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| | | | World History timeline |
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| 1938 |
| | | In Homage to Catalonia George Orwell describes his experiences fighting for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) builds the Burma Road as a supply route | |
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| 1938 |
| | | American naïve painter Grandma Moses has her first exhibition in a local drug store at the age of 78 | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Yorkshire batsman Len Hutton scores a record 364 in a Test match against Australia at the Oval | |
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| 1938 |
| | | British author Graham Greene publishes Brighton Rock, a novel following 17-year-old Pinkie in the criminal underworld of the seaside town | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Wind erosion makes this the worst year of the Dust Bowl crisis in the midwest USA | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Maxim de Winter's house, Manderley, holds dark secrets in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Russian film-maker Sergei Eisenstein directs Alexander Nevsky, with music by Prokofiev | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Irish author Samuel Beckett publishes his first novel, Murphy | |
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| 1938 |
| | | 23-year-old Rangoon student Aung San, later the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, becomes general secretary of a freedom party, Dobama Asiayone (Our Burma Union) | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Lord Nuffield donates to Commonwealth hospitals 'iron lungs', built at his Morris Oxford factory, | |
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| 1938 |
| | | A dramatized version of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, broadcast on US radio, terrifies listeners who think Martians are invading | |
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| 1938 |
| | | US architectural critic Lewis Mumford publishes The Culture of Cities | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Lavrenty Beria is appointed head of Stalin's state security organization, the NKVD | |
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| 1938 |
| | | US tennis player Donald Budge becomes the first person to achieve the grand slam, winning all four majors in the same year | |
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| 1938 |
| | | The peace of Buenos Aires, ending the Chaco War, gives Paraguay most of the region under dispute with Bolivia | |
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| 1938 |
| | | The first of many ballets to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet score is premiered in Czechoslovakia | |
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| 1938 February 4 |
| | | Adolf Hitler appoints Joachim von Ribbentrop as Germany's foreign minister | |
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| 1938 February 12 |
| | | Adolf Hitler uses threats of force to browbeat the Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, into granting special favours to Austrian Nazis | |
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| 1938 March 9 |
| | | The Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, defies Hitler by announcing a referendum on his country's independence | |
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| 1938 March 11 |
| | | The Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg resigns in the face of threats from Hitler, and broadcasts that he is doing so under duress | |
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| 1938 March 1 |
| | | German tanks cross the border into Austria, on the official invitation of Austrian Nazis | |
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| 1938 March 12 |
| | | Adolf Hitler, following his troops into Austria, announces the Anschluss (union of Germany and Austria) | |
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| 1938 April 24 |
| | | The Sudeten German National Socialist Party demands secession from Czechoslovakia, in keeping with Hitler's plans for the Sudetenland | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Left-wingers and Jews suffer immediate persecution in Nazi Austria, now part of Germany | |
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| 1938 |
| | | Voters in both Germany and Austria give massive approval for Hitler's annexation of Austria | |
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| 1938 September 15 |
| | | Neville Chamberlain makes the first of three flights to Germany, this time to negotiate with Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden | |
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| 1938 September 29 |
| | | Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier fly to Munich to discuss Hitler's designs on the Czech Sudetenland | |
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| 1938 September 29 |
| | | Chamberlain and Daladier agree at Munich that Hitler may annexe the Czech Sudetenland, with its largely German population | |
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| 1938 September 30 |
| | | Neville Chamberlain returns to Britain from Munich claiming to have achieved 'peace for our time... peace with honour' | |
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| 1938 September 30 |
| | | Poland insists that the industrial area of Teschen Silesia, largely inhabited by Poles, be ceded by Czechoslovakia | |
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| 1938 October |
| | | The Sudetenland is transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany, in accordance with the Munich agreement | |
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| 1938 October |
| | | Adolf Hitler makes unacceptable demands upon Poland, including the transfer of the free port of Danzig to Germany | |
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| 1938 October |
| | | Adolf Hitler demands a strip of territory through the Polish corridor to reunite Germany with East Prussia | |
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| 1938 November 9 |
| | | Nazi gangs smash the premises of Jews throughout Germany and Austria in a night that becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of cut glass | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Two million Anderson air-raid shelters are distributed to British homes, to be constructed in the garden from corrugated steel panels | |
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| 1939 |
| | | German physicists, led by Otto Hahn, announce their discovery of nuclear fission | |
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| 1939 |
| | | W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrate together to the USA, later becoming US citizens | |
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| 1939 |
| | | James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is published after 17 years in the making | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson move their studios to St Ives | |
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| 1939 |
| | | US author Henry Miller publishes in Paris Tropic of Capricorn, about his adolescence in New York | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Eugenio Pacelli is elected pope and takes the name Pius XII | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Madrid falls to the Nationalist forces, bringing the Spanish Civil War to an end and Franco to power | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Tommy Handley has a huge success in the British comedy radio programme ITMA (It's That Man Again) | |
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| 1939 |
| | | James Thurber publishes his short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington effectively launches the US civil rights movement | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Victor Fleming directs 17-year-old Judy Garland in the film of the famous musical The Wizard of Oz | |
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| 1939 |
| | | US chemist Linus Pauling publishes his collected discoveries on The nature of the chemical bond | |
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| 1939 |
| | | John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family, sharecroppers who are forced to move west to escape the horrors of the Dust Bowl | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Irish author Flann O'Brien publishes his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Ninotchka, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, is another great success for the Swedish film star Greta Garbo | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Robert Menzies, leader of the United Australia Party, becomes Australia's prime minister | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Archaeological treasures are discovered in an Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, in Suffolk | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears give a series of recitals in the USA at the start of a lifelong partnership | |
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| 1939 |
| | | US designer Igor Sikorsky tests the first practical helicopter, using a rotor on a long tail boom to counter torque | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Australian author Patrick White publishes his first novel, Happy Valley | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh star in Gone with the Wind, based on Margaret Mitchell's novel | |
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| 1939 |
| | | British racing driver Malcolm Campbell sets a new water speed record of 141 mph | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan becomes music director of the Berlin State Opera | |
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| 1939 |
| | | British author Christopher Isherwood publishes his novel Goodbye to Berlin, based on his own experiences in the city | |
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| 1939 |
| | | British pianist Myra Hess begins a wartime series of lunchtime concerts in London's National Gallery | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Igor Stravinsky moves to the USA from Paris, his home for nearly 30 years, and settles in Hollywood | |
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| 1939 |
| | | John Ford directs John Wayne in the film Stagecoach | |
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| 1939 |
| | | Joaquin Rodrigo's concerto for guitar and orchestra, the Concierto de Aranjuez, has its first performance in Barcelona | |
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| 1939 |
| | | US crime-writer Raymond Chandler publishes his first novel, The Big Sleep, introducing the hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe | |
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| 1939 |
| | | The US jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker acquires the nickname 'Yardbird', or simply 'Bird' | |
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| 1939 February 2 |
| | | De Valera declares that Eire will be neutral in any forthcoming European war | |
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| 1939 March |
| | | Hungary aligns itself with the Axis powers, signing Germany and Japan's Anti-Comintern Pact | |
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| 1939 March 15 |
| | | Hitler's armies smash their way into Czechoslovakia and enter Prague, against all his previous promises | |
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