Poon Lim's 133 Day South Atlantic Odyssey
Nov 23 Chinese steward Poon Lim begins 133 days adrift after British ship SS Benlomond torpedoed by german U-boat and he is the sole survivor
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- Nov 23 Soviet 21st Army recaptures Kalatsj at Don
- Nov 24 Fieldmarshal Erich von Manstein arrives in Starobelsk
- Nov 24 French collaborator Marquis de Brinon establishes "African Falanx"
- Nov 25 National Organization for Aid to Underground, LO, forms
- Nov 26 Anti-fascist Council for National Liberation (AVNOJ) forms
- Nov 27 French navy at Toulon scuttles ships & subs so Nazis cannot seize them
Josip Broz Tito
- Nov 28 492 die in a fire that destroyed Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston
- Nov 29 US Office of Price Administration rations coffee for everyone, 10 pound a year
- Nov 30 U-boats sink and damage 142 allied ships this month (877,774 tons)
- Nov 30 -Dec 1st: Sea battle at Tassafaronga, Guadalcanal
- Nov 30 German supply vessel Uckermark (formerly called the Altmark) explodes & sinks off Yokohama
- Dec 1 Gasoline rationed in US
- Dec 1 The Beveridge Report is published by the British government unveiling plans for a post-war welfare state
Event of Interest
Dec 2 World’s 1st self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs in Chicago Pile-1 (world's 1st nuclear reactor) at the University of Chicago, overseen by Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi
Leó Szilárd
- Dec 4 First US citizenship granted to an alien on foreign soil (James Hoey)
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Event of Interest
Dec 6 Queen Wilhelmina announces Dutch Commonwealth
Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
- Dec 6 RAF bombs Philips factory (150 die)
Appointment of Interest
Dec 10 Adolf Hitler names Anton Mussert "leader of the Dutch people"
Adolf Hitler
- Dec 10 North Africa: 5th German panzer army forms under col-gen von Arnim
Event of Interest
Dec 10 An early report the Holocaust prepared by the Polish government-in-exile, using information obtained by Witold Pilecki, is addressed to UN member states
Witold Pilecki
- Dec 11 Australian Dutch guerrilla troops evacuated to Timor near Australia
- Dec 12 German offensive in South Western Stalingrad
- Dec 12 A fire in a hostel in St. John's, Newfoundland, kills 100 people
- Dec 13 Seyss-Inquart allows Dutch Nazi Anton Mussert to call himself Leader
- Dec 15 Massachusetts issues 1st US vehicular license plate tabs
- Dec 16 Hitler orders combat against partisans in Russia & Balkan
- Dec 17 Allies in London sentence German war criminals
- Dec 19 Robert Stroud "Birdman of Alcatraz" is transferred to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
- Dec 20 1st Japanese bombing of Calcutta
- Dec 21 US Supreme court declares Nevada separation legal
- Dec 22 World War II: Adolf Hitler signs the order to develop the V-2 rocket as a weapon
- Dec 23 Allies air attack on Den Helder, Netherlands
- Dec 24 First powered flight of V-1 'buzz bomb', Peenemunde, Germany
- Dec 24 Red army occupies German airports at Tasjinskaja & Morozowsk
- Dec 25 Admiral Dalans murderer of Bosinier de la Chapelle, sentenced to death
- Dec 25 British Colonel S W Bailey reaches Mihailovics headquarter
- Dec 25 Soviet artillery and tank battle on German armies at Stalingrad
- Dec 27 1st Japanese women camp (Ambarawa) goes into use
- Dec 27 The Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia is founded.
- Dec 28 Oberkommando Wehrmacht orders strategist flight out of Kaukasus
- Dec 28 Robert Sullivan becomes 1st pilot to fly Atlantic 100 times
- Dec 31 Battle of the Barents Sea between British Navy and German Kriegsmarine off North Cape, Norway