1944 THE GREAT ESCAPE, D-DAY AND THE GI BILL
Despite decisive battles in the air, on land and at sea, two events signal the beginning of the end of World War II: D-Day, June 6, sees more than 160,000
Allied troops storming France’s Normandy coast to deliver a crushing blow to occupying Nazi forces; and in November, Washington state scientists create weapons-grade plutonium, leading to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins an unprecedented fourth term and radio’s Fibber McGee and Molly keep us in stitches. Meanwhile, girls delight in a new magazine—Seventeen.
JAN. 11 President Roosevelt calls for an Economic Bill of Rights in his State of the Union speech.
JAN. 15 An earthquake in San Juan, Argentina, kills an estimated 10,000 people and destroys 90% of the buildings.
JAN. 18 Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday are among the performers in the first jazz concert held at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House—a benefit for the war effort.
FEB. 3 U.S. troops capture the Japaneseheld Marshall Islands.
FEB. 20 The Big Week, the biggest air battle of World War II, begins.
FEB 26 Sue S. Dauser becomes the first female captain in the U.S. Navy.
MARCH 2 Casablanca,
top, wins best picture at
the 16th Academy Awards.
MARCH 18 Italy’s Mount Vesuvius begins to erupt, which lasts a month.
MARCH 24 More than 75 Allied prisoners slip out of a Nazi POW camp via secret tunnel—later known as the Great Escape. Just three men make it to freedom.
APRIL 25 Some 27 member colleges form the United Negro College Fund.
MAY 3 Going My Way, with Bing Crosby as an inspiring young priest, opens in New York.
JUNE 5 American troops lead the Allied liberation of Rome, Italy.
JUNE 5 The British codebreaker Colossus Mark 2 cracks German naval communications vital to D-Day plans.
JUNE 17 Iceland forms
an independent republic, left, after rescinding its union with Denmark.
JUNE 22 President Roosevelt signs the
GI Bill of Rights into law.
JULY 20 A plot to kill Adolf Hitler fails.
AUG. 4 Anne Frank, left, and her family are found. Later, they are sent to a concentration camp.
AUG. 9 Smokey Bear is created as part of a national campaign to prevent forest fires.
SEPT. 5 Central New York is hit by the largest earthquake in the state’s recorded history.
OCT. 25 Florence Foster Jenkins, considered one of the worst singers of all time, gives a recital in Carnegie Hall.
NOV. 28 MGM releases
Meet Me in St. Louis, with Judy Garland, and directed by her husbandto-be Vincente Minnelli.
DEC. 14 National Velvet
makes a star of 12-yearold Elizabeth Taylor, left. DEC. 16 The Battle of the Bulge begins.
DEC. 18 The Supreme Court rules that the internment of Japanese Americans is allowed under the Constitution.