begins

More Cultural History
 http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade40.html
&
 First World War
http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com