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Top Song(s)
• The Mills Brothers - Paper Doll
• Dick Haymes - You'll Never Know
• Bing Crosby - Sunday, Monday or Always
• Glenn Miller - That Old Black Magic
• Harry James - I Had the Craziest Dream
Top Film(s)
• Shadow of a Doubt
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
• The Ox-Bow Incident
• Day of Wrath
• I Walked with a Zombie
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
• These Happy Golden Years - Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Johnny Tremain - Esther Forbes
• Bedknob and Broomstick - Mary Norton
Famous Deaths
• January 5 – George Washington Carver, African-American botanist
• February 22 - Ben Robertson, American novelist, journalist and war correspondent
• March 28 - Edward Heron-Allen, British polymath, lawyer, scientist and scholar
• April 13 – Oskar Schlemmer, German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer
• May 20 – John Stone Stone, American physicist, inventor
• July 6 - Nazaria Ignacia March Mesa, Spanish-born Roman Catholic religious sister, canonized
• August 22 – Virgilio Davila, Puerto Rican poet, educator, businessman and politician
• September 6 – Reginald McKenna, British Chancellor of the Exchequer
• November 24 - Doris Miller, African-American sailor, Pearl Harbor survivor
• December 14 – John Harvey Kellogg, American physician, nutritionist
Medical/Science/Technology
• Construction of British prototype Mark I Colossus computer.
• The cinder cone volcano Paricutin begins to appear in Mexico.
• Project Y, the Manhattan Project's secret laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, begins operations.
• The drugs Vicodin and Lortab are made in Germany.
• The antibiotic streptomycin (the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis) is first isolated by Albert Schatz.
• Winston Churchill's recurring bacterial pneumonia is successfully treated with the sulphapyridine M&B 693.
• A golden mold, growing on an American cantaloupe, is found to be ideal for mass production of penicillin.
• Albert Hofmann discovers the hallucinogenic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide.
• Dr. Willem J. Kolff builds the first dialysis machine, in the occupied Netherlands.
• Krueger flaps for aircraft wings are invented by Werner Kruger and evaluated.
Political Events
• January 4 – Culbert Olson, 29th Governor of California, is succeeded by Earl Warren.
• January 11 – The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China.
• January 14 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, first president of the United States to travel by airplane while in office.
• January 15 – The Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of War, is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.
• February 11 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower is selected to command the Allied armies in Europe.
• February 20 – American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
• April 13 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birthday.
• May 12 – The Trident Conference begins in Washington, D.C., with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill taking part.
• May 17 - The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the computer ENIAC.
• May 19 – Winston Churchill addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
National Events
• January 11 – The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China.
• January 14 - Aircraft carrier USS Independence is commissioned.
• February 6 – Walt Disney Productions' sixth feature film, Saludos Amigos, is released.
• February 7 – It is announced that shoe rationing will go into effect in the US in two days.
• March 9 - Construction of the Alaska Highway begins.
• May 17 - The Memphis Belle becomes the first airplane in the 8th Air Force to complete a 25-mission tour of duty.
• June 6 – The first game of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is played.
• September 7 – The Gulf Hotel fire in Houston, Texas, kills 55 people.
• October 12 – The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) begins radio broadcasting.
• December 4 – The Great Depression officially ends in the United States.
Worldwide Events
• January 16 – Iraq declares war on the Axis powers.
• February 7 – North Atlantic convoy SC 118 is attacked by U-boats, who sink 8 ships.
• March 5 - The Gloster Meteor, the first Allied jet fighter, makes its first flight, in England.
• April 13 – Radio Berlin announces the discovery by Wehrmacht of mass graves of Poles killed by Soviets.
• April 27 – The U.S. Federal Writers' Project ceases operation.
• June 22 – The U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division lands in North Africa.
• July 5 - The National Bands Agreement is concluded in Greece.
• August 2 – John F. Kennedy's PT boat PT-109 is run down by Japanese destroyer Amagiri.
• October 7 – The Naples post-office bombing kills 100.
• December 7 – Chiara Lubich starts the humanitarian Focolare Movement in Trento, Italy.