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FDR signs bill creating women's Navy auxiliary agency (WAVES)
It was established on July 21, 1942 by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 30. This authorized the U.S. Navy to accept women into the Naval Reserve as commissioned officers and at the enlisted level, effective for the duration of the war plus six months. -
Hitler declares "Total War"
The Sportpalast speech (German: Sportpalastrede) or total war speech was a speech delivered by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large, carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943 calling for a total war; the tide of World War II was turning against Nazi Germany and its Axis -
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad was one of the deadliest and most destructive sieges in the history of the world quite possibly the deadliest ever. It would last for 872 days, and there would be more than a million Soviet civilian casualties, plus another million Soviet military casualties and half a million German casualties. -
Bombing of Dresden
Few Allied actions during World War II are as controversial or as debated as the firebombing of Dresden, which began on February 13, 1945, lasting two more days. During that time more than 1,200 Allied aircraft dropped almost 4,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary devices on the German city, killing between 22,000 and 25,000 civilians and utterly destroying the city. -
John F. Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) elected to US House of Representatives
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to by the initials JFK and Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States -
February 28 Massacre
Unspoken about publicly for years, the 28th February is now a national day of remembrance in Taiwan commemorating the brutal repression of an anti-government uprising by the ruling Chinese mainland Kuomintang Party against native Taiwanese. An estimated 28,000 Taiwanese died in 1947 and it began 38 years of martial law now called the White Terror. -
The Berlin Candy Bombers
One of the first major crises of the nascent Cold War, the Berlin Blockade tested the resolve of the Western alliance to protect the small non-communist enclave of West Berlin. When the Soviets blockaded the city in 1948, the Western alliance resolved to break the Soviet operation by airlifting in the supplies that the West Berliners needed. Pilot Gail Halvorsen of the US Air Force noticed a crowd of children at Berlin airport when he dropped off supplies. -
US President Harry Truman announces evidence of USSR's 1st nuclear device detonation
“Statement by President Truman in Response to First Soviet Nuclear Test,” Shortly after the first Soviet nuclear bomb test on August 29, 1949, United States spy planes detected. We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R. ATOMIC EXPLOSION OCCURS IN THE U.S.S.R.. -
US President Harry Truman publicly announces support for the development of a hydrogen bomb
Truman announces U.S. plans to develop hydrogen bomb, Jan. 31, 1950. On this day in 1950, President Harry S. “Accordingly, I have directed the Atomic Energy Commission to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or superbomb. -
Joseph Stalin proclaims the Soviet Union has the atomic bomb
The Soviet atomic bomb project (Russian: Советский проект атомной бомбы) was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. -
Korean War Ends
On July 27, 1953, the Korean War ended - except that technically it didn't. Three years after the invasion of South Korea by North Korea, the bitter conflict on the peninsula was at a military stalemate and had been for two years. Conditions were miserable for the troops and neither side believed it could mount an offensive which would turn the tide in their favor.
