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Top Song(s)
• Glenn Miller - In the Mood
• Artie Shaw - Frenesi
• Bing Crosby - Only Forever
• Glenn Miller - When You Wish Upon a Star
• Jimmie Davis - You Are My Sunshine
Top Film(s)
• The Philadelphia Story
• His Girl Friday
• The Great Dictator
• Rebecca
• The Shop Around the Corner
Best Selling Book(s)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
• The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Pat the Bunny - Dorothy Kunhardt
• Evil Under the Sun - Agatha Christie
• Horton Hatches the Egg - Dr. Seuss
Famous Deaths
• January 15 – Kallirhoe Parren, founder of the Greek women's movement
• February 15 – R. E. B. Crompton, British electrical engineer, industrialist and inventor
• March 27 – Madeleine Astor, American survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic
• April 10 – Bernard Warburton-Lee, British naval officer, Victoria Cross recipient
• June 17 – Sir Arthur Harden, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• July 15 – Robert Wadlow, American citizen, tallest man ever
• August 16 – Henri Desgrange, French racing cyclist and founder of the Tour de France
• September 5 – Charles de Broqueville, 20th Prime Minister of Belgium
• October 9 – Sir Wilfred Grenfell, English medical missionary to Newfoundland and Labrador
• December 23 – Eddie August Schneider, American aviator
Medical/Science/Technology
• The antibiotic dactinomycin (actinomycin D) is first isolated by Selman Waksman and H. Boyd Woodruff.
• The first transposons are discovered in maize (aka corn) by Barbara McClintock.
• The radioactive isotope carbon-14 is discovered by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben.
• Plutonium is first synthesized by a team led by Glenn T. Seaborg and Edwin McMillan.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Levi introduces the Levi graph in a series of lectures on finite geometry.
• German optometrist Heinrich Wohlk produces fully plastic contact lenses.
• At Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Austin T. Moore performs the first metallic hip replacement surgery.
• FM radio demonstrated to the FCC for the first time.
• First free flight of Igor Sikorsky's Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 helicopter, in the United States.
• Donald Leslie demonstrates the Leslie speaker, intended as an adjunct to the Hammond organ.
Political Events
• April 1 – Census date for the 16th U.S. Census.
• April 7 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
• May 16 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, asks for $900 million to finance construction of at least 50,000 airplanes per year.
• June 10 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions with his "Stab in the Back" speech.
• June 14 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Naval Expansion Act into law.
• July 15 – The Democratic Party begins its national convention in Chicago and nominates Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• July 25 – President Roosevelt announces a ban on Japan acquiring high-octane aviation fuel from the United States.
• October 29 – The Selective Service System lottery is held in Washington, D.C.
• December 17 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, first sets forth his plan to send aid to Great Britain.
• December 29 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, declares that the United States must become "the great Arsenal of Democracy."
National Events
• February 7 – RKO release Walt Disney's second full-length animated film, Pinocchio.
• March 4 – Kings Canyon National Park is established in California.
• April 7 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be on a United States postage stamp.
• April 23 – The Rhythm Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, United States, kills 198 people.
• May 15 - The very first McDonald's restaurant opens in San Bernardino, California.
• June 16 – The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is held for the first time in Sturgis, South Dakota.
• June 22 – The first Dairy Queen opens in Edina, Minnesota.
• July 27 – Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Oscar-nominated cartoon short, A Wild Hare.
• October 1 – The first section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, is opened between Irwin and Carlisle.
• November 11 – Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in the Midwest.
Worldwide Events
• January 9 – British submarine HMS Starfish is sunk in the Heligoland Bight.
• February 1 – Soviet forces launch a major assault on Finnish troops occupying the Karelian Isthmus.
• March 12 – The Soviet Union and Finland sign a peace treaty in Moscow, ending the Winter War.
• April 3 – Operation Weserubung – German ships set out for the invasion of Norway.
• April 8 – Operation Wilfred: The British fleet lays naval mines off the coast of neutral Norway.
• May 13 – Winston Churchill, in his first address as Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
• June 3 - Paris is bombed by the Luftwaffe for the first time.
• June 16 - The Churchill war ministry in the United Kingdom offers a Franco-British Union.
• October 29 – The Selective Service System lottery is held in Washington, D.C.
• November 7 – In Tacoma, Washington, the 600-foot long center span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.