50 Fun Facts About 1938

Who directed the 1938 Halloween radio play that convinced some listeners Martians had landed in New Jersey?

Orson Welles staged H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds as news bulletins interrupting a programme of dance music. How far the panic really spread is still disputed.

Which superhero, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, first appeared in Action Comics No. 1 in 1938?

Superman earned his two creators just $130 for the 13-page story, at $10 a page. The comic itself sold for 10 cents.

Which racehorse beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral by four lengths in a 1938 two-horse special at Pimlico?

Seabiscuit drew an estimated 40,000 fans to the Baltimore track while 40 million more listened on the radio. He was voted American Horse of the Year for 1938.

Douglas Corrigan earned the nickname Wrong Way in 1938 by landing in which country instead of California?

Ireland was the very place he had been refused permission to fly to, so few believed his tale of a misread compass. His New York ticker-tape parade outdrew Lindbergh's.

Which European leader did Time magazine name its Man of the Year for 1938, judging impact rather than merit?

Adolf Hitler was picked after redrawing the map of central Europe within a single year. Time handed the same title to Joseph Stalin for 1939, and again for 1942.

Which disease did President Franklin Roosevelt found the March of Dimes to fight in January 1938?

Polio was the target, and comedian Eddie Cantor coined the name as a pun on the newsreel The March of Time. One January morning brought the White House 30,000 letters holding dimes.

Nescafé instant coffee went on sale in 1938 as a way to use up which country's huge surplus of beans?

Brazil was left with mountains of unsold coffee after prices collapsed in the 1929 crash. Nestlé spent years on the problem before launching the powder in Switzerland.

Which boxer beat Germany's Max Schmeling in just over two minutes in their 1938 rematch at Yankee Stadium?

Joe Louis was avenging a 1936 knockout by Schmeling in the same ballpark. Schmeling had arrived with a Nazi publicist who claimed a Black man could not beat him.

Which country did Nazi Germany annex in March 1938 in a takeover known as the Anschluss?

Austria was absorbed on 12 March 1938 without a fight. A plebiscite held under Nazi control a month later claimed 99.7% approval.

Which American tycoon flew around the world in a record 91 hours in July 1938, halving Wiley Post's time?

Howard Hughes flew a twin-engine Lockheed 14 Super Electra with a crew of four. New York gave him a ticker-tape parade, and the flight won his team the 1938 Collier Trophy.

In which German city did Neville Chamberlain sign the September 1938 pact giving away Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland?

Munich hosted the deal, but the Czechoslovaks were not invited to the conference that carved up their country. Many of them know it as the Munich Betrayal.

Britain's Kindertransport rescue of Jewish children began three weeks after which November 1938 pogrom in Germany?

Kristallnacht is named for the broken glass that littered the streets after Jewish-owned shops and synagogues were smashed. The first 196 children landed at Harwich on 2 December.

In which country did Dammam No. 7, nicknamed Prosperity Well, strike commercial oil in March 1938?

Saudi Arabia had watched six earlier wells at the site fail before this one came in. The California company that held the drilling concession later grew into Saudi Aramco.

Which country's president Lázaro Cárdenas seized every foreign-owned oil company in March 1938?

Mexico folded the seized firms into a state-owned company, Petróleos Mexicanos, better known as Pemex. Cárdenas announced the decree in a radio speech to the nation.

Which practice did Franklin Roosevelt's 1938 wages-and-hours law restrict, alongside creating a federal minimum wage?

Child labor of the kind the law called oppressive was barred by the same act that set time-and-a-half for work beyond forty hours a week. Roosevelt signed it on June 25, 1938.

Which part of the United States was devastated by a deadly hurricane in September 1938?

New England took the full force after the storm crossed Long Island as a Category 3 hurricane on September 21. It killed an estimated 682 people and damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes.

Which DuPont material did chemist Roy Plunkett discover by accident in 1938 while trying to make a new refrigerant?

Teflon turned up as a whitish powder inside a gas cylinder that should have been full. The trademark was registered in 1945, and the non-stick frying pan came later still.

Which writing instrument did journalist László Bíró patent in 1938 after noticing how quickly newspaper ink dried?

The ballpoint pen rolls thick ink onto paper with a tiny ball turning in a socket, a tip Bíró developed with his chemist brother György. The brothers later settled in Argentina.

Which Korean conglomerate began in 1938 as a small trading company dealing in dried fish, groceries and noodles?

Samsung means three stars in Korean. Founder Lee Byung-chul set the firm up under Japanese rule, and it did not enter the electronics industry until the late 1960s.

Which office machine grew out of Chester Carlson's 1938 experiment with sulfur, a zinc plate and a glass slide?

The photocopier began with a slide reading 10.-22.-38 ASTORIA, the date and place of the first xerographic copy. Carlson celebrated by buying his assistant a modest lunch.

Which process did Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann first prove in Berlin in December 1938 by bombarding uranium?

Nuclear fission was explained in theory weeks later by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch. Meitner had fled Germany only that July and learned of Hahn's result by letter in Sweden.

Which drug did Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesise in 1938, five years before stumbling on its effects?

LSD revealed its psychedelic power only in 1943, when Hofmann accidentally took some himself. The drug is derived from ergot, a fungus.

Which fish, thought extinct for 66 million years, was found in a fisherman's catch off South Africa in December 1938?

The coelacanth was spotted by museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, and the living genus, Latimeria, is named after her. It became the textbook example of a living fossil.

Which small car designed by Ferdinand Porsche was first built in Germany in 1938 and stayed in production until 2003?

The VW Beetle was conceived as a cheap, simple car for Germany's new autobahn network. With 21.5 million built, it outsold even the Ford Model T.

Which physicist collected the 1938 Nobel Prize in Stockholm, then sailed to New York to escape Mussolini's racial laws?

Enrico Fermi left to protect his Jewish wife, Laura. Four years later his team in Chicago built the first reactor to sustain a chain reaction.

Which household item, sold from February 1938, was the first product to use DuPont's nylon in place of animal hair?

The toothbrush had relied on boar bristles until nylon yarn replaced them. Nylon stockings, the product that made the fibre famous, did not reach shops nationwide until 1940.

Which British locomotive designed by Nigel Gresley set a world speed record for steam of 126 mph in July 1938?

Mallard was one of a batch of A4 engines named after birds, a nod to Gresley's fondness for breeding wild birds. No steam locomotive has gone faster since.

Which British comic from DC Thomson of Dundee published its first issue in July 1938 with Big Eggo on the cover?

The Beano went on to become the world's longest-running weekly comic. Its first cover star, an ostrich, was originally named Oswald.

Which Yorkshire batsman scored a record 364 against Australia in the final Test at The Oval in August 1938?

Len Hutton was playing only his sixth Test when he passed Don Bradman's Ashes record of 334. His 364 stood as the highest Test innings for nearly 20 years.

Which Disney film went on general US release in February 1938 and became the year's highest-grossing picture?

Snow White earned Walt Disney a one-off honorary Oscar the following year: one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones.

Which swashbuckling star played the title outlaw opposite Olivia de Havilland in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood?

Errol Flynn inherited the part after James Cagney, the original choice, walked out on his Warner Bros. contract. The Technicolor film won three Oscars, including one for its score.

In the 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, what kind of animal is Baby?

A leopard named Baby drags Grant's paleontologist and Hepburn's scatterbrained heiress into chaos. Shooting kept stalling because the two stars could not stop laughing.

Which director won a third Best Director Oscar in five years for the 1938 comedy You Can't Take It with You?

Frank Capra's film also took Best Picture, with James Stewart, Jean Arthur and Lionel Barrymore in the cast. His earlier wins came for It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

Which actress won her second Best Actress Oscar as Southern belle Julie Marsden in 1938's Jezebel?

Bette Davis had won her first for Dangerous three years earlier. The Jezebel role is often described as her consolation for missing out on Scarlett O'Hara.

Which 1938 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, set largely aboard a train, caught Hollywood's attention before his move there?

The Lady Vanishes stars Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave as passengers hunting for a missing travelling companion. It is based on the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins.

Which Nobel-winning playwright also won an Oscar for the screenplay of the 1938 film of his play Pygmalion?

George Bernard Shaw became the first person to hold both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar, and he called the Hollywood award an insult. He had adapted his own 1913 play for the screen.

Which singer introduced Irving Berlin's God Bless America on her Armistice Day radio broadcast in 1938?

Kate Smith made it her signature song. Berlin had written it back in 1918 and revised it twenty years later as a peace song.

Which clarinet-playing bandleader took swing into New York's Carnegie Hall for a landmark concert in January 1938?

Benny Goodman took the booking at his publicist's suggestion, and one critic later called the night jazz's coming-out party. The live recording was not released until 1950.

Which singer's breakthrough hit with the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1938 was A-Tisket, A-Tasket, based on a nursery rhyme?

Ella Fitzgerald co-wrote the jazz version herself with arranger Al Feldman. It reached number one on Your Hit Parade, one of the biggest records of the pre-chart era.

Which country retained football's World Cup in 1938, beating Hungary 4–2 in the final in host nation France?

Italy won both the 1934 and 1938 tournaments under the same coach, Vittorio Pozzo. Because of the war, the World Cup was not played again until 1950.

Which American became the first tennis player to win all four Grand Slam singles titles in one year, in 1938?

Don Budge did not lose a set at Wimbledon that summer, where he also won the doubles and mixed doubles. He turned professional that October.

Johnny Vander Meer pitched no-hitters in two consecutive starts in June 1938 for which National League team?

The Cincinnati Reds left-hander threw the second one four days after the first, in the first night game ever played at Ebbets Field. No other major-league pitcher has matched the feat.

Which boxer became the first to hold world titles in three weight divisions at once by adding two belts in 1938?

Henry Armstrong, already featherweight champion, took the welterweight title from Barney Ross that May. In August he dropped down to beat lightweight champion Lou Ambers on a split decision.

Which waterway's levees did Chinese forces deliberately breach in June 1938 to block the advancing Japanese army?

The Yellow River was turned loose at Huayuankou in Henan as a scorched-earth line of defence. The man-made flood was not brought back under control until 1947.

Which author of The Good Earth became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938?

Pearl S. Buck grew up in China as the daughter of missionaries, and the Nobel committee praised her epic descriptions of peasant life there.

Which 1938 Daphne du Maurier novel follows a nameless bride haunted by her husband's first wife at Manderley?

Rebecca has never gone out of print and sold 2.8 million copies between 1938 and 1965. Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film of it won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Which Mississippi blues guitarist, said in legend to have sold his soul at a crossroads, died aged 27 in August 1938?

Robert Johnson was wanted for a Carnegie Hall concert later that year, but producer John Hammond went looking and found he had recently died.

Which United Nations Secretary-General, born in April 1938, shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN itself?

Kofi Annan was born in Kumasi, in what was then the Gold Coast and is now Ghana. He led the organisation for two terms, from 1997 to 2006.

Which country singer, born in Houston in August 1938, scored his signature hit forty years later with The Gambler?

Kenny Rogers turned the song into a screen persona as well, playing the Gambler in a run of television films from 1980. He was the fourth of eight children.

Which playwright won a Pulitzer Prize for Our Town, the 1938 drama set in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire?

Thornton Wilder wanted it performed on a mostly bare stage with almost no props, guided by a Stage Manager who talks to the audience. It was one of his three Pulitzer Prizes.