50 Fun Facts About 1939

Which American picnic food did President Roosevelt serve King George VI at his Hyde Park estate in June 1939?

Hot dogs shared the table with smoked turkey and strawberry shortcake. The royal couple had toured the New York World's Fair only the day before.

Which American holiday did President Roosevelt move a week earlier in 1939 to lengthen the Christmas shopping season?

Thanksgiving ended up on two dates: 23 states took the new one, 22 kept the old and critics mocked the change as Franksgiving. Congress fixed the fourth Thursday of November in 1941.

Which superhero, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, debuted in the 27th issue of Detective Comics in 1939?

Batman gained his cowl, cape, gloves and darker costume at Finger's suggestion. Detective Comics went on to become the longest-running comic book in the United States.

Which Christmas character first appeared in a 1939 giveaway booklet that Robert L. May wrote for Montgomery Ward?

Rudolph was a money-saver: Montgomery Ward had been buying Christmas booklets to give away and decided to create its own. It handed out 2.4 million copies in the first year.

Which actress became the first African American to win an Oscar, for playing Mammy in 1939's Gone with the Wind?

Hattie McDaniel accepted the award at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where she was seated at a segregated table at the side of the room.

Which New York Yankees first baseman ended his streak of 2,130 consecutive games in May 1939, shortly before retiring?

Lou Gehrig's record stood for 56 years, until Cal Ripken Jr. passed it in 1995. In June 1939 he was diagnosed with ALS, the illness many Americans still know by his name.

Which DuPont synthetic fiber went on show as women's stockings at the 1939 New York World's Fair?

Nylon had first been sold a year earlier as toothbrush bristles. When the stockings reached shops across America in 1940, 64 million pairs sold in the first year.

Which physicist signed an August 1939 letter warning President Roosevelt that Germany might build an atomic bomb?

Albert Einstein only signed the letter, which was written by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard. Roosevelt responded by setting up the Advisory Committee on Uranium.

Which singer, later dubbed the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll, was born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee in November 1939?

Tina Turner grew up in the rural community of Nutbush, the place behind the Ike & Tina Turner hit Nutbush City Limits.

Which country did Germany invade on 1 September 1939, the attack that began the Second World War in Europe?

Poland was attacked again sixteen days later, when the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Britain and France had declared war on Germany on 3 September.

Which British prime minister told the nation by radio on 3 September 1939 that it was at war with Germany?

Chamberlain led Britain through only the first eight months of the war, resigning on 10 May 1940. He died of cancer six months after leaving office.

Which Nordic country did the Soviet Union invade on 30 November 1939, starting the three-month Winter War?

Finland gave up 9% of its territory in the peace treaty of March 1940 but kept its independence. The attack got the Soviet Union expelled from the League of Nations.

Which general declared victory in the Spanish Civil War on 1 April 1939 after his forces entered Madrid?

Francisco Franco went on to rule Spain for 36 years, until his death in 1975 at the age of 82.

Which Southeast Asian kingdom, known to the world as Siam, officially changed its name in June 1939?

Thailand had become a constitutional monarchy only seven years earlier, when the revolution of 1932 ended absolute royal rule.

Which actress, sixteen during filming, played Dorothy Gale in the 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz?

Judy Garland's work in 1939 brought her the only Academy Award of her career, a Juvenile Award for The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms.

Which B-movie actor did the director of the 1939 Western Stagecoach insist on casting as the Ringo Kid?

John Wayne was one reason several studios turned the project down, but director John Ford held firm. Stagecoach was also the first of many Westerns Ford shot in Monument Valley.

Which actor played the naive senator who stages a filibuster in Frank Capra's 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?

James Stewart took a part first meant for Gary Cooper: the film was planned as a sequel called Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington. It won him the New York Film Critics Circle Award.

Which fictional detective did Basil Rathbone first play in 1939, beginning a run of fourteen films with Nigel Bruce?

Sherlock Holmes first appeared with Rathbone in The Hound of the Baskervilles, released by 20th Century Fox. Nigel Bruce played Dr. Watson throughout the series, which ran until 1946.

Which American aviator was declared legally dead in January 1939, eighteen months after vanishing over the Pacific?

Amelia Earhart's husband, George Putnam, asked a Los Angeles court to waive the usual seven-year wait so he could manage her finances. She had been trying to fly around the world.

In which Southern city did Gone with the Wind have its premiere in December 1939, drawing a crowd of about 300,000?

Atlanta's premiere capped three days of festivities, and Georgia's governor declared the day a state holiday. The film's Black cast members were kept away by Jim Crow laws.

Which jazz singer recorded the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit for the small Commodore label in April 1939?

Billie Holiday turned to Commodore because her producers at Columbia found the subject too sensitive. She was introduced to the song by the owner of Café Society, an integrated New York nightclub.

Which bandleader released his signature tune Moonlight Serenade in May 1939 and recorded In the Mood the same year?

Glenn Miller led the best-selling recording band of the years 1939 to 1942. His 1939 recording of In the Mood was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1983.

Which Hoboken-born singer joined the Harry James band in 1939 and released his first commercial record that July?

Frank Sinatra signed with Columbia Records four years later and became the idol of the teenage fans known as bobby soxers.

Which author's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family from Dust Bowl Oklahoma to California?

John Steinbeck saw the novel publicly banned and burned by citizens, yet it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was cited again when he received the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Which crime writer set her 1939 mystery And Then There Were None on an isolated island off the Devon coast?

Agatha Christie's island puzzle became the world's best-selling mystery novel, with more than 100 million copies sold.

Which 1939 picture book by Ludwig Bemelmans follows a girl at a Paris boarding school who has her appendix removed?

Madeline was the first of six books by Bemelmans, a series his grandson later extended to 17.

Which village in upstate New York became home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, dedicated in June 1939?

Cooperstown owed the honor to a myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball there in the 1830s. The building was paid for by Stephen Clark, an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune.

Which type of aircraft did Igor Sikorsky test fly in September 1939 in the shape of his experimental VS-300?

Helicopter flight began cautiously: the VS-300 stayed tethered by cables that day, and its first free flight came in May 1940.

Which co-founder of the comedy troupe Monty Python was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, in October 1939?

John Cleese might have been John Cheese: his father thought the family surname embarrassing and changed it when he enlisted in the Army during the First World War.

Which future director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now was born in Detroit, Michigan, in April 1939?

Francis Ford Coppola owes his middle name to his birthplace, Henry Ford Hospital. His father Carmine was a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Which Motown singer, later famous for the album What's Going On, was born in Washington, D.C., in April 1939?

Marvin Gaye was born Marvin Gay Jr., the son of a church minister, and added the final e to his surname soon after releasing his first single.

Which English actor, later cast as both Gandalf and Magneto, was born in Burnley, Lancashire, in May 1939?

Ian McKellen was offered the wizard while he was filming the first X-Men film in 1999, so his two best-known screen roles arrived almost together.

Which Canadian author of the dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale was born in Ottawa in November 1939?

Margaret Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of northern Quebec, where her father, an entomologist, studied forest insects.

Which American fashion designer was born with the surname Lifshitz in the Bronx, New York, in October 1939?

Ralph Lauren changed his surname at 16 after being bullied at school. He launched his company in 1967 with a line of men's ties.

Which publisher, founded in 1939 as Timely, launched with a comic starring the Human Torch that sold out 80,000 copies?

Marvel Comics was the title of that first issue, cover-dated October 1939, which also introduced Namor the Sub-Mariner. A second printing sold approximately 800,000 copies.

Which Austrian thinker died in September 1939, a year after leaving Nazi-ruled Vienna to settle in Hampstead, London?

Sigmund Freud had been determined to stay in Vienna even after the Anschluss. Princess Marie Bonaparte, a wealthy French follower, put up the money that let him leave.

Which Soviet foreign minister signed the August 1939 non-aggression pact with Germany's Joachim von Ribbentrop?

Molotov had been foreign minister for only three months, having replaced the dismissed Maxim Litvinov in May 1939. A secret protocol split Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.

Which Balkan kingdom did Mussolini's Italy invade in April 1939, sending its ruler King Zog into exile in Greece?

Albania was rapidly occupied, and its parliament offered the crown to Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III. He had called the plan an unnecessary risk for an almost negligible gain.

At which Washington landmark did contralto Marian Anderson sing to more than 75,000 people on Easter Sunday 1939?

The Lincoln Memorial steps became her stage after the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from Constitution Hall. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the group in the furor.

Which actor quit the Tin Man role in 1939's The Wizard of Oz after his aluminum-dust makeup made him seriously ill?

Buddy Ebsen had first been cast as the Scarecrow and swapped parts with Ray Bolger. His replacement, Jack Haley, wore a safer aluminum paste.

Which director is credited on both The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, released months apart in 1939?

Victor Fleming took over the Civil War epic after its original director, George Cukor, was fired shortly after filming began. It won him the Academy Award for Best Director.

Which British actor beat Clark Gable to the Best Actor Oscar for playing a schoolmaster in 1939's Goodbye, Mr. Chips?

Robert Donat played Mr. Chipping opposite Greer Garson. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and faced Gone with the Wind in every one of those categories.

Which Swedish-born star played her first comedy role as a stern Soviet envoy in Ernst Lubitsch's 1939 film Ninotchka?

Greta Garbo earned her final Best Actress nomination for the part. Ninotchka turned out to be the penultimate film of her career.

Which private detective made his first appearance in Raymond Chandler's 1939 crime novel The Big Sleep?

Philip Marlowe begins the case at the Los Angeles home of the wealthy, elderly General Sternwood. Humphrey Bogart played him in the 1946 film version.

Which Irish novelist published Finnegans Wake in May 1939 after seventeen years of composition?

James Joyce kept the title secret until publication day. Earlier installments, which began appearing in 1924, had gone out under the name Work in Progress.

Which poet's 1939 collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats?

T. S. Eliot first wrote the poems in letters to his godchildren, signing them with his assumed name, Old Possum. He drew the cover illustrations for the first edition himself.

Which Boston Red Sox rookie drove in 145 runs in 1939, becoming the first rookie to lead his league in RBIs?

Ted Williams spent his entire 19-year career with the Red Sox, although military service in World War II and the Korean War interrupted it twice.

Which university won the first NCAA basketball tournament in March 1939, beating Ohio State 46–33 in the final?

Oregon took the title in a gymnasium on Northwestern University's campus in Evanston, Illinois. The school did not reach another Final Four until 2017.

Which English club won the 1939 FA Cup final 4–1 and then kept the trophy for seven years because of the war?

Portsmouth beat Wolverhampton Wanderers at Wembley, a win manager Jack Tinn put down to his lucky spats. The cup was suspended during the war, so the next final came in 1946.

Which pope, born Eugenio Pacelli, was elected on his 63rd birthday in March 1939 after only three ballots?

Pius XII was the first Secretary of State to be elected pope since the 17th century, and the conclave needed just one day of deliberation.