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1900s | 1910s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s
1940
- Auschwitz Opens
- Battle of Britain
- Cartoon Character Bugs Bunny Debuts in “A Wild Hare”
- The Dunkirk Evacuation
- Franklin D. Roosevelt Elected to an Unprecedented Third Term as U.S. President
- Katyn Forest Massacre
- Leon Trotsky Assassinated
- Nylons on the Market
- Stone Age Cave Paintings Found at Lascaux in France
- Warsaw Ghetto Established
1941
- Atlantic Charter
- Babi Yar Massacre
- Captain America Comic First Appears
- Cheerios First Introduced
- Enigma Cryptography Machine Captured
- German Battleship Bismarck Sinks HMS Hood
- Ho Chi Minh Founds the Communist Viet Minh in Vietnam
- Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor
- Jeep Invented
- Joe DiMaggio Begins His 56-Game Hitting Streak
- Lend-Lease Act Passed
- M&Ms Created
- Mount Rushmore Completed
- Nazi Rudolf Hess Flies to Britain on a Peace Mission
- Nazis Begin Killing Adults and Children With Mental and Physical Disabilities as Part of Their Aktion T-4 Program
- Operation Barbarossa
- Siege of Leningrad
1942
- Anne Frank Goes Into Hiding
- The Bataan Death March
- Battle of Midway
- Battle of Stalingrad
- Japanese-Americans Held in Camps
- Manhattan Project Begins
- Nazis Raze Town in Retaliation for Reinhard Heydrich's Death
- T-shirt Introduced
1943
- French Resistance Leader Jean Moulin Killed
- Grave of Katyn Forest Massacre Found
- Italy Joins the Allies
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
1944
- Ballpoint Pens Go On Sale
- D-Day
- First German V1 and V2 Rockets Fired
- Hitler Escapes Assassination Attempt
1945
- Decapitated Rooster Named Mike Lives for 18 Months
- Division of Korea Into North and South
- FDR Dies
- Firebombing of Dresden
- Firestorm Consumes Tokyo
- First Atomic Bomb Tested
- First Computer Built (ENIAC)
- Germans Surrender
- Hitler Commits Suicide
- Microwave Oven Invented
- Nuremberg Trials Begin
- A Plane Crashes Into the Empire State Building
- Slinky Toy Hits Shelves
- Swedish Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, Who Saved Tens of Thousands of Jewish Lives, Was Arrested and Never Seen Again
- United Nations Founded
- U.S. Drops Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Yalta Conference
1946
- Bikinis Introduced
- Bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem
- Dr. Spock's The Common Book of Baby and Child Care Is Published
- Holiday Movie It's a Wonderful Life Premiers
- Las Vegas Begins Its Transformation With the Building of the Flamingo Hotel
- Jews Are Massacred in the Post-Holocaust Kielce Pogrom in Poland
- Juan Perón Becomes President of Argentina
- Nuclear Testing at Bikini Atoll Begins
- UNICEF Is Founded
- Winston Churchill Gives His "Iron Curtain" Speech
1947
- Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier
- Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered
- Jackie Robinson Joins the Dodgers, Becoming the First Black Baseball Player in the Major Leagues
- Jewish Refugees Aboard the Exodus Turned Back by British
- Marshall Plan
- Polaroid Cameras Invented
1948
- Berlin Airlift
- "Big Bang" Theory Formulated
- "Dewey Defeats Truman" in the Newspaper
- Gandhi Assassinated
- Policy of Apartheid Begun
- State of Israel Founded
1949
- China Becomes Communist
- First Non-Stop Flight Around the World
- George Orwell Publishes Nineteen Eight-Four
- NATO Established
- Soviet Union Has Atomic Bomb
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