Skip to main content

Significant Events and Personalities of 1940

Test your knowledge of significant events and notable figures from the year 1940 with this engaging quiz.

#1940 #history #quiz #events #personalities

1 ________ – Frederick Albert Cook, American explorer (b.

2 ________ – Winston Churchill warns the House of Commons to "prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings."

3 ________ – Roberto Cavalli, Italian designer

4 November 25 – ________, American football coach

5 ________ – Giorgio Moroder, Italian film composer

6 ________ – Germán Castro Caycedo, Colombian writer and journalist

7 ________ – Gene Pitney, American singer (d.

8 Among the dead is former minister and acclaimed historian ________.

9 July 1 – ________, American actor (b.

10 ________ – Mario Andretti, American race car driver

💡 Interesting Facts

  • from 1926 to 1940, the Union Minière du Haut Katanga had a virtual monopoly of the world uranium market.
  • from 1908 to 1940, over 100,000 of the 447 different models for Sears Catalog Homes were sold in the United States.
  • in the history of transportation in Los Angeles, the first California freeway "traffic jam" occurred on January 1, 1940.
  • on July 1, 1940, Romanian military units attacked a Jewish funeral in the town of Dorohoi, killing 53 people according to official sources, but more than 165 people according to Jewish sources.
  • the Capitoline Museums are housed in a complex of palazzi surrounding a piazza in Rome, designed by Michelangelo in 1536 but not fully completed until Mussolini ordered it in 1940.
  • Sofia Petrovna, a book by Russian writer Lydia Chukovskaya written in 1939-1940, and published in the West in 1960s, was published in the Soviet Union only in 1988.
  • Willi Münzenberg (1889–1940) was known as "The Red Millionaire" because he combined high living with communist propaganda.
  • Estonia joined World War II in 1940, after the Soviet Union blockaded the country, a Finnish airliner was shot down and three diplomatic couriers were killed.
  • French Major General René Cogny, who later commanded French forces during the First Indochina War, was captured in June 1940 by the German army, and had to escape by crawling naked through a drainpipe.
  • Ernst Kitzinger, a historian of Byzantine art, was forced to leave Germany in 1934 and England in 1940 because he was Jewish and German respectively.
  • holidays celebrated in Greece include Το Όχι, literally day of the "no", which honors Greece's refusal to surrender to the Axis Powers in 1940.
  • 1940's The Mark of Zorro is often considered the best of the Zorro movies.
    • Previous Quiz Next Quiz

    Related Quizzes

    Key Events and Figures of the 13th Century: A Quiz

    #13th century #history #Mongol Empire #Crusades #European culture #Franciscan order #Cambridge #Boyana Church

    Discovering the 14th Century: A Historical Quiz

    #14th Century #History #Renaissance #Ming Dynasty #Hundred Years' War #Petrarch #Military History

    Exploring the 16th Century: Events, Figures, and Discoveries

    #history #16th century #exploration #Renaissance #Conquistadores #art #politics #religion

    Exploring the 17th Century: Key Events and Figures

    #17th century #history #empires #Mughal Empire #Ottoman Empire #Persian Empire #Taiwan #Hudson's Bay Company #Kara Mustafa #French history

    Exploring the 18th Century: A Historical Quiz

    #18th century #history #quiz #education #literature #philosophy #politics

    Significant Events of 1904

    #1904 #history #events #quiz #education

    Significant Events and Figures of 1906

    #1906 #history #chess #astronomy #civil rights #swimming #biochemistry

    Significant Events and Figures of 1911

    #1911 #history #events #figures #Nobel Prize #aviation #fire incidents #education #composers