Timeline May 1939

Events in May 1939 13

• 1865 – 1939 Charles Horace Mayo (1865-1939) Died 26 May 1939, aged 73 Charles Mayo was an American surgeon and co-founder of the Mayo Clinic. He was known for his work on goitre and thyroid surgery. He died of pneumonia in Chicago.
• 1893 – 1939 Ernst Toller (1893-1939) Died 22 May 1939, aged 45 Toller was a German Expressionist playwright and a leader of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919. He went into exile after the Nazis came to power. He took his own life in New York.
• 1894 – 1939 Joseph Roth (1894-1939) Died 27 May 1939, aged 44 Roth was an Austrian novelist and journalist who wrote Radetzky March about the decline of the Habsburg monarchy. He fled Germany in 1933. He died in poverty in Paris.
• 1939 Battle of Nanchang Japan captures the capital of Jiangxi Japanese forces attacked Nanchang in March and took the city within days. A Chinese counteroffensive in April failed to retake it. Holding Nanchang secured Japan's supply lines around Wuhan.
• 1939 Sutton Hoo ship burial excavated An Anglo-Saxon royal grave is uncovered in Suffolk Basil Brown and a team of archaeologists excavated a 27-metre ship burial at Sutton Hoo. It held a rich collection of Anglo-Saxon gold, weapons and the Sutton Hoo helmet. The grave is usually linked to King Rædwald of East Anglia.
• 1939 Bombing of Chongqing begins in earnest Japanese air raids devastate China's wartime capital Japanese raids on 3 and 4 May set large parts of Chongqing on fire and killed thousands of civilians. The Nationalist government had moved to the city after the fall of Wuhan. The bombing went on for years.
• 1939 Finnegans Wake published James Joyce's final work appears Faber and Faber published James Joyce's Finnegans Wake after 17 years of work. The book is written in a dense, multilingual invented language. It is one of the most difficult novels in English.
• 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol Soviet and Mongolian forces defeat Japan on the Mongolian border An undeclared border war between Soviet-Mongolian and Japanese forces ended with a decisive Soviet victory under Georgy Zhukov in late August. A ceasefire took effect on 16 September. The defeat pushed Japan away from war with the Soviet Union and towards expansion southward.
• 1939 Voyage of the MS St. Louis Jewish refugees are refused entry in the Americas The liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg with more than 900 Jewish refugees. Cuba, the United States and Canada refused to let them land. The ship returned to Europe, and about a quarter of its passengers later died in the Holocaust.
• 1939 White Paper of 1939 Britain limits Jewish immigration to Palestine The British government proposed an independent Palestine within ten years and capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years. Both Zionists and Arab leaders rejected it. It governed British policy in Palestine through the war.
• 1939 – 1992 Giovanni Falcone Anti-Mafia Judge A magistrate who spent his life fighting the Sicilian Mafia until his assassination in the Capaci bombing.
• 1939 Pact of Steel signed Germany and Italy form a military alliance Ciano and Ribbentrop signed the Pact of Friendship and Alliance in Berlin. Each country promised to support the other in any war, whether offensive or defensive. The treaty formalised the Rome–Berlin Axis.
• 1939 Military Training Act Britain introduces peacetime conscription Parliament passed Britain's first peacetime conscription law. It required men aged 20 and 21 to do six months of military training. It was replaced once war broke out.