1939: African-American singer Marian Anderson performs before 75,000 people
1940: Booker T. Washington first African-American to be depicted on a U.S. postage stamp
1941: The America First Committee holds its first mass rally in N.Y. City
1942: Lieutenant Colonel James 'Jimmy' Doolittle plans & leads the first U.S. air raid to strike the Japanese Home Islands
1943: Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann is the first person to use LSD
1944: Rudi Vrba & Alfred Wetzler escape from Auschwitz
1945: Adolf Hitler & Eva Braun, commit suicide in a bunker in Berlin
1946: John Maynard Keynes influential economist dies
1947: Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American in modern Major League Baseball after joining the Brooklyn Dodgers
1948: Ralph Alpher & George Gamow publish 'The Big Bang Theory'
1949: 12 nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty, creating NATO
1950: 'The Eagle' launched featuring 'Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future'
1951: Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein dies
1952: The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress makes its maiden flight.
1953: Casino Royale written by Ian Fleming is published. It introduces James Bond (Agent 007)
1954: Arturo Toscanini. aged 87, makes his last last public performance
1955: Physicist Albert Einstein dies. He developed the general theory of relativity
1956: Lionel 'Buster' Crabb, a MI6 diver, vanishes on reconnaissance mission to a Soviet cruiser
1957: The Sky at Night is first broadcast. It was presented by Patrick Moore until his death in 2012
1958: C.N.D. march 52 miles to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston
1959: Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper & Deke Slayton become astronauts
1960: U.S. launches world's first successful weather satellite, TIROS-1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida
1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes first human in space, orbiting the Earth once in Vostok 1
1962: Due to computer failure the Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the far side of Moon
1963: Yugoslavia becomes the "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" & Tito named Life President