Timeline February 1939

Events in February 1939 10

• 1857 – 1939 Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) Died 10 February 1939, aged 81 Achille Ratti was pope from 1922. He signed the Lateran Treaty, which created Vatican City. In 1937 he condemned Nazism in the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge.
• 1869 – 1939 Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939) Died 27 February 1939, aged 70 Krupskaya was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Lenin's wife. She served as Deputy People's Commissar for Education. She shaped Soviet library and educational policy.
• 1874 – 1939 Franz Schmidt (1874-1939) Died 11 February 1939, aged 64 Schmidt was an Austrian composer, cellist and teacher. He is best known for his four symphonies and the oratorio The Book with Seven Seals. He also played cello in the Vienna Court Opera orchestra under Mahler.
• 1875 – 1939 Antonio Machado (1875-1939) Died 22 February 1939, aged 63 Machado was a Spanish poet of the Generation of 98 and wrote Campos de Castilla. He supported the Republic and fled to France as Catalonia fell. He died in Collioure a few weeks later.
• 1939 – 1978 Claude François (1939-1978) Died 11 March 1978, aged 39 François was one of France's biggest pop stars of the 1960s and 70s, co-writer of the song that became "My Way". He died of electrocution while adjusting a lamp in his bathtub.
• 1939 – 2026 Wally Funk (1939-2026) Died 8 July 2026, aged 87 American aviation pioneer who in 2021 became the oldest woman to reach space, sixty years after being denied a place in the astronaut corps.
• 1939 Japanese occupation of Hainan Japan seizes the island off southern China Japanese forces landed on Hainan and quickly took control of the island. The occupation gave Japan air and naval bases within reach of French Indochina. It alarmed France and Britain.
• 1939 Meitner and Frisch explain nuclear fission Uranium splitting is explained and named Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch published a paper in Nature showing that Hahn and Strassmann's experiments had split the uranium nucleus. They calculated the enormous energy released and gave the process the name fission. The discovery made atomic weapons conceivable.
• 1939 – 2013 Ray Manzarek (1939-2013) Died 20 May 2013, aged 74 Ray Manzarek was an American musician and co-founder of the rock band the Doors, known for his distinctive keyboard work. He died in Germany after a long battle with bile duct cancer.
• 1939 1939 World Snooker Championship Joe Davis Title 13 Winner: Joe Davis; Runner-up: Sidney Smith. Score: 43–30.