1939: HMS Royal Oak is torpedoed & sunk
1940: Soccer star 'Pele' is born
1941: Carving on Mount Rushmore finishes
1942: First V-2 rocket successfully launches from Peenemunde Germany
1943: Chiang Kai-shek made Chairman of National Government of China
1944: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide
1945: Pierre Laval, former premier of Vichy France, is executed
1946: 10 Nazi War criminals are executed
1947: Chuck Yeager flies Bell X-1 plane faster than speed of sound
1948: T.S. Eliot awarded Nobel Prize in Literature
1949: Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China
1950: People's Liberation Army cross the Jinsha River & invade Tibet
1951: 'I Love Lucy' starring Lucille Ball makes its television debut on CBS
1952: United Nations move into their new building in New York City
1953: UNIVAC 1103 first commercial computer to use random access memory
1954: Texas Instruments announces first commercial transistor radio
1955: William Henry "Bill" Gates III is born. He & Paul Allen will found Microsoft
1956: The Ten Commandments, produced & directed by Cecil B. DeMille is released
1957: Space Age kickstarted when Soviet Union launch Sputnik 1, first artificial satellite to orbit Earth
1958: Pope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli elected 261st pope, succeeding Pope Pius XII
1959: The Guggenheim art museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright opens its doors to the public
1960: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a table at a meeting of the U.N.
1961: Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin Mausoleum & buried in Kremlin Wall Necropolis
1962: A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed
1963: Edith Piaf ('The Little Sparrow'), singer & one of France's greatest stars dies aged 47