Time Magazine Reports: The 1940s Quiz

Answer: Military Draft

Burke-Wadsworth was better known as the Selective Service Act of 1940. 'Time' explained in detail 'THE DRAFT: How It Works'. "A new thing had entered U. S. life: although the U. S. had conscripted its citizens in two wars, never before had it conscripted them in peace. Some 16,500,000 men, aged 21 to 36, forthwith became liable to compulsory military service. How, when, whether conscription would actually touch them was prescribed in 1) the bill, and 2) the selective system which the Army & Navy had long since prepared against a martial day."

Also in 1940: Indiana wins NCAA Basketball championship over Kansas, Leon Trotsky assassinated, Lascaux prehistoric cave paintings discovered in France.

Answer: George Patton

'Time' magazine's December 22 article 'Home Affairs: Fallen Citadel' noted the demise of the America First neutrality movement; "The stronghold of U.S. isolationism fell almost with the first shots. The America First Committee quietly dismantled its guns, took down its flags, mustered out its men.

Said Chairman Robert E. Wood, a good soldier: "The period of democratic debate on the issue of entering the war is over...[The committee] urges all those who have followed its lead to give their full support to the war effort of the nation, until peace is attained."

Also in 1941: Mt. Rushmore sculpture completed by Gutzon Borglum, 'Sergeant York' is top grossing film, Greta Garbo retires at age 36.

Answer: Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, Oakland and Long Island, NY all suffered false alarm reports of enemy air attacks. 'The Battle of Los Angeles' occurred in February, 1942 when anti-aircraft units fired a lengthy barrage against non-existent enemy planes.

On March 2, 'Time' reported the first actual attack on the US mainland, "A submarine emerged from the sea about seven miles north of Santa Barbara, Calif., and for 20 minutes lobbed shells at an oil refinery. First reports: little damage; no one was injured; no fires were started; most of the 25 shells fired exploded in a field; frightening horses; one went over Highway 101, burst in the foothills." In June the Japanese sub I-25 fired on Ft. Stevens, damaging the backstop of the facility's baseball field. In September the same I-25 launched a seaplane which dropped incendiary bombs near Brookings, Oregon causing no damage.

Also in 1942: Cost of gasoline $.15 per gallon, Duke of Kent (brother of King George VI) dies while serving in RAF, Nazi leaders institute 'final solution to the Jewish question' at Wannsee Conference.

Answer: Canteen

'Time' reported that "Into its smoky, dusky Manhattan basement have poured over 500,000 men in the uniforms of almost all the United Nations, from U.S. leathernecks to men of the Royal Netherlands Navy and Chinese aviation cadets; and lately it has done a roaring trade in French sailors. In a year, its pretty hostesses have danced an estimated 2,184,000 miles."

The Canteen inspired a song by Irving Berlin (' I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen'), a United Artists movie and a live radio broadcast. Bette Davis and John Garfield headed the effort to create the "Hollywood Canteen" in Los Angeles.

Also in 1943: Rationing of shoes, meat, cheese, butter and cooking oils go into effect in the US, In July Benito Mussolini is deposed, Notre Dame is college football's champion with a 9-0-1 record.

Answer: Home Guard

Headed 'World Battlefronts, THE ENEMY: What It Means,' 'Time' reported that, "Britain learned it first, in the black days after Dunkirk: even the old men had to be prepared to fight. Germany was deep into the fifth year before it had to dig so deep... the Volkssturm decree summoned all "able-bodied" males between 16 and 60 except those in the Todt (construction) organization, or in police and security units. Himmler's aim was for three million Volkssturm soldiers; perhaps one million have already been mobilized."

'Time' also sarcastically noted that Germany's new Women's Armed Forces Auxiliary Corps "is ruled, appropriately, by that famed lover of women, Dr. Goebbels."

Also in 1944: Cost of a loaf of bread $.10, US unemployment 1.2%, Bretton Woods Conference creates International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Answer: Dresden

In fact 'Time's report was accurate, not exaggerated. Dresden suffered not a single bombing but a series of attacks by British and American bombers. Between February 13 and 15, over 1200 Allied planes dropped almost 4000 tons of bombs.

Also in 1945: Princess Elizabeth began training as a driver-mechanic in the Auxiliary Territorial Service - Britain's woman's military auxiliary, US national debt reaches $260.1 billion, B-25 bomber flies into the Empire State Building killing 13

Answer: Irgun

Britain's civil and military headquarters were housed in the King David Hotel. 'Time' reported, "British troops searched for bodies in the wreck...where 80 had died in a Zionist terrorist explosion. British statesmen in London groped for something solid in the rubble of their Palestine policy. World sympathy for Zionism, though not yet a ruin, was beginning to crumble. The Arabs, who seemed to profit most by last week's events in the Holy Land, sat tight.

While the overwhelming majority of Jewish spokesmen deplored the outrage, an extremist Zionist band known as the Irgun Zvai Leumi took credit for it. Inferentially, it deprecated the loss of life by claiming to have telephoned a warning to the King David's switchboard."

Also in 1946: Dr. Spock's 'Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care' published, tsunami strikes Hawaii killing 173, William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) hanged for treason.

Answer: Brooklyn Dodgers

In the October 13 'Sport: Nothing Like It' article, 'Time' opened with a story fans could believe or not as they chose, "The tension was hemispheric. In a Calgary, Alberta court, the Crown interrupted his address to the jury to glance at a note. Then he passed it on to defense counsel, who broke into a grin and quickly apologized: "Pardon me, gentlemen, but I have just received today's ball score." The judge suggested drily that the jury would like to know the news too. "Of course, your Lordship," came the answer. "The Dodgers won 9-8."

1947's Series was the first to be televised. The broadcasts were available only in New York City, Philadelphia, Schenectady, and Washington, DC. The three networks of the time split the coverage among themselves. NBC and CBS each covered two games, DuMont broadcast three.

Also in 1947: Parliament nationalizes Britain's coal mines, price of a Bulova men's watch $52.50, Chuck Yeagar breaks sound barrier in X-1 rocket plane.

Answer: Donora, Pennsylvania

'PENNSYLVANIA: Death at Donora' described how "Fog settled down on the grimy industrial towns of Pennsylvania's Monongahela Valley one day last week, blurred the bleak outlines of steel mills and foundries, and softened the glare of great furnaces. At sooty Donora (pop. 13,500), it was particularly heavy; the hills stand close and no breath of breeze had reached its streets. The haze thickened as locomotives and the high stacks of U.S. Steel's huge Donora Zinc Works sent fumes into the still air...
A Choking Sensation. The first to discover that the smog had assumed peculiar qualities was a man walking home late at night. He was seized with a paroxysm of choking. But he had little time to reflect on the fact that the fog had assumed an odd, penetrating odor. He sat down on the curb, toppled over and died." Blame for the deaths has fallen primarily on fluorine gas emissions from the zinc works.

In 1952 London suffered its own 'killer smog' which killed up to 4000 people.

Also in 1948: President Truman signs executive order ending racial segregation in the US Armed Forces, average cost of movie ticket $.60, Dick Button wins men's figure skating gold medal at St. Moritz Winter Olympics.

Answer: True

The NP won elections in 1948 and began institutionalizing and refining apartheid which remained national policy until 1990. In 'SOUTH AFRICA: Departheid' a report in the issue for November, 1949 'Time' poked fun at the extremes to which South Africa would go to keep the races apart.

"The South African government's official policy of apartheid-vaguely defined as "separateness" for 2,000,000 dominant whites and 8,000,000 subordinate blacks-reached an ultimate. In gold-mining Klerksdorp, at the request of the local Handelskamer (Chamber of Commerce), the town council agreed to provide separate hearses for the two races. It was unpleasant and unhealthy to contemplate, explained Councilman D. J. Piennar, that a hearse bearing a black corpse to the cemetery might next day be used to carry a white man's coffin."

Also in 1949: Polaroid Camera introduced for $89.95, British De-Havilland Comet, first commercial jet airliner, takes first test flight, US population reaches 149 million.