Facts from 1943

1943

January

• January 13 – Helmut Schenk is the first person to use an ejection seat from an aircraft.
• January 14 – The Casablanca Conference, where Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to travel by airplane while in office (Miami, Florida to Morocco to meet with Winston Churchill to discuss WWII).
• January 15 The world's largest office building, The Pentagon, is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.
• January 27 – WWII: 50 bombers mount the first all American air raid against Germany (Wilhelmshaven is the target).

 February

• February 7 – WWII: In the United States, it is announced that shoe rationing will go into effect in 2 days.
• February 10 – March 3 – Mohandas Gandhi keeps a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.
• February 20 American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.

 March

• March 3 – 173 people are killed in a crush while trying to enter an air-raid shelter at Bethnal Green tube station in London.
• March 23 – The drugs Vicodin and Lortab are first produced in Germany.
• March 31 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! opens on Broadway, heralds a new era in "integrated" stage musicals, becomes an instantaneous stage classic, and goes on to be Broadway's longest-running musical up to that time (1948).

April

• April 19 – Albert Hofmann self administers the drug LSD for the first time in history, and records the details of his trip.
• April 25 – Easter occurs on the latest possible date (last time 1886; next time 2038) in the Western Christian Church.

May

• May 19 – Winston Churchill addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
• May 29 – Norman Rockwell's illustration of Rosie the Riveter first appears on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

July

• July 5 – WWII: Battle of Kursk – The largest tank battle in history begins.
• July 28 – WWII: Operation Gomorrah – The British bomb Hamburg, causing a firestorm that kills 42,000 German civilians.

August

• August 2 – WWII: John F. Kennedy's PT-109 is rammed by a destroyer.
• August 29 – WWII: Germany dissolves the Danish government after it refuses to deal with a wave of strikes and disturbances to the satisfaction of the German authorities (see Occupation of Denmark).

September

• September 12 – WWII: German paratroopers rescue Mussolini from imprisonment, in "Operation Oak".

 October

October 30 – The Merrie Melodies animated short Falling Hare, one of the only shorts with Bugs getting out-smarted, is released in the United States.

November

• November 15 – Porajmos: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies and "part-Gypsies" be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."
• November 16
• WWII: After flying from Britain, 160 American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in German-controlled Vemork, Norway.
• November 18 – WWII: The Royal Air Force opens its bombing campaign against Berlin, with 440 planes causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses 9 aircraft and 53 aviators.

 December

• December 4 The Great Depression officially ends in the United States: With unemployment figures falling fast due to WWII-related employment, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes the Works Progress Administration.