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Year 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events[link]

Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.

January[link]

• January 4 – WWII: (Axis powers): Luftwaffe General Hermann Göring assumes control of most war industries in Germany.
• January 6 – WWII: Winter War: General Semyon Timoshenko takes command of all Russian forces.
• January 8
  • WWII: Winter War – Battle of Suomussalmi: The Russian 44th Assault Division is destroyed by Finnish forces.
  • WWII: Food rationing begins in Great Britain.
• January 9 – WWII; The submarine HMS Starfish (19S) is sunk.
• January 10 – WWII: Mechelen Incident: A German plane carrying secret plans for the invasion of western Europe makes a forced landing in Belgium, leading to mobilization of defense forces in the Low Countries.
• January 26 – Brisbane, Australia swelters through its hottest day ever, 43.2 degrees Celsius (109.76 Fahrenheit).
• January 27 – WWII: A peace resolution introduced in the Parliament of South Africa is defeated 81–59.
• January 29 – Three gasoline-powered trains carrying factory workers crash and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi station, Yumesaki Line (Nishinari Line), Osaka, Japan, killing at least 181 people and injuring at least 92.

February[link]

• February 1 – WWII: Winter War – Russian forces launch a major assault on Finnish troops occupying the Karelian Isthmus.
• February 2 – Vsevolod Meyerhold is executed in the Soviet Union on charges of treason and espionage. He is cleared of all charges 15 years later in the first waves of de-Stalinization
• February 7 – RKO release Walt Disney's second full-length animated film, Pinocchio.
• February 10 – Tom and Jerry make their debut in Puss Gets the Boot. However it is not until 1941 that their current names are adopted.
• February 16 – WWII: Altmark Incident: The British destroyer Cossack pursues the German tanker Altmark into Jøssingfjord in southwestern Norway.
• February 22 – In Tibet, province of Ando, 4-year-old Tenzin Gyatso is proclaimed the tulku (rebirth) of the thirteenth Dalai Lama.
• February 27 – Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14.
• February 29 – Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award.

March[link]

• March – Truth or Consequences debuts on NBC Radio.
• March 2 – Cartoon character Elmer Fudd makes his debut in the animated short Elmer's Candid Camera.
• March 3 – In Sweden, a time bomb destroys the office of Norrskenflamman (a Swedish communist newspaper), killing 5.
• March 5 – Katyn massacre: Members of the Soviet Politburo (Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Voroshilov and Lavrenty Beria) sign an order, prepared by Beria, for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs.
• March 11 – Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck and six others leave Monterey, California for The Sea of Cortez on a collecting expedition.
• March 12 – The Soviet Union and Finland sign a peace treaty in Moscow ending the Winter War; Finns, along with the world at large, are shocked by the harsh terms.
• March 18 – WWII: Axis powers: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.
• March 21 – Édouard Daladier resigns as prime minister of France; Paul Reynaud succeeds him.
• March 23 – The Pakistan Resolution is rallied around by the All-India Muslim League; Muslims from every corner of India meet up around Iqbal Park, Lahore (now in modern-day Pakistan).
• March 31 – WWII: Commerce raiding hilfskreuzer Atlantis, leaves the Wadden Sea for what will become the longest warship cruise of the war. (622 days without in-port replenishment or repair)^[1]

April[link]

• April 5 – Neville Chamberlain, in what proves to be a tragic misjudgment, declares in a major public speech that Hitler has "missed the bus".
• April 7 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
• April 9 – WWII: Germany invades Denmark and Norway in Operation Weserübung. The British campaign in Norway is simultaneously commenced.
• April 12
  • The Faroe Islands are occupied by British troops, following the taking over of Denmark by Nazi Germany. This action is taken to avert a possible German occupation of the islands, which would have had very grave consequences for the course of the Battle of the Atlantic
  • Opening day at Jamaica Racetrack features the use of pari-mutuel betting equipment, a departure from bookmaking heretofore used exclusively throughout New York state. Other NY tracks follow suit later in 1940.
• April 21 – Take It or Leave It makes it debut on CBS Radio, with Bob Hawk as host.
• April 23 – A fire at the Rhythm Night Club in Natchez, Mississippi kills 198.

May[link]

• May 10 – WWII:
  • Battle of France begins
  • German forces invade Low Countries
    • Battle of the Netherlands begins
    • Battle of Belgium begins
    • Invasion of Luxembourg begins
  • Iceland is invaded by the United Kingdom.
  • With the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

May 10: Winston Churchill

• May 13
  • Winston Churchill, in his first address as Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons, "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
  • WWII: German armies open a 60-mile (97 km) wide breach in the Maginot Line at Sedan, France.
• May 14
  • Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her government flee to London; Rotterdam is subjected to savage terror bombing by the Luftwaffe; 980 are killed, and 20,000 buildings destroyed.
  • Recruitment begins in Britain for a home defence force: the Local Defence Volunteers, later known as the Home Guard.
• May 15
  • The very first McDonald's restaurant opens in San Bernardino, California.
  • Women's stockings made of nylon are first placed on sale across the United States. Almost five million pairs are bought on this day.^[2]
  • WWII: The Dutch army surrenders.
• May 16 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of Congress, asks for an extraordinary credit of approximately $900 million to finance construction of at least 50,000 airplanes per year.
• May 17 – Brussels falls to German forces; the Belgian government flees to Ostend.
• May 18 – Marshal Philippe Pétain is named vice-premier of France.
• May 19 – General Maxime Weygand replaces Maurice Gamelin as commander-in-chief of all French forces.
• May 20
  • WWII: German forces (2nd Panzer division), under General Rudolf Veiel, reach Noyelles on the English Channel.
  • Holocaust: The Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the German concentration camps, opens in occupied Poland near the town of Oświęcim. Between May 1940 and January 1945, around 1.1 million people will be killed here.
• May 22 – WWII: The British Parliament passes a further Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, giving the government full control over all persons and property.
• May 24 – WWII: The Anglo-French Supreme War Council decides to withdraw all forces from Norway.
• May 26
  • WWII: The Dunkirk evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force starts.
  • First free flight of Igor Sikorsky's Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 helicopter.
• May 28
  • WWII: King Leopold III of Belgium orders the Belgian forces to cease fighting. Leaders of the Belgian government on French territory declare Leopold deposed.
  • Winston Churchill warns the House of Commons to "prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings."
• May 29 – The Vought XF4U-1, prototype of the F4U Corsair U.S. fighter later used in WWII, makes its first flight.

June[link]

• June 3
  • The Holocaust: Franz Rademacher proposes the Madagascar Plan.
  • Weather Bureau transferred to the Department of Commerce.
  • WWII: Paris is bombed by the Luftwaffe for the first time.
• June 4
  • WWII: The Dunkirk evacuation ends – British forces complete evacuating 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France.
  • WWII: Winston Churchill tells the British House of Commons, "We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight on the beaches... on the landing grounds... in the fields and the streets.... We shall never surrender."
• June 9 – WWII: The British Commandos are created.
• June 10
  • WWII: Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
  • WWII: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions with his "Stab in the Back" speech during the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.
  • WWII: Canada declares war on Italy.
  • WWII: Norway surrenders to German forces.
  • WWII: The French government flees to Tours.
• June 12 – WWII: 13,000 British and French troops surrender to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at St. Valery-en-Caux.
• June 13 – WWII: Paris is declared an open city.
• June 14
  • WWII: The Soviet Union annexes three Baltic States which are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which causes the term Soviet Empire to be coined.
  • WWII: The French government flees to Bordeaux and Paris falls under German occupation.
  • WWII: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Naval Expansion Act into law, which aims to increase the United States Navy's tonnage by 11%.
  • WWII: A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
• June 15 – WWII: Verdun falls to German forces.
• June 16 – The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is held for the first time in Sturgis, South Dakota.
• June 17
  • Philippe Pétain becomes Prime Minister of France and immediately asks Germany for peace terms.
  • The Soviet Army enters the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
  • WWII: Operation Ariel begins: Allied troops start to evacuate France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation.
  • WWII: A Luftwaffe Junkers 88 bomber sinks the British ship RMS Lancastria, which was evacuating troops from near Saint-Nazaire, France, killing some 5,800 men.^[3] (Wartime censorship prevents the story from becoming public.)
• June 18
  • WWII: Winston Churchill says to the House of Commons: "The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin."
  • WWII: Appeal of 18 June: General Charles de Gaulle, de facto leader of the Free French Forces, makes his first broadcast appeal over Radio Londres from London rallying French Resistance, calling on all French people to continue the fight against Nazi Germany: "France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war".
• June 21 – WWII: Vichy France and Germany sign an armistice at Compiegne, in the same wagon-lit railroad car used by Marshal Ferdinand Foch to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918.
• June 23 – WWII: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France.^[4]
• June 24
  • U.S. politics: The Republican Party begins its national convention in Philadelphia and nominates Wendell Willkie as its candidate for president.
  • WWII: Vichy France signs armistice terms with Italy.
• June 28 – General Charles de Gaulle is officially recognized by Britain as the "Leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be."
• June 30
  • Civil Aeronautics Administration under Department of Commerce.
  • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is placed under the Federal Security Agency.
  • Fish and Wildlife Service, within the Department of the Interior.
  • WWII: German forces land in Guernsey, marking the start of the 5-year Occupation of the Channel Islands.

July[link]

• July 1 – The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opens for business, built with an 8-foot (2.4 m) girder and 190 feet (58 m) above the water, as the third longest suspension bridge in the world.
• July 2 – WWII: British-owned SS Arandora Star, carrying civilian internees and POWs of Italian and German origin from Liverpool to Canada, is torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-47 off northwest Ireland with the loss of around 865 lives.
• July 3 – WWII: British naval units sink or seize ships of the French fleet anchored in the Algerian ports of Oran and Mers-el-Kebir. The following day, Vichy France breaks off diplomatic relations with Britain
• July 6 – The submarine HMS Shark (54S) is sunk.
• July 10
  • WWII: The Battle of Britain begins
• July 11 – the destroyer HMS Escort (H66) is torpedoed and sunk by an Italian submarine.
  • WWII: Vichy France begins with a constitutional law which only 80 members of the parliament vote against.
• July 14 – WWII: Winston Churchill, in a worldwide broadcast, proclaims the intention of Great Britain to fight alone against Germany whatever the outcome: "We shall seek no terms. We shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy. We shall ask none."
• July 15 – U.S. politics: The Democratic Party begins its national convention in Chicago, and nominates Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term as president.
• July 19 – WWII: Allied victory at the Battle of Cape Spada HMAS Sydney (D48) and five destroyers sink the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni.
• July 19 – WWII: Adolf Hitler makes a peace appeal to Britain in an address to the Reichstag. Lord Halifax, the British foreign minister, flatly rejects peace terms in a broadcast reply on July 22.
• July 21 – The Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR and Lithuanian SSR are proclaimed in Moscow.
• July 25 – General Henri Guisan addresses the officer corps of the Swiss army at Rütli resolving to resist any invasion of the country.
• July 27 – Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Oscar-nominated cartoon short, A Wild Hare.

August[link]

• August 1 – WWII: The British submarine HMS Spearfish (69S) is sunk.
• August 3 – The Lithuanian SSR, Latvian SSR (August 5) and Estonian SSR (August 6) are incorporated into the Soviet Union.
• August 4 – Gen. John J. Pershing, in a nationwide radio broadcast, urges all-out aid to Britain in order to defend the Americas, while Charles Lindbergh speaks to an isolationist rally at Soldier Field in Chicago.
• August 8 – WWII: Wilhelm Keitel signs the "Aufbau Ost" directive, which eventually leads to the invasion of the Soviet Union.
• August 10 – WWI: HMS Transylvania (F56) is off Malin Head, Ireland.
• August 18 – HRH The Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, is installed as Governor of the Bahamas.^[5]
• August 20
  • WWII: Winston Churchill pays tribute in the House of Commons to the Royal Air Force: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
  • Leon Trotsky is attacked with an ice axe in his Mexico home by NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.
• August 21 – Leon Trotsky dies of injuries sustained.
• August 24 – Howard Florey and a team including Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, publish their laboratory results showing the in vivo bactericidal action of penicillin. They have also purified the drug.^[6][7]
• August 26 – WWII: Chad is the first French colony to proclaim its support for the Allies.
• August 30 – Second Vienna Award: Germany and Italy compel Romania to cede half of Transylvania to Hungary.

September[link]

• September – The U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division (previously a National Guard Division in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma), is activated and ordered into federal service for 1 year, to engage in a training program in Ft. Sill and Louisiana, prior to serving in WWII.
• September 2 – WWII: An agreement between America and Great Britain is announced to the effect that 50 U.S. destroyers needed for escort work will be transferred to Great Britain. In return, America gains 99-year leases on British bases in the North Atlantic, West Indies and Bermuda.
• September 5 – WWII: Commerce raiding hilfskreuzer Komet enters the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait after crossing the Arctic Ocean from the North Sea with the help of Soviet icebreakers Lenin, Stalin, and Kaganovich.^[8]
• September 7
  • Treaty of Craiova: Romania loses Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria.
  • WWII: The Blitz – Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London (the first of 57 consecutive nights of strategic bombing).
• September 12
  • In Lascaux, France, 17,000-year-old cave paintings are discovered by a group of young Frenchmen hiking through Southern France. The paintings depict animals and date to the Stone Age.
  • The Hercules Munitions Plant in Succasunna-Kenvil, New Jersey explodes, killing 55 people.
• September 16 – WWII: The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 is signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt, creating the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.
• September 17–September 18 – WWII: SS City of Benares is torpedoed by German submarine U-48 in the Atlantic with the loss of 248 of the 406 on board, including child evacuees bound for Canada. This results in cancellation of the British Children's Overseas Reception Board's plan to relocate children overseas.
• September 26 – WWII: The United States imposes a total embargo on all scrap metal shipments to Japan.
• September 27 – WWII: Germany, Italy and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact.

October[link]

• October 16 – The draft registration of approximately 16 million men begins in the United States.
• October 18–October 19 – WWII: Thirty-two ships are sunk from Convoy SC 7 and Convoy HX 79 by the most effective "wolfpack" of the war including U-boat aces Kretschmer, Prien and Schepke
• October 28 – WWII: Italian troops invade Greece, meeting strong resistance from Greek troops and civilians. This action signals the beginning of the Balkans Campaign.
• October 29 – The Selective Service System lottery is held in Washington, D.C..

November[link]

• November 5 – United States presidential election, 1940: Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican challenger Wendell Willkie and becomes the United States' first and only third-term president.
• November 6 – Agatha Christie's mystery novel And Then There Were None is published in book form in the United States.
• November 7 – In Tacoma, Washington, the 600-foot (180 m)-long center span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (known as Galloping Gertie) collapses.
• November 8 – MS City of Rayville is sunk by a naval mine, the first US merchant to be lost in the war off Cape Otway, Austrlia
• November 9 – Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez premieres in Barcelona, Spain.
• November 10 – An earthquake in Bucharest, Romania kills 1,000.
• November 11
  • WWII: The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian battleship fleet anchored at Taranto naval base.
  • WWII: The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan.
  • Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in the Midwestern United States.
• November 13 – Walt Disney's Fantasia is released. It is the first box office failure for Disney, though it eventually recoups its cost years later, and becomes one of the most highly regarded of Disney's films.
• November 14 – WWII: The city of Coventry, England is destroyed by 500 German Luftwaffe bombers (150,000 fire bombs, 503 tons of high explosives, and 130 parachute mines level 60,000 of the city's 75,000 buildings; 568 people are killed).
• November 16
  • WWII: In response to Germany levelling Coventry 2 days before, the Royal Air Force begins to bomb Hamburg (by war's end, 50,000 Hamburg residents will have died from Allied attacks).
  • An unexploded pipe bomb is found in the Consolidated Edison office building (only years later is the culprit, George Metesky, apprehended).
  • The Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers is founded.
• November 18 – WWII: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
• November 20 – WWII: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
• November 27
  • In Romania, coup leader General Ion Antonescu's Iron Guard arrests and executes over 60 of exiled king Carol II of Romania's aides. Among the dead is former minister and acclaimed historian Nicolae Iorga.
  • WWII: The Royal Navy and Regia Marina fight the Battle of Cape Spartivento.