istoryworld
Events relating to north america
Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of our Teeth has a mixed reception at its New Haven premiere
US crooner Bing Crosby sings Irving Berlin's White Christmas
Joseph Stilwell is appointed to head the US military mission to Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek)
US physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer is appointed director of the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon
US general Dwight Eisenhower is appointed to command Allied landings in north Africa
Canadian troops provide most of the assault force in a disastrous raid on Dieppe
Enrico Fermi and his team in Chicago achieve the first nuclear chain reaction
The loss of merchant shipping to U-boats reaches a peak in the Battle of the Atlantic, with 1.5 million tons sunk in the last quarter of the year
The musical Oklahoma! launches the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
11-year-old Elizabeth Taylor co-stars with a collie in Lassie Come Home
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is repealed in the US, but there are to be only 105 Chinese immigrants each year
New Allied successes against the German U-boats provide a turning point in the battle of the Atlantic
The Allied destruction of U-boats climbs to its highest level in the Battle of the Atlantic, with 56 sunk in two months
Carl ('Tooey') Spaatz is appointed to command the US Strategic Air Forces in Europe
Ibn Saud and his US partners set up ARAMCO, the Arabia-American Oil Company
Saul Bellow publishes his first novel, Dangling Man, a study of an intellectual adrift as he waits to be drafted into the army
Composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins work together on the ballet Fancy Free
Fancy Free becomes On the Town, a Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein, directed by Jerome Robbins
The World Bank and IMF are conceived at an international conference in the USA, at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire
12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor co-stars with a horse in the film National Velvet
Boston writer Robert Lowell publishes his first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness
The separate poems forming T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets are brought together for the first time as a single volume, published in New York
Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring has choreography by Martha Graham
US general Dwight Eisenhower is appointed to command the Allied invasion of Normandy
The first of many thousands of war brides arrive in Canada, mainly from Great Britain
