Events from the year 1939 in the United States.
Incumbents
Federal government President: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-New York) Vice President: John Nance Garner (D-Texas) Chief Justice: Charles Evans Hughes (New York) Speaker of the House of Representatives: William B. Bankhead (D-Alabama) Senate Majority Leader: Alben W. Barkley (D-Kentucky) Congress: 75th (until January 3), 76th (starting January 3)
State governments Governors and lieutenant governors Governors
Lieutenant governors
Events
January January 1 The Hewlett-Packard Company is founded in Palo Alto, California. Texas A&M University wins its only football national championship. January 5 – Pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart is officially declared dead after her 1937 disappearance. January 17 – Frank M. Dixon is sworn in as the 40th governor of Alabama replacing Bibb Graves.
February February 6 – Raymond Chandler's hardboiled California private detective Philip Marlowe is introduced in his first full-length work of crime fiction, The Big Sleep, published by Alfred A. Knopf. February 15 – John Ford's Western film Stagecoach starring John Wayne premieres in New York City and Los Angeles. February 18 – The Golden Gate International Exposition opens in San Francisco. February 20 – A Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden is organized by the German American Bund in New York City. More than 20,000 people attend and Fritz Julius Kuhn is a featured speaker. February 23 – The 11th Academy Awards are presented at Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles without an official host, with Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You winning the Academy Award for Outstanding Production. The film is receives the most nominations with seven, with Capra winning his third Best Director award. Michael Curtiz and William Keighley's The Adventures of Robin Hood receives the most awards with three. February 27 – Sitdown strikes are outlawed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
March March 3 – Students at Harvard University demonstrate the new tradition of swallowing goldfish to reporters. March 22 – Undefeated LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds men's basketball team tops undefeated Loyola of Chicago in the championship game of the second annual National Invitation Tournament, 44–32. LIU's 24–0 final record is the first perfect season of college basketball's postseason tournament era. March 28 – American adventurer Richard Halliburton delivers a last message from a Chinese junk, before he disappears on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
April April 9 – African-American singer Marian Anderson performs before 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after having been denied the use both of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and of a public high school by the federally controlled District of Columbia. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigns from the DAR because of their decision. April 10 – Alcoholics Anonymous ("The Big Book") is first published. April 14 – John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath is first published. April 16 – The Boston Bruins defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs in the fifth and final game of the Stanley Cup Finals to capture their second championship in ice hockey. April 20 – Billie Holiday records "Strange Fruit", the first anti-lynching song, in New York. April 30 – The 1939 New York World's Fair opens.
May May 1 – Batman makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #27. May 2 – Major League Baseball's Lou Gehrig, the legendary New York Yankees first baseman known as "The Iron Horse", ends his 2,130 consecutive games played streak after contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The record stands for 56 years before Cal Ripken Jr. plays 2,131 consecutive games. May 20 – Pan American Airways begins trans-Atlantic mail service with the inaugural flight of its Boeing 314 flying boat Yankee Clipper from Port Washington, New York to Marseille.
June June – Superman (comic book) begins publication. June 4 – The , a ship carrying a cargo of 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida after already having been turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of the passengers later die in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. June 6 – The first Little League Baseball game is played in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. June 7 – British King George VI and Queen Elizabeth cross the Canadian border into the United States being the first reigning British monarch to visit the United States. June 10 – MGM's first successful animated character, Barney Bear, makes his debut in The Bear That Couldn't Sleep. However, it is not until 1942 that his name is adopted. June 12 – The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is officially dedicated in Cooperstown, New York. June 21 – The New York Yankees announce first baseman Lou Gehrig's retirement, after doctors reveal he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
July July 2 The 1st World Science Fiction Convention opens in New York City. The newly sculpted head of Theodore Roosevelt is dedicated at Mount Rushmore, by Harlan J. Bushfield and William S. Hart. July 4 – Lou Gehrig gives his "Farewell to Baseball" speech at Yankee Stadium. In it, he says, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." July 8 – The Pan American Airways Boeing 314 flying boat Yankee Clipper inaugurates the world's first heavier-than-air North Atlantic air passenger service between the United States (Port Washington, New York) and Britain.
August August 2 – The Einstein–Szilard letter is signed by Albert Einstein on Long Island, advising President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt of the potential use of uranium to construct an atomic bomb. It is delivered on October 11 and leads to the first meeting on October 21 of the Advisory Committee on Uranium and ultimately to the Manhattan Project. August 15 – MGM's classic color musical film The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum's famous novel, and starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. On August 25 it is released in movie theaters throughout the United States. August 31 – The first edition of Marvel Comics is published by Timely Publications, debuting the characters of Namor, the Angel, and the Human Torch.
September September 1 General George C. Marshall becomes Chief of Staff of the United States Army. World War II: The Special Division is created within the State Department to help with repatriation efforts abroad particularly in Europe with Breckinridge Long heading the Special Division. September 3 – World War II: SS Athenia, a British ocean liner is torpedoed by a German submarine off the Irish coast with 30 Americans onboard dying. September 4 – The State Department declares all US passports that are outstanding invalid for travelling to Europe and requires all those applying to document a need for foreign travel. September 5 – World War II: The United States declares its neutrality in the war. September 11 – Mark Twain National Forest is established in Missouri. September 21 – WJSV broadcast day: Radio station WJSV in Washington, D.C. records an entire broadcast day for preservation in the National Archives. September 29 – Gerald J. Cox, speaking at an American Water Works Association meeting, becomes the first person to publicly propose the fluoridation of public water supplies in the United States. September 30 – 1939 Waynesburg vs. Fordham football game, the first televised American football game, between college teams Fordham University and Waynesburg College at Randall's Island, New York.
October October 8 – The New York Yankees defeat the Cincinnati Reds in the fourth and final game of the World Series, to capture their fourth consecutive championship in baseball. October 15 – The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed La Guardia Airport) is dedicated. October 17 – Comedy-drama film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington premieres in Washington, D.C. October 21 – The first meeting of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Uranium is held under Lyman James Briggs, authorized by President Roosevelt to oversee neutron experiments, a precursor of the Manhattan Project. October 22 – In the first televised NFL football game, the Brooklyn Dodgers defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 23–14 at Ebbets Field. October 24 – Nylon stockings go on sale for the first time anywhere in Wilmington, Delaware. October 25 – The Time of Your Life, a drama by William Saroyan, debuts in New York City.
November November 4 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act of 1939 into law. The arms embargo previously put into place by the Neutrality Act of 1937 is lifted and put any trade with nations engaged in war under cash-and-carry grounds. American ships and planes are prohibited as part of the Act from visiting any belligerent state in a war along with transporting anything. November 6 – Hedda Hopper's Hollywood debuts on radio with Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as host (the show runs until 1951, making Hopper a powerful figure in the Hollywood elite). November 8 – CBS television station W2XAB resumes test transmission with an all-electronic system broadcast from the top of the Chrysler Building in New York City. November 15 – In Washington, D.C., U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
December December 2 – La Guardia Airport opens for business in New York City. December 15 – The film Gone with the Wind, starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard, premieres at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. It is based on Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel. It is the longest American film made up to this time (nearly four hours). December 22 – The second cel-animated feature film and the first produced by an American studio other than Walt Disney Productions, Gulliver's Travels (by Fleischer Studios, and very loosely based upon the book by Jonathan Swift), is released. December 29 – The prototype of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber first flies.
Undated
Sandia View Academy, a private Adventist school, is founded in Corrales, New Mexico, General Motors introduces the Hydra-Matic drive, the first mass-produced, fully automatic transmission, as an option in 1940 model year Oldsmobile automobiles. Construction of Fallingwater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is completed. A logging crew sets off the second of three major forest fires in the Tillamook Burn of Oregon, which destroys .
Ongoing New Deal (1933–1939)
Births
January
January 3 – Gene Summers, American rock 'n' roll singer (member of Rockabilly Hall of Fame) (d. 2021) January 8 – Ruth Maleczech, American actress (d. 2013) January 9 – Jimmy Boyd, American singer, musician and actor (d. 2009) January 10 David Horowitz, American conservative writer (d. 2025) William Levy, American-Dutch journalist, author and poet (d. 2019) Sal Mineo, American actor (d. 1976) Bill Toomey, American athlete January 12 William Lee Golden, American country and gospel singer, member of the Oak Ridge Boys Jim Palosaari, American evangelist (d. 2011) January 13 – Paul Henderson, journalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting (d. 2018)Paul Henderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning Seattle Times reporter who championed the underdog, dies at 79 | The Seattle Times January 16 – Mac Curtis, American singer (d. 2013) January 17 – Maury Povich, American talk show host January 18 – Bo Gritz, U.S. presidential candidate January 19 – Phil Everly, American rock 'n' roll musician (member of Rockabilly Hall of Fame) (d. 2014) January 20 – Paul Coverdell, American politician (d. 2000) January 24 – Ray Stevens, American musician January 27 – Julius Lester, American civil rights activist, writer, musician, photographer and professor (d. 2018) January 31 – Jerry Brudos, American serial killer (d. 2006)
February