Timeline 1938
Return to home
1938 Jan 1, In
Russia Alexander Gelver, 24, an American from Oshkosh, Wis., was
executed in a Stalinist purge.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.A26)
1938 Jan 3, The first broadcast
of Woman in White was presented on the NBC Red network. The program
remained on radio for 10 years and was one of the first to feature
real, honest-to-goodness doctors and nurses in leading roles.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1938 Jan 3, The March of Dimes
was established on this day in 1938 - by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt - to fight poliomyelitis (Roosevelt himself was afflicted
with polio). The organization was originally called the National
Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (as the disease was commonly
known).
(AP, 1/3/98)(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1938 Jan 5, Juan Carlos I, King
of Spain, was born.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1938 Jan 5-1938 Apr 1, The
Pumpkin Papers consist of sixty-five pages of retyped secret State
Department documents, four pages in Alger Hiss's own handwriting of
copied State Department cables, and five rolls of developed and
undeveloped 35 mm film all dating from this period. They played a
role in the conviction of Alger Hiss on Jan 21, 1950.
(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/pumpkinp.html)
1938 Jan 6, A bronze memorial
statue of Henry Hudson was erected in Bronx.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1938 Jan 10, Eduard van Beinum
became the 1st conductor of Amsterdam Concert orchestra.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1938 Jan 12, Austria recognized
the Franco government in Spain.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1938 Jan 16, The Benny Goodman
Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert featured an outstanding solo by
saxophonist Lester Young. Goodman performed at Carnegie Hall along
with Count Basie, Harry James, Lester Young, Gene Krupa, Johnny
Hodges, Lionel Hampton and 17 others. The concert was recorded and
in 2000 Columbia issued a remastered edition of the performance.
(WSJ, 8/29/96, A11)(WSJ, 1/12/00, p.A20)
1938 Jan 19, GM began mass
production of diesel engines.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1938 Jan 22, Thornton Wilder's
play "Our Town," a portrait of small-town life in Grover's Corners,
NH, was performed publicly for the first time, in Princeton, N.J. It
opened on Broadway on Feb 4.
(AP, 2/4/97)(AP, 1/22/98)
1938 Jan 31, James G. Watt, US
Secretary of Interior (1981-83), was born in Colorado.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1938 Feb 4, The Thornton Wilder
play "Our Town" opened on Broadway. [see Jan 22]
(AP, 2/4/97)
1938 Feb 4, Hitler seized
control of German army and put Nazis in key posts.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1938 Feb 5, John Guare,
playwright, was born. His work included "The House of Blue Leaves."
(HN, 2/5/01)
1938 Feb 11, The 4th Lithuanian
parliament accepted Lithuania’s 3rd Constitution, which was
proclaimed May 12, 1938. The Constitution reduced the powers of the
Seimas. It could only consider the draft laws and give
recommendations to the president.
(DrEE, 10/5/96, p.5)(LHC, 2/11/03)
1938 Feb 11, In Romania Carol
II, who had banned political parties and established a royal
dictatorship, chose Miron Cristea (1868-1939) to be the Prime
Minister, a position from which he served for about a year.
Patriarch Miron Cristea, who led the Romanian Orthodox Church from
1925 to 1939, was responsible for revising the citizenship law,
stripping about 225,000 Jews, or 37% of the Jewish population, of
their Romanian citizenship.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miron_Cristea)(AP,
8/3/10)
1938 Feb 12, Japan refused to
reveal naval data requested by the U.S. and Britain.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1938 Feb 13, Oliver Reed, actor
(Big Sleep), was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1938 Feb 16, The US Federal
Crop Insurance program was authorized.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1938 Feb 17, The first Baird
color TV was demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London. [see
Dec 20]
(HN, 2/17/01)(MC, 2/17/02)
1938 Feb 20, Anthony Eden
(1897-1977) resigned as British foreign secretary in a dispute with
PM Neville Chamberlain. He said Chamberlain was appeasing Germany.
(www.bartleby.com/67/1852.html)
1938 Feb 20, Hitler demanded
self-determination for Germans in Austria and Czechoslovakia. As
Hitler’s quest for Lebensraum ("living space") expanded into
Czechoslovakia, thousands of Czechoslovakian soldiers and airmen
escaped to participate in the liberation of their country.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1938 Feb 23, Twelve Chinese
fighter planes dropped bombs on Japan. The China Air Task Force was
a scrappy but beleaguered fill-in that fought both the Japanese and
supplied shortcomings until the Fourteenth Air Force was formed.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1938 Feb 24, The first nylon
products, toothbrushes, were marketed in New Jersey by Du Pont.
(HN, 2/24/98)(MC, 2/24/02)
1938 Feb 26, US female Figure
Skating championship was won by Joan Tozzer. US male Figure Skating
championship was won by Robin Lee.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1938 Feb 26, The 1st passenger
ship was equipped with radar.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1938 Feb 27, Britain and France
recognized the Franco government in Spain.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1938 Mar 2, Landslides and
floods cause over 200 deaths in Los Angeles, CA.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1938 Mar 2, Trials of Soviet
leaders began in the Soviet Union.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1938 Mar 3, A world record for
the indoor mile run was set at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH this
day. Glenn Cunningham made the distance in 4 minutes, 4.4 seconds.
(HC, Internet, 3/3/98)
1936 Mar 3, Standard Oil of
California struck oil at Damman No 7. Aramco made the first
commercial oil find in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The English Arabist,
H. St. John Philby, orchestrated the Aramco concession in Saudi
Arabia.
(HN, 3/15/98)(WSJ, 3/8/99, p.A16)(SFEC, 6/27/99,
p.T3)(www.chevron.com)
1938 Mar 5, Lynn Margulis,
biologist, was born.
(HN, 3/5/01)
1938 Mar 8, Herbert Hoover told
Hitler that his doctrine would be unacceptable and intolerable in
the U.S.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1938 Mar 9, In Vienna, Kurt
Schuschnigg defied the Nazis calling for a decree on independence.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1938 Mar 12, John Ross, poet,
historian and author, was born. He celebrated his 60th birthday in
SF with friends at the Cafe Babar with much gusto and brouhaha.
(EW)
1938 Mar 12, Germany invaded
Austria after the Austrian Nazi Party invited German troops to march
in and the union came to be know as the Anschluss. Hitler took over
Austria, as his mission to restore his homeland to the Third Reich,
and a chunk of Czechoslovakia. The Nazis took over Austria and
expelled all Jews and other political opponents from the
universities.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(TL, 1988, p.111)(TMC, 1994,
p.1938)(StuAus, April ‘95, p.18)(HN, 3/12/98)(AP, 3/12/98)
1938 Mar 13, Clarence S. Darrow
(80), famed attorney in the Scopes Monkey Trial, died in Chicago.
(AP, 3/13/98)(MC, 3/13/02)
1938 Mar 17, Rudolf Nureyev,
ballet dancer, choreographer (Kirov), was born in Russia.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1938 Mar 17, The Polish
government presented an ultimatum to Lithuania to establish
diplomatic ties. (LHC, 3/17/03)
1938 Mar 18, NY 1st required
serological blood tests of pregnant women.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1938 Mar 18, Pres. Lazaro
Cardenas of Mexico nationalized US and British oil companies.
(WSJ, 3/20/96, p.A-1)(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A15)
1938 Mar 19, Lithuania
accepted a Polish peace ultimatum and established diplomatic ties.
(HN, 3/19/98)(LHC, 3/19/03)
1938 Mar 22, Glen Campbell,
singer (By the Time I get to Phoenix, Galveston), was born.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1938 Spring, Cardinal Theodor
Innitzer of Vienna met with Hitler and then directed all Catholic
clergy and laity to "unconditionally support the great German State
and the Fuhrer."
(SFEC, 9/7/97, BR p.4)
1938 Mar 24, The U.S. asked
that all powers help refugees fleeing from the Nazis.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1938 Mar 26, NBC radio
performance of Howard Hanson's 3rd Symphony.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1938 Mar 26, Herman Goering
warned all Jews to leave Austria.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1938 Mar 27, The U.S. stopped
buying Mexican silver in reprisal for the Mexican seizure of
American oil companies.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1938 Mar 28, The US Supreme
Court in Lovell v City of Griffin declared that it is
unconstitutional to require someone to get a government permit to
engage in free speech.
(SFC, 4/18/09,
p.B2)(http://supreme.justia.com/us/303/444/case.html)
1938 Mar 28, Colonel Edward
Mandell House (b.1858), friend and advisor to Pres. Woodrow Wilson,
died in Texas. In 2006 Godfrey Hodgson authored “Woodrow Wilson’s
Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House.”
(www.library.yale.edu/un/house/chrono.htm)
1938 Mar, In Austria within
days of the Anschluss squads of Nazis and Austrian museum personnel
emptied the Viennese palaces of the Rothschild brothers, Alphonse
and Louis. After the war Clarice Rothschild, the widow of Alphonse,
recovered much of the collection, which had been hidden in the Alt
Aussee salt mines near Salzburg. She was forced to give up many
works as "donations" in exchange for export licenses.
(WSJ, 7/6/99, p.A13)
1938 Mar, Nikolay Bukharin, a
revolutionary economist who helped edit Pravda with Lenin, was put
on trial and executed in the purges. He met Lenin in 1912 while in
exile in Western Europe, but returned to Russia with the February
revolution of 1917. Bukharin broke with Lenin over Lenin‘s support
of peace with Germany, but championed Lenin‘s New Economic Policy
after his death in 1924. It was partially this adherence that
brought Bukharin into conflict with the Stalinist faction within the
Politburo, losing his position in 1929. In early 1937, after years
of declining influence, Bukharin was secretly arrested and later
tried on false charges for "counterrevolutionary activities."
(HNQ, 12/12/00)
1938 Apr 4, Bart Giamatti,
baseball commissioner, president of Yale, was born.
(HN, 4/4/01)
1938 Apr 5, Anti-Jewish riots
broke out in Dabrowa, Poland.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1938 Apr 6, Roy Plunkett, a
DuPont researcher in New Jersey, discovered the polymer,
polytetrafluoroethylene, later known as teflon. He patented the
substance in 1941.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, Par p.12)(Sm, 2/06, p.38)
1938 Apr 6, U.S. recognized the
German conquest of Austria.
(HN, 4/6/98)
1938 Apr 7, [Edmund G] Jerry
Brown Jr, (Gov-D-Cal, Mayor of Oakland), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1938 Apr 10, NY made syphilis
testing mandatory for a marriage license.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1938 Apr 10, Germany annexed
Austria.
(HN, 4/10/98)
1938 Apr 19, General Francisco
Franco declared victory in the Spanish Civil War. [see 1939]
(HN, 4/19/97)
1938 Apr 22, In Virginia 45
workers were killed in a coal mine explosion at Keen Mountain in
Buchanan County.
(AP, 4/22/08)
1938 Apr 23, Sudeten Germans in
Czechoslovakia demanded self government.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1938 Apr 25, First use of
seeing eye dog.
(HN, 4/25/98)
1938 Apr 26, Maurice Williams,
singer and songwriter, was born. He was in the group Zodiacs and did
the song "Stay."
(440 Int’l. Internet, 4/26/97, p.1)
1938 Apr 26, Duane Eddy,
guitarist, was born. His songs included: "Rebel-’rouser," "Forty
Miles of Bad Road," " Because they’re Young," " A Thunder of drums,"
"The Wild Westerners," "The Savage Seven," and "Kona Coast."
(440 Int’l. Internet, 4/26/97, p.1)
1938 Apr 26, Austrian Jews
required to register property above 5,000 Reichsmarks.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1938 Apr 27, King Zog of
Albania married Geraldine Apponyi (22) of Hungary.
(SFC, 10/28/02, p.A17)
1938 Apr 30, Larry [Van Cott]
Niven, US sci-fi author (5 Hugo, Neutron Star), was born.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1938 May 2, Pulitzer prize was
awarded to Thornton Wilder (Our Town).
(MC, 5/2/02)
1938 May 3, The concentration
camp at Flossenburg opened.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1938 May 3, Vatican recognized
Franco's Catholic and fascist Spain.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1938 May 4, Douglas Hyde, a
protestant, became the 1st president of Eire.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1938 May 6, Dutch writer
Maurits Dekker was sentenced to 50 days for "offending a friendly
head of state" (Hitler).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1938 May 10, Peter Davies,
Major-General, Director-General (RSPCA), was born.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1938 May 10, Maxim
Shostakovich, conductor (Atlanta Symph), was born in Leningrad,
Russia.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1938 May 12, Sandoz Labs
manufactured LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide).
(MC, 5/12/02)
1938 May 12, In Holland, the
4-day convention at Utrecht ended. A Provisional Constitution for
the World Council of Churches was adopted.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1938 May 17, The radio quiz
show "Information, Please!" made its debut on the NBC Blue Network.
(AP, 5/17/97)
1938 May 17, Congress passed
the Vinson Naval Act, providing for a strengthened US Navy.
(AP, 5/17/07)
1938 May 22, Richard Benjamin,
director, actor (Goodbye Columbus, He & She), was born in NYC.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1938 May 25, Raymond Carver,
American writer, was born.
(HN, 5/25/01)
1938 May 26, William Bolcom,
American composer, was born in Seattle. Washington. Bolcom won the
Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano. In the
fall of 1994, he was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished
University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bolcom)
1938 May 26, Teresa Stratas,
[Anastasia Stratakis], soprano (Salome), was born in Toronto.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1938 May 26, House Committee on
Un-American Activities began its work of searching for subversives
in the United States.
(HN, 5/26/99)
1938 May 28, Hindemith's opera
"Mathis der Maler," premiered in Zurich.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1938 May 28, The foundation for
Tel Aviv harbor was laid.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1938 May 31, Peter Yarrow,
(Peter, Paul & Mary-Puff the Magic Dragon), was born in NYC.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1938 Jun 1, Superman made his
first appearance in D.C. Comics’ Action Comics Series issue #1. The
comic book sold for 10 cents. By 1995 surviving copies sold for over
$75,000. Jerry Siegel (b.1914) and Joe Shuster (b.1914) created
Superman in 1933. In 2001 Bradford W. Wright authored "Comic Book
Nation," a history of comic books. In 2009 a copy of the first
Superman comic book sold for 317,200 dollars at an auction.
(www.greatkrypton.com/superman/creators.php)(SFC,
6/2/96, p.T-11)(WSJ, 5/23/01, p.A24)(AFP, 3/14/09)
1938 Jun 3, The German Reich
voted to confiscate so-called "degenerate art."
(HN, 6/3/98)
1938 Jun 6, Bishop Rafael
Guizar Valencia (b.1878) died in Mexico City. He had risked his life
to tend the wounded during Mexico’s revolution. In 2006 Pope
Benedict XVI named him a saint.
(SFC, 10/16/06, p.A2)
1938 Jun 7, The 1st play
telecast with original Broadway cast: "Susan & God."
(SC, 6/7/02)
1938 Jun 7, Boeing 314 Clipper
flying boat was 1st flown (Eddie Allen).
(SC, 6/7/02)
1938 Jun 15, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner (b.1880), German Expressionist painter, died by his own
hand.
(http://www.the-artists.org)
1938 Jun 16, Joyce Carol Oates,
American writer and university professor, was born. She wrote "Them"
and "Garden of Earthly Delights."
(HN, 6/16/99)
1938 Jun 16, Torgny Lindgren,
Swedish writer, was born.
(HN, 6/16/01)
1938 Jun 17, Japan declared war
on China.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1938 Jun 18, Babe Ruth was
signed as a Dodger’s coach for the rest of the season.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1938 Jun 19, In Montana 47
people were killed when a railroad bridge in Montana collapsed,
sending a train known as the "Olympian Flyer" hurtling into Custer
Creek. A cloudburst caused the bridge to collapse sending a
locomotive and 7 passenger cars into the creek.
(AP, 6/19/08)(SFC, 6/19/09, p.D10)
1938 Jun 22, US boxing champion
Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in the first round of their
heavyweight rematch at New York City's Yankee Stadium. Schmeling had
won their first fight in NYC on June 19,1936.
(AP,
6/22/97)((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Louis_vs._Max_Schmeling)
1938 Jun 23, The Civil
Aeronautics Authority was established.
(AP, 6/23/97)
1938 Jun 24, A 500 ton
meteorite landed near Pittsburgh.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1938 Jun 25, The US Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938 was enacted.
(AP, 6/25/08)
1938 Jun 25, Mary Hallock Foote
(b1847), author and illustrator, died. Her 3 Leadville novels
established her as a Western writer. On 2003 Darlis A. Miller
authored “Mary Hallock Foote: Author-Illustrator of the American
West.
(AH, 6/03,
p.62)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hallock_Foote)
1938 Jun 27, Bruce E. Babbitt
(Gov-D-AL), was born.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1938 Jun 28, Congress created
the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure construction
loans.
(HN, 6/28/98)
1938 Jun 29, Mesa Verde
National Park, Colorado, and Olympic National Park, Washington, were
founded.
(HN, 6/29/01)
1938 Jun, Pius XI commissioned
American Jesuit John Lafarge to write a new encyclical expressly
condemning Nazi anti-Semitism. Lafarge and others wrote "The Unity
of the Human Race." Pius XI died soon thereafter and it was never
published. In 1997 George Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky published:
"The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI."
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A23)(SFEC, 9/7/97, BR p.4)
1938 Jul 4, 1st game at Shribe
Park, Phila; Braves beat Phillies 10-5.
(Maggio, 98)
1938 Jul 4, France-Turkish
friendship treaty.
(Maggio, 98)
1938 July 6, Delegates from
thirty-two countries met for 9 days at the French resort of Evian to
discuss the problem of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austrian.
The German government was able to state with great pleasure how
"astounding" it was that foreign countries criticized Germany for
their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the
doors to them when "the opportunity offer[ed]." The French foreign
ministry, the Quai d’Orsay, sabotaged the Evian conference on
European refugees, the only diplomatic effort to alleviate the fate
of “stateless” German and Austrian Jews.
(http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/evian/evian.html)(WSJ,
11/15/06, p.D14)
1938 Jul 9, Brian Dennehy,
actor (Check is in the Mail, F/X, Cocoon, Death of a Salesman), was
born in Ct.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1938 Jul 9, Supreme Court
Justice Benjamin Cardozo died in Port Chester, NY, at age 68.
(AP, 7/9/08)
1938 Jul 10, Howard Hughes and
the "Yankee Clipper" began the 1st passenger flight around the world
flight from NYC. [see Jul 14]
(MC, 7/10/02)
1938 Jul 14, Jerry Rubin,
activist (Chicago 7), stockbroker, was born.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1938 Jul 14, Howard Hughes
landed at Floyd Bennet Field in NY with a crew of four after flying
around the world in 3 days, 19 hours, and 17 min., a new record.
(Hem., 2/96, p.44)
1938 Jul 14, Italian Premier
Mussolini published an anti-Jewish and African manifesto prepared by
Italian "scientists."
(http://specialcollections.library.wisc.edu/exhibits/Fascism/Race.html)(Econ,
11/21/09, p.55)
1938 Jul 16, Tokugawa Soyeshima
sent a telegram to the Olympic Committee saying that Japan would not
be able to host the 1940 Winter Olympics due to fighting with China.
(WSJ, 2/8/02, p.A1)
1938 Jul 17, Pilot Douglas
Corrigan sought permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly
across the Atlantic from New York to Ireland, but he was turned down
on the grounds that his plane was in poor condition. Corrigan seemed
to accept the ruling, but when he took off from New York on this
day, saying he was headed for California, he banked sharply to the
east and headed out over the ocean. Twenty-eight hours and 13
minutes later, Corrigan landed in Ireland, innocently explaining
that his 180-degree wrong turn must have been due to a faulty
compass. No one believed Corrigan’s explanation, especially the
aviation authorities in both Ireland and America, who suspended the
rebellious pilot’s license and ordered his aircraft dismantled. Upon
his return to America, "Wrong-Way" Corrigan was greeted as a hero.
More than a million people lined New York’s Broadway for a
ticker-tape parade honoring the man who had flown in the face of
authority.
(AP, 7/17/97)(HNPD, 7/178)
1938 Jul 18, Douglas "Wrong
Way" Corrigan arrived in Ireland. He had left NY for Calif. [see Jul
17]
(MC, 7/18/02)
1938 Jul 18, Vladimir M.
Kirshon (35), Russian playwright, was executed.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1938 Jul 19, Richard Jordan,
actor (Dune, Old Boyfriends, Gettysburg), was born in NYC.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1938 Jul 20, Diana Rigg,
actress (Emma Peel-Avengers, Hospital), was born in Doncaster,
England.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1938 Jul 20, Natalie Wood
(d.1981), (From Here to Eternity, West Side Story, Splendor in
the Grass, Rebel Without a Cause), was born as Natasha
Nikolaevna Gurdin.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1938 Jul 21, Les Aspin,
(Rep-D-Wisc, 1971-93), Minister of Defense (1993-94), was born.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1938 Jul 21, Janet Reno, US
attorney general (1993-2001), was born.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1938 Jul 21, Paul Hindemith
& Leonide Massines ballet premiered in London.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1938 Jul 21, Owen Wister
(b.1860), novelist, died at his summer home in Rhode Island.
His 1902 novel "The Virginian" inspired 5 films. He had earlier
begun a novel set in his native Philadelphia but stopped work on it
when his wife died during childbirth on Aug 24, 1913.
(HN, 7/14/01)(SFC, 1/9/02, p.D8)(AH, 10/02, p.20)
1938 Jul 22, The Third Reich
issued special identity cards for Jewish Germans.
(HN, 7/22/98)
1938 Jul 24, Instant coffee was
invented. Nestle came up with the first instant coffee after 8 years
of experiments.
(SFEC, 2/7/99, Z1 p.8)(MC, 7/24/02)
1938 Jul 28, Robert Hughes
[Studley Forrest], writer, critic, was born in Australia.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1938 Jul 28, K. Reinmuth
discovered asteroid #1485 Isa.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1939 Aug 1, Synthetic vitamin K
was produced for the first time.
(HN, 8/1/00)
1938 Aug 3, George Memmoli,
actor (Earl-Hello Larry), was born in NYC.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1938 Aug 3, Terry "5 Wigs"
Wogan, British talk show host (Irish Days), was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1938 Aug 7, Nazi's closed the
theology department of Innsbruck university.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1938 Aug 7, Konstantin S.
Stanislavsky (75), Russian director (S Method), died.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1938 Aug 9, Leo Frobenius
(1873-1938), German ethnologist and archaeologist, died in Italy. He
undertook his first expedition to Africa in 1904 to the Kasai
district in Congo. Frobenius had taught at the University of
Frankfurt. In 1925, the city acquired his collection of about 4700
prehistorical African stone paintings, which are currently at the
University's institute of ethnology, which was named the Frobenius
Institute in his honor in 1946.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Frobenius)
1938 Aug 13, Robert Johnson,
blues guitarist, was poisoned by a bartender at a roadhouse outside
of Greenwood, Miss.
(SFC, 9/23/98, p.E3)
1938 Aug 15, Maxine Waters,
congresswoman from California, second African-American woman to be
elected to congress, was born.
(HN, 8/15/98)
1938 Aug 16, Robert Johnson
(27), bluesman, musician and king of the Mississippi Delta blues,
died 3 days after ingesting whiskey laced with poison (probably
strychnine). He has 2 grave sites around Morgan City. Columbia
Records issued the first Robert Johnson LP in 1961 titled "King of
the Delta Blues Singers" and "Robert Johnson: The Complete
Recordings" in 1990. His music is on "The Complete Plantation
Recordings" (Chess/MCA). Peter Guralnick later wrote his biography.
His tunes included "Love in Vain," "Cross Road Blues" and "Ramblin
on My Mind." In 1998 the video documentary "Can’t You Hear the Wind
Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson" was released. In 1999
Robert Mugge premiered his film "Hellhounds On My Trail: The
Afterlife of Robert Johnson."
(HT, 5/97, p.41)(NH, 9/96, p.54)(HT, 5/97,
p.41)(SFC, 9/23/98, p.E3)(WSJ, 10/16/98, p.W12)(SFEM, 9/26/99, p.12)
1938 Aug 18, President
Roosevelt and Canadian PM William Lyon Mackenzie King dedicated the
Thousand Islands Bridge connecting the United States and Canada.
(AP, 8/18/07)
1938 Aug 21, Kenny Rogers,
country singer, was born in Houston.
(HN, 8/21/00)(SSFC, 5/20/01, Par p.22)
1938 Aug 24, Mason Williams,
composer (Classical Gas), writer (Smother Brothers Hour), was born
in Abilene, Tx.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1938 Aug 25, Frederick Forsyth,
author of thrillers, was born. His work included "The Day of the
Jackal" (1971) and "The Odessa File."
(HN, 8/25/00)
1938 Aug 27, George Eyston set
an automobile land-speed record.
(MC, 8/27/02)
1938 Aug 28, The first degree
given to a ventriloquist’s dummy is awarded to Charlie
McCarthy—Edgar Bergen’s wooden partner. The honorary degree, "Master
of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback," was presented on radio by Ralph
Dennis, the dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University.
(HN, 8/28/00)
1938 Aug 28, Mauthausen
concentration camp began operating in Austria.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1938 Aug 29, Elliott
Gould (Goldstein) actor, was born. His films included Bob &
Carol, Ted & Alice, M*A*S*H, The Long Good-Bye, The Night They
Raided Minskys.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1938 Aug, Prentice Cooper
(1895-1969) received the Democratic nomination for governor of
Tennessee. He was elected and served as governor from 1939-1945.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prentice_Cooper)
1938 Sep 1, Alan Dershowitz,
attorney (Claus Von Bulow, OJ Simpson), was born in NYC.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1938 Sep 1, George Maharis,
actor (Buz-Route 66, Most Deadly Game), was born in Astoria, NY.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1938 Sep 1, Mussolini cancelled
the civil rights of Italian Jews.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1938 Sep 3, The 1940 Olympic
site was changed from Tokyo, Japan, to Helsinki, Finland.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1938 Sep 10, Charles Cruft,
(.b1852), English founder of the Crufts dog show (1886), died. He
was the general manager of James Spratt dog biscuits and founded the
show as a vehicle to market.
(AP,
9/29/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crufts)
1938 Sep 12, Tatiana Troyanos,
NYC, mezzo-soprano (Octavian-Der Rosenkavalier), was born.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1938 Sep 12, In a speech in
Nuremberg, Adolf Hitler demanded self-determination for the Sudeten
Germans in Czechoslovakia.
(AP, 9/12/97)
1938 Sep 14, Graf Zeppelin II,
world's largest airship, made its maiden flight.
(MC, 9/14/01)
1938 Sep 15, Thomas Wolfe
(b.1900), US writer (Look Homeward Angel), died in Baltimore.
(http://www.britannica.com)
1938 Sep 15, There was a
conference at Berchtesgaden between Adolf Hitler and British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)
1938 Sep 20, Emlyn Williams’
"Corn is Green," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1938 Sep 21, A Category 3
hurricane struck parts of New York and New England, causing
widespread damage and claiming more than 600 lives. Winds hit 183
MPH in New England and 700 were killed. The storm hit Long Island
and Connecticut and caused $308 million in damage.
(AP, 9/21/97)(WSJ, 5/31/06, p.B1)
1938 Sep 21, Winston Churchill
condemned Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1938 Sep 22, The musical comedy
revue "Hellzapoppin'," starring Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, began a
three-year run on Broadway.
(AP, 9/22/06)
1938 Sep 23, A time capsule, to
be opened in the year 6939, was buried on the grounds of the World's
Fair in New York City. The capsule contained a woman's hat,
man's pipe & 1,100' of microfilm. [see Apr 30, 1939]
Westinghouse coined the term "time capsule" when it buried a torpedo
shaped vessel at the 1939 NY fair.
(AP, 9/23/98)(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.D4)(MC, 9/23/01)
1938 Sep 25, President Franklin
Roosevelt urged negotiations between Hitler and Czech President
Benes over the Sudetenland.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1938 Sep 26, Hitler issued his
ultimatum to Czech government, demanding Sudetenland.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1938 Sep 27, Ocean liner Queen
Elizabeth was launched at Glasgow. The RMS Queen Elizabeth,
the largest passenger liner built to that date, boasted a
200,000-horsepower engine and beautiful art deco style. The elegant
ocean liner was named to honor Queen Elizabeth, a consort of King
George VI of England and mother to Queen Elizabeth II.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1938 Sep 27, Jewish lawyers
were forbidden to practice in Germany.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1938 Sep 27, League of Nations
declared Japan the aggressor against China.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1938 Sep 28, Ben E. King, was
born. He was the lead singer of The Drifters and composer of
"Spanish Harlem" and "Stand by Me."
(HN, 9/28/00)
1938 Sep 28, Koko Taylor, blues
singer, was born.
(HN, 9/28/00)
1938 Sep 29, British, French,
German and Italian leaders signed the Munich Agreement, which was
aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, inhabited by a German-speaking
minority. The treaty ceded three areas of Czechoslovakia to other
powers: the Sudetenland was annexed into Germany, the Teschen
district was given to Poland, and parts of Slovakia went to Hungary.
British PM Neville Chamberlain gained a brief peace agreement from
Hitler at Munich and without consulting the Czechs agreed that Nazi
forces could occupy Sudetenland. Some mark this "appeasement policy"
as the decisive event of the century. Chamberlain predicted "peace
in our time." French PM Edouard Daladier was very depressed from the
meeting. In 1980 Telford Taylor published "Munich: The Price of
Peace." It is a detailed political & diplomatic history of the
1930's in Europe, culminating in the Munich conference. Taylor later
helped write the rules for Nuremberg Trials. In 2008 David Vaughan
authored “Battle for the Airwaves: Radio and the 1938 Munich
Crises.”
(http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Chlup/chluplinks/munich.html)(SFC,
6/9/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 6/16/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)(AP,
9/29/06)(SFC, 5/26/98, p.B2)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.115)
1938 Sep 30, A day after
co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain praised the accord on his return home, saying, "I
believe it is peace for our time."
(AP, 9/30/06)
1938 Sep, The first workable
British radar system, called the Chain Home, started operation. By
December Great Britain had five radar stations along its coasts to
warn of enemy aircraft and over a dozen more were under
construction. Fearing future wars where aircraft, especially
bombers, could threaten Britain, the government pressed engineers to
pursue radar research, beginning in 1935. Many other nations,
including the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan, were busy
with their own experiments with radar.
(HNQ, 1/3/01)
1938 Oct 1, Germany annexed
Sudetenland (1/3 of Czech Republic).
(MC, 10/1/01)
1938 Oct 3, German troops
occupied the Sudetenland.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)
1938 Oct 7, Germany demanded
all Jewish passports stamped with letter J.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1938 Oct 8, G. Kaufman &
Moss Hart's "Fabulous Invalid," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1938 Oct 9, Copland's
ballet "Billy the Kid," premiered in Chicago.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1938 Oct 10, Germany completed
its annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.
(AP, 10/10/97)
1938 Oct 14, John Dean III,
former White House counsel (Watergate figure), was born.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1938 Oct 14, Nazis planned
Jewish ghettos for all major cities.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1938 Oct 15, Robert Sherwood's
"Abe Lincoln in Illinois," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1938 Oct 16, Billy the Kid, a
ballet by Aaron Copland, opened in Chicago. [see Oct 9]
(HN, 10/16/98)
1938 Oct 17, Evel Knieval (d.
Nov 30, 2007) was born as Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel, Jr. He became
a US daredevil motorcycle stunt man, showman, entertainer, Member
Motorcycle Hall of Fame and Guinness World Record Holder.
(HN, 10/17/98)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Kneivel)
1938 Oct 20, Czechoslovakia,
complying with Nazi policy, outlawed the Communist Party and began
persecuting Jews.
(HN, 10/20/98)
1938 Oct 21, Japanese troops
occupied Canton.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(MC, 10/21/01)
1938 Oct 22, Christopher Lloyd,
actor (Taxi, Back to the Future), was born in Stamford, Ct.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1938 Oct 22, Derek Jacobi,
actor (Lanner-Strauss Family, Dead Again), was born in London.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1938 Oct 22, Chester Carlson
and Otto Kornei performed the 1st successful test of their
photocopier at Astoria, Queens, NYC. They used powdered ink and an
electrical charge to create the first photocopy. The reproduced page
said: "10-28-38 Astoria." Carlson tried to sell the machine to IBM,
RCA, Kodak and others, but they were not impressed.
(HN, 10/22/00)(ON, 11/04, p.7)
1938 Oct 24, The Fair Labor
Standards Act became law, establishing the 40-hour work week
effective Oct 24, 1940. The Act forbade child labor in factories.
(HN,
10/24/00)(www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/flsa1938.htm)
1938 Oct 25, Hankow,
current capital of China, fell to the Japanese. The Chinese again
moved their capital, this time to Chungking in the mountains above
the Yangtze River.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(DoD, 1999, p.452)
1938 Oct 26, Ralph Bakshi,
animator (Lord of Rings, Fritz the Cat, Mighty Mouse), was born.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1938 Oct 26, Du Pont named its
new synthetic fiber "nylon." [see Oct 27]
(MC, 10/26/01)
1938 Oct 27, Du Pont announced
a name for its new synthetic yarn: nylon. [see Oct 26]
(AP, 10/27/97)
1938 Oct 28, There was a
farewell parade of International Brigade in Barcelona, Spain.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1938 Oct 30, On a Sunday night
Orson Welles and his troupe of actors in the Mercury Theater touched
off mass panic with a CBS dramatic radio adaptation of the 1898
novel of Martian conquest, "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells. In
spite of pre-broadcast announcements that the production was
fiction, about a million Americans readied their guns for battle,
fled and prayed for deliverance from what they believed was a real
threat. Orson Welles (left), roundly criticized for inciting the
hysteria, apologized for the realistic nature of the radio play and
explained that he never expected such a severe reaction. The War of
the Worlds broadcast went on the air opposite radio's number-one
program, The Charlie McCarthy Show, featuring ventriloquist Edgar
Bergen and his dummy. Critic Alexander Woollcott telegraphed Welles,
"This only goes to prove, my beamish boy, that the intelligent
people were all listening to a dummy, and all the dummies were
listening to you."
(HFA, '96, p.40)(TMC, 1994, p.1938)(TL, 1988,
p.111)(AP, 10/30/97)(HNPD, 10/30/98)(HN, 10/30/98)
1938 Oct 31, The day after his
"War of the Worlds" broadcast had panicked radio listeners, Orson
Welles expressed "deep regret" but also bewilderment that anyone had
thought the simulated Martian invasion was real.
(AP, 10/31/98)
1938 Oct, Oberlin College in
Oberlin, Ohio, admitted four female students and became the first
institution of higher learning to admit women to its college
programs on an equal basis with men. Prior to 1838, boys and girls
had studied together in its primary and secondary programs, while
older girls studied at Oberlin‘s female seminary.
(HNQ, 6/3/00)
1938 Oct, The Federal Hourly
Minimum Wage was set at $0.25 an hour.
(http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/blminwage.htm)
1938 Nov 1, Seabiscuit raced
against Triple Crown War Admiral at Pimlico and won the match race.
In 2001 Laura Hillenbrand authored "Seabiscuit: An American Legend."
Over 6 years the horse won 33 victories with record earnings of
$437,730.
(WSJ, 3/9/00, p.W9)
1938 Nov 1, German
colonel-general Gerd von Runstedt retired.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1938 Nov 2, Germany gave
southern Slovakia to Hungary.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)
1938 Nov 6, The Red Ryder and
Little Beaver cartoon strip by Fred Harman (b.1902) began appearing
in the Chicago Sun. It went out of syndication in 1964.
(WSJ, 12/23/03, p.D8)
1938 Nov 8, Crystal Bird Fauset
of Pa., became the first African American woman to be elected to a
state legislature.
(HN, 11/6/98)
1938 Nov 9, Maurice Bavaud
(25), a Swiss theology student, failed in his attempt to shoot
Hitler at a Nazi parade in Munich. Switzerland, which followed a
policy of neutrality toward Germany before and during World War II,
failed to intervene on Bavaud's behalf, and he was guillotined in
May, 1941, in Berlin's notorious Ploetzensee prison.
(AP, 11/8/08)
1938 Nov 9, Kristallnacht took
place in Germany. Nazi leaders heard that a Jew had shot a German
diplomat in Paris and ordered reprisals. Nazis killed 35 Jews,
arrested thousands and destroyed Jewish synagogues, homes and stores
throughout Germany and Austria in what became known as
Kristallnacht. 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The
event is depicted by Peter Gay in his 1998 book "My German
Question."
(HFA, '96, p.18)(TL, 1988, p.111)(AP,
11/9/97)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20) (SFC, 11/10/98, p.A12)(HN, 11/9/00)
1938
Nov 10, Pearl Buck (1892-1973), pen-name of Pearl Walsh, née
Sydenstricker, received the Nobel for literature for her rich and
truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China (“The Good Earth”),
and for her biographical masterpieces.
(http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1938/index.html)
1938 Nov 10, Kate Smith first
sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on her CBS radio program,
which aired Thursdays.
(AP, 11/10/06)
1938 Nov 10, Fascist Italy
enacted anti-Semitic legislation.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1938 Nov 10, Kemal Ataturk
(57), [Mustafa Kemal], marshal and president Turkey, died of
cirrhosis of the liver. He was succeeded by Ismet Inonu (d.1973).
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.B1)(EWH, 4th ed, p.1088)(Econ,
3/19/05, Survey p.4)
1938 Nov 11, Mary Mallon, also
known as “Typhoid Mary,” died of a stroke on North Brother Island.
She had been quarantined there since 1915 after spreading typhus for
years while working as a cook in the New York area.
(AH, 2/06, p.26)
1938 Nov 11, German and
Austrian Jews suffered 1 billion Mark damage in the Nov 9 Nazi
Kristallnacht; Jews forced to wear Star of David.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1938 Nov 11, Ismet Inonu
(b.1884) became president of the Turkish republic on the death of
Kemal Ataturk. He continued in office until 1950.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)
1938 Nov 12, Hermann Goering
announced he favored Madagascar as a Jewish homeland.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1938 Nov 12, Mexico agreed to
compensate the U.S. for land seizures.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1938 Nov 13, Jean Seberg,
actress (Breathless, Paint Your Wagon), was born in Marshalltown,
Iowa.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1938 Nov 15, Farewell Parade of
International Brigades in Barcelona.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1938 Nov 17, Gordon Lightfoot,
folksinger (Sundown), was born in Ontario, Canada.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1938 Nov 17, Italy passed its
own version of anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1938 Nov 19, Ted Turner,
broadcasting mogul, owner of the Atlanta Braves, America's Cup
winner, was born in Cincinnati.
(www.infoplease.com)
1938 Nov 20, The 1st documented
anti-Semitic remarks over US radio were made by Father Coughlin.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1938 Nov 21, Nazi forces
occupied western Czechoslovakia and declared its people German
citizens. This annexation of Sudetenland was the first major
belligerent action by Hitler. The allies chose to sit still for it
in return for a promise of "peace in our time," which Hitler later
broke.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1938 Nov 21, Leopold Godowsky
(68), pianist and composer, died.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1938 Nov 24,Clifford Odets'
"Rocket to the Moon," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1938 Nov 24, Mexico seized oil
land adjacent to Texas.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1938 Nov 25, Charles
Starkweather, murderer (Midwest killing spree), was born.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1938 Nov 26, Poland renewed a
non-aggression pact with the USSR to protect against a German
invasion.
(HN, 11/26/98)
1938 Nov 30, Germany banned
Jews from being lawyers.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1938
Dec 2, Albert Kessel became the 1st person to die in California gas
chamber. Robert Lee Cannon and Albert Kessel were convicted of the
murder of Warden Clarence Larkin. Four other inmates were also
executed in connection with this murder, three within two weeks.
(www.corr.ca.gov/CommunicationsOffice/CapitalPunishment/key_events.asp)
1938 Dec 7, Philip Barry's
"Here Come the Clowns," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1938 Dec 8, The Graf Zeppelin,
Germany's only aircraft carrier during World War II, was launched.
It was taken over by Russia after the war and last seen in 1947. In
2006 a Polish oil company found the wreckage on the sea floor about
38 miles north of the northern port city of Gdansk.
(AP, 7/27/06)
1938 Dec 8, L.P. Beria followed
Nikolai Jezjov as head of Russian secret police.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1938 Dec 13, Philip M. Musica
(aka Frank Donald Costar), former president of McKesson &
Robbins, committed suicide with a shot to the head.
(WSJ, 6/30/99, p.B4)
1938 Dec 15, Washington sent
its fourth note to Berlin demanding amnesty for Jews.
(HN, 12/15/98)
1938 Dec 15, Groundbreaking
ceremonies for the Jefferson Memorial took place in Washington, D.C.
(AP, 12/15/97)
1938 Dec 17, Italy declared the
1935 pact with France invalid, because ratification's had not been
exchanged. France denied the argument.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1938 Dec 20, First electronic
television system was patented. [see Feb 17]
(HN, 12/20/98)
1938 Dec 23, John Hammond
produced a Carnegie Hall concert titled "From Spirituals to Swing."
(WSJ, 11/5/99, p.W11)
1938 Dec 23, Margaret
Hamilton's costume caught fire in filming of "Wizard of Oz."
(MC, 12/23/01)
1938 Dec 27, Osip Mandelstam
(b.1891), Russian poet born in Poland to Jewish parents, died while
in transit to a labor camp. In 1998 Emma Gerstein authored “Moscow
Memoirs: Memories of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Literary
Russia Under Stalin.” An English translation by John Crowfoot became
available in 2004.
(SSFC, 9/11/04,
p.M3)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)
1938 Dec 28, Florence Lawrence
(b.1890), silent movie film star, committed suicide in Beverly
Hills, Ca.
(ON, 4/06,
p.6)(http://cemeteryguide.com/lawrence.html)
1938 Dec 28, France ordered the
doubling of forces in Somaliland; two warships were sent.
(HN, 12/28/98)
1938 Dec 29, Jon Voight, actor
(Deliverance, Midnight Cowboy), was born in Yonkers, NY.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1938 Dec 29, Construction on
Lake Washington Floating Bridge, Seattle, began.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1938 Dec 30, Joseph Bologna,
actor (Citizen Cohn, My Favorite Year), was born in Brooklyn, NY.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1938 Dec 30, An electronic
television system was patented by V.K. Zworykin. [see Dec 20]
(MC, 12/30/01)
1938 Dec 31, Dr. R.N. Harger's
"drunkometer," the 1st breath test, was introduced in Indiana.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1938 Dec, In NYC Barney
Josephson (1902-1988), a former shoe salesman, opened Café
Society at 2 Sheridan Square, as a European style cabaret. ''The
wrong place for the right people'' was its slogan. In 1940 he
opened an uptown branch on East 58th Street. By 1950 both versions
were gone. In 2009 Terry Trilling Josephson, his 4th wife, published
his memoir “Café Society: The Wrong Place for the Right
People,” based on taped interviews.
(WSJ, 4/6/09, p.A13)(http://tinyurl.com/dbhdjw)
1938 Ishmael Bernal
(1938-1996), Filipino movie director, was born. In 1982 he made his
film "Manila by Night." It showed how poverty drives people to do
things they would not normally do.
(SFC, 6/4/96, p.A19)
1938 Thomas Hart Benton painted
"Susanna and the Elders."
(SFEM, 5/4/97, p.6)
1938 Brancusi, sculptor, had
three of his greatest works inaugurated in the Tirgu Jiu Park,
Romania.
(TL, 1988, p.111)
1938 John Steuart Curry,
American artist, painted "Parade to War."
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.E1)
1938 Edward Hopper created his
painting "Comparment C, Car 293."
(SSFC, 8/4/02, p.M2)
1938 Frida Kahlo painted "What
the Water Showed Me."
(SFEC, 9/28/97, BR p.5)
1938 Rene Magritte, Belgian
artist, wrote his statement of principles: "Le Ligne de Vie"
(Lifeline), and said: "Surrealism is revolutionary because it is
relentlessly hostile to all those bourgeois ideological values which
keep the world in the appalling condition in which it is today."
(SFEM, 4/23/00, p.6)
1938 Lois Mailou Jones (d.1998
at 92), American artist and teacher, painted her "Les Fetiches," an
image of 5 African masks.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A21)
1938 Juan Miro, Spanish
painter, completed a set of 8 etchings titled the "Black and Red
Series."
(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.T3)
1938 Picasso painted "Young
Girl With a Boat." It featured his eldest daughter, Maya, and sold
for $5.98 million in 1999.
(SFC, 12/8/99, p.A17)
1938 Stanley Spencer, English
artist, painted "Cookham, Flowers in a Window."
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.B5)
1938 Gabriel Almond (d.2002),
political scientist, titled his dissertation "Plutocracy and
Politics in New York City." It was published in 1998.
(SSFC, 1/5/03, p.A27)
1938 Jean Cocteau wrote his
play "Indiscretions." "The play was mildly scandalous, though less
because of a father and son unwittingly sharing a mistress than
because the boy’s mother was shown as passionately obsessed with her
son."
(WSJ, 4/28/95, p.A-8)
1938 Daphne Du Maurier
(1907-1989), English writer, authored her novel “Rebecca.”
(WSJ, 8/2/08, p.W4)
1938 Julien Gracq (1910-2007),
French writer, published "Au chateau d'Argol" (The Castle of Argol).
It was favorably reviewed by the Surrealist leader Andre Breton, who
became a friend and a strong influence.
(AP, 12/23/07)
1938 Tennessee Williams wrote
his play "Not About Nightingales." It was based on an incident in
Pennsylvania's Philadelphia County prison, where 4 inmates died
after 25 inmates, who threatened a hunger strike due to bad food,
were locked in an isolation chamber with giant radiators pumping
200-degree heat.
(WSJ, 3/3/99, p.A17)
1938 Eric Ambler (d.1998 at 89)
wrote "Epitaph for a Spy." He invented a new type of non-hero spy
character set on the back streets with greater realism than previous
thrillers.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1938 George Gamow, physicist,
wrote "Mister Tompkins in Wonderland." It was a simplified
explanation of quantum theory.
(NH, 6/96, p.8)
1938 Margaret Halsey
(1911-1997) published her best seller "With Malice Toward Some." It
poked fun at English customs and mores.
(SFC, 2/8/97, p.A24)
1938 Paul-Louis Landsberg
(1901-1943), German philosopher, authored “The Experience of Death:
and The Moral Problem of Suicide.” Landsberg, a Jewish Catholic,
died in a Nazi concentration camp.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.92)(http://tinyurl.com/6bjhe7)
1938 Norman Lewis (d.2003),
British travel writer, authored "Sand and Sea in Arabia."
(SFC, 7/26/03, p.A22)
1938 Anne Morrow Lindbergh
authored the travel book "Listen! The Wind."
(WSJ, 11/29/99, p.A26)
1938 Dawn Powell published her
novel "The Happy Island."
(SFEC, 2/14/99, BR p.5)
1938 "Nausea" by Jean-Paul
Sartre was published. It was an account of his own existential
dilemma and disgust at bourgeois values.
(TL, 1988, p.111)
1938 Edgar Snow (1905-1972)
authored “Red Star Over China.”
(Econ, 5/29/04, p.85)
1938 H.J. Timperley, a reporter
for the Manchester Guardian, published "What War Means," an account
of the Nanjing tragedy.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, Z1 p.4)
1938 Karen Blixen (Isak
Dinesen) wrote her novel: "Out of Africa."
(SFEC, 11/3/96, BR p.5)
1938 Marcel Pagnol wrote his
comedy "The Baker’s Wife."
(SFC, 7/16/96, p.E1)
1938 Dawn Powell wrote her
novel "The Happy Island."
(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A24)
1938 Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966),
English writer, authored his novel “Scoop.”
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.91)
1938 The epic drama "The Life
of Galileo" was written by Bertolt Brecht.
(SFC, 9/24/99, p.C1)
1938 Tennessee Williams (26)
completed his play "Spring Storm," while at the Univ. of Iowa. The
play dealt with the "unconscious cruelty of the sexual struggle in
youth."
(SFEC, 11/14/99, DB p.35)(WSJ, 2/16/00, p.A24)
1938 Lew Christensen’s ballet
"Filling Station" was premiered to music by Virgil Thomson.
(SFEC, 8/17/97, DB p.37)
1938 Aaron Copland wrote a
ballet titled "Billy the Kid." Billy the Kid was born Nov 23, 1859
as William H. Bonney (1859-1881) and became a famous US outlaw.
(HFA, ‘96, p.42)(WUD, 1994, p.148)
1938 Antony Tudor in London
created the comic ballet "Gala Performance."
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.B1)
1938 The musical "Boys From
Syracuse" by Rogers and Hart was based on a George Abbott version of
"Comedy of Errors" by Shakespeare.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A20)
1938 The musical "Great Lady"
was choreographed by George Balanchine and featured Jerome Robbins
(d.1998 at 79) in his first Broadway performance.
(SFC, 7/30/98, p.A10)
1938 The Cole Porter musical
"Leave It To Me" featured Sophie Tucker singing "Most Gentleman
Don’t Like Love."
(SFC, 3/13/97, p.A13)
1938 The Carter Family began
performing live on the most powerful radio station of the time.
(Hem., 4/97, p.68)
1938 Alan Lomax invited Jelly
Roll Morton (1885-1941) to record music and memories at the Library
of Congress. In 2005 Rounder Records published a complete, 9-hour
set of the recordings on 7 CDs plus an additional CD of Lomax
interviews with contemporaries of Morton.
(Econ, 1/21/06, p.79)
1938 Norbert Schultze (d.2002
at 91), German composer, wrote his song "Lili Marlene" based on a
WWI poem by Hans Leip "The Song of a Young Sentry." In 1980 Rainer
Werner Fassbinder directed the film "Lili Marlene." In 1996 Schultze
authored the book "With you, Lili Marlene."
(SFC, 10/26/02, p.A23)
1938 Bugs Bunny made his
premiere in the cartoon "Porky’s Hare Hunt."
(WSJ, 5/4/01, p.A1)
1938 The animated cartoon
“Porky in Wackyland” featured Porky Pig in a Salvador Dali-esque
landscape.
(WSJ, 6/28/08, p.W6)
1938 Ella Fitzgerald recorded
her hit song "A Tisket A Tasket."
(SFC, 6/16/96, p.A10)
1938 Jazz composer Billy
Strayhorn met Duke Ellington, who hired him on the spot.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.52)
1938 Black contralto Marian
Anderson was awarded an honorary doctorate by Harvard Univ.
(TL, 1988, p.111)
1938 Bill Munroe (1912-1996)
put together his band called the Blue Grass Boys. During the war the
classic bluegrass quintet developed with mandolin, fiddle, guitar,
bass and banjo. He was joined by Lester Flatt in 1945 and Earl
Scruggs in 1946.
(SFC, 9/10/96, p.A17)(SSFC, 6/10/01, p.D3)
1938 Samuel Conlon Nancarrow
(d. 1997 at 84) published his compositions "Toccata for Violin and
Piano" and "Prelude and Blues for Piano." They were issued by
Slonimsky. He later read Henry Cowell’s "New Musical Resources" and
began composing for the player piano for which he gained renown.
(SFC, 8/13/97, p.C2)
1938 Harry James, trumpeter,
heard Frank Sinatra sing and hired him for $75 per week.
(SFC, 5/16/98, p.E7)
1938 In Hawaii the $1.4 million
Shangri La estate of tobacco heiress Doris Duke (1912-1993), begun
in 1936, was completed on 4.9 acres east of Diamond Head. Duke
collected Islamic art and in 2002 the estate was opened for limited
public tours and research.
(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C9)(SSFC, 2/25/07, p.G5)
1938 Rosalie Meyer Stern
founded the free concert festivals at Stern Grove in San Francisco.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. C1)
1938 Walter Gropius
(1883-1969), German architect and Bauhaus founder, built his modern
style Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Gropius had fled
Germany in 1934.
(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P14)
1938 Nellie Simmons Meier
(1862-1944), famous American palm reader, donated her palm prints to
the Library of Congress. She lived most of her life in Indianapolis
and studied the palms of such people as actress Mary Pickford, boxer
Gene Tunney, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, and Amelia Erhart.
In 1937 she published her best seller "Lion’s Paws," a set of
character sketches based on the palm prints.
(Civil., Jul-Aug., ‘95, p.54-57)
1938 Sidney Guilaroff (d.1997
at 89), Hollywood hairdresser, was the first never-married man in
the US to adopt a child.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.D8)
1938 After the death of his
wife, Elinor, Robert Frost took Kathleen Morrison as his secretary
and lover, even as she remained married to novelist and Harvard
Prof. Theodore Morrison.
(WSJ, 4/30/96, p.A-12)
1938 The John James Audubon
Museum was opened in Henderson, Kentucky. Mr. Audubon lived in
Henderson from 1810-1819.
(WSJ, 11/27/95, p.A-14)
1938 The 83 acre Fairchild
Tropical Garden opened up in Coral Gables, Florida, in honor of the
legendary botanist, David Fairchild.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)
1938 Kay Sumner Einfeldt
(1916-1996) wrote in the Los Angeles Times about the joys and
sorrows of being tall while working on drawing dwarfs for Disney’s
Snow White feature film. Response to her article led to the founding
of the Tip Toppers organization. Happy was one of the seven dwarfs.
(SFC, 10/16/96, p.C2)(SFC,12/26/97, p.C22)
1938 Poet Archibald MacLeish
created the position of Consultant in Poetry for the Library of
Congress.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.D7)
1938 Baseball began in Puerto
Rico, just east of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Sea. Its
capital is San Juan.
(Hem., Dec. ‘95, p.105)
1938 Don Budge (d.2000 at 84)
swept all four major tennis tournaments to become the sport's first
"Grand Slam" winner.
(WSJ, 1/27/00, p.A1)
1938 Byron White signed a
$15,800 contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates becoming the NFL’s
first big money player. He later served for 31 years as a US Supreme
Court Justice.
(WSJ, 7/8/08, p.A17)
1938 Gertrude Stein led a
campaign to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Adolf Hitler. Stein was
also a close friend of Bernard Fey, who collaborated with the Nazis
and was named by Hitler as head of the French national library in
Paris. Fey was convicted of war crimes after WW II.
(SFC, 6/9/96, Z1 p.5)
1938 Rudolf (b.1909) and Ruth
Schlesinger (b.1920) arrived in the US after fleeing Nazi
persecution. Rudolph went on to pursue a law career and wrote the
first book on comparative law. He taught at Cornell (1948-1975) and
then Hastings in SF. Ruth worked as a curator of prints at both
Cornell and Hastings. They died together in SF in 1996.
(SFC, 11/20/96, p.C8)
1938 Charles George Werner
(d.1997 at 88), cartoonist, won the Pulitzer Prize for his Oklahoman
cartoon of the Nobel Peace Prize lying on a grave marked
"Czechoslovakia."
(SFC, 7/3/97, p.A24)
1938 Franklin D. Roosevelt
signed the first minimum wage increase. The minimum wage was .25
cents per hour. The US minimum wage was established as part of the
Fair Labor Standards Act. The minimum age for employment of
adolescents was set at 14 outside of school hours. It was designed
to prevent employers from cutting wages during the Depression. [see
1914, Jan. 5] It also established that overtime must be paid at time
and a half. It established the 40 hour work week that went into
effect Oct 24, 1940.
(SFC, 8/21/96, p.A3)(SJSVB, 4/8/96, p.8)(SFC,
6/26/96, p.A20)(WSJ, 3/24/97, p.B1)(AP, 10/24/97)
1938 Thurman Arnold (1891-1969)
became an assistant US Attorney general of US Department of Justice
and head of its antitrust division (1938-1943). As chief competition
lawyer for the United States government, Arnold launched numerous
studies to support the antitrust efforts in the late 1930s.
(Econ, 8/29/09,
p.53)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurman_Arnold)
1938 NY Times publisher A.H.
Sulzberger urged Pres. Roosevelt not to name a Jew to the Supreme
Court for fear of exacerbating anti-Semitism.
(WSJ, 5/26/04, p.A8)
1938 U.S. War Plan Orange-3 was
a contingency plan for a war in which the U.S. faced Japan as
its sole enemy. The plan was one of the "color" war plans for
projected conflicts in which the U.S. engaged a single enemy at one
time. The plan originated in the early 1900s and underwent numerous
revisions, with War Plan Orange-3 completed in 1938. It was based on
the premise of a Japanese surprise attack and envisioned a primarily
naval war. Elements of the Orange Plans were incorporated in the
later Rainbow war plans.
(HNQ, 4/19/00)
1938 In northern California
more military artillery was installed in the headlands of the Golden
Gate and Fort Cronkhite was established near Rodeo Beach.
(SFC, 6/13/08, p.A22)
1938 The US Federal Firearms
Act banned firearm sales to known felons.
(WSJ, 12/16/03, p.A4)
1938 Labor Secretary Frances
Perkins was the first woman in Roosevelt’s Cabinet.
(SFC, 1/27/97, p.A20)
1938 The Food, Drug and
Cosmetics Act included a restriction on the sale of embedded
non-food items, unless there’s a functional value, like the stick on
a lollipop.
(WSJ, 6/24/02, p.A8)
1938 The House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) was created to inquire into subversive
activities in the US. It was commonly known as the Dies Committee.
It was convened in 1947 to search for Communists in the film
industry.
(WUD, 1994, p.689)(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.64)
1938 The US government
established the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae -
FNMA) to expand the flow of money to mortgage lenders.
(WSJ, 9/27/04, p.A1)
1938 The National Maritime
[labor] Union was established.
(SFC, 12/16/96, p.A24)
1938 Hammond Chaffetz (d.2001
at 93) won a big price-fixing case against the oil industry. 30 oil
executives were convicted along with 16 major oil companies for
violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.C2)
1938 Florida passed a law
making it illegal to export alligators.
(SSFC, 5/15/05, p.C2)
1938 In Minnesota Harold E.
Stassen (31) defeated Gov. Elmer A Benson and became the youngest
governor ever elected in any US state.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.A24)
1938 In Minnesota Curtis L.
Carlson (d.1999 at 84) borrowed $55 and created the Gold Bond Stamp
Co. which made trading stamps for grocery stores to attract
customers. He parlayed the operation into large real estate holdings
that included the Radisson Hotel which he expanded to a 350-hotel
chain.
(SFC, 2/23/99, p.A22)
1938 Hans G. Knoll, Germany
immigrant, founded the Knoll furniture company in NYC. In 2010 Brian
Lutz authored “”Knoll: A Modernist Universe.”
(SSFC, 7/11/10, p.L1)
1938 John Burr Williams,
American securities analyst, argued that the price of financial
assets reflects a measurable intrinsic value.
(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.J4)
1938 Buick pioneered the first
electric turn signals.
(F, 10/7/96, p.69)
1938 David Reid (d.2003 at 86)
created the image of Elsie the Cow for the Borden milk company.
Elsie's web site is at: www.elsie.com.
(SFC, 12/19/03, p.A25)
1938 Ford introduced the
Mercury line of cars.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1938 Georges de Latour, owner
of Beaulieu Vineyard in Napa Valley, Ca., hired French-trained
enologist Andre Tchelistcheff to oversee the maturation of his
Private Reserve.
(SFC, 10/10/08, p.F3)
1938 William Hewlett and David
Packard began their Hewlett Packard Co. in a one-car garage at 767
Addison in Palo Alto with $538. As a student at Stanford, Hewlett
built a prototype for an audio oscillator. In 1939 it became their
first product to be sold. Walt Disney used it in making the film
"Fantasia." In 2007 Michael S. Malone authored Bill & Dave.”
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.C3)(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)(SFEC,
6/6/99, p.T7)(WSJ, 6/6/07, p.D7)
1938 Howard Hughes flew around
the world in a record 3 days, 19 hrs., 14 min.
(TMC, 1994, p.1938)
1938 Eddie Rickenbacker, after
a failed stint as an automotive manufacturer, and several associates
bought Eastern Airlines and guided it to become one of the most
profitable airlines in the postwar era.
(HNPD, 10/7/98)
1938 Recreational Equipment
Inc. (REI) was founded as a basement co-op by Seattle area
mountain-climbing buddies. It was based in Kent, Wa. By 2006 it had
82 stores and cleared $1 billion in 2005 sales.
(SFC, 2/11/03, p.B1)(SSFC, 3/26/06, p.C5)
1938 Pacific Mail Steamship Co.
changed its name to American President Lines. It is now based in
Oakland, Ca. and sails out of Los Angeles and Seattle.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R46)
1938 Alfred M. Butts invented
the game of Scrabble but toy and game sellers refused to market his
product. Butts and his friend, James Brunot, put together 180 sets
and promptly sold them. [see 1932]
(SFE Zone 3, 2/12/95, p. 8)
1938 Massachusetts inventor
Earl Silas Tupper left the Du Pont company in 1938 to form the
Tupper Plastics Company. The material called "Poly-T" used to create
Tupperware was developed from a black, putrid, rock-hard oil
refining waste product called polyethylene slag. He refined and
purified the slag into a higher quality plastic. He then turned his
attention to replacing the widely used glass and metal food
containers with his waterproof and airtight seal introduced in 1947.
(HNQ, 2/13/99)
1938 Lazlo Biro [Laszlo Biro]
of Hungary invented the ball-point pen. He fled Hungary in 1943 and
patented the ballpoint in Argentina.
(TL, 1988, p.111)(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.B7)
1938 Plastic replaced glass for
contact lenses.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R21)
1938 Charles Critchfield,
American physicist, proposed the H-H fusion as a principle source of
star energy.
(SCTS, p.134)
1938 Otto Hahn and Fritz
Strassman discovered nuclear fission, the process of splitting the
nucleus of the atom and releasing the stored energy.
(SFEC, 12/19/99, Par, p.14)
1938 George Callendar, British
engineer, published a paper that announced an increase in the
world’s temperature. He also declared that this will produce
beneficial effects such as improving the world’s climate and
retarding glaciers.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.57)
1938 Konrad Zuse (1910-1995), a
German inventor, created a test model for the first functioning,
freely programmable, fully automatic computer, the Z1. The Z2, a
functioning electromechanical computer was completed in 1940. The
Z3, freely programmable with binary arithmetic, was operational in
1941. He wrote an autobiography: "The Computer - My Life."
(Wired, 1/97, p.36)
1938 US virologist Wendell
Stanley opened up the genetic study of viruses.
(TL, 1988, p.111)
1938 The drug, DES,
diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen, was developed and
prescribed for women with problem pregnancies in the belief that
insufficient estrogen levels caused miscarriages and premature
births. Later DES was linked to vaginal cancer and deformities in
the reproductive tract.
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.44-45)
1938 Conrad Elvehjem identified
vitamin B3, whose deficiency causes pellagra.
(MT, Fall ‘96, p.4)
1938 Frank Benford, physicist,
formulated a theory known as Benford’s Law. It laid out the
statistical frequency with which the numbers 1-9 appear in any set
of random numbers. In 1995 a professor of accounting used the
obscure theory to catch tax cheats, check forgers, and embezzlers.
(WSJ, 7/10/95, p. B-1)
1938 Guy Stewart Callendar,
English engineer and an expert on steam technology, took up
meteorology. He evaluated old measurements of atmospheric CO2
concentrations and concluded that an increase in CO2 explained a
current trend to global warming.
(www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm)(Econ,
9/9/06, Survey p.3)
1938 A South African fishing
trawler brought up in its nets a coelacanth fish, long thought to be
extinct. The fish was identified by naturalist Marjorie
Courtenay-Latimer. She sent a sketch of the fish to Prof. J.L.B.
Smith who properly identified it as a new species of coelacanth and
named it Latimeria chalumnae. It was later mounted and is now on
display in the East London Museum.
(NG, 6/1988, p.825,831)
1938 G. Trolli, an Italian
physician working in the Belgian Congo (Zaire), reported a condition
called konzo meaning "tied legs." It was later related to cyanide
poison from improper preparation of cassava root.
(NH, 7/96, p.14)
1938 Nikolai Ivanovich
(b.1888), Russian editor, writer and Communist leader, was ordered
shot by Stalin.
(WUD, 1994, p.195)(WSJ, 5/19/99, p.A20)
1938 Charles Duryea (1861-1938)
died. He and his brother Jack were the first to successfully build a
gasoline-engine motor vehicle in 1893 in Springfield, Mass.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1938 Max Factor Sr. died. He
had been the personal cosmetician to the czar of Russia. Max Factor
Sr. and his son, Francis, invented pancake makeup to keep actor’s
faces from appearing green in Technicolor films. Francis assumed his
father’s name, Max.
(SFC, 6/9/96, p.B-6)
1938 Georges Melies, pioneering
French filmmaker, died at age 77. His work included some 498 movies
of which only about 50 survive. In 1975 Paul Hammond authored
"Marvelous Melies."
(ON, 1/00, p.9)
1938 Captain Ed. Musick of Pan
Am disappeared with 5 crew members during a survey flight from Pago
Pago to Auckland, New Zealand.
(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.38)
1938 Cesar Vallejo (b.1892),
Peruvian poet, died. His 1918 book "The Black Heralds" was
translated into English in 2003 by Rebecca Seiferle.
(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.M4)
1938 The BBC began its first
foreign language service, an Arabic radio service.
(WSJ, 1/13/00, p.A19)(WSJ, 1/19/02, p.B1)(Econ,
10/29/05, p.57)
1938 Freud was convinced to
flee Vienna for England after Germany annexed Austria and after his
daughter was arrested by the Gestapo and held in custody for a day.
He died in London on September 23, 1939.
(HNQ, 3/24/00)
1938 The Cammargo Correa Group
in Brazil was begun as a family business. It has since mushroomed
into a construction giant.
(USA Today, OW, 4/22/96, p.5)
1938 Denmark’s K.B. Hallen
sports arena in the Copenhagen opened. It was destroyed by fire in
2011.
(AP, 9/28/11)
1938 In Canada the Winnipeg
Ballet Company was founded.
(TL, 1988, p.111)
1938 In Canada William Lyon
Mackenzie King served as prime minister and suffered from arthritis.
(G&M, 7/30/97, p.A24)
1938 In Czechoslovakia Anny K.
Maass (d.1998 at 89) became the first female attorney. She was
stripped of her profession when the Nazis invaded a year later.
(SFC, 8/12/98, p.C4)
1938 The French claimed
sovereignty over Adelie Coast, a region of Antarctica on the coast
of Wilkes Land.
(AHD, 1971, p.15)
1938 Herman Goering called for
the complete Aryanization of the retail stores owned by the retail
chain A. Wertheim. During the 1920s and 1930s the company had
purchased properties in East Berlin to block competitors from
acquiring sites near its flagship store near Leipziger Platz. In
2006 Germany validated a claim by Wertheim heirs to the property,
valued at some $350 million.
(WSJ, 3/29/02, p.A8)(SFC, 1/24/06, p.A2)
1938 The Nazis took a
collection of 12,500 posters taken from the home of Hans Sachs
(d.1974), who soon fled with his family to the US. On Jan 28, 2010,
a Berlin appeals court ruled that while Peter Sachs, the son of
collector Hans Sachs, is the owner of the posters, now worth
millions, he isn't entitled to their restitution by the
government-owned German Historical Museum.
(AP, 1/29/10)
1938 A right-wing dictatorship
ruled over Greece.
(SFC, 6/23/96, p.B6)
1938 In India Lakireddy Bali
Reddy was born in Velvadam in Andhra Pradesh state. The Reddy caste
was traditionally made up of landowners. He later studied
engineering at UC Berkeley and established land holdings valued at
some $60 million.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A12)
1938 In India Uday Shankar
opened a school of dance in Almora to teach both Western and local
traditions.
(TL, 1988, p.111)
1938 In India Metro Cinema,
built by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, opened in Bombay (later Mumbai).
Initially the cinema showed only MGM films. In the 1970s an Indian
business took over the cinema and it became a popular venue for
Bollywood film premieres.
(AP, 11/27/08)
1938 There was extensive
flooding in India that was not rivaled until 1998.
(WSJ, 9/4/98, p.A1)
1938 In the Indonesian half of
New Guinea there is the city of Wamena deep in the heart of Irian
Jaya’s Great Baliem Valley. It was discovered by Westerners in this
year. It is said to be the largest city in the world supported
entirely by plane.
(Hem., 10/’95, p.144)
1938 In Iraq the Habaniyah
airfield was completed.
(AP, 7/5/03)
1938 Neturei Karta (Aramaic for
"Guardians of the City") was founded in Jerusalem by Jews who
opposed the drive to establish the state of Israel, believing only
the Messiah could do that. The members of Neturei Karta descended
from Hungarian Jews who settled in Jerusalem's Old City in the early
nineteenth century, and from Lithuanian Jews who were students of
the Gaon of Vilna, who had settled earlier.
(http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/index.cfm)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta)
1938 In the Langhe region of
Italy Giacomo Morra initiated the Int’l. Truffle Fair in Alba.
(SFEC, 9/27/98, p.T4)
1938 In Italy King Victor
Emmanuel III supported dictator Benito Mussolini and signed racial
laws that expelled Jews from government and university jobs and the
military and restricted their work, schooling and right to own
property. Some 8,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps from
which only about 600 survived.
(SFC, 5/6/97, p.A11)
1938 In Italy Ugo Cerletti
(1877-1963), neurosurgeon, and psychiatrist Lucio Bini (1908-1980)
pioneered the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), electric
shock, to cure patients of depression.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh38el.html)
1938 Oil was found in Kuwait.
(SSFC, 4/13/03, p.E1)
1938 In Romania Bran Castle,
owned by Queen Marie, was bequeathed to her daughter Princess
Ileana. In 1948 it was confiscated by the Communists. In 2006 the
fabled “Dracula’s Castle” was transferred to Dominic van Hapsburg, a
New York architect who inherited it from Princess Ileana.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.A2)
1938 In Russia Yevgeny
Mravinsky began to lead the Leningrad Philharmonic and continued
till 1988.
(WSJ, 1/29/96, p. A-14)
1938 Samsung began as a small
noodle business. By 2011 it had swelled into a network of 83
companies accounting for 13% of South Korea’s exports.
(Econ, 10/1/11, p.14)
1938 The Spanish Loyalist
defense at the battle of the Ebro was photographed by Robert Capa.
(SFEM, 1/12/97, BR p.9)
1938 Sweden’s collective wage
deal system began. The system set wages through sector-wide deals
with employers. In 2005 the system faced problems as cheaper workers
arrived from other EU countries.
(AP, 8/23/05)
1938 In Lucerne, Switzerland,
the International Festival of Music began its annual event.
Toscanini and Ernest Ansermet created the music festival of Lucerne,
Switzerland, at Tribschen, the house in which Wagner wrote "Die
Meistersinger."
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.T1,5)(Hem, 6/96, p.141)(SFEC,
6/7/98, p.T3)
1938 Switzerland later
acknowledged that it had asked Berlin in this year to stamp German
passports with "J" so that they could bar most Jews.
(WSJ, 5/19/97, p.A18)
1938 Swiss chemists Albert
Hofmann discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD) in 1938 while
studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other
grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm, later part of Novartis.
Hofmann was the first person to test the drug when a tiny amount of
the substance seeped on to his finger during a repeat of the
laboratory experiment in April 1943.
(AP, 1/11/06)
1938 Turkey’s army crushed a
rebellion in the southeastern province of Tunceli and villagers were
burned alive of gassed. The government later admitted that some
15,000 Alevi Kurds died. Survivors spoke of least twice as many
dead. In 2010 documentary titled ‘Two Locks of Hair: The Missing
Girls of Dersim,’ which sheds light on the painful incidents of the
1938 Dersim Operation, four 80-year-old women tell of the trauma
they experienced during the tragedy.
(Econ, 4/30/11,
p.55)(www.kurdishcinema.com/DersimsLostGirls.html)
1938-1940 Eugene Savage painted 6 Hawaiian murals
commissioned by the Matson cruise ship line. They depicted Capt.
Cook’s discovery of the islands and a luau with King Kamehameha.
Matson used the designs on menu covers until 1957. The Kamehameha
Garment Co., founded in 1936, adopted one of the murals for its
“Aloha shirts.”
(SFC, 11/9/05, p.G9)
1938-1940 Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat,
and Jan Zvartendijk, a Dutch diplomat, worked together to save 6-8
thousand Polish Jews, who had fled to Lithuania by issuing them
visas for Japan, China and the Dutch colonies in South America. In
1997 Ken Mochizuki published "Passage To Freedom: The Sugihara
Story."
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A13)(SFEC, 4/27/97, BR p.10)
1938-1944 Eugene O’Neill, playwright, lived at the
Tao House in Danville with his 3rd wife Carlotta Monterey. Carlotta
was Miss California in 1907.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, Z1p.1)
1938-1945 This period was later covered by Klemens
von Klemperer in his: German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search
for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945."
(SFEC, 3/28/99, p.A30)
1938-1959 De Valera served two terms as prime
minister of Eire (Ireland).
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)
1938-1992 Mobil Oil operated a fueling facility at
San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf during this period. In 2008 the
city sued Exxon-Mobil to force a cleanup of the site and pay damages
and attorney fees.
(WSJ, 6/20/08, p.B3)
Go to 1939