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The California Golden Bears defeat the Alabama Crimson Tide in this year's Rose Bowl Game in college football, with a final score of 13-0.
The Merrie Melodies cartoon short Daffy Duck & Egghead is released, being the first cartoon to give Daffy Duck his continuing name, as well as his second appearance.
January 3 – The March of Dimes is established as a foundation to combat infant polio by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
January 11 – Leading Korean dancer Choi Seung-hee arrives in San Francisco to begin her international tour in the United States.[1] She is the first Korean Wave entertainer.
January 16 – The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert is recorded live when Benny Goodman and his orchestra become the first jazz musicians to headline a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
January 22 – Thornton Wilder's play Our Town is performed for the first time anywhere in Princeton, New Jersey. It premieres in New York City on February 4.
January 27 – The Niagara Bridge at Niagara Falls, New York collapses due to an ice jam.
January 28 – The first ski tow in America begins operation in Vermont.
February 4 – Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first cel-animated feature in motion picture history, is released in the U.S. following last year's premiere.
March 3 – The Santa Ana River in California spills over its banks during a rainy winter, killing 58 people in Orange County and causing trouble as far inland as Palm Springs.[2]
March 10 – The 10th Academy Awards, hosted by Bob Burns, are presented at Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, with William Dieterle's The Life of Emile Zola winning the most awards with three, including the Academy Award for Outstanding Production, and receiving the most nominations with ten. Leo McCarey wins Best Director for The Awful Truth.
April–June[]
April 15 – Huey, Dewey and Louie make their first appearance, in the Disney animated short Donald's Nephews.
April 18 – First appearance of comic book superheroSuperman (as a backup story), in Action Comics #1 (cover date June).[3]
April 25 – Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins: The Supreme Court of the U.S. holds that federal courts do not have the judicial power to create general federal common law when hearing state law claims under diversity jurisdiction, overturning almost a century of federal civil procedure case law.
April 28 – The towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott in Massachusetts are disincorporated to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir.
April 30 – The first cartoon to feature a prototypical Bugs Bunny, Porky's Hare Hunt, is released.
May 12
U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull rejects the Soviet Union's offer of a joint defence pact, to counter the rise of Nazi Germany.
USS Enterprise is commissioned.
May 17 – Information Please debuts on NBC Radio.
June 22 – Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis knocks out Max Schmeling in the first round of their rematch at Yankee Stadium in New York City.
June 23
The Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the U.S. (effective August 22).
Marineland opens near St. Augustine, Florida.
June 24 – A 450-metric-ton (496-short-ton) meteorite explodes about 12 miles (19 km) above the earth near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
June 25 – Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act is signed into law by president Franklin D. Roosevelt.
June 29 – Olympic National Park is established in Washington state.
July–September[]
July 3 – The last reunion of the Blue and Gray commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
July 5 – The Non-Intervention Committee reaches an agreement to withdraw all foreign volunteers from the Spanish Civil War. The agreement is respected by most Republican foreign volunteers, notably by those from England and the United States, but is ignored by the governments of Germany and Italy.
July 6 – The Evian Conference on Refugees is convened in France. No country in Europe is prepared to accept Jews fleeing persecution, and the United States will take only 27,370.
July 14 – Howard Hughes sets a new record, by completing a 91-hour airplane flight around the world.
July 18 – Wrong Way Corrigan takes off from New York City, ostensibly heading for California. He lands in Ireland instead.
July 28 – Pan Amflying boatHawaii Clipper disappears with 6 passengers and 9 crew members en route from Guam to Manila.
August 6 – The Looney Tunes animated short Porky & Daffy is released.
August 18 – The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting the United States with Canada, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
August 31 – Winston Churchill, still believing France and Britain mean to honor their promises to defend Czechoslovakia against Nazi aggression, suggests in a personal note to Neville Chamberlain that His Majesty's Government may want to set up a broad international alliance including the United States (specifically mentioning U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as possibly receptive to the idea) and the Soviet Union.
September 1 – Haggar debuts a new pant concept, "Slacks", as the appropriate pant to wear during a man's "Slack Time."
September 4 – During the ceremony marking the unveiling of a plaque at Pointe de Grave, France celebrating Franco-American friendship, U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt in a speech states, "France and the United States were united in war and peace", leading to much speculation in the press that if war did break out over Czechoslovakia, then the United States would join the war on the Allied side.
September 9 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt disallows the popular interpretation of Bullitt's speech at a press conference at the White House. Roosevelt states it is “100% wrong” the U.S. would join a “stop-Hitler bloc” under any circumstances, and makes it quite clear that in the event of German aggression against Czechoslovakia, the U.S. would remain neutral.
September 12 – Hitler makes his much-anticipated closing address at Nuremberg, in which he vehemently attacks the Czech people and President Beneš. American news commentator H. V. Kaltenborn begins his famous marathon of broadcast bulletins over the CBS Radio Network with a summation of Hitler's address.
September 20 – The first patents for nylon (first synthesized in 1935) are granted in the name of Wallace Carothers to DuPont,[4] which on October 27 announces the new product's name. The first items produced in the new material (February 24) are toothbrushbristles.
September 21 – The New England Hurricane of 1938 strikes Long Island and southern New England, killing over 300 along the Rhode Island shoreline and approximately 600 in total.
September 22 – Olsen and Johnson's musical comedy revue Hellzapoppin' begins its 3-year run on Broadway.
October–December[]
October 3 – Production of the Jefferson nickel begins, replacing the buffalo nickel (last struck in April). The new nickel is released on November 15.[5]
October 9 – The New York Yankees defeat the Chicago Cubs, 4 games to 0, to win their 7th World Series Title.
October 10 – The Blue Water Bridge opens, connecting Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario.
October 16 – Winston Churchill, in a broadcast address to the United States, condemns the Munich Agreement as a defeat and calls upon America and western Europe to prepare for armed resistance against Adolf Hitler.
October 17 – The American stunt performer Evel Knievel was born in Butte, Montana.
October 24 – The minimum wage is established by law in the U.S.
October 30 – Orson Welles's radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds (with script by Howard Koch) is broadcast, causing panic in various parts of the United States.
October 31 – Great Depression: In an effort to try restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a 15-point program intended to upgrade protection for the investing public.
November 1 – Horse racing: Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral by four lengths in their famous match race at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.
November 10 – On the eve of Armistice Day, Kate Smith sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" for the first time on her weekly radio show.
November 18 – Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
December – President Franklin Roosevelt agrees to lend $25 million to Chiang Kai-shek, cementing the Sino-American relationship and angering the Japanese government.
Undated[]
The Dictionary of Occupational Titles is established; it will run until 1998, when it is replaced with the online Occupational Information Network.
Herbert E. Ives and G. R. Stilwell execute the Ives–Stilwell experiment, showing that ions radiate at frequencies affected by their motion.[6]
October 30 – Robert Woolsey, film comedian (born 1888)
November 1 – Charles Weeghman, restaurateur and owner of Chicago Cubs (born 1874)
November 4 – Samuel W. Bryant, admiral (born 1877)
November 11 – Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary), first known (in the United States) asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever (born 1869)[15]
November 15 – Harry Grant Dart, cartoonist (born 1868)[16]
^The date is established in court documents released during a legal battle over the rights to the character.
^US Patent 2,130,523 Linear polyamides suitable for spinning into strong pliable fibers; US Patent 2,130,947 Diamine dicarboxylic acid salt and US Patent 2,130,948 Synthetic fibers. Trossarelli, L. (2010). "The history of nylon". Club Alpino Italiano, Centro Studi Materiali e Tecniche. Archived from the original on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2012-02-28.
^Bowers, Q. David (2007). A Guide Book of Buffalo and Jefferson Nickels. Atlanta, Ga.: Whitman Publishing. ISBN978-0-7948-2008-4.