1940 A year full of War and Cartoons!

1940

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Year 1940 was a leap year and started on a Monday.

 January

• January 8 – WWII: Food rationing begins in Great Britain.

February

• February 7 – RKO release Walt Disney's second full-length animated film, Pinocchio.
• February 10 – Tom and Jerry make their debut in Puss Gets the Boot. However it is not until 1941 that their current names are adopted.

 March

• March 2 – Cartoon character Elmer Fudd makes his debut in the animated short Elmer's Candid Camera.
• March 31 – WWII: Commerce raiding hilfskreuzer Atlantis, leaves the Wadden Sea for what will become the longest warship cruise of the war. (622 days without in-port replenishment or repair)^[1]

April

• April 7 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.

 May

• May 10 – WWII:
• Battle of France begins – German forces invade Low Countries.
• Iceland is invaded by the United Kingdom.
• With the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

May 13 – Winston Churchill, in his first address as Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons, "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

• May 15 – The very first McDonald's restaurant opens in San Bernardino, California.
• May 16 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of Congress, asks for an extraordinary credit of approximately $900 million to finance construction of at least 50,000 airplanes per year.
• May 20 – Holocaust: The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp opens in Poland.

June

• June 3 – The Holocaust: Franz Rademacher proposes the Madagascar Plan.
• June 4 – WWII: Winston Churchill tells the British House of Commons, "We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight on the beaches... on the landing grounds... in the fields and the streets.... We shall never surrender."
• June 10 – WWII: Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
• June 10 – WWII: Canada declares war on Italy.
• June 10 – WWII: Norway surrenders to German forces.
• June 13 – WWII: Paris is declared an open city.
• June 14 – WWII: The French government flees to Bordeaux and Paris falls under German occupation.
• June 14 – WWII: A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

July

• July 1 – The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opens for business, built with an 8-foot (2.4 m) girder and 190 feet (58 m) above the water, as the third longest suspension bridge in the world.
• July 10 – WWII: The Battle of Britain begins
• July 14 – WWII: Winston Churchill, in a worldwide broadcast, proclaims the intention of Great Britain to fight alone against Germany whatever the outcome: "We shall seek no terms. We shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy. We shall ask none."
• July 27 – Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Oscar-nominated cartoon short, A Wild Hare.

August

• August 24 – Howard Florey and a team including Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, publish their laboratory results showing the in vivo bactericidal action of penicillin. They have also purified the drug.^[4][5]

 September

• September 2 – WWII: An agreement between America and Great Britain is announced to the effect that 50 U.S. destroyers needed for escort work will be transferred to Great Britain. In return, America gains 99-year leases on British bases in the North Atlantic, West Indies and Bermuda.
• September 7 – WWII: The Blitz – Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London (the first of 57 consecutive nights of strategic bombing).
• September 12 – In Lascaux, France, 17,000-year-old cave paintings are discovered by a group of young Frenchmen hiking through Southern France. The paintings depict animals and date to the Stone Age.

 October

• October 9 - John Lennon is born.
• October 16 – The draft registration of approximately 16 million men begins in the United States.

 November

• November 5 – United States 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 7 – In Tacoma, Washington, the 600-foot (180 m)-long center span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (known as Galloping Gertie) collapses.
• November 11 – Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in the Midwestern United States.
• 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.

 December

• 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 14 – Plutonium is first isolated chemically in the laboratory.
• 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 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).