50 Fun Facts About 1942

Which physicist, born in Oxford on 8 January, arrived exactly 300 years to the day after Galileo died?

Stephen Hawking returned to Oxford as a student at 17, where he coxed a college rowing crew with such a daredevil streak, his coach recalled, that boats came back damaged.

Which college football bowl game was played in Durham, North Carolina on 1 January, moved over fears of a Japanese attack?

The Rose Bowl came to Duke's own stadium, enlarged with seating borrowed from two neighbouring colleges, after the Blue Devils offered to host; the unbeaten favourites then lost 20–16 to Oregon State.

Which film star, with the composer George Antheil, won a US patent on 11 August for frequency-hopping torpedo guidance?

Hedy Lamarr and Antheil, a composer who had written for player pianos, used a piano-roll mechanism to hop among 88 frequencies; similar technology reached Navy ships only in 1962.

Which actress, Clark Gable's wife, died on 16 January when her plane home from a war-bond tour hit a Nevada mountain?

Carole Lombard's TWA flight hit Potosi Mountain near Las Vegas after most of the beacons that guided night flights had been switched off for fear of Japanese bombers. Gable, inconsolable, joined the Army Air Forces soon afterwards.

Which BBC radio programme, devised by Roy Plomley, began on 29 January with comedian Vic Oliver as its first guest?

Desert Island Discs came to Plomley one evening at home in 1941, and he wrote to the BBC proposing it; his first castaway, Vic Oliver, happened to be Winston Churchill's son-in-law.

Which NHL team lost the first three games of the Stanley Cup Final to Detroit and then won the next four?

The Toronto Maple Leafs' revival came as Detroit lost coach Jack Adams, suspended indefinitely for going after the referee; no North American team had won a playoff series from 3–0 down before.

Which boxer, born in Louisville on 17 January, was given a birth name honouring a slave-owner turned abolitionist?

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., a name handed down from the Kentucky abolitionist his father was named after; in 1964 he renounced it as a 'slave name'.

Which 13th-birthday present, received on 12 June, did Anne Frank turn into her diary?

An autograph book bound in red-checkered cloth became the diary; it was no surprise, since her parents had let her pick it out herself in a bookshop.

Which Edward Hopper painting of a late-night diner, finished on 21 January, sold to a Chicago museum for $3,000?

Nighthawks was the name Hopper's wife Jo favoured; she posed for the woman at the counter while he modelled the seated men in a mirror, and the Art Institute of Chicago bought it within months.

Whose wartime blueprint for social insurance named Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness as 'giants'?

William Beveridge married his long-time colleague Janet Mair within weeks of publishing it; the report became the founding blueprint of Britain's post-war welfare state.

Which everyday item went on the ration in Britain in February, with one coupon buying a four-ounce bar?

Soap of every kind went on coupons, a four-ounce bar of hard soap or three ounces of toilet soap for each one; bread, by contrast, stayed off the ration until after the war.

Which Beatle was born on 18 June at Walton Hospital in Liverpool, where his mother had qualified as a nurse?

Paul McCartney's mother rode a bicycle to her patients and died when he was 14, a loss that later bonded him with John Lennon, whose own mother died in 1958. His father Jim led a jazz band.

Which guitarist, born in Seattle on 27 November as Johnny Allen, was given a new first name four years later?

Jimi Hendrix became James Marshall Hendrix in 1946, renamed in honour of his father Al and Al's late brother Leon Marshall; he was the eldest of his mother Lucille's five children.

Which future US president was born on 20 November at St Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania?

Joe Biden's family left Scranton for Delaware when he was ten, after his father's work dried up; he overcame a childhood stutter by memorising lines of Emerson and Yeats.

Which comedian, born on 24 November 'on the linoleum, three floors up' in Glasgow, was a shipyard welder before comedy?

Billy Connolly left the yards at the end of the 1960s to sing folk, sharing a stage in the Humblebums with Gerry Rafferty before the jokes between songs took over the act.

Which World Cup winner, born in Collyhurst on 18 May, jigged round Wembley in 1966 with the trophy and his false teeth?

Nobby Stiles's jig was broadcast everywhere, and thirty years on Baddiel and Skinner's 'Three Lions' closed its roll of English football memories with the words 'Nobby dancing'.

Which besieged Mediterranean base received the George Cross from King George VI in a letter dated 15 April?

Malta's governor replied 'By God's help Malta will not weaken but will endure until victory is won', and the George Cross was added to the island's flag in 1943, where it remains today.

Which brother of George VI died on 25 August when his Sunderland flying boat crashed on a Caithness hillside?

The Duke of Kent was one of 14 killed on Eagle's Rock near Dunbeath, on a flight bound for Iceland; only the rear gunner survived, and the dukedom passed to a son of six.

Which French port did 5,000 Canadians attack in Operation Jubilee on 19 August, suffering 68 per cent casualties?

Dieppe's raid was over in under ten hours; 3,367 of the Canadians were killed, wounded or captured, and the hard lessons about assaulting a defended port shaped the D-Day landings two years later.

Which Australian city was bombed on 19 February by four of the Japanese carriers that had struck Pearl Harbor?

Darwin took a heavier weight of bombs than Pearl Harbor had, though far fewer died, and it was the first of about 100 Japanese air raids on northern Australia; all four carriers were sunk at Midway in June.

What did Gandhi call the campaign he launched at Bombay's Gowalia Tank Maidan on 8 August with the cry 'Do or Die'?

Quit India saw almost the whole Congress leadership jailed without trial within hours of Gandhi's speech, yet the Viceroy still called the unrest 'by far the most serious rebellion since 1857'.

Which Latin American country declared war on Germany and Italy on 22 August after U-boats sank a string of its ships?

Brazil's expeditionary force, sent to Italy in 1944, called itself the Smoking Snakes, because sceptics had said a snake was likelier to smoke a pipe than the force was to reach the front.

Beneath the stands of which Chicago football ground did Fermi's pile go critical on 2 December?

Stagg Field's west stands hid a rackets court where Chicago Pile-1 produced the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction; the coded phone call afterwards announced that 'the Italian navigator' had landed in the New World.

Which four-engined RAF bomber, developed from the troublesome Manchester, flew its first mission in March?

The Avro Lancaster's debut by No. 44 Squadron was laying mines in the Heligoland Bight; Roy Chadwick's redesign had replaced the Manchester's two unreliable Vulture engines with four Rolls-Royce Merlins.

Which Warner Bros. bird appeared, pink and naked, in Bob Clampett's short 'A Tale of Two Kitties'?

Tweety's first foes, Babbit and Catstello, were based on Abbott and Costello, and the bird began as an aggressive wild nestling before softening into the familiar yellow canary.

Which William Wyler film about an English family at war did Roosevelt order rushed into cinemas as propaganda?

Mrs. Miniver was the year's highest-grossing film and the first centred on the Second World War to win Best Picture, one of its six Oscars. Goebbels wrote that its propaganda had 'up to now only been dreamed of'.

Which gangster-film star won the Best Actor Oscar playing the song-and-dance man George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy?

James Cagney insisted Fred Astaire had been offered the part first, though the producer said he had never considered anyone else. In the film Cagney's sister Jeanne played Cohan's sister.

Which Enid Blyton series began with Julian, Dick, Anne and George exploring a wreck off Kirrin with Timmy the dog?

The Famous Five's first adventure, published that year, had the cousins find a map of Kirrin Castle aboard the wreck of George's great-great-great-grandfather's ship. Their usual Polzeath holiday had fallen through.

Which writer first set out his Three Laws of Robotics in 'Runaround', published in Astounding Science-Fiction in March?

Isaac Asimov always credited his editor, John W. Campbell, with spelling the laws out in a 1940 conversation; Campbell insisted they were already in Asimov's head and only needed stating.

Which Vera Lynn song was written by two Americans, one perhaps unaware that its bird is unknown in Britain?

The White Cliffs of Dover was written in 1941, while the United States was still neutral, by Walter Kent and lyricist Nat Burton; Vera Lynn's recording the next year made it a British wartime standard.

Whose Seventh Symphony was played in besieged Leningrad on 9 August by musicians kept going on extra rations?

Dmitri Shostakovich's symphony was broadcast over loudspeakers across the city and towards the German lines as psychological warfare; the Leningrad Radio Orchestra under Karl Eliasberg was the only symphonic ensemble left.

Which left fielder won the Triple Crown yet lost the MVP vote to New York's Joe Gordon?

Ted Williams felt he deserved a 'little more consideration' for the Triple Crown and blamed his trouble with the draft board; he did win the MVP twice, and retired a six-time batting champion and two-time Triple Crown winner.

Which guidebook series named the Luftwaffe's spring raids on Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury?

The Baedeker raids took their name from a German spokesman's vow to bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the guide, in retaliation for the RAF's destruction of Lübeck; Bath's Assembly Rooms were gutted.

In which Bette Davis film does Paul Henreid light two cigarettes at once and pass one to her?

Now, Voyager's stars long claimed the cigarette moment came out of rehearsals, but Casey Robinson's script drafts show he wrote it; Davis also insisted on re-testing Henreid without the brilliantined hair that made him look like Valentino.

Which Pledge of Allegiance gesture did Congress replace on 22 December with the right hand over the heart?

The Bellamy salute, an arm extended towards the flag since 1892, had come to look uncomfortably like the fascist salutes of Italy and Germany; Congress amended the Flag Code it had only passed that June.

Which charity was founded by Quakers, activists and academics to get food through the blockade to occupied Greece?

Oxfam is short for the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, which first met in a church library and lobbied Britain's own government to let food through the Allied naval blockade.

Which victory did Churchill tell the Lord Mayor's luncheon on 10 November was 'perhaps the end of the beginning'?

El Alamein moved General Alexander to tell Churchill to 'Ring out the bells'; at the Mansion House he cautioned that it was 'not the end' and 'not even the beginning of the end'.

Which port's Normandie dry dock did the explosive-packed destroyer HMS Campbeltown ram on 28 March?

St Nazaire had the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast big enough for Germany's largest battleship; Campbeltown's hidden charges went off at noon, hours after the ramming, and kept it out of use until 1948.

Which liner, carrying some 10,000 American troops, sliced the escorting cruiser HMS Curacoa in two on 2 October?

RMS Queen Mary kept zig-zagging while Curacoa's captain held a straight course, each expecting the other to give way; forbidden to stop for fear of U-boats, the liner sailed on, and more than 330 of the cruiser's men died.

What slogan did Stalin's Order No. 227 of 28 July carry, alongside the creation of penal battalions?

'Not one step back!' ordered each front to form penal battalions for officers accused of indiscipline and send them to the most dangerous sectors; more than 400,000 Red Army personnel were sentenced to such units by 1945.

Which bandleader's 'Der Fuehrer's Face' followed every 'Heil' with a derisive raspberry and was a huge late-year hit?

Spike Jones's record made its raspberries with a rubber razzer he called the 'birdaphone'; the tune was written for a Donald Duck cartoon, but his record reached the public before the film did.

Which Val Lewton horror film introduced the 'bus', a false-alarm jump scare that still carries his name?

Cat People's editor Mark Robson cut a menacing silence against the sudden hiss of a bus's air brakes, a device Lewton reused in later films; Simone Simon starred as the woman who fears her own transformation.

Which Austrian author, once a resident of Bath, died with his wife Lotte in Petrópolis, near Rio, on 22 February?

Stefan Zweig and Lotte were found the next day, dead of a barbiturate overdose, after he had grown despairing at Europe's future; his memoir of the vanished Habsburg world, The World of Yesterday, came out that year.

Fear of which German battleship made the Admiralty scatter Arctic convoy PQ 17 on 4 July, dooming most of its ships?

Tirpitz was believed in London to be closing in, so the escorts were pulled away and the merchantmen told to scatter; alone, most of them were picked off by U-boats and aircraft on the way to Arkhangelsk.

Which cruiser, sunk in the Barents Sea in May with 4.5 tons of Soviet gold aboard, had the bullion salvaged in 1981?

HMS Edinburgh's 465 ingots were part-payment by the USSR for war supplies; Keith Jessop's divers brought up 431 bars in 1981 and 29 more in 1986, leaving just five on the seabed.

Which English engineer, a pioneer of stereo sound, died on 7 June when a Halifax testing H2S radar crashed?

Alan Blumlein, 38, died with everyone aboard on a secret trial of the H2S set; he had hit on stereo in 1931 at the cinema, irked that an actor's voice stayed put as the actor crossed the screen.

Which Swedish runner set a mile world record in July and became the first man under 14 minutes for 5,000 metres?

Gunder Hägg's 4:06.2 mile was equalled by his rival Arne Andersson within the month; between them the two Swedes, racing in a neutral country, dragged the record down towards four minutes while the rest of the world was at war.

Which German sabotage mission landed eight agents by U-boat in New York and Florida in June, ending with six executions?

Operation Pastorius unravelled when its leader George Dasch phoned the FBI under the name 'Pastorius'; the first party had buried its explosives in the sand at Amagansett and taken the train into Manhattan.

Which pioneering Egyptologist died in Jerusalem in July, having bequeathed his head to the Royal College of Surgeons?

Flinders Petrie's body lies in the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion while his head went to London; a popular legend has Lady Petrie carrying it home in a hat box after the war.

Which Liberty ship was launched on 12 November just 4 days, 15 hours and 29 minutes after her keel was laid?

SS Robert E. Peary's record was a propaganda exercise, meant to show how fast American yards could build; she was delivered three days later, 7 days, 14 hours and 32 minutes after the keel went down.