Commissar for Foreign Affairs, since 1929, had retired at his own request and had been succeeded by Vyacheslav M. Molotov, 49, President of the Council of People's Commissars.

May 7. An open military as well as a political alliance between Germany and Italy was announced in Berlin and Rome; on May 22, in Berlin, Germany and Italy signed, in the presence of Chancellor Hitler, a 10-year military pact, article III of which says: "If contrary to the wishes and hopes of the contracting parties it should happen that either of them should become involved in military entanglements with one other power or with other powers, the other contracting party will immediately rally to his side as ally and support him with all his military resources on land, at sea, and in the

air."

May 11. In Chicago, an elevator fire destroyed several lives and 4,100,000 bushes of grain.

May 11. Fighting began between Japanese (Manchukuo) and Mongol (Soviet) troops on the border southeast of Lake Bor. This frontier fight lasted for six months and cost over 20,000 lives before the border agreement was reached.

May 17. The Canada-United States tour of King George and Queen Elizabeth_began when the Royal party landed in Quebec from the steamship, Empress of Australia. They went to the west coast and back, they entered the United States at Niagara Falls, June 7, visited the Roosevelts in Washington, June 8-9; saw New York City and the World's Fair June 10; were lodged by the Roosevelts at Hyde Park, June 10-11; returned to Canada by Rouse's Point, continued by train to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, and got back to London, June 22. May 22. Thomas J. Pendergast, 67, a Democratic leader, pleaded guilty, in the U. S. Court, Kansas City, Mo., to income tax evasion, and was sentenced to 1 year 3 months in prison and a fine of $10,000. R. E. O'Malley, ex-State Insurance Superintendent, who also pleaded guilty to tax evasion, was sentenced May 27 to a year and a day in prison.

June 1. The Townsend old-age pension bill was defeated in the U. S. House. 302 to 97. Those in favor of the plan included 40 Democrats, 55 Republicans, 1 Farmer-Laborite, and 1 Progressive.

was

July 26. The Leeds-Liverpool Canal blocked by a terrorist bomb explosion. Aug. 13. A 13-car passenger train from Chicago, bound for the West Coast, was wrecked in a canyon of the Humboldt River. west of Elko, Nav.; 24 killed, over 100 hurt. The accident was attributed by the Interstate Comerce Commission to sabotage. Aug. 15. The United States Government paid $44,728,300 for the properties of the Tennessee Electric Power Co. The distribution facilities were sold to 35 cities, towns, and electric cooperatives for an added $34,321,700.

In Palestine, bombing and shootings killed scores in a month in the Jerusalem area. Aug. 21. While the British and French military missions still were in Moscow, the German Government announced that the trade agreement of Aug. 19 between the Reich and Soviet Russia had been followed by an agreement to conclude a mutual nonaggression pact. The pact was put in official form under date of Aug. 23, in Moscow, and was signed there early on Aug. 24. The treaty runs for 10 years. Each country is bound to refrain from any act of force against the other and will not support warlike acts against either by a third power.

Sept. 1. Germany began to send armed troops across the border into Poland, and into Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia. The City of Danzig joined the Reich. Sept. 3. Prime Minister Chamberlain announced in Parliament that a state of war between Great Britain and Germany had begun at 11 A.M. (6 A.M. New York time). Australia and New Zealand followed suit. France also declared a state of war. Canada did likewise. In a radio proclamation to the world, Prime Minister Chamberlain stated that the "reasonable proposals"

which Chancellor Hitler had broadcast on Aug. 31 were never shown to the Poles or to Britain or France. Hitler, he declared, can be stopped only by force." The state of war" had come to pass, he asserted, because Germany had refused a British ultimatum delivered to Berlin two hours earlier demanding recall of German soldiers from Polish territory. Cracow was captured on Sept. 6; Gdynia, Sept. 14; Russia invaded Poland, Sept. 16; Warsaw was taken by the Germans, Sept. 27.

Sept. 22. Several hundred persons were killed, 1,000 buildings were ruined and 5,000 were left homeless by earthquakes in the region of Smyrna, Turkey.

Oct. 5. The military court (court martial) on Governors Island that had been trying Grover C. Bergdoll, Philadelphia World War draft dodger, found him guilty of escape and desertion and fixed his sentence at three years in prison at hard labor, in addition to the 5-year term he is working out. Oct. 6 Chancellor Hitler told the Reichstag there was no longer any real excuse for a prolongation of the war to the destruction of more lives and property. He announced Germany's wish for peace and readiness to take part in a conference to draft and guarantee a statute to that end. He closed by saying: "and let those who consider war to be the better solution reject my outstretched hand." On Sept. 7 the first British troops arrived in France. Again, on Oct. 10. Hitler said in the Reichstag: "I have given expression to our readiness for peace. Germany has no cause for war against the Western powers. They have recklessly provoked a war on the flimsiest grounds. If they reject our readiness for peace then Germany is determined to take up the battle and fight it out-this way or that.' Nov. 8. The Centennial Fair opened, Wellington, New Zealand.

Nov. 16. Al Capone, who had served more than 7 years for federal income tax evasion, was formally released from prison by the United States Department of Justice, and went into a hospital in Baltimore for treatment.

Nov. 23. New York and 24 other States observed Thanksgiving Day, as per the Proclamation of President Roosevelt which set it a week ahead of the usual date. In Boston, Governor L. O. Barrows, of Maine, waved aside the bird he was to carve at the Maine banquet of the annual New England conference, drew a can of sardines from his pocket and ate them for dinner."' Nov. 29. In General Sessions Court, N. Y. City, a jury convicted Fritz Kuhn, 42, leader of the German American Bund, of grand larceny and forgery. It was alleged he had taken $717 from the Bund to ship across the country furniture of Mrs. Florence Camp. It was also alleged that he had committed larceny and forgery in listing on the bund's book the sum of $500 as having been paid to J. D. C. Murray for legal services. Kuhn was sentenced to 211⁄2 to 5 years in Sing Sing.

Nov. 30. Russia invaded Finland. Dec. 11. The U. S. Supreme Court outlawed wire-tapping evidence.

Explosions in a cellulose plant near Brachto in Transylvania, killed 50 persons. Dec. 17. The German battleship, Graf Spee. was blown up by her officers just after leaving Montevideo, Uruguay; 2 days later the crew of the 32,581 German passenger line. Columbus, scuttled her 450 miles east of Cape May, N. J.

Dec. 20. Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, convicted in the U. S. Court, N. Y. City, of conspiracy to violate the narcotic laws, was fined $2,500 and was sentenced to 14 years in prison followed by 10 years probation. Dec. 22. Two train collisions killed 223 persons in Germany.

Dec. 24. The Pope made public a 5-point program for lasting peace.

Dec. 27. Earthquakes and floods in northern Anatolia, Turkey, in the Black Sea region, destroyed 50,000 lives, 100,000 homes, and much live stock.

Dec. 28. Pius XII returned the visit of King Victor Emmanuel to the Vatican. It was the first Papal appearance in the Quirinal in n ore than 70 years.

1940 Jan. 14. In N. Y. City the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested 17 members of the Christian Front, on charges of plotting to overthrow the Government. The cases came to naught in the court. Jan. 27. The Spanish Government restored to the Jesuits their property, confiscated by the Republic in 1932 when they were expelled.

at

Feb. 5. At Chungking. Gen. Chiang Kaishek's National Government named Lingerh Lamutanchu, 6. discovered last year Chinghai and recently taken at Lhasa, Tibet. the 14th Dalai Lama. Called "Ehrling", or "divine child," he was selected by Tibetan lamas as possessing all the attributes of reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. He was born at the moment his predecessor died and he was enthroned on Feb. 22. Feb. 24. The Spanish Government banned Freemasonry and limted the activity of secret societies.

March 11. In Brooklyn, in the County Court, a jury found Ernest Walter Kehler, 24, a boxer known as Ernie Haas, guilty of manslaughter in the first degree after his counsel admitted that the accused man had killed Dr. Walter R. Engelberg, German consulate secretary. Haas was sentenced later to 10 to 20 years in prison. March 13. In London, Sir Michael O'Dwyer, 75, was assassinated at a joint meeting in Caxton Hall of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society. killer, Mohowed Singh Azad, wounded the Marquess of Zetland, Secretary of State for India, and Lord Lamington and Sir Louis Dane, former Indian administrators. O'Dwyer was Lieut. Gov. of the Punjab when the Amrisan outbreak occurred in 1919 and British troops killed over 400 natives and wounded 1,200.

The

March 30. The Japanese-supported government of the conquered area in China was inaugurated at Nanking, under Wang Chingwei, with jurisdiction in the Provinces of Hopei, Shansi and Shantung.

April 2. Taking of the 1940 United States Census was begun throughout the country. April 12. David L. Lawrence, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, and seven other executives of that party, were acquitted, in Harrisburg, of charges that they conspired to force political contributions from State employes during the Earle administration. The jury was made up entirely of Republicans.

April 15. In the Valley of the River Plata, in Argentina and Uruguay, 50.000 persons were made homeless and a score were killed when an 80-mile-an-hour freezing gale from the south piled the shallow waters of the Plata up on to the Argentine shore. April 19. The Lake Shore Limited of the N. Y. Central westbound for Chicago, was wrecked at 11:33 P.M. on the Gulf Curve at Little Falls, N. Y. The engineer and the fireman were killed when the locomotive jumped the track. Those killed in the wreck numbered 28, and several of the injured died in hospitals.

April 23. Fire and panic in a vine-sheathed dance hall in Natchez, Miss., killed 198 Negroes and several more died in hospitals. The building formerly was a church. The only door was in the front. The windows had been boarded up.

Fire in the City Hall, Sandona, Colombia, killed 103 persons (67 were children) at a service in commemoration of Gen. Santander who died 100 years ago.

The U. S. Senate, 45 to 36, passed the bill terminating the authority of the President under the Silver Purchase Act of 1934 to buy foreign silver.

This

May 13. Queen Wilhelmina and her daughter fled from the Hague to London; on May 14 Gen. Winkelman, Commander in Chief of the Netherlands armies, in a radio proclamation from Amsterdam, directed his troops to tay down their arms in the key defense belt around Rotterdam and Utrecht. capitulation covered all of the Netherlands except the Zeeland Peninsula, north of the Belgian coast. It was later stated at The Hague that the final casualty list of the Dutch Army was 2.890 killed, 6,889 wounded and 29 missing. The capitulation was signed on May 15.

-May 15. At the United States Navy Yard, Kit

1940

tery, Me., while four survivors of the Squalus disaster stood at attention on deck, the submarine was recommissioned as the Sailfish.

May 17. German armored forces in Belgium conquered Brussels, and, after bitter fighting, they took Louvain and Malines. The Belgium government was shifted to Ostend, on the Channel Coast. Through breaks in the Maginot line in Northern France the invaders reached the vicinity of Avesnes and Vervins.

President Roosevelt pardoned and restored all civil rights to Dr. Frederick A. Cook, Polar explorer, who, in 1923, was fined $12,000 and costs and was sentenced to 14 years 9 months in a Federal prison. He had been convicted in Texas of using the mails to defraud. He was released on parole in 1930 and was discharged from parole in 1935. The pardon was read to Dr. Cook in a hospital in Port Chester, N. Y., where he was suffering from an apoplectic stroke.

May 18. In France, the Germans, using over 2,000 tanks, pressed east and south to Landrícies and the Guise. They reached the Aisne River. They occupied Antwerp, in Belgium, and hoisted the Reich's flag over the Town Hall. Premier Reynaut reshuffled the French Cabinet, bringing in as Vice Premier and technical adviser on military operations Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the man who stopped the Germans at Verdun in the World War. Marshal Petain, 84, arrived in Paris by plane from Spain, where he had been Ambassador. Reynaud took over the War Ministry, replacing Edouard Daladier, who became Foreign Minister. May 23. In Chile, earthquakes at Callao, Lima and Chorrillos killed 350 persons. injured 5,000 and destroyed many buildings. The temblors continued several days. An armed posse disguised as policemen broke into the house, in Mexico City, of Leon Trotsky, exiled Communist Russian War Minister under Lenin and fired through the locked doors of his bedroom. He and his wife escaped death by lying on the floor. The assassins kidnapped a guard, Robert S. Harte of N. Y. City, and fled in automobiles. The body of Harte was found on June 24, buried under the floor of a farmhouse kitchen about 20 miles from Mexico City. May 28. The King of the Belgians surrendered to the Germans his army of 500,000 soldiers, who had been fighting alongside the Allies in the "pocket" in Flanders into which they had been penned by Chancellor Hitler's forces. The capitulation, which was unconditional, went into effect at 3 A.M., May 28. For two days the Allied leaders and the Belgian Cabinet had known of Leopold's decision and they had argued with him in vain. He told them his troops, who were under his personal command, were in desperate straits, subsisting on meager rations of hard biscuits for days; in many instances they had been entirely without ammunition; they had borne the brunt of the fighting, with the heaviest ratio of losses, and they could not hold out any longer unless "substantial new assistance" was received from the British and French. May 29. The British forces in Flanders, together with some of the French and some of the Belgians, all of whom had been squeezed by the Germans into a pocket which hourly became smaller, began to retreat to the channel at Dunkerque, after having been split in two, once more, by their opponents who had joined together near Lille, south of the Belgian border.

June 14. The Germans entered Paris, unopposed, all French troops having been withdrawn. Led by tanks, followed by motorized divisions and then by infantry, the Reich Army marched along the Champs Elysees. Many shops were closed and shuttered. The French Government moved from Tours to Bordeaux.

-Spanish troops took control of Tangier, în North Africa, opposite the Straits of Gibraltar, with consent of France, Britain and Italy, which was given. Germany said, after the move was made. The United States announced it would insist on its extra-territorial rights in Tangier under its 1906 treaty. June 15. Berlin reported that the Maginot Line had been wholly cut off by a German troops column that penetrated to the French-Swiss border, so that no continuous

French front was presented to attacks. The Germans completed occupation of Verdun; they also took Dijon, Metz, Dieuze and Sarrebourg. Their bombing of Rennes killed 4,500 persons.

The ex-Cunard cruise vessel, Lancastria, carrying over 5,000 British troops back to England from France, was sunk by German torpedoes with loss of 2,500 lives, off St. Nazaire.

Soviet Russia began military occupation and political reorganization of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. It was charged that the three nations had violated their mutual assistance pacts with the Soviet Government by making a secret pact among themselves. June 21. Negotiations for peace between France and Germany were begun in Compiegne Forest. The Maginot Line was turned over to the German forces under the terms of the armistice. France broke off diplomatic relations with Britain on July 5 and on July 9 the Parliament at Vichy voted itself out of existence.

June 29. President Roosevelt signed a bill of Congress requiring all aliens in the U. S. to submit to registration and fingerprinting. July 9. The Duke of Windsor was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Bahama Islands. His post as liaison officer between the French and British in France ended with the collapse of France. He and the Duchess escaped first to Spain and then to Portugal.

July 17. The Democratic National Convention, in Chicago, renominated President Roosevelt for a third term.

July 30. Earthquakes in the central plateau of Anatolia shook down 14 villages, killing more than 1,000 persons.

July 31. A steel gasoline motor passenger car and a 2-engine 73-car freight train collided head-on near Akron, Ohio, on the Pennsylvania Railroad; 43 persons were killed. Aug. 17. The Duke of Windsor became Gov. Gen, of the Bahamas.

Aug. 20. Leon Trotsky (Leba Bronstein), 63, exiled Russian ex-War Minister, was beaten on the head, in his gun-guarded villa on the outskirts of Mexico City. His skull was broken and he died Aug. 21. His assailant who had been known as Frank Jackson told the police his name was Jaegues Mornard van den Dreschd, 36, a journalist, born in Teheran, Persia (Iran) of Belgian parents. The body of Trotsky was cremated on Aug. 27.

Aug. 31. Crash near Lovettsville, Va., of an airplane bound from Washington for Pittsburgh in a thunderstorm, killed U. S. Senator Ernest Lundeen, 62, of Minnesota, 20 other passengers, and the crew of four, including Margaret Carson, hostess. and seven other women. The plane, a Pennsylvania Central Air liner, was proceeding with the rain falling heavily and a thick fog obscuring visibility.

Sept. 11. The Norwegian Parliament in Oslo declared King Haakon no longer able to function, but decided to postpone until after the war the question of whether he would be allowed to return to his country. By the decision the Norwegian Government in London, where King Haakon also took refuge after his country was occupied by the German Army, is considered to have resigned and a new government is named. Sept. 22. Japanese troops from their Canton army attacked Dong Dang on the French Indo-China border. 120 miles north of Hanoi. The next day they attacked French troops at Langson in French Indo-China, with artillery and bombing planes. Meantime an agreement had been reached at Hanoi, 82 miles distant, allowing limited" Japanese forces to enter the country. Sept. 27. Germany, Italy and Japan signed in Berlin a 10-year pact to "assist one another with all political, economic and military means when one of the three contracting powers is attacked by a power at preşent not involved in the European war or in the Chinese-Japanese conflict." Oct. 3. In London, ex-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned as Lord President of the Council. In the Cabinet shakeup that followed. Prime Minister Winston Churchill enlarged the so-called Inner War Cabinet to eight Members, three of whom are now Members of the Labor Party. Chamberlain

quit the next day as leader of the Conserverative Party.

Oct. 8. The New York State Court of Appeals sustained the conviction on lottery charges (Feb. 25, 1939) of James J. Hines, a former Tammany district leader. A conspiracy charge a misdemeanor-was dismissed, but all 12 felony counts, on which Hines was sentenced, to 4 to 8 years, were affirmed. He entered Sing Sing prison Oct. 14.

Oct. 21. The New York World's Fair came to its end.

Oct. 27. Greece was invaded by Italian warplanes, across the Albanian border and were reported over Athens. Greece rejected a three-hour ultimatum from Italy and rallied her forces. Premier Metaxas and King George urged the nation to independence. Oct. 29. The first United States peacetime compulsory military service was inaugurated when Secretary of War Stimson, blindfolded, drew from a glass bowl, in the War Department Auditorium in Washington, the number 158-first of 16,313,240 cards for young men who had registered under the Selective Service and Training Act.

Nov. 4. A United Air Lines plane with ten persons aboard, bound from San Francisco for New York, crashed into Bountiful Peak of the Wasatch Range, at an elevation of 7,000 ft., in a snowstorm 13 miles northeast of Salt Lake City.

Nov. 5. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for a third term as President of the United States. No other holder of that office ever was chosen for more than two of the constitutional 4-year periods.

Nov. 7. Built last July, the concrete roadway of the $6,400,000 suspension bridge over the Narrows at Tacoma, Wash., was broken to pieces by a 42-mile-an-hour wind and fell 190 feet into Puget Sound, carrying with it part of the centre 2,800-foot span with its web-girdered stiffening trusses. Two trucks and an auto went down with the span, but the four occupants escaped by crawling up to the towers.

Nov. 10. In Rumania, an arthquake, with its center in the Province of Moldavia, killed 388 persons and damaged many buildings in the city of Bucharest. Hundreds were made homeless in the central area of the country. Nov. 15. The $58,000,000 Manhattan-Queens Midtown Vehicular tunnel, N. Y. City, was opened to traffic. It provides a route between the central shopping districts of Manhattan to the Midtown Highway in Long Island City and the connecting highway between Queens and Brooklyn.

Nov. 16. In New York City, the Communist party of the United States voted to dissolve all affiliation with the Communist International and all other foreign organizations. Nov. 18. John L. Lewis resigned the presidency of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C. I. O.) which he founded in 1935. Nov. 20. Hungary joined the Axis; Rumania went in on Nov. 23; Slovakia on Nov. 24. Nov. 27. In the military prison at Jihlava, Rumania, 64 former officials of exiled King Carol were shot to death by members of the Iron Guard, in revenge for the assassination, in November, 1938, of the Iron Guard founder, Cornelius Zelea Codreanu, and 13 of his followers. Among the 64 killed were ex-Premier Gen. George Argeseanu; Nicholas Steranescu, head of the Surete Generale and army intelligence under Carol: Michael Morusoy, one-time head of Carol's secret police; Victor Iamandi, Minister of Justice at the time Codreanu was sentenced to prison; General Ion Bengliu, former chief of gendarmerie; Colonels Vasile Zeclu and Dinulescue, who commanded the squad that executed Codreanu; and Gabriel Marinescu. ex-president of the Bucharest police. ExPremier Nicholas and Virgil Madgearu were slain elsewhere. There were other killings, some estimates being as high as 2,000. Nov. 30. Lorraine was annexed to the Reich. Dec. 14. Pierre Laval was dismissed by Marshal Petain as Vice Premier.

At the close of 1940 the war was still in full progress. with air raids in Europe and Africa, and submarine attacks on ships and ports of all belligèrents.

(For later dates see War Chronology, also General Chronology, in this Almanac.)