THE FORTIES
A Chronology of Events
Editor: Piero Scaruffi
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1940:
- Blood transfusion introduced
- First freeway of Los Angeles (the Pasadena freeway)
- Hitler invades Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France
- Mussolini invades Greece
- Germany bombs Britain day and night (the "blitz")
- Fulgencio Batista is elected president of Cuba
1941:
- Ho Chi Minh founds Vietminh and sets to liberate Vietnam from the Japanese and the French
- Hitler attacks Yugoslavia, Romania, Greece, Russia
- Japan invades Indochina
- Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the USA enters world war II
1942: Enrico Fermi reports the first nuclear reaction
1943:
- Alan Turing and others build the Colossus, the first electronic computer
- Albert Hofmann discovers LSD
- In Yugoslavia 500,000 Serbs are exterminated by Croatian "ustashas"
1944:
- Germany launches V2 rockets against Britain and France
- Bretton Woods agreement: the world's monetary system is anchored to the dollar and the dollar to gold
- The World Bank is born
1945:
- The United Nations are founded (in San Francisco)
- Germany is divided
- The U.S. drops two nuclear bombs on Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
1946:
- Mar: Churchill delivers in the USA the "Iron Curtain" speech, virtually opening the "Cold War" against the Soviet Union
- Jun: George Marshall envisions a plan to promote the economic recovery of European democracies
- Waves of refugees from Eastern Europe
- The French bomb Vietnam
- Nurberg process against 22 nazist war criminals
- The first computer, Eniac, is unveiled, built by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert
- The first motoscooter, Piaggio's Vespa, debuts in Italy
- Percy Spencer invents the microwave oven
1947:
- Mar: Truman announced the "Truman doctrine" about containing the expansion of communism and defending democracies (specifically Greece and Turkey)
- William Shockley invents the transistor at Bell Labs
- Edwin land invents Polaroid, the first instant camera
- Pan Am introduces the first round-the-world flight
1948:
- Feb: Communists seize power in Czechoslovakia in a coup directed by the Soviet Union
- Jun: The Soviet Union blockades West Berlin
- War between India and Pakistan
- Gandhi assassinated
- Palestine is given to the Jews to start their own country, Israel
- Invention of "xerography" (copying machines) by Chester carlson
- Invention of the music record
- Cable TV is deployed in rural U.S.
- Declaration of Human Rights
1949:
- NATO is formed by western European countries and USA
- Fausto Coppi is the first cyclist to win both the Tour and the Giro in the same year
- Communists led by Mao seize the power in China
- End of the communist insurgency in Greece
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