Timeline December 1942

Events in December 1942 6

• 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.
• 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.
• 1942 – 1943 The Paramount -- bobby-soxers and mass hysteria Sinatra performs at the Paramount Theatre in New York on 30 December 1942, billed as an 'extra added attraction' to Benny Goodman's band. The audience -- overwhelmingly teenage girls, known as bobby-soxers -- erupts in screaming that is unprecedented in American popular entertainment. He returns to the Paramount the following October for a four-week engagement; thousands queue overnight for tickets; girls faint in the aisles; police are called. The phenomenon is called 'Sinatramania' and it is the first modern pop idol mania -- the template for Beatlemania twenty years later.