Nov 29th, 2009 · It was 1939, the year of the New York World's Fair, Germany's invasion of Poland, and the publication of Steinbeck's classic The Grapes of Wrath. It's also the year two 18-year-old girls from Denver took a train to the East Coast for an adventure that inspired a Hollywood musical.
Aug 31st, 2009 · Authorities say John Kalymon, who lives in Troy, Mich., shot Jews while serving in the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Force in what is now the city of Lviv, which until 1939 was part of Poland. The retired auto engineer, who has been under investigation for years and was stripped of his citizenship in 2007, has repeatedly denied the charges.
Apr 29th, 2009 · New Yorkers rode a 1939-era train Wednesday along the subway line made famous by jazz legend Duke Ellington. The festivities marked the 110th anniversary of Ellington's birth.
Apr 12th, 2009 · After being barred from performing at Constitution Hall in 1939 because she was black, opera singer Marian Anderson gave a performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Author Raymond Arsenault's new book, The Sound of Freedom, reflects on the cultural significance of Anderson's performance that Easter.
Feb 22nd, 2009 · Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in the 1939 epic Gone With the Wind — becoming the first African-American to win an Academy Award. But her award has been missing for some 40 years. Was it lost, stolen or simply overlooked?
Feb 15th, 2009 · From 1935 to 1939, an army of folklorists and writers went in search of tales both real and tall. These stories of America in the Great Depression were gathered by literary giants like Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Jim Thompson. A new book revisits the project.
Jan 25th, 2009 · A recently published book contradicts what we have come to believe about the end of World War II: In small towns all over Europe, cheering crowds greeted smiling GIs as heroes. William Hitchcock, the author of the new book The Bitter Road to Freedom: A new history of the Liberation of Europe and a Temple University professor who specializes in the history of Europe since 1939, says although it was true in some cases, there was also brutality, injustice and violence.
Jul 11th, 2008 · In anticipation of the new Batman film The Dark Knight, which opens in theaters next week, we revisit an archival interview with Bob Kane, the man who drew Batman from its inception in 1939 until the late 1960s.