Timeline August 1940

Events in August 1940 10

• 1851 – 1940 Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) Died 22 August 1940, aged 89 British physicist who did pioneering work on radio. In later life he was a prominent investigator of spiritualism.
• 1856 – 1940 J. J. Thomson (1856-1940) Died 30 August 1940, aged 83 British physicist who discovered the electron in 1897 and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906. He led the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, and seven of his assistants went on to win Nobel Prizes.
• 1875 – 1940 Walter Chrysler (1875-1940) Died 18 August 1940, aged 65 American industrialist who founded the Chrysler Corporation in 1925. He also paid for the Chrysler Building in New York.
• 1879 – 1940 Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Died 21 August 1940, aged 60 Russian revolutionary, founder of the Red Army and Stalin's chief rival, exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. A Soviet agent, Ramón Mercader, struck him with an ice axe at his home in Coyoacán, Mexico City, on 20 August. He died the following day.
• 1880 – 1940 Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) Died 4 August 1940, aged 59 Zionist leader born in Odessa who founded Revisionist Zionism and the Betar youth movement. He died of a heart attack while visiting a Betar camp in New York State.
• 1940 Soviet occupation of the Baltic states Red Army occupies Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia The Soviet Union issued ultimatums and occupied Lithuania on 15 June, then Latvia and Estonia on 17 June. Rigged elections followed, and all three states were annexed as Soviet republics in early August. They regained independence only in 1991.
• 1940 US Championships 1940 Men: Don McNeill · Women: Alice Marble
• 1940 – 1945 Exile in the United States Spent five years in exile in the United States, attending school near Washington. He returned to Norway on 7 June 1945, one month after liberation, reunited with a father he barely knew.
• 1940 Hundred Regiments Offensive Chinese Communist forces attack Japanese railways and garrisons From 20 August the Eighth Route Army under Peng Dehuai attacked Japanese railways, roads and blockhouses across northern China. It was the largest Communist offensive of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Japan retaliated with the brutal "Three Alls" policy.
• 1940 Second Vienna Award Germany and Italy give Northern Transylvania to Hungary On 30 August Germany and Italy arbitrated a territorial dispute and forced Romania to cede Northern Transylvania to Hungary. The loss sparked a political crisis in Romania. King Carol II abdicated on 6 September and Ion Antonescu took power.