1940 History, Trivia and Fun Facts

• The Comics: Superman bad guy Lex Luthor was originally drawn with a full head of red hair, in Action Comics #23, but an artist's mistake made the iconic villain bald.
• Influential Songs include: Frenesi by Artie Shaw, The Breeze and I by Jimmy Dorsey and We Three (My Echo My Shadow and Me) by The Ink Spots
• The Big Movies included Gone with the Wind, Fantasia, The Philadelphia Story and Pinocchio
• Price of 12 oz. of Hormel SPAM in 1940: 25 cents
• The World Population was ~ 2,350,000,000
• US Life Expectancy: Males: 60.8 years, Females: 65.2 years
• The Conversation: "Cheese!" People started saying cheese when smiling for the camera. In the earliest days of photography, photos took a minute or more, and the habit of keeping a straight face started to disappear with the rise of motion pictures in the late 1920s.
• And... For his role in The Philadelphia Story (1940), Cary Grant demanded top billing and (a very high) $137,000 salary. He then donated the entire amount to the British War Relief Society.

UNSUNG HERO, Chiune Sugihara was the Japanese consul general in Lithuania. Against tradition, and specific orders, he gave thousands of visas to nearly anyone who asked for them, and many did ask, so they could escape from the Nazi regime. He was fired of course, and lost his entire career. Why? He later said "They were human beings, and they needed help. I'm glad I found the stregnth to give it to them."

The German army used a radar system called Wotan. The British scientist R.V. Jones figured out how the system worked by assuming that it used a single beam based on the fact that the Germanic god Wotan had only one eye.

When Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940, French soldiers cut the elevator cables to the Eiffel Tower. German soldiers had to climb the tower to hoist the swastika.

Eduard Bloch was the Jewish doctor of the Hitler family who treated Hitler's mother before her death in 1907. Hitler granted him his "everlasting gratitude" and called him "noble Jew". He was put under special protection by the Gestapo until he could move to America in 1940.

Portuguese consul Sousa Mendes issued 30,000 visas in Bordeaux over a few days. This heroic feat was characterized as "the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust."

Two RAAF training airplanes collided in mid-air, becoming locked together. As the aircraft were traveling in the same direction, they became a technical biplane and were landed safely by the pilot of the upper plane. There were no deaths.

After dividing Poland with Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin ordered the "liquidation" of the Polish officer corps in 1940, resulting in the mass execution of over 25,000 Poles in what came to be known as the Katyn Massacre.

During the outbreak of World War II, London Zoo killed all their venomous animals in case the zoo was bombed and the animals escaped.

In 1933 Author H.G. Wells Wrote a Sci-Fi Book in which he predicted a second World War would break out between Germany and Poland in January of 1940.

When the UK defeated Italy in North Africa in December 1940, the victory was so complete that the British announced that they had captured "five acres of officers and 200 acres of other ranks". It was the first great Allied victory on land against the Axis.

London's Richmond Golf Club didn't stop play when the Nazis were bombing them in 1940, they just adjusted their rules. "A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. Penalty one stroke."

11-year-old Audrey Hepburn studied ballet in occupied Holland. To aid the resistance, the students performed in secret while Nazi patrols roamed nearby. Applause was forbidden, and later Hepburn said, "The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performance."

The term "First World War" was first used in September 1914, barely two months into the conflict and decades before WWII.

After being deposed by the Soviet Union in 1940, the President of Estonia was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Russia for "persistent claiming of being the President of Estonia".

All copies of a 1938 Japanese version of King Kong are believed to have been destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. The film was one of Japan's first giant monster movies, and featured special effects by the man who would go on to create the Godzilla costume 16 years later.

Nikola Tesla offered to build the American military a "teleforce" death ray that could "melt airplane motors 250 miles away". All he wanted was $2 million and three months of time.

Adrian Carton de Wiart served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived two plane crashes and escaped a prisoner-of-war camp. He wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."

Almost 80% of German casualties in World War II took place in Eastern Front.

During the Second World War, Pablo Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. During one search of his apartment, a German officer saw a photograph of the painting Guernica. "Did you do that?" the German asked Picasso. To which he replied "No, you did".

In September, 1940 the UK sent the US documents for improved radar, the jet engine, feasibility of an atomic bomb, rocket designs, plastic explosives & more; tech that would lead to victory, the nuclear age, jet age & said to be the "most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores"; in a single trunk.