1943Albert Hofmann test LSD for the first time

on himself

PT-109 sinks and a young JFK helps save his crew

“Oklahoma!” opens on Broadway

1944D-Day

1944

FDR elected to a 4th term

Battle of the Bulge begins

Paris liberated by the Allies

1945FDR dies on April

12th

Truman takes oath as 33rd president

1945Mussolini and his

mistress are executed

Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide

Berlin falls to Soviet forces

May 7th – Germany signs unconditional surrender

May 8th – V-E Day

1945Truman signs the order to drop atomic bombs on:

Hiroshima – Aug.6th

Nagasaki – Aug. 9th

1945Sept. 2nd – Formal Japanese

surrender. World War II officially ends

Japan announces its surrender

August 15th - V-J Day

1946The War Brides Act allows foreign-born wives of US

citizens who served in the US military to enter the US

The world begins to enter the Cold War as the

US and Russia begin constructing nuclear

arms

1947Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into law, creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of

Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

The House Un-American Activities

Committee investigates the Red Scare in Hollywood

1947Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. This starts a an interest in the

subject nationwide

Howard Hughes performs the maiden flight of the Spruce Goose, the largest fixed-wing aircraft

ever built

Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier in an X-1

rocket-powered research plane

1948 Truman abolishes racial segregation in the armed

forces

Truman wins re-election against Dewey