Explore 5072 historical events from 1940–1949.
Aung San was a Burmese politician, independence activist and revolutionary. He was instrumental in Myanmar's struggle for independence from British rule, but he was assassinated ju…
Aung San, Burmese general and politician (born 1915)
Lyuh Woon-hyung, also known by his art name Mongyang, was a Korean independence activist and reunification activist.
Lyuh Woon-hyung, South Korean politician (born 1886)
Edith Agnes Kathleen Young, Baroness Kennet, FRBS was a British sculptor. Trained in London and Paris, Scott was a prolific sculptor, notably of portrait heads and busts and also o…
Kathleen Scott, English sculptor (born 1878)
Sir Joseph Cook was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the sixth prime minister of Australia from 1913 to 1914. He held office as the leader of the Liberal P…
Joseph Cook, English-Australian miner and politician, 6th Prime Minister of Australia (born 1860)
Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti was an Italian-French automobile designer and manufacturer. He received French citizenship in 1946 and is remembered as the founder and proprietor of th…
Ettore Bugatti, Italian-French engineer and businessman, founded Bugatti (born 1881)
Gunnar Sommerfeldt was a Danish actor and film maker.
Gunnar Sommerfeldt, Danish actor and director (born 1890)
Frederick Russell Burnham was an American scout and world-traveling adventurer. He is known for his service to the British South Africa Company and to the British Army in colonial …
Frederick Russell Burnham, American soldier and adventurer (born 1861)
Fiorello Henry La Guardia was an American attorney and politician who served as the 100th mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1946. He previously represented New York in the U.S. H…
Fiorello H. La Guardia, American lawyer and politician, 99th Mayor of New York City (born 1882)
Jantina "Tine" Tammes was a Dutch botanist and geneticist and the first professor of genetics in the Netherlands.
Jantina Tammes, Dutch biologist, geneticist, and academic (born 1871)
Henry DeWitt Carey II was an American actor and one of silent film's earliest superstars, usually cast as a Western hero. One of his best-known performances is as the president of …
Harry Carey, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1878)
Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin was an American historian known as an authority on U.S. Constitutional history.
Andrew C. McLaughlin, American historian and author (born 1861)
Hugh John Lofting was an English-American writer, trained as a civil engineer, who created the classic children's literature character Doctor Dolittle. The fictional physician talk…
Hugh Lofting, English-American author and poet (born 1886)
Bernard Mannes Baruch was an American financier and statesman.
American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch first described the post–World War II tensions between the So
Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian brigand, who rose to prominence in the disorder that followed the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. In September of that year, Giuliano became an…
Sicilian separatist Salvatore Giuliano and his gang fired into a crowd of May Day marchers near Piana degli Albanesi, Si
The Constitution of Japan is the supreme law of Japan. Written primarily by American civilian officials during the occupation of Japan after World War II, it was adopted on 3 Novem…
A new Constitution of Japan went into effect, providing for a parliamentary system of government, guaranteeing certain f
Chanel No. 5 is the first perfume launched by French couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in 1921. The scent formula for the fragrance was compounded by French-Russian chemist and per…
After renegotiating a contract with the makers of her signature perfume Chanel No
The National Diet is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives, and an upper house, the House of Councillors. Both ho…
The first session of the National Diet opened in Tokyo, Japan
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636, and named Harvard College in 1639 in honor of its first …
At a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall called for economic aid to war-torn
Informally or generally, a mafia is any of various criminal organizations that include, or bear a strong similarity to, the original Sicilian Mafia, the Italian-American Mafia, or…
A Mafia hitman murdered gangster Bugsy Siegel, one of the driving forces in the development of the Las Vegas Strip, in B
Debris found by a rancher in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, has become the basis for UFO conspiracy theories alleging that the United States military recovered a crashed extraterre…
Following reports of the capture of a "flying disc" by U.S. Army Air Forces personnel near Roswell, New Mexico, the…
On 2 August 1947, Star Dust, a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into Mount Tupu…
Star Dust, a British South American Airways airliner, crashed into Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes; its…
Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat, and statesman who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. …
Jawaharlal Nehru (pictured) took office as the first prime minister of India, a post he held for 16 years.
Independence Day is Syria's National Day commemorating the evacuation of the last French soldier at the end of the French mandate of Syria on 17 April 1946 after Syria's proclamati…
The last French troops are withdrawn from Syria
The Pilbara strike was a landmark strike by Indigenous Australian pastoral workers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The strike lasted between 1946 and 1949, and was th…
Start of three-year Pilbara strike of Indigenous Australians