Timeline November 1942

Events in November 1942 13

• 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.
• 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.
• 1942 Second Battle of El Alamein Montgomery defeats Rommel in North Africa The Second Battle of El Alamein, fought October 23 to November 11, 1942, was a decisive British victory over Rommel's Afrika Korps. Churchill said: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning."
• 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 – 1943 Sent to the United States Liaison, and speech encryption Turing crosses the Atlantic to advise American cryptanalysts and to inspect Bell Labs' speech encryption work. He is, at first, refused access to the most sensitive American material. He spends time with Claude Shannon in the Bell Labs cafeteria, where the two discuss whether a machine could be made to think.
• 1942 Dwight D. Eisenhower commands Operation Torch He leads the Allied landings in French North Africa, the first large American offensive in the European theatre.
• 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 Jimi Hendrix born in Seattle Johnny Allen Hendrix Renamed James Marshall Hendrix by his father at four.
• 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.