January: Carole Lombard dies in a plane crash aged 33. She had just raised over $2 million in defense bonds at a rally that evening.

February: Executive order 9066 allows U.S. military to define exclusion zones. Many Japanese Americans are sent to internment camps.

March: Belzec, the first Nazi German extermination camp is created in Poland. Approximately 500,000 are killed in just 9 months.

April: Lieutenant Colonel James 'Jimmy' Doolittle plans & leads the first U.S. air raid to strike the Japanese Home Islands.

May: The Women's Army Corps (WAC) is created as an auxiliary unit about 150,000 women will serve during the war years.

June: Czech paratroopers attempt to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, a main architect of the Holocaust. He dies 8 days later.

July: The Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first operational jet fighter aircraft, flies using only its jets for the first time.

August: 'Quit India' resolution is passed by the All India Congress Committee, starting widespread civil disobedience.

September: The Battle of Milne Bay begins. The Japanese attack on the Australian garrison is their first failure in the Pacific campaign.

October: The first V-2 rocket is successfully launched from Peenemunde Germany. It is the first man-made object to reach space.

November: Casablanca premieres at the Hollywood Theater in New York. The classic film stars Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman.

December: As part of the Manhattan Project a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.