General
Population: 2.33 Billion*
- Entertainment: Films include "The Two-Faced Woman" (Garbo's last), "Citizen Kane" (Orson Welles), "The Big Store" (Marx brothers), "Ohm Kruger" (anti-British propaganda), "Suspicion" (Hitchcock),
"How Green Was My Valley"
Art includes Edward Hopper (Nighthawks)
Henry Moore's drawings of refugees in London air raid shelters
Feliks Topolski executes drawings of British forces
Music includes Shostakovich
Writers include F Scott Fitzgerald (The Last Tycoon), Noel Coward, Winston Churchill, Upton Sinclair
- History: Monument Over Time Capsule to be opened in 6939 dedicated
- Medicine: Dr. William Black infects 12-month=old baby with herpes as part of experiment
Goliszed publishes study on intentional infection of infants with gum disease Vincent's angina
- Politics: Churchill and Roosevelt sign Atlantic Charter (forerunner of UN) Atlantic drawn up to determine post-war peace
Atlantic Charter states Allied War Claims
- Science: Edwain McMillan and Glenn T Seaborg discover plutonium
- Technology: "Mosquito" fighter aircraft in use
Whinfield and Dickson invent Dacron
Donald Bailey invents portable military bridge
Hans Haas begins underwater photography
- Travel: Ferry Command aircraft crosses Atlantic
- Deaths: Sherwood Anderson the writer swallows toothpick at a party and dies of peritonitis, Lou Gehrig, Lord Robert Baden-Powell (Boy Scouts), English aviatrix Amy Johnson,
Kaiser Wilhelm II, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Rabindranath Tagore, German physicist Walther Nernst, King Alfonso XIII of Spain
Africa
- General: Germans invade north Africa
Rommel retreats after Allies counter
Rommel aattacks Tobrik
- Egypt: Italians and Germans invade
- Eritrea: Italy surrenders land - combines with south Ethiopia
- Ethiopia: (Abyssinia) Italy surrenders Ethiopia - combines with Eritrea (N Ethiopia)
Independence from British
- Libya: Germans invade north
Australians and British capture Tobruk
Allied troops take Benghazi - city evacuated
- Somaliland: Surrendered by Italy
Americas
- Canada: Churchill visits Ottawa
- Mexico: Colima erupts
- Panama: Gatun Locks construction on Panama Canal begins
- Peru: Avalanche
- St Lucia: US base built under "destroyers for bases" deal
Asia
- Hong Kong: Japan invades and Hong Kong surrenders
- Japan: Neutrality pact signed with Soviet Union
War declared by British and United States
- Malaya: Japan invades
- Philippines: Japan attacks and invades
- Vietnam: Communist-nationalist guerrilla organization, the Vietminh, is set up in Indo-China
Europe
- General: Soviets and British sign pact of mutual assistance
Germany and Italy declare war on US
Jet aircraft developed in England and Germany
- Crete: Germans invade Crete
- Croatia: Formation of Independent State of Croatia to 1945
- Cyrene: British gain control of Cyrenaica
- Germany: German Naval ship Scharnhorst sunk by British killing 1425
German U-boat attacks intensified
Start of "Final" extermination of the Jews
- Great Britain: BBC Brains' Trust broadcast
British Navy cruiser Hood sunk by the Bismarck killing 1338
British ship Lancastria sunk killing 3900
British Air Raid Precaution reorganized as Civil Defence
Anthony Eden visits Soviet Union
"Utility" clothing and furniture encouraged in Britain and clothes rationing starts
Air Training Corps established
Japanese sink HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse
Blitz on Coventry - German air raids on London resumed
RAF bombs Nuremberg
HMS Ark Royal sunk
British begin attack in western desert
- Greece: Greeks surrender to the Germans
Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess lands in Scotland
- Italy: Italian Neptunia sunk killing 5000
Rome develops Central Institute of Restoration to preserve art
- Soviet Union: Siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) - Germans invade - also Volgograd (Stalingrad) and advance on Moscow
Minsk, Smolensk, Tallinn attacked, then Germans enter Ukraine taking Kiev, Orel, Odessa, and Kharkov fall
Soviet counter-attack against Germans in Ukraine - Marshal Timoshenko launches Russian counter-offensive
Germany invades under Operation Barbarossa
Soviets and British sign pact of mutual assistance
Stalin undisputed head of Soviet government
- Yugoslavia: Pro-Nazi Prince Paul regent of Yugoslavia deposed
Germany invades
Bismarck sunk,
Middle East
- Egypt: Britains counter-attack Italy
- Iran: Invasion by Britain and Soviet Union
- Iraq: British forces invade
- Syria: British forces invade
Pacific
- Australia: Rubella outbreak