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Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats former president Herbert Hoover for presidency.
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Nazis legally come to power in Germany with passage of Enabling Act.
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A war fought in the late 1930s in Spain. On one side were the Loyalists, Spaniards loyal to a recently elected government in the form of a republic; on the other side were fascists ( see fascism ), led by General Francisco Franco.
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Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii.
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The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought during 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia.
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In August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history.