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 18, San Quentin prison held its first double hanging in two years as convicted murderers Lee Grant Goodwin and Roy Leon Righthouse were executed before 51 witnesses.
(SSFC, 2/17/13, p.42)
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 1, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Italian poet, writer and political leader, died. In 2013 Lucy Hughes-Hallett authored “The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet Seducer and Preacher of War."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_d%27Annunzio)
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 7, California’s San Quentin prison received a new lethal gas chamber to supplant its gallows.
(SSFC, 3/3/13, p.42)
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 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 27, San Francisco SPCA officer Al Girolo broke up a cockfight at the back of 1363 Underwood Street in Hunters Point. 7 men were arrested and 6 roosters seized.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, DB p.42)
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 9, In Tunisia French troops cracked down on nationalist-inspired rioting in Tunis. 122 Tunisians were killed by French troops. Tunisians remembered this as Martyr’s Day.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2000/apr/07/local/me-17142)
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 20, San Francisco’s Joe DiMaggio ended his holdout with Colonel Jacob Rupert, owner of the NY Yankees, and accepted an annual salary of $25,000. DiMaggio had asked for $40,000.
(SSFC, 4/21/13, DB p.46)
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 Apr, Louis J. Caldor, NYC engineer and art collector, began purchasing the art work of Anna Mary Moses (77), a widow living in Eagle Bridge, NY.
(ON, 8/20/11, p.11)
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, Carl Von Ossietzky (b.1889), German pacifist, anti-fascist writer and 1935 Nobel Peace Prize winner, succumbed to tuberculosis and from the after-effects of the abuse he suffered in the concentration camps.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky)(Econ 7/15/17, p.38)
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 30, In San Francisco followers of Adolf Hitler opened their 2-day German-American Bund convention at California Hall at Polk and Turk Streets.. As an estimated 3,000 pickets shouted anti-Nazi slogans.
(SSFC, 5/26/13, DB p.42)
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, published by Romania-born American Harry Donenfeld (1893-1965). 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)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Donenfeld)
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 19, The Italian soccer team performed the fascist salute in Colombes Stadium, Paris, before the start of the World Cup soccer final match against Hungary. Italy defended its World Cup title, beating Hungary 4-2. It would keep the Jules Rimet Trophy for another 12 years as the world descended into war.
(AP, 5/16/18)
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. Nevada Sen. Patrick McCarran wrote the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which put the government in charge of regulating airline fares and accident investigations.
(https://tinyurl.com/y75ama6o)(AP, 6/23/97)
1938 Jun 24, A 500 ton meteorite landed near Pittsburgh.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1938 Jun 25, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. It included a restriction on the sale of embedded non-food items, unless there’s a functional value, like the stick on a lollipop. It was partially provoked by a rash of injuries from depilatory creams.
(WSJ, 6/24/02, p.A8)(Econ, 2/7/15, p.79)
1938 Jun 25, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the US Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. It allowed workers with disabilities to be paid less if they were less productive.
(https://tinyurl.com/vjzcmog)Econ., 5/9/20, p.74)
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 26, Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), a protestant, was inaugurated as the 1st president of Ireland.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hyde)
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, Queen Marie of Romania died. She was the wife of King Ferdinand I, who reigned from 1914 to 1927. Born in England in 1875 as Princess Marie of Edinburgh, her father was Prince Alfred, a son of Queen Victoria. The heart of Marie was finally laid to rest on Nov 3, 2015, after criss-crossing the nation for 77 years.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_of_Romania)(AP, 11/3/15)
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 15, Former SF Supervisor Andrew J. Gallagher, representing the directors of Agricultural District 1-A, said the “Int’l. Live Stock Show Pavilion" will hereafter be called “The Cow Palace." The new building in Daly City opened in 1941.
{Daly City, SF, USA}
(SSFC, 8/11/13, DB p.42)(SFC, 2/28/08, p.A11)
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 5, In San Francisco some 85,000 unionists, led by ILWU head Harry Bridges, marched to celebrate Labor Day.
(SSFC, 9/1/13, DB p.42)
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 up to 800 lives. Winds hit 183 MPH in New England. The storm hit Long Island and Connecticut and caused $308 million in damage.
(AP, 9/21/97)(WSJ, 5/31/06, p.B1)(Econ, 11/3/12, p.27)
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 16, In San Francisco the new Aquatic Park was officially opened at the end of Polk St. and Van Ness Ave after 7 years of work and $1 million in costs.
(SSFC, 9/22/13, DB p.46)
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 7, Ernst vom Rath (29), a German diplomat in Paris, was shot and mortally wounded by a 17-year-old Polish Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan, who had fled from Germany to France. Rath died after two days and news of his death triggered Nazi reprisals.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_vom_Rath)
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 Ernst vom Rath, 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."
(AP, 11/9/97)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)(SFC, 11/10/98, p.A12)(SSFC, 11/10/13, DB p.46)
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.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIi0VUAAlaU)
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 16, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD) while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm, later part of Novartis. It was set aside for five years, until 16 April 1943, when Hofmann decided to reexamine it. While re-synthesizing LSD, he accidentally absorbed a small amount of the drug through his fingertips and discovered its powerful effects.on 19 April 1943, Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LSD. This day is now known as "Bicycle Day", because he began to feel the effects of the drug as he rode home on a bike.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann)(AP, 1/11/06)
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 Nov, Britain began a program called Kindertransport to admit unaccompanied Jewish children from Austria and Germany up to age 17 if they had a host family.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport)(SFC, 7/2/15, p.A6)
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 22, In San Francisco Charlie Low opened his Forbidden City nightclub at 363 Sutter (later 369 Sutter), one block outside the gate of Chinatown. In 1960 dancer Coby Yee (1926-2020) bought the club from Low and changed the name to "Coby Yee's Forbidden City." It closed in 1970. In 2014 Arthur Dong authored “Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American nightclubs, 1936-1970."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City_(nightclub))(SFC, 1/10/15, p.C2)
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, Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler as “Man of the Year."
(SSFC, 12/29/13, DB p.42)
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 Dec, San Francisco longshoremen announced that the picketing of ships loading scrap iron for Japan would be discontinued in favor of a nationwide campaign for the declaration of an embargo against Japan.
(SSFC, 12/15/13, DB p.42)
1938 Dec, 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)(Econ, 12/14/13, IL p.11)
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 Ted Geisel (1904-1991), aka Dr. Seuss, authored “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins."
(SFC, 9/6/13, p.E2)
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 Folklorist Alan Lomax spent three months in Michigan recording folk music as part of his 10-year cross-country trek to document folk music for the Library of Congress.
(SFC, 9/25/13, p.F4)
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 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 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 Cloisters, a branch of the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art, opened in Upper Manhattan. It was made possible by a grant from John D. Rockefeller Jr.
(Econ, 6/15/13, p.83)
1938 Hans G. Knoll (d.1955), Germany immigrant, founded the Knoll furniture company in NYC. Knoll was the scion of a family that had founded a furniture business in Germany in 1865. In 1946 he married Florence Schust (1917-2019), a designer who had joined his firm in 1943. In 2010 Brian Lutz authored “"Knoll: A Modernist Universe."
(SSFC, 7/11/10, p.L1)(SSFC, 1/27/19, p.C10)
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 Jack and Jill of America, an African-American society, was founded. It is devoted to shaping children into leaders in business, society and politics.
(Econ., 8/22/20, p.24)
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 US War Plan Orange-3 was a contingency plan for a war in which the US faced Japan as its sole enemy. The plan was one of the "color" war plans for projected conflicts in which the US 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 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 Charles Minot Dole (1899-1976), founder of the Mt. Mansfield Ski Patrol, and Charles Langley, president of the United States National Ski Association, organized the US National Ski Patrol System in Stowe, Vermont. In 1941 they helped form the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, made up in large part by members of the National Ski Patrol.
(ON, 4/2011, p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ski_Patrol)
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 Herbert Yardley, American cryptographer, went to Chongqing, China, to form a “Chinese Black Chamber" for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists.
(Econ, 12/19/15, p.41)
1938 The Salvation Army coined the unofficial National Doughnut Day holiday, later marked on the first Friday of June, to commemorate the female volunteers who served doughnuts and coffee to soldiers during World War I.
(http://donutdayusa.com/)
1938 In San Francisco the 90-million gallon Sunset Reservoir was built. It was retrofitted from 2006-2008 to withstand up to a 7.9 magnitude earthquake.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.C3)
1938 Gambling and bookie joints became illegal in San Francisco this year.
(SFC, 8/10/19, p.C2)
1938 Florida passed a law making it illegal to export alligators.
(SSFC, 5/15/05, p.C2)
1938 In Hawaii the $1.4 million Shangri La estate of tobacco heiress Doris Duke (d.1993) 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)
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 James D. Robinson conceived the idea of an Automatic Chlorination System. Simply put, equipment installed in customer accounts would automatically dispense a proper amount of chemical sanitizer into rinse water. Later that same year the automatic chlorination system became Auto-Chlor System, founded in Memphis, Tennessee.
(http://www.autochlor.com/about-us/history/)
1938 Construction began on the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state. This put a stop to salmon migration up the Columbia River.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.42)
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 The De Beers company, led by the Oppenheimer family, hired a New York advertising agency to coax American into buying more diamonds. By the end of the century 80% of American brides received a diamond engagement ring.
(Econ, 2/25/17, p.51)
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, a physicist working at General Electric, 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)(Econ, 12/15/12, p.76)
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 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 Austria’s singing von Trapp family escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria and performed concert tours throughout Europe and then a 3-month tour in the America. The family settled in Vermont and opened a ski lodge in Stowe.
(SFC, 2/24/14, p.C5)
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 G. Trolli, an Italian physician working in the Belgian Congo (Zaire), reported a condition called konzo meaning "tied legs." It was later found to occur over wide areas of Central Africa and related to cyanide poison from improper preparation of cassava root.
(NH, 7/96, p.14)(Econ, 9/7/13, p.78)
1938 In the Belgian Congo the 5,000 square km (1,900 square mile) Garamba National Park was established.
(AP, 6/13/14)
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 Chinese Nationalist leaders intentionally broke levees on the Yellow River to prevent the Japanese military from advancing. More than 500,000 people, Japanese and Chinese, died in the resulting flood. Chinese army commander Xiong Xianyu kept a diary on the levee action.
(Econ, 6/22/13, p.83)(http://tinyurl.com/kxkkrdc)
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 Muslim Brotherhood chief Hassan el Banna (1906-1949), speaking in Cairo, proposed stitching together the nascent states of the Ottoman empire to form one Muslim community.
(Econ, 2/18/12, p.49)
1938 The French claimed sovereignty over Adelie Coast, a region of Antarctica on the coast of Wilkes Land.
(AHD, 1971, p.15)
1938 Wolfsburg, Germany, was founded by the Nazis as “City of the KdF car, to house labor for the factory built to produce what became the VW Beetle.
(Econ, 2/27/15, p.56)
1938 Adolf Hitler signed an agreement with Bulgaria to send workers to the Third Reich.
(Econ., 8/29/20, p.40)
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 German SS officer Ernst Schafer led an expedition Tibet in an effort to trace the origins of the Aryan race. In 1939 he brought back a 23.4 statue of the Buddhist god called Vaisravana that was carved from a meteorite that had crashed to Earth thousands of years earlier. The existence of the statue, perhaps a thousand years old, was only revealed in 2007.
(SFC, 9/28/12, p.A2)
1938 Alfred Flatow (1869-1942), Jewish gymnast and three-time, first-place medalist in the 1896 Olympics, fled to the Netherlands. He was later arrested by the Nazis for possession of guns following their occupation of the Netherlands. Flatow was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 where he was starved to death.
(SFC, 7/17/14, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Flatow)
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 India the Larsen & Toubro engineering firm was founded in Bombay by two Danes. It came to be viewed as one of India’s best companies.
(Econ, 10/22/11, SR p.8)
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 provincial vegetable and dried-fish shop. By 2011 it had swelled into a network of 83 companies accounting for 13% of South Korea’s exports. In 2020 Geoffrey Cain authored "Samsung Rising."
(Econ, 10/1/11, p.14)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.56)
1938 The Spanish Loyalist defense at the battle of the Ebro was photographed by Robert Capa.
(SFEM, 1/12/97, BR p.9)
1938 In Sweden the Saltsjobaden Accord was signed between unions and employers ushering in a consensus system of labor relations.
(Economist, 10/13/12, SR p.20)
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 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)
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 18, San Quentin prison held its first double hanging in two years as convicted murderers Lee Grant Goodwin and Roy Leon Righthouse were executed before 51 witnesses.
(SSFC, 2/17/13, p.42)
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 1, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Italian poet, writer and political leader, died. In 2013 Lucy Hughes-Hallett authored “The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet Seducer and Preacher of War."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_d%27Annunzio)
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 7, California’s San Quentin prison received a new lethal gas chamber to supplant its gallows.
(SSFC, 3/3/13, p.42)
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 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 27, San Francisco SPCA officer Al Girolo broke up a cockfight at the back of 1363 Underwood Street in Hunters Point. 7 men were arrested and 6 roosters seized.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, DB p.42)
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 9, In Tunisia French troops cracked down on nationalist-inspired rioting in Tunis. 122 Tunisians were killed by French troops. Tunisians remembered this as Martyr’s Day.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2000/apr/07/local/me-17142)
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 20, San Francisco’s Joe DiMaggio ended his holdout with Colonel Jacob Rupert, owner of the NY Yankees, and accepted an annual salary of $25,000. DiMaggio had asked for $40,000.
(SSFC, 4/21/13, DB p.46)
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 Apr, Louis J. Caldor, NYC engineer and art collector, began purchasing the art work of Anna Mary Moses (77), a widow living in Eagle Bridge, NY.
(ON, 8/20/11, p.11)
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, Carl Von Ossietzky (b.1889), German pacifist, anti-fascist writer and 1935 Nobel Peace Prize winner, succumbed to tuberculosis and from the after-effects of the abuse he suffered in the concentration camps.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky)(Econ 7/15/17, p.38)
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 30, In San Francisco followers of Adolf Hitler opened their 2-day German-American Bund convention at California Hall at Polk and Turk Streets.. As an estimated 3,000 pickets shouted anti-Nazi slogans.
(SSFC, 5/26/13, DB p.42)
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, published by Romania-born American Harry Donenfeld (1893-1965). 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)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Donenfeld)
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 19, The Italian soccer team performed the fascist salute in Colombes Stadium, Paris, before the start of the World Cup soccer final match against Hungary. Italy defended its World Cup title, beating Hungary 4-2. It would keep the Jules Rimet Trophy for another 12 years as the world descended into war.
(AP, 5/16/18)
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. Nevada Sen. Patrick McCarran wrote the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which put the government in charge of regulating airline fares and accident investigations.
(https://tinyurl.com/y75ama6o)(AP, 6/23/97)
1938 Jun 24, A 500 ton meteorite landed near Pittsburgh.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1938 Jun 25, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. It included a restriction on the sale of embedded non-food items, unless there’s a functional value, like the stick on a lollipop. It was partially provoked by a rash of injuries from depilatory creams.
(WSJ, 6/24/02, p.A8)(Econ, 2/7/15, p.79)
1938 Jun 25, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the US Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. It allowed workers with disabilities to be paid less if they were less productive.
(https://tinyurl.com/vjzcmog)Econ., 5/9/20, p.74)
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 26, Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), a protestant, was inaugurated as the 1st president of Ireland.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Hyde)
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, Queen Marie of Romania died. She was the wife of King Ferdinand I, who reigned from 1914 to 1927. Born in England in 1875 as Princess Marie of Edinburgh, her father was Prince Alfred, a son of Queen Victoria. The heart of Marie was finally laid to rest on Nov 3, 2015, after criss-crossing the nation for 77 years.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_of_Romania)(AP, 11/3/15)
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 15, Former SF Supervisor Andrew J. Gallagher, representing the directors of Agricultural District 1-A, said the “Int’l. Live Stock Show Pavilion" will hereafter be called “The Cow Palace." The new building in Daly City opened in 1941.
{Daly City, SF, USA}
(SSFC, 8/11/13, DB p.42)(SFC, 2/28/08, p.A11)
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 5, In San Francisco some 85,000 unionists, led by ILWU head Harry Bridges, marched to celebrate Labor Day.
(SSFC, 9/1/13, DB p.42)
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 up to 800 lives. Winds hit 183 MPH in New England. The storm hit Long Island and Connecticut and caused $308 million in damage.
(AP, 9/21/97)(WSJ, 5/31/06, p.B1)(Econ, 11/3/12, p.27)
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 16, In San Francisco the new Aquatic Park was officially opened at the end of Polk St. and Van Ness Ave after 7 years of work and $1 million in costs.
(SSFC, 9/22/13, DB p.46)
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 7, Ernst vom Rath (29), a German diplomat in Paris, was shot and mortally wounded by a 17-year-old Polish Jewish youth, Herschel Grynszpan, who had fled from Germany to France. Rath died after two days and news of his death triggered Nazi reprisals.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_vom_Rath)
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 Ernst vom Rath, 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."
(AP, 11/9/97)(WSJ, 11/3/98, p.A20)(SFC, 11/10/98, p.A12)(SSFC, 11/10/13, DB p.46)
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.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIi0VUAAlaU)
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 16, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD) while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm, later part of Novartis. It was set aside for five years, until 16 April 1943, when Hofmann decided to reexamine it. While re-synthesizing LSD, he accidentally absorbed a small amount of the drug through his fingertips and discovered its powerful effects.on 19 April 1943, Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LSD. This day is now known as "Bicycle Day", because he began to feel the effects of the drug as he rode home on a bike.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann)(AP, 1/11/06)
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 Nov, Britain began a program called Kindertransport to admit unaccompanied Jewish children from Austria and Germany up to age 17 if they had a host family.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport)(SFC, 7/2/15, p.A6)
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 22, In San Francisco Charlie Low opened his Forbidden City nightclub at 363 Sutter (later 369 Sutter), one block outside the gate of Chinatown. In 1960 dancer Coby Yee (1926-2020) bought the club from Low and changed the name to "Coby Yee's Forbidden City." It closed in 1970. In 2014 Arthur Dong authored “Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American nightclubs, 1936-1970."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City_(nightclub))(SFC, 1/10/15, p.C2)
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, Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler as “Man of the Year."
(SSFC, 12/29/13, DB p.42)
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 Dec, San Francisco longshoremen announced that the picketing of ships loading scrap iron for Japan would be discontinued in favor of a nationwide campaign for the declaration of an embargo against Japan.
(SSFC, 12/15/13, DB p.42)
1938 Dec, 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)(Econ, 12/14/13, IL p.11)
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 Ted Geisel (1904-1991), aka Dr. Seuss, authored “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins."
(SFC, 9/6/13, p.E2)
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 Folklorist Alan Lomax spent three months in Michigan recording folk music as part of his 10-year cross-country trek to document folk music for the Library of Congress.
(SFC, 9/25/13, p.F4)
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 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 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 Cloisters, a branch of the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art, opened in Upper Manhattan. It was made possible by a grant from John D. Rockefeller Jr.
(Econ, 6/15/13, p.83)
1938 Hans G. Knoll (d.1955), Germany immigrant, founded the Knoll furniture company in NYC. Knoll was the scion of a family that had founded a furniture business in Germany in 1865. In 1946 he married Florence Schust (1917-2019), a designer who had joined his firm in 1943. In 2010 Brian Lutz authored “"Knoll: A Modernist Universe."
(SSFC, 7/11/10, p.L1)(SSFC, 1/27/19, p.C10)
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 Jack and Jill of America, an African-American society, was founded. It is devoted to shaping children into leaders in business, society and politics.
(Econ., 8/22/20, p.24)
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 US War Plan Orange-3 was a contingency plan for a war in which the US faced Japan as its sole enemy. The plan was one of the "color" war plans for projected conflicts in which the US 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 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 Charles Minot Dole (1899-1976), founder of the Mt. Mansfield Ski Patrol, and Charles Langley, president of the United States National Ski Association, organized the US National Ski Patrol System in Stowe, Vermont. In 1941 they helped form the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, made up in large part by members of the National Ski Patrol.
(ON, 4/2011, p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ski_Patrol)
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 Herbert Yardley, American cryptographer, went to Chongqing, China, to form a “Chinese Black Chamber" for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists.
(Econ, 12/19/15, p.41)
1938 The Salvation Army coined the unofficial National Doughnut Day holiday, later marked on the first Friday of June, to commemorate the female volunteers who served doughnuts and coffee to soldiers during World War I.
(http://donutdayusa.com/)
1938 In San Francisco the 90-million gallon Sunset Reservoir was built. It was retrofitted from 2006-2008 to withstand up to a 7.9 magnitude earthquake.
(SFC, 2/18/14, p.C3)
1938 Gambling and bookie joints became illegal in San Francisco this year.
(SFC, 8/10/19, p.C2)
1938 Florida passed a law making it illegal to export alligators.
(SSFC, 5/15/05, p.C2)
1938 In Hawaii the $1.4 million Shangri La estate of tobacco heiress Doris Duke (d.1993) 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)
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 James D. Robinson conceived the idea of an Automatic Chlorination System. Simply put, equipment installed in customer accounts would automatically dispense a proper amount of chemical sanitizer into rinse water. Later that same year the automatic chlorination system became Auto-Chlor System, founded in Memphis, Tennessee.
(http://www.autochlor.com/about-us/history/)
1938 Construction began on the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state. This put a stop to salmon migration up the Columbia River.
(Econ, 6/7/14, p.42)
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 The De Beers company, led by the Oppenheimer family, hired a New York advertising agency to coax American into buying more diamonds. By the end of the century 80% of American brides received a diamond engagement ring.
(Econ, 2/25/17, p.51)
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, a physicist working at General Electric, 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)(Econ, 12/15/12, p.76)
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 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 Austria’s singing von Trapp family escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria and performed concert tours throughout Europe and then a 3-month tour in the America. The family settled in Vermont and opened a ski lodge in Stowe.
(SFC, 2/24/14, p.C5)
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 G. Trolli, an Italian physician working in the Belgian Congo (Zaire), reported a condition called konzo meaning "tied legs." It was later found to occur over wide areas of Central Africa and related to cyanide poison from improper preparation of cassava root.
(NH, 7/96, p.14)(Econ, 9/7/13, p.78)
1938 In the Belgian Congo the 5,000 square km (1,900 square mile) Garamba National Park was established.
(AP, 6/13/14)
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 Chinese Nationalist leaders intentionally broke levees on the Yellow River to prevent the Japanese military from advancing. More than 500,000 people, Japanese and Chinese, died in the resulting flood. Chinese army commander Xiong Xianyu kept a diary on the levee action.
(Econ, 6/22/13, p.83)(http://tinyurl.com/kxkkrdc)
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 Muslim Brotherhood chief Hassan el Banna (1906-1949), speaking in Cairo, proposed stitching together the nascent states of the Ottoman empire to form one Muslim community.
(Econ, 2/18/12, p.49)
1938 The French claimed sovereignty over Adelie Coast, a region of Antarctica on the coast of Wilkes Land.
(AHD, 1971, p.15)
1938 Wolfsburg, Germany, was founded by the Nazis as “City of the KdF car, to house labor for the factory built to produce what became the VW Beetle.
(Econ, 2/27/15, p.56)
1938 Adolf Hitler signed an agreement with Bulgaria to send workers to the Third Reich.
(Econ., 8/29/20, p.40)
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 German SS officer Ernst Schafer led an expedition Tibet in an effort to trace the origins of the Aryan race. In 1939 he brought back a 23.4 statue of the Buddhist god called Vaisravana that was carved from a meteorite that had crashed to Earth thousands of years earlier. The existence of the statue, perhaps a thousand years old, was only revealed in 2007.
(SFC, 9/28/12, p.A2)
1938 Alfred Flatow (1869-1942), Jewish gymnast and three-time, first-place medalist in the 1896 Olympics, fled to the Netherlands. He was later arrested by the Nazis for possession of guns following their occupation of the Netherlands. Flatow was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 where he was starved to death.
(SFC, 7/17/14, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Flatow)
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 India the Larsen & Toubro engineering firm was founded in Bombay by two Danes. It came to be viewed as one of India’s best companies.
(Econ, 10/22/11, SR p.8)
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 provincial vegetable and dried-fish shop. By 2011 it had swelled into a network of 83 companies accounting for 13% of South Korea’s exports. In 2020 Geoffrey Cain authored "Samsung Rising."
(Econ, 10/1/11, p.14)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.56)
1938 The Spanish Loyalist defense at the battle of the Ebro was photographed by Robert Capa.
(SFEM, 1/12/97, BR p.9)
1938 In Sweden the Saltsjobaden Accord was signed between unions and employers ushering in a consensus system of labor relations.
(Economist, 10/13/12, SR p.20)
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 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)
