Timeline March 1943

Events in March 1943 11

• 1863 – 1943 Alexandre Yersin (1863-1943) Died 1 March 1943, aged 79 Alexandre Yersin was a Swiss-French bacteriologist who discovered the plague bacillus in Hong Kong in 1894. The organism, Yersinia pestis, is named after him. He spent most of his life in Vietnam, where he founded Pasteur Institutes and a medical school.
• 1898 – 1943 Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) Died 13 March 1943, aged 44 Stephen Vincent Benét was an American poet and writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for John Brown's Body, his epic poem of the Civil War, and wrote the short story The Devil and Daniel Webster. He was awarded a second Pulitzer after his death.
• 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.
• 1943 Sliced bread is banned A wartime measure to save wax paper and steel The public complained so loudly that the ban was lifted after 47 days.
• 1943 – 1945 Delilah A speech scrambler in a shed Back in Britain, Turing builds a portable voice encryption system at Hanslope Park with the engineer Donald Bayley. It works, and is demonstrated by encrypting and recovering a recording of a Churchill speech. The war ends before it is deployed.
• 1943 Battle of the Bismarck Sea Allied aircraft destroy a Japanese troop convoy US and Australian aircraft attacked a Japanese convoy carrying troops to New Guinea. They sank all eight transports and four of the escorting destroyers, using skip bombing. Japan stopped sending large convoys to New Guinea afterwards.
• 1943 Tony Meehan born Hampstead, London Daniel "Tony" Meehan was born on 2 March 1943 in Hampstead, London. He would become the original drummer of The Shadows, the youngest member of the founding lineup.
• 1943 – 2008 Bobby Fischer American World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer became World Champion in 1972 after defeating Boris Spassky in the famous Cold War match in Reykjavik. He dramatically increased global interest in chess.
• 1943 – 2008 Bobby Fischer (1943-2008) Died 17 January 2008, aged 64 American chess grandmaster who became world champion in 1972 after defeating Boris Spassky in a Cold War-era match watched around the world. He spent his later years in self-imposed exile and died in Reykjavik, Iceland.
• 1943 Liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto German forces destroy the Kraków Ghetto German SS and police forces cleared the Kraków Ghetto. Those judged able to work were sent to the Płaszów camp, and thousands of others were shot or deported to Auschwitz. Amon Göth commanded the operation.
• 1943 Oklahoma! opens on Broadway Rodgers and Hammerstein's first musical premieres Oklahoma!, the first musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opened at the St. James Theatre in New York. It wove its songs and dance into the story and ran for 2,212 performances. It is regarded as the start of the golden age of the Broadway book musical.