RETURN TO INDEX
Top Song(s)
• Bing Crosby - Swinging On a Star
• Jimmy Dorsey - Besame Mucho
• The Mills Brothers - You Always Hurt the One You Love
• Dinah Shore - I'll Walk Alone
• Woody Guthrie - This Land is Your Land
Top Film(s)
• Double Indemnity
• Laura
• Arsenic and Old Lace
• Gaslight
• To Have and Have Not
Best Selling Book(s)
• Rabbit Hill - Robert Lawson
• The Razor’s Edge - W. Somerset Maugham
• The Hundred Dresses - Eleanor Estes
• Forever Amber - Kathleen Winsor
• A Bell for Adano - John Hersey
Famous Deaths
• January 4 - Kaj Munk, Danish playwright, Lutheran pastor and martyr
• February 17 – Valentin Kotyk, partisan scout, the youngest-ever Hero of Soviet Union
• March 11 - Hendrik Willem van Loon, Dutch-born American historian, journalist and writer
• April 28 - Frank Knox, American Secretary of the Navy during WWII
• May 11 – Leon Koz?owski, Polish archaeologist and politician, 25th Prime Minister of Poland
• June 28 – Anton Breinl, Australian medical practitioner and researcher
• July 30 - Nikolai Polikarpov, Soviet aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer
• August 12 - Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., American fighter pilot, oldest son of Joseph P. Kennedy
• September 18 - Hendrikus Colijn, Dutch policeman, 25th Prime Minister of the Netherlands
• October 9 - Kitty Marion, German-born actress and women's rights activist
Medical/Science/Technology
• Hendrik van de Hulst predicts the 21 cm hyperfine line of neutral interstellar hydrogen.
• Last known evidence for existence of the Asiatic lion in the wild in Iran.
• Americium discovered by Glenn T. Seaborg.
• IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.
• The Whipple Museum of the History of Science is established at the University of Cambridge, England.
• November 19 – Minnesota Starvation Experiment begins.
• Hans Asperger describes Asperger syndrome.
• David S. Sheridan invents the disposable plastic tracheal tube catheter.
• Ball lightning observed in Uppsala, Sweden.
• Hanford Site in Washington (state) produces its first plutonium.
Political Events
• January 11 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a Second Bill of Rights for social and economic security.
• January 12 – Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle begin a 2-day conference in Marrakech.
• February 14 – SHAEF headquarters is established in Britain by General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• April 3 – Smith v. Allwright decided in the Supreme Court prohibits white primaries.
• July 1 – The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference begins at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
• July 19 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt is renominated for a fourth term at the 1944 Democratic National Convention.
• August 9 – The United States Forest Service release posters featuring Smokey Bear for the first time.
• November 7 - Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey.
• December 16 – General George C. Marshall becomes the first Five-Star General.
• December 30 – Edward Stettinius Jr. becomes the last United States Secretary of State of the Roosevelt administration.
National Events
• January 20 – The U.S. Army 36th Infantry Division, in Italy, attempts to cross the Gari River.
• February 2 – The first issue of Human Events is published in Washington, D.C.
• April 25 – The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.
• May 8 – World War II: USS Ticonderoga is commissioned.
• July 6 - Hartford Circus Fire: More than 100 children die in one of the worst fire disasters in U.S history.
• August 12 – Major fire at Luna Park, Coney Island, New York.
• August 14 – Fort Lawton riot.
• September 5 – An earthquake affects New York town of Massena at the Canada–United States border.
• October 8 – The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet radio show debuts in the United States.
• December 26 - The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams premieres in Chicago.
Worldwide Events
• January 20 – The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
• March 10 - In Britain, the prohibition on married women working as teachers is lifted.
• May 5 – Mohandas Gandhi is released from jail in India, on health grounds.
• June 5 – The German navy's Enigma messages are decoded in England almost in real time.
• June 13 – Germany launches the first V-1 flying bomb attack on London.
• August 1 - The Warsaw Uprising begins.
• August 21 - The Dumbarton Oaks Conference opens in Washington, D.C.
• October 11 – The Tuvan People's Republic is annexed into the Soviet Union.
• November 7 - A passenger train derails in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, due to excessive speed; 16 are killed, 50 injured.
• December 24–26 – Agana race riot in Guam between white and black United States Marines.