Historical Events in 1939 (Part 2)

Events 201 - 400 of 430

• Jul 22 Jane Bolin becomes the 1st African American female judge in New York
• Jul 25 5th and last Dutch government of Colijn, forms

• Jul 25 New York Yankees starting pitcher Atley Donald sets American League rookie record for consecutive wins; beats St. Louis Browns 5-1 for his 12th straight victory
• Jul 26 Yankee catcher Bill Dickey hits 3 consecutive HRs
• Jul 28 5th Dutch government of Colijn falls
• Jul 30 Tour de France: Sylvère Maes of Belgium wins his 3rd title from Frenchman René Vietto
• Aug 2 Hatch Act prohibits political activity by federal workers

• Aug 10 2nd Dutch De Geer government forms (1st with Social Democrats)
• Aug 11 Sergei Rachmaninov's last appearance in Europe
• Aug 13 Yankees set AL shutout margin with 21-0 victory over A's
• Aug 13 Sabotage suspected in crash of 'City of San Francisco'
• Aug 14 First night MLB game in the City of Chicago is played at Comiskey Park; White Sox beat St. Louis Browns, 5-2


• Aug 15 First night game at baseball's Comiskey Park, Sox beat Browns 5-2
• Aug 15 13 Stukas dive into the ground during a disastrous air-practice at Neuhammer. No survivors.

• Aug 17 "The Wizard of Oz" opens at Loews Capitol Theatre in NY
• Aug 19 37.6 cm rainfall at Tuckerton, NJ (state record)
• Aug 20 1st black bowling league formed (National Bowling Assoc)
• Aug 20 Russian offensive under General Zjoekov against Japanese invasion in Mongolia
• Aug 22 Dutch border guards take positions for German invasion
• Aug 22 Premier De Geer recalls Dutch holidaymakers in Black Forest
• Aug 23 John Cobb (Britain) drives 365.85 MPH (593.48 KPH) at Bonneville Flats

• Aug 24 Germany & USSR sign 10-year non-aggression pact
• Aug 26 1st major league baseball telecast on W2XBS- Cincinnati Reds defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, Brooklyn
• Aug 26 Belgium mobilizes
• Aug 26 Croatia gets autonomous status
• Aug 27 Erich Warsitz in a Heinkel He-178 makes the 1st manned jet-propelled flight
• Aug 27 Nazi Germany demands Danzig & Polish corridor

• Aug 28 Netherland mobilizes


• Aug 28 Sammy Fain and Jack Yellen's musical "George White's Scandals" premieres
• Aug 28 Journalist Care Hollingworth observes the “large numbers of troops, literally hundreds of tanks, armored cars and field guns” Germany had aligned along the Polish border. Three days later, Hitler invades Poland and WWII begins.
• Aug 29 Chaim Weizmann informs England that Palestine Jews will fight in WW II
• Aug 30 6th NFL Chicago All-Star Game: NY Giants 9, All-Stars 0 (81,456)
• Aug 30 General Reijnders appointed supreme commander of Dutch army

• Aug 30 NY Yankee Atley Donald pitches a baseball a record 94.7 mph (152 kph)
• Aug 30 Poland mobilizes
• Aug 31 Japanese invasion army driven out of Mongolia
• Aug 31 Staged "Polish" assault on radio station in Gleiwitz

• Sep 1 Physical Review publishes 1st paper to deal with "black holes"
• Sep 1 Switzerland proclaims neutrality at the outbreak of WWII
• Sep 1 World War II starts when Germany invades Poland by attacking the Free City of Danzig

• Sep 1 The Wound Badge for Wehrmacht, SS, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe soldiers is instituted. The final version of the Iron Cross was also instituted on this date
• Sep 1 Switzerland mobilizes its forces and the Swiss Parliament elects Henri Guisan to head the Swiss Army (an event that can happen only during war or mobilization)

• Sep 1 Last day of 1st-class cricket in England before the declaration of war against Germany; great slow left-armer Hedley Verity finishes with amazing figures of 7 for 9 v Sussex to give Yorkshire the County Championship
• Sep 3 German submarine U-30, commanded by Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, sinks British passenger ship SS Athenia; 117 people die, among them 28 Americans
• Sep 3 World War II: Britain declares war on Germany after invasion of Poland. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by Australia, New Zealand, South Africa & Canada
• Sep 3 Mitford sister and Nazi sympathizer Unity Mitford attempts suicide after Britain declares war on Germany, bullet lodged in her brain eventually kills her in 1948
• Sep 4 Dutch 2nd Chamber affirms Neth's in a State of War
• Sep 4 German troops move into Danzig
• Sep 4 Netherlands & Belgium declare neutrality
• Sep 4 Mir, a Nazi ghetto in occupied Poland, is exterminated
• Sep 4 RAF bombs Wilhelmshafen
• Sep 5 34th Davis Cup: Australia beats USA in Haverford (3-2)

• Sep 5 International Lawn Tennis Challenge, Haverford, PA: John Bromwich beats American Frank Parker 6-0, 6-3, 6-1 to give Australia the title, 3-2
• Sep 6 1st German air attack on Great Britain in WW II
• Sep 6 South Africa declares war on Nazi-Germany
• Sep 6 World War II: The Battle of Barking Creek.
• Sep 7 Radio NY Worldwide-WRUL begins radio transmission
• Sep 8 FDR declares "limited national emergency" due to war in Europe
• Sep 8 Gen Von Reichenau's panzer division reaches suburbs of Warsaw
• Sep 8 Indians Bob Feller, 20, is youngest pitcher to win 20 games
• Sep 8 Yanks beat Red Sox 4-1 in 7, game called because of lightning
• Sep 9 Nazi army reaches Warsaw

• Sep 11 Battle of Kutno-pocket: Germans advance to Warsaw
• Sep 11 British submarine Triton torpedoes British submarine Oxley
• Sep 11 Iraq and Saudi Arabia declare war on Nazi Germany

• Sep 14 British fleet attacks German U-39 boat

• Sep 16 NY Yankees clinch their 11th & 4th successive pennant
• Sep 17 German U-29 sinks British aircraft carrier Courageous, 519 die
• Sep 17 Poland's President Ignacy Mościck and Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski flee to Romania
• Sep 17 Soviet Union invades Eastern Poland allowing Germans to advance West, taking 217,000 Poles prisoner, without a formal declaration of war
• Sep 17 Taisto Mäki of Finland becomes first man to run 10,000 metres in under 30 minutes, in a time of 29:52.6 in Helsinki

• Sep 18 Polish government of Moscicki flees to Romania

• Sep 19 British Expeditionary Force reaches France
• Sep 19 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) becomes radio host of Reichsrundfunk Berlin
• Sep 19 Wehrmacht (German regular army) murders 100 Jews in Lukov Poland
• Sep 20 British navy captures German U-27 boat

• Sep 23 Cookie Lavagetto goes 6 for 6-Dodgers get 27 hits & beat Phillies 22-4
• Sep 25 German Luftwaffe strikes Warsaw with (fire)bombs
• Sep 25 Andorra and Germany sign a treaty ending WW I, as Versailles Peace Treaty forgot to include Andorra
• Sep 26 German seaplane shoots KLM-aircraft (1 killed)
• Sep 27 Warsaw surrenders to Germans after 19 days of resistance
• Sep 27 White Sox host 1st "day-night" doubleheader, lose to Cleve, 5-2 & 7-5
• Sep 28 Estonia accepts Soviet military bases
• Sep 28 Final broadcast of The Fleischmann Hour was heard on radio

• Sep 30 In the first televised college football game, Fordham beats Waynesburg, 34-7 at Randalls Island, NY
• Sep 30 Germany & Russia agree to partition Poland
• Sep 30 Chicago pitcher Clint Brown sets MLB record with his 61st relief appearance as White Sox beat St. Louis Browns, 7-5
• Sep 30 Britain first evacuates citizens in anticipation of war.
• Oct 1 Winston Churchill calls Russia a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"
• Oct 1 After a one-month Siege of Warsaw, hostile forces entered the city.
• Oct 3 Lemmer-Urk Dike closes
• Oct 4 Last Polish troops surrender
• Oct 6 Adolf Hitler denies he intends to go to war against France and Britain
• Oct 6 Adolf Hitler announces plans to regulate Jewish problem
• Oct 6 Last Polish army is defeated in World War II.
• Oct 8 Germany annexes Western Poland
• Oct 8 NY Yankees sweep Reds in 36th World Series, 4th straight WS win

• Oct 11 Bucky Harris signs to manage Washington again

• Oct 11 NAACP organized Legal Defense & Education Fund
• Oct 14 BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated) formed
• Oct 14 German U-47 sinks British battleship HMS Royal Oak, 833 killed
• Oct 15 LaGuardia Airport opens in NYC
• Oct 15 Yeshiva of Mir closes after 124 years
• Oct 16 Sugar rationing begins in Netherlands

• Oct 22 NBC becomes first network to televise a pro football game; Brooklyn Dodgers beat Philadelphia Eagles, 23-14 at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field

• Oct 24 Nylon stockings go on sale for first time (Wilmington, Delaware)
• Oct 25 William Saroyan's "Time of Your Life" premieres in NYC
• Oct 26 Polish Jews forced into obligatory work service
• Oct 28 Anti-German demonstrations/strikes in Czechoslovakia
• Oct 28 Spitfire shoots German Heinkel-111 down above Scotland
• Oct 29 Golden Gate International Exposition closes (1st closure)
• Oct 29 NHL Babe Seibert Memorial Game: All-Stars beat Montreal 5-3
• Oct 30 USSR & Germany agree on partitioning Poland, Adolf Hitler deports Jews
• Oct 30 German U boat fails on attack of English battleship Nelson with Winston Churchill, Dudley Pound & Charles Forbes aboard
• Nov 1 First animal conceived by artificial insemination (rabbit) displayed
• Nov 1 First jet plane, Heinkel He 178, demonstrated to German Air Ministry
• Nov 1 Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Sertum laetitiae


• Nov 3 Clare Booth's "Margin for Error" premieres in NYC
• Nov 4 First air conditioned automobile (Packard) exhibited, Chicago, Illinois
• Nov 4 US allows "cash & carry" arms sales during WW II
• Nov 6 WGY-TV (Schenectady, NY), 1st commercial TV station, begins service
• Nov 6 WRGB TV channel 6 in Schenectady-Alby-Troy, NY (CBS) 1st broadcast
• Nov 6 World War II: 'Sonderaktion Krakau' - a Nazi operation against academics, with 184 professors arrested in Krakow and deported
• Nov 8 Failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in Burgerbraukeller, Munich
• Nov 8 H Lindsay & R Crouse' "Life with Father" premieres in NYC

• Nov 9 Nobel for physics awarded to Ernest O Lawrence (cyclotron)
• Nov 9 Venlo-incident: German Abwehr kills 2 British agents

• Nov 12 Jews in Lodz, Poland ordered to wear a yellow star of David
• Nov 14 Oil refinery fire kills 500 & destroys Lagunillas, Venezuela
• Nov 15 Anti-German demonstrations in Czechoslovakia
• Nov 15 FDR lays cornerstone of Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
• Nov 15 Nazis begin mass murder of Warsaw Jews
• Nov 15 The first unemployment compensation law, under the Social Security Act, that of the District of Columbia, was approved for grants by the Social Security Board

• Nov 16 German U-boat torpedoes tanker Sliedrecht near Ireland
• Nov 17 German U-boat torpedoes passenger ship

• Nov 17 The Rome-Rio de Janeiro air connection is created.
• Nov 18 Dutch KNSM passenger ship Simón Bolívar hits German mine, 86 die
• Nov 18 The Irish Republican Army explodes three bombs in Piccadilly Circus
• Nov 19 Don Lash wins 6th straight AAU cross-country 10K championship
• Nov 19 Comic superheroes Flash (as Jay Garrick) and Hawkman (Carter Hall) first appear in "Flash Comics No. 1" published by DC

• Nov 26 4 soviet soldiers killed on Finnish-Russian border

• Nov 28 Hans Frank, Nazi Governor-General of Poland, organizes Judenrat
• Nov 28 Soviet government revokes Russian-Finnish non-aggression treaty
• Nov 29 Cor Klint swims world record 200 m backstroke (2:38.8)
• Nov 29 USSR drops diplomatic relations with Finland
• Nov 30 Paul Osborn's "Mornings at 7" premieres in NYC
• Nov 30 USSR invades Finland, bombs Helsinki

• Dec 2 British Imperial Airways & British Airways merge to form BOAC
• Dec 2 NY's La Guardia Airport began operations as an airliner from Chicago lands, 1 minute after midnight

• Dec 6 5th Heisman Trophy Award: Nile Kinnick, Iowa (HB)

• Dec 7 William Walton's violinist concert premieres in Cleveland
• Dec 9 CFL Grey Cup, Landsdowne Park, Ottawa: Winnipeg Blue Bombers claim 2nd title; defeat Ottawa Rough Riders, 8-7
• Dec 9 Russian air raid on Helsinki
• Dec 9 1940 NFL Draft: George Cafego from University of Tennessee first pick by Chicago Cardinals

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