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Battle of Britian
The Battle of Britain was the intense air battle between the Germans and the British over Great Britain's airspace from July 1940 to May 1941, with the heaviest fighting from July to October 1940. -
Leon Trotsky Assassinated
Around 5:30 p.m. on August 20, 1940, Trotsky was sitting at his desk in his study, helping Ramon Mercader (known to him as Frank Jackson) edit an article. Mercader waited until Trotsky started to read the article, then snuck up behind Trotsky and slammed a mountaineering ice pick into Trotsky's skull. -
Jeep Invented
The Bantam Car Company invented the Jeep in 1941, but the Willys-Overland company got the first government contract to build jeeps that same year because of its better design and ability. The government had invited 135 companies to design and build the vehicle. Ford was the only other company to make an attempt. -
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation undertaken by the German Army Group North against Leningrad—historically and currently known as Saint Petersburg—in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II -
Attack on Pearl Habor
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise air attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. After just two hours of bombing, more than 2,400 Americans were dead, 21 ships* had either been sunk or damaged, and more than 188 U.S. aircraft destroyed. -
The Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March was the forced march of American and Filipino prisoners of war by the Japanese during World War II. The 63-mile march began with 72,000* prisoners from the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines on April 9, 1942. The horrible conditions and harsh treatment of the prisoners during the Bataan Death March resulted in an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 deaths. -
Anne Frank Goes Into Hiding
Thirteen-year-old Anne Frank had been writing in her red-and-white-checkered diary for less than a month when her sister, Margot, received a call-up notice around 3 p.m. on July 5, 1942. Although the Frank family had planned to go into hiding on July 16, 1942, they decided to leave immediately so that Margot would not have to be deported to a "work camp." -
T-shirt
. During World War II the T-shirt was finally issued as standard underwear for all ranks in both the U.S. Army and the Navy. Although the T-shirt was intended as underwear, soldiers performing strenuous battle games or construction work, and especially those based in warmer climes would often wear an uncovered T-shirt -
Manhattan Project
During World War II, American physicists and engineers began a race against Nazi Germany to create the first atomic bomb. This secret four-year endeavor (1942-1945) was code-named “the Manhattan Project,” named for one of the initial sites of research, Columbia University in Manhattan, New York. Headed by Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves (military head) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (scientific director), the Manhattan Project ultimately cost over two billion dollars. Research took place at secret -
The Katyn Forest Massacre
In addition to the annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany, there were other incidents of mass death on both sides of the fighting forces during World War II. One such massacre was uncovered on April 13, 1943 by German forces in the Katyn Forest outside Smolensk, Russia. The mass graves discovered there contained the remains of 4,400 Polish military officers, who had been killed by the NKVD (Soviet secret police) upon the orders of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in April/May 1940. -
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland fought valiantly against the German soldiers who intended to round them up and send them to the Treblinka Death Camp. Despite overwhelming odds, the resistance fighters, known as the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization; ZOB) and led by Mordechai Chaim Anielewicz, used their small cache of weapons to resist the Nazis for 27 days. Ghetto residents without guns also resisted by building and then hiding within und -
D-Day
During World War II, the Allied powers planned to create a two-front war by continuing the Soviet Union's attack of Nazi-occupied lands from the east and by beginning a new invasion from the west. -
Hitler Commits Suicide
With the end of World War II imminent and the Russians nearing his underground bunker under the Chancellery building in Berlin, Germany, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head with his pistol, likely after swallowing cyanide, ending his own life just before 3:30 pm on April 30, 1945. In the same room with Hitler was his new wife, Eva Braun, who ended her life by swallowing a cyanide capsule. After their deaths, SS men carried their bodies up to the Chancellery’s courtyard, covered the -
Microwave Oven Invented
The microwave oven did not come about as a result of someone trying to find a better, faster way to cook. During World War II, two scientists invented the magnetron, a tube that produces microwaves. Installing magnetrons in Britain’s radar system, the microwaves were able to spot Nazi warplanes on their way to bomb the British Isles. -
Ballpoint pen go on sales
The first great success for the ballpoint pen came on an October morning in 1945 when a crowd of over 5,000 people jammed the entrance of New York’s Gimbels Department Store. The day before, Gimbels had taken out a full-page ad in the New York Times promoting the first sale of ballpoints in the United States. The ad described the new pen as a "fantastic... miraculous fountain pen ... guaranteed to write for two years without refilling!" On that first day of sales, Gimbels sold out its entire sto
