1939: Stagecoach, directed by John Ford premieres
1940: Walt Disney's 'Pinocchio' released
1941: Lothar von Arnauld de la Periere killed in plane crash
1942: Executive order 9066 allows U.S. military to define exclusion zones
1943: Nazis arrest members of the White Rose Resistance movement
1944: Sue S. Dauser becomes first female U.S. Navy commissioned Captain
1945: Roosevelt, Churchill & Stalin meet near Yalta
1946: Trygve Lie elected first Secretary General of the U.N.
1947: Edwin Land gives first demonstration of his Polaroid instant camera
1948: Miranda a moon of Uranus is discovered by Gerard Kuiper
1949: Grady, a cow owned by Bill & Alyne Mach becomes trapped in a silo
1950: First credit card charge is made by founders of the Diners Club
1951: Last Shah of Persia, marries Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari
1952: King George VI of the United Kingdom dies after a long illness
1953: Watson & Crick announce discovery of structure of DNA
1954: Matt Groening creator of 'The Simpsons'is born
1955: Steve Jobs is born. With Steve Wozniak he will found Apple & become a huge influence in computing
1956: Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Joseph Stalin as a 'cult of personality'
1957: "Toddlers' Truce" a TV closedown between 6pm & 7pm is abolished in the U.K.
1958: Members of Manchester United football team (The Busby Babes) die in Munich Plane crash
1959: Plane crash claims the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, 'The Big Bopper' & pilot Roger Peterson
1960: Winter Olympic Games begin at the Squaw Valley Ski Resort, in Placer County, California
1961: The Beatles perform for the first time at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England
1962: Aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the Earth
1963: Suffering from severe depression Sylvia Plath commits suicide in London