WHAT ALL HAPPENED JUNE TO AUGUST 1939
Find out what all happened June to August 1939

Huỳnh Phú Sổ founds Hòa Hảo Buddhism. (4. July 1939)

Siam is renamed Thailand by Plaek Pibulsonggram, the country's third prime minister. (24. June 1939)

The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California. (15. August 1939)

Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison (17. June 1939)

Judge Joseph Force Crater, known as the "Missingest Man in New York", is declared legally dead. (6. June 1939)

Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures' Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor. (12. June 1939)

First flight of the German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter-bomber airplane. (1. June 1939)

First flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft. (27. August 1939)

Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, informs a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considered himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth", then announces his retirement from major league baseball. (4. July 1939)

Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps. (4. June 1939)

Holocaust: the last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed. (6. July 1939)

Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland the following day thus starting World War II in Europe. (31. August 1939)

13 Stukas dive into the ground during a disastrous air-practice at Neuhammer. There are no survivors. (15. August 1939)

The United Kingdom and Poland form a military alliance in which the UK promises to defend Poland in case of invasion by a foreign power. (25. August 1939)

Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon. (2. August 1939)

World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations. (23. August 1939)

The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York. (12. June 1939)