Explore 1393 historical events from 1940–1949.
AHS Centaur was a hospital ship which was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Queensland, Australia, on 14 May 1943. Of the 332 medical personnel and civilia…
World War II: A Japanese submarine sinks AHS Centaur off the coast of Queensland
Petro Taras Ostap Tyschtschenko is a German businessman best known for his role in developing the European market for the American computer company Commodore International.
Petro Tyschtschenko, Austrian-German businessman
John Russell Watkins is a former Australian cricketer who played in one Test match in 1973.
John Watkins, Australian cricketer
Margo Symington MacDonald was a Scottish politician, teacher and broadcaster. She was the Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Govan from 1973 to 197…
Margo MacDonald, Scottish journalist and politician (died 2014)
Alan James Beith, Baron Beith, is a British Liberal Democrat politician who represented Berwick-upon-Tweed as its Member of Parliament (MP) from 1973 to 2015.
Alan Beith, English academic and politician
Albert Hofmann was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also is…
Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the hallucinogenic effects of the research drug LSD
Operation Vengeance was the American military operation to kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy on 18 April 1943 during the Solomon Islands campaign in the P…
World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is an English conductor, particularly known for his performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000, perf…
John Eliot Gardiner, English conductor and director
John Keith Crisco Sr. was an American businessman and public official from the State of North Carolina.
Keith Crisco, American businessman and politician (died 2014)
Louise Elisabeth Glück was an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty m…
Louise Glück, American poet (died 2023)
John Cradock Maples, Baron Maples was a British politician and life peer who served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 1989 to 1992 and Shadow Foreign Secretary from 1999 t…
John Maples, Baron Maples, English lawyer and politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence (died 2012)
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was an uprising by the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to tran…
World War II: In German-occupied Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins, after German troops enter the Warsaw Ghetto
Albert Hofmann was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also is…
Albert Hofmann deliberately doses himself with LSD for the first time, three days after having discovered its effects on
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and air…
World War II: The British submarine HMS Seraph surfaces near Huelva to cast adrift a dead man dressed as a courier and c
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held office as general secretary of the Commun…
Joseph Stalin dissolves the Comintern (or Third International)
Operation Chastise, commonly known as the Dambusters Raid, was an attack on German dams carried out on the night of 16/17 May 1943 by 617 Squadron RAF Bomber Command, later called …
World War II: Dambuster Raids commence by No
Scott Williams is a professor of mathematics at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He was recognized by Mathematically Gifted & Black as a Black History Month 2017 Honoree.
Scott W
Anthony James "Tony O" Esposito was a Canadian-American professional ice hockey goaltender, who played 16 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL), 15 of those for the Chicago B…
Tony Esposito, Canadian-American ice hockey player, coach, and manager (died 2021)
Frans Thomas Koppelaar is a Dutch painter, who was born in The Hague, Netherlands.
Frans Koppelaar, Dutch painter
Hervé Jean-Pierre Villechaize was a French actor. He is best known for his roles as the evil henchman Nick Nack in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun and as Mr. R…
Hervé Villechaize, French actor (died 1993)
The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered ar…
The Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends
Operation Chastise, commonly known as the Dambusters Raid, was an attack on German dams carried out on the night of 16/17 May 1943 by 617 Squadron RAF Bomber Command, later called …
Operation Chastise is undertaken by RAF Bomber Command with specially equipped Avro Lancasters to destroy the Mohne, Sor
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's 1943 address to Congress took place May 19 at 12:30 p.m. EWT before a joint meeting of the United States Senate and House of Representati…
Winston Churchill's second wartime address to the U
The Luttra Woman is a skeletonised bog body discovered in a peat bog in Falbygden near Luttra, Sweden. The remains were found on 20 May 1943 by a peat cutter. The skull was well-pr…
The Luttra Woman, a bog body from the Early Neolithic period (radiocarbon-dated c