The End of Tyranny

January

* January 4 – Culbert Olson, 29th Governor of California, is succeeded by Earl Warren.

* January 11

o The United States and United Kingdom give up territorial rights in China.

o President Roberto María Ortiz dies in Argentina; Ramón Castillo succeeds him.

* January 12 – Dutch journalist and writer Jan Campert dies in the Neuengamme concentration camp.

* January 13 – Helmut Schenk is the first person to use an ejection seat from an aircraft.

* January 14 – The Casablanca Conference, where Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to travel by [[fdead

-wing aircraft|airplane]] while in office (Miami, Florida to Morocco to meet with Winston Churchill to discuss World War II).

* January 15

o WWII: The Japanese are driven off Guadalcanal.

o The world's largest office building, The Pentagon, is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.

* January 18

o WWII: Soviet officials announce they have broken the Wehrmacht's siege of Leningrad.

o The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins.

* January 23

o WWII: British forces capture Tripoli from the Italians.

o Duke Ellington plays at New York City's Carnegie Hall for the first time.

o Critic and commentator Alexander Woollcott suffers an eventually fatal heart attack during a regular broadcast of the CBS Radio roundtable program "People's Platform".

* January 27 – WWII: 50 bombers mount the first all American air raid against Germany (Wilhelmshaven is the target).

* January 29 – German police arrest alleged necrophiliac Bruno Ludke.

* January 29 – Marine Corps Women's Reserve (MCWR) created.

[edit] February

Soviet T34 tanks during the Battle of Kursk.

* February 2 – WWII: In Russia, the Battle of Stalingrad comes to an end with the surrender of the German 6th Army.

* February 3 – WWII:

o The Four Chaplains of the U.S. Army are drowned, when their ship (USAT Dorchester) is struck by a German torpedo.

* February 7 – WWII: In the United States, it is announced that shoe rationing will go into effect in 2 days.

* February 8 – WWII – Battle of Guadalcanal: United States forces defeat Japanese troops.

* February 10 – March 3 – Mohandas Gandhi keeps a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.

* February 11 – General Eisenhower is selected to command the Allied armies in Europe.

* February 14 – WWII:

o Rostov-na-Donu, Russia is liberated.

o Battle of the Kasserine Pass: German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia; it is the United States' first major battle defeat of the war.

* February 16 – WWII: The Soviet Union reconquers Kharkov, but is later driven out in the Third Battle of Kharkov

* February 18

o In a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast, German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels declare a "Total War" against the Allies.

o The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement.

* February 20

o American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.

o The Mexican volcano Parícutin is born in a farmer's cornfield.

* February 22 – Members of White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany.