Timeline of Notable Events

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January 5: The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.

 

January 18: The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. The performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.

 

January 27: The Siege of Leningrad is lifted by the Soviets after 880 days and more than 2 million Russians killed.

 

February 7: Bing Crosby records "Swinging on a Star" for Decca Records.

 

February 8: Henry McAlpin becomes the first African American reporter accredited to White House.

 

February 20: Batman & Robin comic strip premieres in newspapers.

 

February 26: Sue Dauser, of the nurse corps, is appointed as the first female US navy captain.

 

March 2: 16th Academy Awards: Casablanca wins best picture, and Jennifer Jones and Paul Lukas win acting awards.

 

April 13: South Carolina rejects black suffrage.

 

April 22: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at Salzburg.

 

May 3: Meet Me in St Louis opens on Broadway.

 

May 14: General Rommel, Speidel, and von Stulpnagel attempt to assassinate Hitler.

 

May 16: The first of 180,000+ Hungarian Jews reach Auschwitz.

 

May 31: Allied breakthrough in Italy.

 

June 6: D-Day begins as the 156,000-strong Allied Expeditionary Force lands in Normandy, France.

 

June 16: George Stinney, a 14-year-old African American boy, is wrongfully executed for the murder of two white girls, and becomes the youngest person executed in 20th-century America.

 

June 20: Nazis begin mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.

 

June 22: US President Franklin Roosevelt signs the "GI Bill of Rights." 

 

July 4: Matt Friedman arrives in Lebanon to ask Sally Talley for her hand in marriage.