1939
1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar).
Events
January-June
July-September
October-November
December
unknown dates
Ongoing events
Year in topic
1939 in film
1939 in literature
1939 in music
1939 in rail transport
1939 in sports
July 4 - Lou Gehrig , recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , tells a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considered himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth" as he announces his retirement from Major League Baseball .
1939 in television
April - television demonstrations are held at the World's Fair in New York and the Golden Gate International Exhibition in San Francisco
April 30 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt , appearing at the World's Fair, becomes the first U.S. president to give a speech that is broadcast on television
May 17 - The first baseball game (Princeton-Columbia) is broadcast on television, from Baker Field in New York . Bill Stern was the announcer
June 1 - The first heavyweight boxing match is televised, Max Baer vs Lou Nova , form Yankee Stadium .
August 26 - The first Major League Baseball game is telecast, a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field , in Brooklyn .
September 1 - As World War II began, BBC television abruptly stopped its broadcasting in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon (The BBC would resume its broadcasting at that same point after the war in 1945 )
The DuMont company begins producing consumer television sets
September 30 - The first televised college football game, Fordham vs Waynesburg, at Randall's Island , New York .
October 22 - The first NFL game is televised. The Brooklyn Dodgers vs Philadelphia Eagles at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn .
Births
January-February
January 3 - Bobby Hull , hockey player
January 6 - Valeri Lobanovsky , football player and manager (d. 2002 )
January 10 - Sal Mineo , actor (d. 1976 )
January 10 - Bill Toomey , track and field athlete
January 11 - Ann Heggtveit , world and 1960 Winter Olympics ski champion
January 17 - Maury Povich , talk show host
January 18 - James Gritz , Green Beret , United States Populist Party Presidential candidate .
January 19 - Phil Everly , musician and singer
January 21 - Wolfman Jack , disk jockey , actor (d. 1995 )
January 22 - Ray Stevens , country music musician
January 29 - Germaine Greer , writer, feminist
February 6 - Mike Farrell , actor
February 10 - Roberta Flack , singer
February 11 - Jane Hyatt Yolen , science fiction author .
February 12 - Ray Manzarek , keyboardist
February 23 - Peter Fonda , actor
February 28 - Erika Pluhar , actress and singer
February 28 - Tommy Tune , dancer, choreographer, actor
March-April
March 1 - Warren Davis , The Monotones
March 8 - Robert Tear , Welsh tenor
March 13 - Neil Sedaka , singer
March 19 - Joe Kapp , American football star
March 20 - Brian Mulroney , eighteenth Prime Minister of Canada
March 26 - James Caan , actor
March 31 - Zviad Gamsakhurdia , scientist and writer, first President of the Republic of Georgia (d. 1993 )
March 31 - Volker Schlöndorff , film director
April 2 - Marvin Gaye , singer (d. 1984 )
April 4 - Hugh Masakela , musician
April 7 - Francis Ford Coppola , American film director
April 7 - Sir David Frost , broadcaster, television host
April 13 - Paul Sorvino , actor
May
May 7 - Ruud Lubbers , politician and Prime Minister of the Netherlands
May 7 - Jimmy Ruffin , singer
May 9 - Ralph Boston , athlete
May 13 - Harvey Keitel , actor
May 18 - Hark Bohm , film director
May 19 - Livio Berruti , Italian athlete
May 19 - Dick Scobee , astronaut (d. 1986 )
May 23 - Reinhard Hauff , film director
May 25 - Ian McKellen , actor
May 29 - Al Unser , race car driver
May 30 - Michael J. Pollard , actor
June
July
August
September-December
September 6 - Brigid Berlin actor and artist
September 9 - Ron McDole , American football player
September 16 - Breyten Breytenbach , South African poet, writer and painter
September 23 - Janusz Gajos , Polish actor
September 30 - Len Cariou , Tony Award winning stage actor/singer
October 7 - John Hopcroft , American theoretical computer scientist
October 7 - Bill Snyder , football coach at Kansas State University
October 14 - Ralph Lauren , American fashion designer
October 24 - F. Murray Abraham , actor
October 31 - Ron Rifkin , actor
November 21 - Mulayam Singh Yadav , politician, India
November 23 - Bill Bissett , Canadian anti-conventional poet
December 2 - Yael Dayan , Israeli writer and politician
December 8 - James Galway , Irish flutist
December 18 - Michael Moorcock , English science fiction author
Deaths
January 24 - Maximilian Bircher-Benner , Swiss physician and Muesli inventor
January 28 - William Butler Yeats , writer
February 10 - Pope Pius XI
February 11 - Franz Schmidt , Austrian composer
February 12 - S. P. L. Sørensen , Danish chemist
February 22 - Antonio Machado , Spanish poet (b. 1875 )
March 19 - Lloyd L. Gaines , American civil rights activist
April 7 - Joseph Lyons , tenth Prime Minister of Australia
June 4 - Tommy Ladnier , jazz musician (b. 1900 )
June 17 - Eugen Weidmann , last public guillotine execution in France
June 19 - Grace Abbott , social worker, activist (b. 1878 )
August 2 - Harvey Spencer Lewis , F.R.C., Rosicrucian mysticist and Imperator of AMORC
August 11 - Jean Bugatti , automobile designer
September 18 - Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (a.k.a. “Witkacy”), Polish writer and painter (b. 1885 )
October 7 - Harvey Cushing , American neurosurgeon (b. 1869 )
November 12 - Norman Bethune , Canadian humanitarian
November 28 - James Naismith , inventor of basketball
December 3 - Princess Louise , Duchess of Argyll, fourth daughter of Queen Victoria
December 22 - Ma Rainey , blues singer (b. 1886 )
December 23 - Anthony Fokker , aircraft manufacturer
Heads of state in 1939
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