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Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: Henry F. Schricker (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Iowa: John K. Valentine (Democratic) (until January 12), Bourke B. Hickenlooper (Republican) (starting January 12)
Lieutenant Governor of Kansas: William M. Lindsay (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), Carl E. Friend (Republican) (starting month and day unknown)
Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Keen Johnson (Democratic) (until October 9), Rodes K. Myers (political party unknown) (starting October 9)
Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Earl K. Long (Democratic) (until June 26), Coleman Lindsey (Democratic) (starting June 26)
Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: Francis E. Kelly (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska: Nate M. Parsons (Democratic) (until January 5), William E. Johnson (Republican) (starting January 5)
Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: Fred S. Alward (political party unknown) (until January 2), Maurice J. Sullivan (Democratic) (starting January 2)
Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico: Hiram M. Dow (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), James Murray, Sr. (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
Lieutenant Governor of New York: Charles Poletti (Democratic) (starting January 1)
Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Wilkins P. Horton (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota: Thorstein H. H. Thoresen (Republican) (until January 5), Jack A. Patterson (Republican) (starting January 5)
Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: Paul P. Yoder (Democratic) (until January 9), Paul M. Herbert (Republican) (starting January 9)
Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma: James E. Berry (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania: Thomas Kennedy (Democratic) (until January 17), Samuel S. Lewis (Democratic) (starting January 17)
January 5 – Amelia Earhart is officially declared dead after her 1937 disappearance.
February[]
February 6 – Raymond Chandler's hardboiled California private detectivePhilip Marlowe is introduced in his first full-length work of crime fiction, The Big Sleep, published by Alfred A. Knopf.
February 20 – A Nazi rally was organized by the German American Bund at Madison Square Garden. More than 20,000 people attended, and Fritz Julius Kuhn was a featured speaker.
February 21 – The Golden Gate International Exposition opens in San Francisco.
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.[1]
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 LadyEleanor 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.
May 1 – Batman makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #27.
May 2 – Major League Baseball's Lou Gehrig, the legendary Yankee 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 314flying boatYankee Clipper from Port Washington, New York to Marseille.
June[]
June – Superman (comic book) begins publication.
June 4 – The SS St. Louis, 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 Nazideath camps during the Holocaust.
June 6 – The first Little League Baseball game is played in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.[2]
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.[3]
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 AirwaysBoeing 314flying boatYankee 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 – Albert Einsteinwrites to President Franklin Roosevelt about developing the atomic bomb using uranium.[4][circular reference] This leads to the creation of the Manhattan Project.
August 15 – MGM's classic 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.
September[]
September 5 – World War II: The United States declares its neutrality in the war.
September 11 – Mark Twain National Forest is established.
September 21 – 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.
October 11 – Manhattan Project: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is presented a letter signed by Albert Einstein, urging the United States to rapidly develop the atomic bomb.
October 15 – The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed La Guardia Airport) is dedicated.
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 orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons to non-belligerent nations.
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.[5]
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.
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 Oldsmobileautomobiles.
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 209,690 acres (848.6 km2).[6]
^Focus Midwest. FOCUS/Midwest Publishing Company. 1974. p. 27.
^Clifton J., Philips (1971). "Fearn, Anne Walter". In James, Edward T. (ed.). Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. 1. p. 603. ISBN978-0-67462-734-5.