1942

Events in 1942 111

• 1858 – 1942 Franz Boas (1858-1942) Died 21 December 1942, aged 84 Franz Boas was a German-born American anthropologist, often called the father of American anthropology. He challenged scientific racism and promoted cultural relativism, and he trained a generation of scholars at Columbia University. He died at a luncheon at the Columbia Faculty Club.
• 1860 – 1942 Walter Sickert (1860-1942) Died 22 January 1942, aged 81 Walter Sickert was a British painter and a leading figure of the Camden Town Group. His dark scenes of music halls and urban interiors influenced 20th-century British art. He died in Bath.
• 1862 – 1942 William Henry Bragg (1862-1942) Died 12 March 1942, aged 79 William Henry Bragg was a British physicist who, with his son Lawrence, founded the science of X-ray crystallography. The two shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics. He served as President of the Royal Society from 1935 to 1940.
• 1870 – 1942 Jean Perrin (1870-1942) Died 17 April 1942, aged 71 Jean Perrin was a French physicist whose experiments on Brownian motion confirmed that atoms and molecules exist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 and helped found the CNRS. He fled occupied France and died in New York.
• 1871 – 1942 Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942) Died 15 March 1942, aged 70 Alexander Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer and conductor and a teacher of Arnold Schoenberg. His works include the Lyric Symphony and the opera Der Zwerg. He fled the Nazis to the United States and died in Larchmont, New York.
• 1874 – 1942 Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) Died 24 April 1942, aged 67 Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908, and its sequels. Her books, set on Prince Edward Island, have been translated into dozens of languages. She died in Toronto.
• 1878 – 1942 Akiko Yosano (1878-1942) Died 29 May 1942, aged 63 Akiko Yosano was a Japanese poet, feminist and social reformer. Her 1901 tanka collection Midaregami (Tangled Hair) caused a sensation with its frank sensuality. She also produced a modern Japanese translation of The Tale of Genji.
• 1878 – 1942 George M. Cohan (1878-1942) Died 5 November 1942, aged 64 George M. Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright and songwriter known as "the man who owns Broadway". He wrote "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". His life was dramatised in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy.
• 1880 – 1942 Robert Musil (1880-1942) Died 15 April 1942, aged 61 Robert Musil was an Austrian writer best known for his unfinished modernist novel The Man Without Qualities. He left Austria after the Anschluss and lived in exile in Switzerland. He died in poverty in Geneva.
• 1881 – 1942 Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) Died 22 February 1942, aged 60 Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, biographer and one of the most widely translated writers of his day. After fleeing Nazism he settled in Brazil, where he and his wife Lotte took their own lives in Petrópolis. His memoir The World of Yesterday was published after his death.
• 1882 – 1942 John Barrymore (1882-1942) Died 29 May 1942, aged 60 John Barrymore was an American actor famed for his stage Hamlet and for films including Grand Hotel and Twentieth Century. A member of the Barrymore acting family, he was known as "The Great Profile". He died in Los Angeles.
• 1884 – 1942 Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942) Died 16 May 1942, aged 58 Bronisław Malinowski was a Polish-born anthropologist who established participant-observation fieldwork as the core method of social anthropology. His research in the Trobriand Islands produced Argonauts of the Western Pacific. He died in New Haven, Connecticut.
• 1891 – 1942 Edith Stein (1891-1942) Died 9 August 1942, aged 50 Edith Stein was a German philosopher, a student of Edmund Husserl, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism and became a Carmelite nun. She was arrested in the Netherlands and murdered at Auschwitz. Pope John Paul II canonised her in 1998 as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
• 1891 – 1942 Grant Wood (1891-1942) Died 12 February 1942, aged 50 Grant Wood was an American painter and a leader of the Regionalist movement, which depicted the rural Midwest. His 1930 painting American Gothic is among the most recognised images in American art. He died of pancreatic cancer in Iowa City.
• 1892 – 1942 Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) Died 19 November 1942, aged 50 Bruno Schulz was a Polish Jewish writer and artist, author of The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. He was shot dead by a Gestapo officer in the Drohobych ghetto. He is considered one of the great Polish prose stylists of the 20th century.
• 1902 – 1942 Prince George, Duke of Kent (1902-1942) Died 25 August 1942, aged 39 Prince George, Duke of Kent, was the fourth son of King George V and a younger brother of George VI. He was killed when an RAF Sunderland flying boat crashed in Caithness, Scotland, while he was on active service. He was the first member of the British royal family in centuries to die on military duty.
• 1903 – 1942 Irène Némirovsky (1903-1942) Died 17 August 1942, aged 39 Irène Némirovsky was a Kyiv-born French novelist of Jewish origin, known for David Golder. She was arrested in occupied France and murdered at Auschwitz. Her unfinished novel Suite française was published to wide acclaim in 2004.
• 1904 – 1942 Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) Died 4 June 1942, aged 38 Reinhard Heydrich was a senior SS officer, head of the Reich Security Main Office and Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He was one of the main architects of the Holocaust and chaired the Wannsee Conference. He died of wounds from an attack by Czechoslovak parachutists in Prague.
• 1905 – 1942 Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) Died 2 February 1942, aged 36 Daniil Kharms was a Russian avant-garde poet and writer of absurdist prose, and a founder of the OBERIU group. He was arrested by the NKVD in 1941 and died in a prison psychiatric ward during the Siege of Leningrad. His work was largely unpublished in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.
• 1908 – 1942 Carole Lombard (1908-1942) Died 16 January 1942, aged 33 Carole Lombard was an American actress and one of the leading stars of 1930s screwball comedy, known for My Man Godfrey and Nothing Sacred. She died when TWA Flight 3 crashed near Las Vegas while she was returning from a war bond rally. She was married to Clark Gable.
• 1942 – 2025 Brian Wilson (1942-2025) Died 11 June 2025, aged 82 American songwriter and producer who co-founded the Beach Boys and, with Pet Sounds, expanded what a pop record could be.
• 1942 Camus publishes The Stranger L'Étranger appears in occupied Paris Gallimard published Albert Camus's first novel, L'Étranger, the story of Meursault, a detached Frenchman in Algeria who kills an Arab man. The book became a central work of absurdist literature. Camus's essay The Myth of Sisyphus followed later the same year.
• 1942 – 2021 Carlos Reutemann (1942-2021) Died 7 July 2021, aged 79 Argentine Formula One driver and later governor of Santa Fe province.
• 1942 – 1967 Hepburn and Tracy begin a 26-year relationship Never acknowledged in public while he lived Tracy was Catholic and never divorced. They made nine films together.
• 1942 – 1970 Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) Died 18 September 1970, aged 27 Jimi Hendrix, the American guitarist who redefined electric rock guitar playing, died in London from asphyxiation after a drug overdose. He remains widely regarded as one of the most influential guitarists in popular music history.
• 1942 – 2025 Lou Gerstner (1942-2025) Died 27 December 2025, aged 83 American businessman who as chief executive from 1993 to 2002 turned around an ailing IBM, one of the most studied corporate revivals in business history.
• 1942 – 2024 Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024) Died 23 March 2024, aged 82 Italian pianist whose combination of intellectual rigour and technical brilliance gave him a unique standing.
• 1942 – 2024 Richard Perry (1942-2024) Died 24 December 2024, aged 82 American music producer who worked with Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon and the Pointer Sisters.
• 1942 – 2023 Richard Roundtree (1942-2023) Died 24 October 2023, aged 81 American actor whose John Shaft made him the first African American action hero to headline a major film.
• 1942 – 2023 Seymour Stein (1942-2023) Died 2 April 2023, aged 80 American record executive who founded Sire Records and signed the Ramones, Talking Heads and Madonna.
• 1942 Declaration by United Nations signed Allied nations pledge joint war against the Axis Representatives of 26 nations signed the Declaration by United Nations in Washington, D.C., committing themselves to the principles of the Atlantic Charter. Each signatory pledged its full resources to the war and promised not to make a separate peace with the Axis powers. The term "United Nations" later became the name of the postwar international organisation.
• 1942 – 2018 Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) Died 14 March 2018, aged 76 British theoretical physicist known for his work on black holes and cosmology, and for the bestselling book A Brief History of Time. He continued his research for decades despite being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in his twenties. He became one of the most recognizable scientists in the world.
• 1942 – 2011 Clarence Clemons (1942-2011) Died 18 June 2011, aged 69 The American saxophonist was a founding member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, known for his solo on "Born to Run" and decades of live performance alongside Springsteen. He died in Florida after suffering a stroke. His towering stage presence made him one of rock's most recognizable sidemen.
• 1942 Rio de Janeiro Conference American republics recommend breaking ties with the Axis Foreign ministers of the American republics met in Rio de Janeiro after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The conference recommended that member states break diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan. Most Latin American countries did so within weeks.
• 1942 – 2016 Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) Died 3 June 2016, aged 74 Ali was a heavyweight boxing champion widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Beyond the ring, he was known for his conversion to Islam, his refusal to be drafted for the Vietnam War, and his outspoken civil rights activism. He lived with Parkinson's disease for over three decades before his death.
• 1942 Wannsee Conference Nazi officials coordinate the "Final Solution" Reinhard Heydrich chaired a meeting of senior Nazi and German state officials at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. The meeting coordinated the ministries and agencies involved in the deportation and murder of Europe's Jews. Adolf Eichmann's minutes of the conference survived and became key evidence of the Holocaust's planning.
• 1942 8th Elfstedentocht Winner: Durk van der Duim The 1942 edition was again held under Nazi occupation on 22 January. Durk van der Duim, one of the five Pact of Dokkum skaters, won the solo title. Three participants died during the race. The event drew enormous public attention as a moment of Dutch identity during dark times.
• 1942 – 2014 Eusébio The Black Panther Widely considered one of the greatest footballers of all time and a national hero.
• 1942 – 2020 Terry Jones (1942-2020) Died 21 January 2020, aged 77 Terry Jones was a Welsh writer, director and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, directing films including Monty Python's Life of Brian. He died on 21 January 2020 after a long illness with a rare form of dementia.
• 1942 Fall of Singapore British Commonwealth garrison surrenders to Japan Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita crossed the Johor Strait on 8 February and took Singapore within a week. Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival surrendered on 15 February, and about 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops became prisoners. Winston Churchill called it the worst disaster in British military history.
• 1942 – present Carole King Singer-songwriter American songwriter who with Gerry Goffin wrote hits for the Shirelles, Little Eva and Aretha Franklin, then made Tapestry, one of the best-selling albums ever.
• 1942 – 2019 Peter Tork (1942-2019) Died 21 February 2019, aged 77 Peter Tork was an American musician best known as the bassist and keyboardist for the 1960s pop group the Monkees. The band, formed for a television series, went on to become a genuine commercial and cultural phenomenon. He died at his home in Connecticut.
• 1942 – 1989 Huey Newton (1942-1989) Died 22 August 1989, aged 47 Huey Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966, becoming a central figure in the Black Power movement. He advocated armed community patrols and social programs while facing repeated legal prosecution. He was shot and killed in Oakland, California.
• 1942 Bombing of Darwin Japanese air raids strike northern Australia Japanese carrier aircraft and land-based bombers attacked the port of Darwin in two raids, sinking ships in the harbour and destroying aircraft. At least 235 people were killed. It was the largest single attack ever made on Australia.
• 1942 Executive Order 9066 Roosevelt authorises the removal of Japanese Americans President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order allowing the military to exclude people from designated areas of the United States. It was used to force about 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them US citizens, from the West Coast into internment camps. The US government formally apologised in 1988.
• 1942 – 2024 Joseph Lieberman (1942-2024) Died 27 March 2024, aged 82 American senator who in 2000 was the first Jewish candidate on a major party presidential ticket.
• 1942 Sinking of the Struma Refugee ship torpedoed in the Black Sea The Struma, an overcrowded ship carrying Jewish refugees from Romania, was towed out of Istanbul after being held there for weeks. A Soviet submarine torpedoed it the next day, and nearly 800 people died. There was a single survivor.
• 1942 Battle of the Java Sea Japanese navy destroys an Allied squadron A combined American, British, Dutch and Australian naval force under Rear Admiral Karel Doorman tried to intercept a Japanese invasion convoy bound for Java. The Allies lost two cruisers and several destroyers, and Doorman was killed. The defeat left Java open to invasion.
• 1942 – 1969 Brian Jones (1942-1969) Founder of the Rolling Stones English multi-instrumentalist who founded the Rolling Stones. Pushed out of the band in June 1969, he drowned in his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm weeks later, aged 27.
• 1942 – 2013 Lou Reed (1942-2013) Died 27 October 2013, aged 71 Lou Reed was an American musician and songwriter, frontman of the Velvet Underground and later a solo artist known for albums including Transformer. He died of liver disease following a liver transplant.
• 1942 Dutch East Indies surrender to Japan Dutch colonial rule in the Indies collapses Dutch and Allied forces on Java capitulated to the Japanese army at Kalijati. The surrender ended organised resistance in the Dutch East Indies and gave Japan the oil fields it had gone to war to secure. The Japanese occupation lasted until 1945.
• 1942 Japanese capture Rangoon Burma's capital falls British forces abandoned Rangoon, and Japanese troops entered the city. Losing the port cut the main supply route to Allied forces in Burma and to China. British and Chinese armies then began a long retreat toward India.
• 1942 Deportations to Belzec begin Operation Reinhard extermination camps start killing Transports of Jews from the Lublin ghetto to the newly built Belzec extermination camp began. Belzec was the first of the three Operation Reinhard camps, followed by Sobibor and Treblinka. Around 430,000 or more people were murdered there by the end of 1942.
• 1942 MacArthur promises "I shall return" US commander pledges to liberate the Philippines Ordered to leave Corregidor, General Douglas MacArthur escaped to Australia. On arrival he made his statement that he would return to the Philippines. The line became one of the best-known pledges of the Pacific War.
• 1942 – 2018 Aretha Franklin (1942-2018) Died 16 August 2018, aged 76 American singer known as the "Queen of Soul", whose hits including "Respect" and "Chain of Fools" made her one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her voice became closely associated with the civil rights era.
• 1942 – 2024 Daniel C. Dennett (1942-2024) Died 19 April 2024, aged 82 American philosopher of mind and prominent figure in the new atheism, author of Consciousness Explained.
• 1942 Fall of Bataan and the Bataan Death March Captured US and Filipino troops forced on a brutal march About 75,000 American and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula surrendered to Japan on 9 April. The prisoners were forced to march roughly 100 km to prison camps, with little food or water. Thousands died from beatings, executions, disease and exhaustion.
• 1942 – 2006 Ken Lay (1942-2006) Died 5 July 2006, aged 64 Kenneth Lay, founder and former chairman of Enron, died of a heart attack at his home in Colorado weeks before his scheduled sentencing. He had been convicted of fraud and conspiracy over the company's 2001 collapse. His conviction was later vacated because he died before sentencing.
• 1942 Doolittle Raid First American air raid on the Japanese home islands Sixteen B-25 bombers led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle took off from the carrier USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The damage was slight, but the raid lifted American morale. It also pushed Japan to attack Midway.
• 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea First naval battle fought entirely by aircraft carriers American and Australian naval forces met a Japanese fleet sent to support an invasion of Port Moresby. The opposing ships never came within sight of each other, and all the fighting was done by carrier aircraft. The result was a tactical draw but a strategic Allied success, because the invasion was called off.
• 1942 – 1998 Tammy Wynette (1942-1998) Died 6 April 1998, aged 55 Tammy Wynette, the country singer known as the First Lady of Country Music for hits including "Stand by Your Man," died of a blood clot at her Nashville home on 6 April 1998. She had sold tens of millions of records over a three-decade career.
• 1942 Fall of Corregidor Last US stronghold in the Philippines surrenders After weeks of bombardment, Japanese troops landed on the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay. General Jonathan Wainwright surrendered all US forces in the Philippines. About 11,000 defenders were taken prisoner.
• 1942 – 2000 Ian Dury (1942-2000) Died 27 March 2000, aged 57 Ian Dury was an English singer and lyricist who, with his band the Blockheads, brought wit and music-hall swagger to the punk and new wave era. Songs such as "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" showcased his wordplay. Left disabled by childhood polio, he was also an advocate for disabled people. He died of cancer.
• 1942 Second Battle of Kharkov Soviet offensive ends in encirclement A Soviet offensive to retake Kharkov ran into a German counter-attack that trapped several Soviet armies at the Izium salient. The Red Army lost more than 250,000 men. The defeat opened the way for the German summer drive toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus.
• 1942 Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich Czechoslovak parachutists attack the Reich Protector Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, trained in Britain for Operation Anthropoid, ambushed Heydrich's car in Prague on 27 May. Heydrich died of his wounds on 4 June. He was the most senior Nazi official assassinated during the war.
• 1942 Thousand-bomber raid on Cologne RAF launches its first 1,000-bomber attack RAF Bomber Command sent more than 1,000 aircraft against Cologne in Operation Millennium. The raid destroyed thousands of buildings and killed several hundred people. Arthur Harris used it to show what large-scale area bombing could do.
• 1942 – 1999 Curtis Mayfield (1942-1999) Died 26 December 1999, aged 57 Curtis Mayfield was an American soul and funk musician known for his work with The Impressions and his solo album Super Fly. He continued recording after being paralyzed in a 1990 stage accident. He died of complications from diabetes in Roswell, Georgia.
• 1942 Battle of Midway US Navy sinks four Japanese carriers American codebreakers found out about Japan's plan to take Midway Atoll, and US carriers ambushed the Japanese fleet. Dive bombers sank the carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, while the US lost the Yorktown. The battle turned the Pacific War in the Allies' favour.
• 1942 Lidice massacre Nazis destroy a Czech village in reprisal German forces falsely linked the village of Lidice to Heydrich's assassins and destroyed it in retaliation. All 173 men over 15 were shot, and the women and most of the children were deported to camps, where many were killed. The village was then burned and levelled.
• 1942 – present Paul McCartney Singer, songwriter, bassist English musician and co-writer with John Lennon of most Beatles songs. Later led Wings and became one of the most successful songwriters in history.
• 1942 – 2013 Roger Ebert (1942-2013) Died 4 April 2013, aged 70 Roger Ebert was an American film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-host of the television program At the Movies, the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He died after a long battle with cancer that had cost him the ability to speak.
• 1942 – 2011 Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011) Died 20 October 2011, aged 69 Gaddafi, the longtime ruler of Libya, was captured and killed by rebel fighters near his hometown of Sirte during the Libyan Civil War. His death marked the effective end of his four-decade rule and the collapse of his government. Video of his capture and death spread rapidly worldwide.
• 1942 – 1993 Chris Hani (1942-1993) Died 10 April 1993, aged 50 Chris Hani was general secretary of the South African Communist Party and a senior leader of the African National Congress's armed wing. He was assassinated outside his home near Johannesburg by a right-wing extremist opposed to the end of apartheid. His killing nearly derailed South Africa's negotiated transition and prompted Nelson Mandela to appeal for calm on national television.
• 1942 First Battle of El Alamein British Eighth Army halts Rommel's advance Auchinleck's Eighth Army stopped the German-Italian Panzer Army Africa at a defensive line near El Alamein, about 100 km from Alexandria. The fighting ended in stalemate. It stopped the Axis push toward the Suez Canal.
• 1942 – present Wim T. Schippers Artist, television maker, voice actor, 1942-2026 Wim T. Schippers (1942-2026) — visual artist, television maker, playwright, songwriter and voice actor. Co-founder of the A-dynamic movement, creator of the Peanut Butter Floor and Sjef van Oekel, voice of Ernie and Kermit on Sesamstraat. One of the most original and influential figures in Dutch cultural history of the twentieth and twenty-first century.
• 1942 Anne Frank's family goes into hiding Frank family enters the Secret Annex in Amsterdam Otto Frank moved his family into hidden rooms behind his business premises at Prinsengracht 263. His daughter Anne kept a diary there, which she had been given for her 13th birthday on 12 June. The family was discovered and arrested in August 1944.
• 1942 – present Margaret Court The Amazon Holds the all-time record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
• 1942 Vel' d'Hiv Roundup French police arrest Jews in Paris for deportation French police, acting on German orders, arrested about 13,000 Jews in Paris, including more than 4,000 children. Many were held in terrible conditions at the Vélodrome d'Hiver cycling stadium before being sent to Auschwitz. Few survived.
• 1942 Great deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto Mass transports to Treblinka empty most of the ghetto German forces began the Grossaktion Warsaw, the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. About 265,000 people were sent to the newly opened Treblinka extermination camp and murdered by September. The survivors later launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.
• 1942 – 1995 Jerry Garcia (1942-1995) Died 9 August 1995, aged 53 Jerry Garcia was the lead guitarist and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, one of the most influential bands of the American counterculture. His improvisational style and the band's extensive touring built a devoted fan following known as Deadheads. His death effectively ended the Grateful Dead as a touring band.
• 1942 Operation Pedestal Convoy fights its way through to besieged Malta The British sent a heavily escorted convoy of 14 merchant ships to resupply Malta, which was close to surrender. Axis aircraft, submarines and E-boats sank nine merchant ships and several warships. The damaged tanker Ohio reached Grand Harbour with fuel that kept the island in the fight.
• 1942 Bracero Program established US and Mexico agree on wartime farm labour The United States and Mexico signed an agreement to bring Mexican workers to American farms to cover wartime labour shortages. The program was extended many times. About 4.6 million contracts were issued before it ended in 1964.
• 1942 Holiday Inn released Film introduces Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" Paramount released Holiday Inn, a musical starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Crosby sang Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" in the film, and the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. His recording became one of the best-selling singles of all time.
• 1942 US Marines land on Guadalcanal First major Allied offensive in the Pacific begins The 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and nearby islands in the Solomons and captured an unfinished Japanese airfield, which became Henderson Field. Six months of heavy fighting on land, at sea and in the air followed. Japan evacuated the island in February 1943.
• 1942 Quit India Movement launched Gandhi calls for an immediate end to British rule The All-India Congress Committee passed the Quit India resolution in Bombay, and Gandhi urged Indians to "Do or Die". The British arrested Gandhi and almost the entire Congress leadership within hours. Mass protests followed and were put down harshly.
• 1942 Bambi released Disney's fifth animated feature reaches US cinemas Walt Disney Productions released Bambi, based on Felix Salten's novel about a young deer. Its box-office takings were modest during the war. It later became one of Disney's best-loved films, and the death of Bambi's mother became famous.
• 1942 Manhattan Project organised US Army takes over the atomic bomb effort The US Army Corps of Engineers set up the Manhattan Engineer District to manage the development of an atomic bomb. General Leslie Groves took command in September. The project grew to employ more than 125,000 people at sites across the United States.
• 1942 Dieppe Raid Allied amphibious assault on occupied France fails About 6,000 mostly Canadian troops, with British commandos and US Rangers, attacked the French port of Dieppe. The raid was a disaster: more than half of the force was killed, wounded or captured within hours. Lessons from the failure shaped planning for later landings, including D-Day.
• 1942 – 2008 Isaac Hayes (1942-2008) Died 10 August 2008, aged 65 American singer, songwriter and musician whose soul soundtrack for Shaft won an Academy Award and helped define 1970s funk. He was also known to a later generation as the voice of Chef on South Park.
• 1942 Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy Largest South American nation joins the Allies After German U-boats sank several Brazilian merchant ships, Brazil declared war on Germany and Italy. It was the only South American country to send ground troops overseas during the war. The Brazilian Expeditionary Force fought in Italy in 1944 and 1945.
• 1942 – 1943 Battle of Stalingrad Turning point on the Eastern Front The Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 - February 1943) was the largest and bloodiest battle in history, with nearly 2 million casualties. The German 6th Army was encircled and destroyed, marking the turning point of the war in the East.
• 1942 – 2023 Wolfgang Schauble (1942-2023) Died 26 December 2023, aged 81 German politician who helped negotiate reunification and served as finance minister through the eurozone crisis.
• 1942 – 2020 David Stern (1942-2020) Died 1 January 2020, aged 77 David Stern served as commissioner of the NBA from 1984 to 2014, transforming it into a global entertainment brand and expanding the league internationally. He died on 1 January 2020 following a brain hemorrhage.
• 1942 – 2019 Felice Gimondi The Phoenix Winner of all three Grand Tours; competed in the era of Merckx.
• 1942 – 1999 Madeline Kahn (1942-1999) Died 3 December 1999, aged 57 Madeline Kahn was an American actress and comedian celebrated for her roles in Mel Brooks films including Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. She received two Academy Award nominations during her career. She died of ovarian cancer in New York City.
• 1942 First successful V-2 rocket launch German A4 rocket reaches the edge of space An A4 rocket, later known as the V-2, was launched from Peenemünde and flew about 190 km. It reached an altitude of roughly 85 km, higher than any human-made object before it. The rocket was later used as a weapon against London and Antwerp.
• 1942 – 2026 Christopher A. Sims (1942-2026) Died 14 March 2026, aged 83 American economist who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for Economics for his research on how macroeconomic indicators interact with economic shocks.
• 1942 – 2013 Annette Funicello (1942-2013) Died 8 April 2013, aged 70 Annette Funicello was an American actress and singer who rose to fame as one of the original Mouseketeers on The Mickey Mouse Club and later starred in a series of beach-party films. She died from complications of multiple sclerosis, with which she had lived for over two decades.
• 1942 – 2008 Michael Crichton (1942-2008) Died 4 November 2008, aged 66 American author and filmmaker best known for the novel Jurassic Park and for creating the television series ER. His technology-driven thrillers sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide.
• 1942 Second Battle of El Alamein Montgomery defeats Rommel in Egypt The British Eighth Army under Bernard Montgomery attacked the German-Italian army at El Alamein and broke through after twelve days of fighting. Rommel's forces retreated across Libya. It was the first major British land victory over Germany in the war.
• 1942 – 2014 Bob Hoskins (1942-2014) Died 29 April 2014, aged 71 Bob Hoskins, the English actor known for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "The Long Good Friday," died in a hospital in England from pneumonia. He had retired from acting the previous year after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He was noted for his gritty, versatile screen presence.
• 1942 Operation Torch Allied landings in French North Africa American and British forces under Dwight D. Eisenhower landed at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. After brief resistance, Vichy French forces agreed to an armistice. The landings opened the campaign that drove the Axis out of North Africa in 1943.
• 1942 – 2026 Sandro Mazzola Inter Milan and Italy, 1942-2026 - seventeen years at one club Forward of the Grande Inter, European champion with Italy in 1968, and the son of the Torino captain lost at Superga.
• 1942 – present Joe Biden 46th President — oldest US president Joe Biden (born Nov 20, 1942) was the 46th President 2021-2025, the oldest person ever to serve as US president. He withdrew from Afghanistan, led Western support for Ukraine, and declined to seek re-election in 2024.
• 1942 Casablanca premieres Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman film opens in New York Warner Bros. premiered Casablanca in New York, about two weeks after Allied troops took the city it was named after. The film starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and later won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is regularly listed among the greatest films ever made.
• 1942 Scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon French navy sinks its own ships to keep them from Germany German forces occupied Vichy France in response to Operation Torch, and on 27 November they moved to seize the French fleet at Toulon. French crews scuttled more than 70 ships, including battleships and cruisers, before the Germans could take them. Almost none could be used by the Axis.
• 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire Boston nightclub fire kills 492 A fire broke out in the crowded Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston and spread in minutes. Blocked and locked exits trapped the patrons, and 492 people died. The disaster led to major reforms of fire codes and advances in the treatment of burns.
• 1942 Beveridge Report published Blueprint for the British welfare state William Beveridge published Social Insurance and Allied Services, which proposed a national system of social security to fight "Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness". The report was hugely popular in wartime Britain. It shaped the postwar Labour government's welfare reforms and the creation of the National Health Service.
• 1942 Chicago Pile-1 achieves first nuclear chain reaction Fermi's reactor goes critical under a Chicago stadium A team led by Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a graphite pile under the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. The experiment proved that nuclear energy could be released on a large scale. It was a key step toward both the atomic bomb and nuclear power.
• 1942 – 1981 Harry Chapin (1942-1981) Died 16 July 1981, aged 38 American singer-songwriter Harry Chapin, best known for the 1974 hit "Cat's in the Cradle," died in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway on 16 July 1981. He was also widely known for his activism against world hunger. Congress posthumously awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal for his humanitarian work.
• 1942 – 2025 Muhammadu Buhari (1942-2025) Died 13 July 2025, aged 82 Nigerian military leader who was head of state in 1984-85 and returned as a democratically elected president from 2015 to 2023.