Timeline December 1938

Events in December 1938 11

• 1890 – 1938 Karel Čapek (1890-1938) Died 25 December 1938, aged 48 Čapek was a Czech writer whose play R.U.R. introduced the word "robot". He was a prominent critic of fascism and died a few months after the Munich Agreement.
• 1891 – 1938 Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) Died 27 December 1938, aged 47 Mandelstam was one of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. He was arrested for an epigram mocking Stalin and died in a transit camp near Vladivostok.
• 1936 – 1938 Child Performer Made her radio debut at the age of four and her screen debut at six in the Vitaphone featurette Toyland Casino, singing Five and Ten Cent Soldiers on Parade.
• 1938 Fled Nazi Germany His family fled Nazi Germany to escape anti-Jewish persecution, emigrating to New York City. Thirteen of his relatives would perish in the Holocaust.
• 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow The British Empire Exhibition is held at Bellahouston Park The exhibition showcased industry and culture across the Empire and drew over 12 million visitors. Thomas Tait's modernist Tower of Empire was its centrepiece.
• 1938 First Kindertransport arrives in Britain Jewish refugee children reach Harwich After Kristallnacht, Britain agreed to admit unaccompanied Jewish children from the Reich. The first group arrived at Harwich on 2 December. Nearly 10,000 children were rescued before the war began.
• 1938 Fermi awarded Nobel Prize and leaves Italy Fermi uses the Stockholm ceremony to escape Fascist Italy Enrico Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on neutron-induced radioactivity. Italy's new racial laws threatened his Jewish wife, so the family went on to the United States instead of returning home.
• 1938 Pearl S. Buck awarded Nobel Prize in Literature The first American woman to win the literature prize Pearl S. Buck received the prize for her portrayals of peasant life in China and her biographical works. She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1938 Discovery of nuclear fission Hahn and Strassmann split the uranium nucleus In Berlin, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann found barium among the products of uranium bombarded with neutrons. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch explained the result as the nucleus splitting apart, which led directly to nuclear reactors and the atomic bomb.
• 1938 Living coelacanth discovered A fish thought extinct for 66 million years is found off South Africa Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer spotted an unusual fish in a trawler's catch near East London, South Africa. Ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith identified it as a coelacanth, a group known previously only from fossils.
• 1938 Big Bill Broonzy plays From Spirituals to Swing Carnegie Hall Takes the place of the dead Robert Johnson at John Hammond's concert.