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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