• Politics: Hawaii had unique US banknotes from 1942 through the war’s end. In case of Japanese invasion, the US government would have declared the notes worthless to prevent use by Japanese troops.
• Influential Songs include White Christmas by Bing Crosby, Deep In The Heart of Texas by Alvino Rey, and There’ll Be Bluebirds Over (The White Cliffs of Dover) by Glenn Miller Kay Kyser Kate Smith,  Jimmy Dorsey, or Sammy Kaye
• The Big Movies included Bambi, Mrs. Miniver, and Yankee Doodle Dandy
• Price of a woman’s Bulova Watch in 1942: $29.75
• Price to tune a piano: $3.00
• The World Population was ~ 2,396,000,000
• In the original cut of the film To Be or Not To Be, Carole Lombard’s character speaks the line, “What can happen on a plane?” The line was removed before the movie was released because Carole Lombard died in a plane crash in the interim.
• And… In 1942, the BBC banned the song ‘Deep In the Heart of Texas’ during work hours because its infectious melody might cause wartime factory workers to neglect their tools while they clapped in time with the song.

“Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By“
-Ingrid Bergman, in Casablanca

“Round up the usual suspects.”
– Claude Rains, in Casablanca

“Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
– Gary Cooper, as Lou Gehrig, in Pride of the Yankees

“Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
– Bette Davis, in Now, Voyager

“My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you.”
– James Cagney, as George M. Cohan, in Yankee Doodle Dandy

Poon Kim holds the record for surviving adrift in a life raft at 133 days in 1942-43. When told no one had ever survived longer on a raft at sea, he replied, “I hope no one will ever have to break that record.”

The BBC banned Deep In the Heart of Texas during work hours because its infectious melody might cause wartime factory-hands to neglect their tools while they clapped in time with the song.

The original version of the famous painting, “Washington Crossing The Delaware,” was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid on Germany in 1942.

A build-up followed by a fake scare in a horror film is called a ‘Lewton Bus,’ named after a scene in Val Lewton’s 1942 horror film Cat People.

Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a maximum income of $25,000, equivalent to roughly $350,000 today.

The ball atop One Times Square started in 1907 as 100 incandescent lightbulbs on a wood and iron structure hoisted with a rope. The ball drop tradition has been observed yearly since, except in 1942 and 1943, in observance of wartime blackouts.

3 Musketeers Bars originally had three smaller chocolate bars. A chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla variety. In 1942, the strawberry and vanilla flavors were cut due to increased production costs due to sugar rationing.

Bambi and Bambi II hold the record for the longest gap between movie sequels, the first released in 1942 and the second released 64 years later in 2006.

Hoagy Carmichael’s 1942 song I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with My Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o, Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues held the world record for the longest song title.

The 1942 Rose Bowl was played in Durham, NC, due to fears of a Japanese attack on the West Coast of the US.

The word nimrod comes from a biblical figure, King Nimrod, who was a mighty hunter. It now means a stupid person after Bugs Bunny sarcastically referred to the hunter Elmer Fudd as nimrod in a cartoon. Most people did not get the joke and assumed it meant ‘stupid.’
According to a poll conducted by Gallup, 48% of Americans approved of Canada and the US becoming a single country.

A Lakota Native American named Dewey Beard was the last survivor of the Battle Of Little Bighorn and the Wounded Knee Massacre, only to have his homeland confiscated from him yet again in 1942 so that the US Department Of War could use it for a gunnery range.

University of Chicago produced the first nuclear chain reaction, using uranium isotope U-235.

Ronald Reagan’s first autobiography was titled Where’s the Rest of Me? (1965) from a line in the movie King’s Row (1942) where his character wakes up to find that his legs have been amputated.

Hollywood Detective Magazine (1942-1950) debuted.

Walt Disney helped the Army design a Mickey Mouse gas mask in the ’40s to make chemical warfare less frightening to kids.

Nutella was invented in World War II because of chocolate rations.

Captain Richard Antrim was captured in 1942 & held as a POW. During this time, he was impressed with his engineering skills & helped the Japanese arrange trenches. From the air, the trenches spelled out “US,” warning bombers not to attack and that it was a POW camp, saving hundreds of lives.

Chattanooga Choo Choo was the first single since 1927’s My Blue Heaven to sell 1 million copies, and RCA Victor gave Glenn Miller the first gold record as a reward.

During the battle of Stalingrad, Mikhail Panikakha had only two Molotov cocktails left after helping repel German attacks. He raised the one to throw when a bullet hit it, setting him on fire. He then took the last bottle, jumped out of the trench, and hit the nearest German tank.

Napalm was developed in 1942 in a secret laboratory at Harvard University.

Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier in the Second World War. In 1942, he falsified his age to 18 to join the Army. Until 1945, he participated in battles on Sicily, at Salerno, Anzio, and Rome, and also in southern France and the Alsace region.

13-year-old Seaman Calvin Graham was decorated for valor in battle. That is how his mother learned where he had been and revealed his secret to the Navy.

The action movie Barb Wire (1996), starring Pamela Anderson, is based on the classic Casablanca (1942), with many of the original characters’ genders being switched

Coca-Cola Deutschland created Fanta due to difficulties importing Coca-Cola syrup into Nazi Germany during World War II due to a trade embargo to create a new product for the German market, using only ingredients available in Germany at the time.

The Declaration of Independence spent World War II in Fort Knox, placed in a box and sealed with lead.

Joseph Stalin was technically not the leader of the USSR during the Second World War. When the Big Three Allies (Churchill, FDR, Stalin) met, FDR presided, being the only head of state present. Mikhail Kalinin was the nominal head of state of the USSR during WWII.

During World War II American factory workers produced more than twice their German counterparts. They had four times the output of Japanese workers, prompting industrialist Donald Douglas to observe, “Here’s proof that free men can out-produce slaves.”

Had Japan won the Battle of Midway in 1942, it might have next attacked and conquered Hawaii. The US would have only had one aircraft carrier in the Pacific for six months.

On Christmas Day, 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad, Radio Moscow broadcasted “Every seven seconds a German soldier dies in Russia” to the besieged Nazi Army. The sound of a ticking clock accompanied the message. The ticking clock was broadcast all day.

There is only one recording of Hitler’s voice where he is not giving a speech – a private conversation between himself and Finnish leader Mannerheim recorded in secrecy by a sound engineer in 1942.

A man called the Phantom Barber would break into people’s houses in Pascagoula, Mississippi, at night and cut their hair.

The Battle of Los Angeles occurred in which the Coast Artillery Brigade fired over 1,400 shells at we-still-don’t-know-what on February 24/25.

When the USS Juneau was sunk in Nov 1942, all five of the Sullivan family’s siblings were killed in Waterloo, Iowa.

Sodium fluoride was accidentally added to the scrambled eggs meal at a mental home. At about one teaspoon per patient, the sodium fluoride caused violent reactions, including vomiting blood and paralysis within 15 minutes, and killed 47 of the 467 patients within the day.

On August 16, 1942, a military blimp left San Francisco Bay on a routine submarine-spotting mission. A few hours later, the airship wandered back over land and crashed with nobody aboard. Life rafts and other gear had not been touched. To this day, the two-man crew has never been found.

The Skeleton Lake of Roopkund: A British forest guard in India made an alarming discovery- some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake full of skeletons. They were the remains of a 9th-century AD party killed by a freak hail storm.

Dr. Alf Alving, working for the US Army’s Office of Scientific Research and Development, tested some 441 convicts from Statesville Penitentiary for Malaria drugs without their knowledge.

Airplane Celebrity Death: Carole Lombard. Side Note: Carole had previously agreed to fake her death in a plane crash in 1940 for publicity.

Working your ‘Victory Garden’ would give US troops more food for the war. (Through 1945)

Watching Casablanca, Cat People, and Bambi at the local theater

Reading The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel

Charts based on Billboard music charts.