1944
The first episode of Vaudville Of 1944 broadcast. The Late Christopher Bean - starring Edith Evans and Edward Chapman - broadcast in The Home Service's Saturday-Night Theatre strand. John Harlow's Candles At Nine - starring Jessie Matthews, John Stuart and Beatrix Lehmann - premiered.
We're All Together and The Young Man Who Stroked Cats broadcast.
Colin Wills' A Waltz Dream broadcast.
Ronald Pertwee and Harold Dearden's Interference broadcast in the Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
James Patrick Page born in Heston, Middlesex.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressubrger's The Volunteer premiered.
Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister and Mussolini's son-in-law, was executed by Mussolini's revived Fascist government sympathisers. Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat - starring Tallulah Bankhead - released.
Joseph William Frazier born in Beaufort, South Carolina.
The first Battle of Monte Cassino began when the British X Corps attacked along the Garigliano river at the Western end of the German Gustav Line.
The Allies launched Operation Shingle, landing at Anzio. The Allies had hoped to break the stalemate in Southern Italy, but they were unable to break out of the beachhead and the line held until late May.
John Harlow's Headline - starring David Farrar, Anne Crawford and William Hartnell - premiered.
Sam Newfield's Nabonga - starring Buster Crabbe, Julie London and Fifi D'Orsay - premiered.
The lifting of the Siege of Leningrad after eight hundred and seventy two days.
The Russian Army completed the encirclement of two German Army corps at the Korsun pocket, South of Kiev. Two-thirds of the Germans escaped in the breakout the following month albeit with the loss of most heavy equipment. Carlos Hugo Christensen's La Pequeña Señora De Pérez - starring Mirtha Legrand - premiered.
None Shall Escape - starring Alexander Knox - and The Fighting Sullivans premiered. Patricia Ann Ruth Noble born in Marrickville, New South Wales.
Paula Topham born in Westminster.
The prototype computer Colossus Mark 1 - developed by British codebreakers to help in the cryptanalysis of the German's Lorenz cipher - began operations at Bletchley Park. Colossus was designed by research telephone engineer Tommy Flowers to solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman and using algorithms written by Bill Tutte. Alan Turing's use of probability in cryptanalysis also contributed to its design. It has sometimes been erroneously stated that Turing himself designed Colossus to aid the cryptanalysis of the earlier Enigma. Turing's machine which helped decode Enigma was the electromechanical Bombe.
Geoffrey Hughes born in Wallasey.
Roger Lloyd-Pack born in Islington.
The second Battle of Monte Cassino began with the destruction of the historic Benedictine monastery by Allied bombing. The Allies believed - possibly incorrectly - that the grounds were used as an observation post by the Germans.
Diplomats from the USSR and Finland met to sign an armistice. Michael Curtiz's Passage To Marseille - starring Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains - premiered.
Leipzig was bombed for two straight nights. This marked the beginning of The Big Week bombing campaign against German industrial cities by Allied bombers.
David Bernard Wood born in Sutton, Surrey. Charles Frend's Sam Demetrio London - starring Arthur Young, Walter Fitzgerald, Ralph Michael and Barry Letts - premiered.
Shipmates Ashore broadcast from Newcastle on The Forces Programme.
The first day of the - renamed - General Forces Programme, highlights included All Together Now.
Valerie Stanton born in Kensington.
Roger Harry Daltrey born in Hammersmith.
Robert Wise's The Curse Of The Cat People - starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph and Ann Carter - premiered.
Ranulph Tiwselton-Wykeham-Fiennes born in Windsor.
The third Battle of Monte Cassino began. The town of Cassino was destroyed by Allied bombers.
Peter Cleall born in Finchley.
Knickerbocker Holiday - starring Nelson Eddy - premiered. Petra Mavis Markham born in Prestbury, Cheshire. Christian Charles Roberts born in Southmoor, Oxfordshire. Patricia Anne Boyd born in Taunton.
German forces occupied Hungary in Operation Margarethe. Yugoslav partisans attack Trieste on the border of Italy and Slovenia.
Charles Vidor's Cover Girl - starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly - premiered.
Roger Michael Hilary Minster born in Surey.
The Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Rome. Three hundred and thirty five Italians were killed, including seventy five Jews and over two hundred members of various Italian Resistance groups; this was a German response to a bomb blast which had killed German troops. Orde Wingate was killed in a plane crash.
Ann Sidney born in Poole.
Gabrielle Mary Drake born in Lahore.
The Forces Network's Mediterranean Merry-Go-Round included the first episode of Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne's Much Binding In The Marsh.
Helen Duncan - a fake medium - became the last person to be jailed (for nine months) under the 1735 Witchcraft Act at the Old Bailey for 'falsely claiming to procure spirits.' Myfanwy Talog Williams born in Caerwys, Flintshire.
Hywel Thomas Bennett born in Garnant, Carmarthenshire.
Soviet forces took Kerch, beginning the reconquest of the Crimea.
Roy Del Ruth's Broadway Rhythm - starring George Murphy, Ginny Simms, Charles Winninger and Gloria DeHaven - premiered.
Basil Dearden's The Halfway House - starring Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns, Esmond Knight, Valerie White and Sally Ann Howes - premiered.
Vivienne Rose Crisp born in London.
Diane Fletcher born in Derby.
George Marshall's And The Angels Sing - starring Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynnt and Fred MacMurray - premiered.
The Slapton Sands tragedy: Over seven hundred American soldiers were killed in a training exercise in preparation for D-Day at Slapton in Devon.
Nicolas Michael Angelis born in Liverpool.
Cyd Hayman born in Chippenham.
George Cukor's adaptation of Gaslight - starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotton - premired.
Leo McCarey's Going My Way - starring Bing Crosby - premiered. Carlo Forgione born in Dundee.
The first episode of Archie Takes The Helm, featuring ventriloquist Peter Brough and Archie Andrews broadcast as part of the Navy Mixture strand on the General Forces Network.
John Rhys-Davies born in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Roger Rees born in Aberystwyth. Zubair Ahmed Siddiqi born in Lucknow, India.
Richard O'Sullivan born in Chiswick.
Anthony Asquith's Fanny By Gaslight - starring Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Wilfrid Lawson and Stewart Granger - premiered.
Nigel Lambert born in Southend On Sea.
Sara Kestelman born in London.
Vivien Heilbron born in Glasgow.
After months of carnage, the - fourth - Battle of Monte Cassino concluded with an Allied victory as Polish troops of the Second Polish Corps led by general Władysław Anders captured Monte Cassino. Leslie S Hiscott's Welcome Mister Washington - starring Barbara Mullen, Donald Stewart, Peggy Cummins and Leslie Bradley - premiered. Doran Godwin born in Harrow.
Colin Spaull born in Surrey.
Keith Wiliam Robert Fletcher born in Worcester.
Fiona Walker born in London.
Allies at Anzio linked up with colleagues from South Italy. Though Harold Alexander wished to trap the German Tenth Army, American Fifth Army commander Mark Clark ordered Truscott to turn North toward Rome. Vincent Sherman's Mister Skefflington - starring Bette Davis - premiered. Stephanie Turner born in Bradford.
Roy William Neil's The Scarlet Claw - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Paul Cavanagh - premiered.
Patricia Quinn born in Belfast. Eunice Irene Carroll born in Liverpool.
David Lean's adaptation of Noel Coward's This Happy Breed - starring Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway and John Mills - premiered. Robert Powell born in Salford.
This Is The Life - starring Donald O'Connor, Susanna Foster and Peggy Ryan - premiered.
Richard Thorpe's Two Girls & A Sailor - starring June Allyson and Van Johnson - premiered.
Rome was liberated by the Americans. George Formby's 'The "V" Sign Song'/'The Old Cane Bottom Chair' released.
Operation Overlord commenced when more than a thousand British bombers drop five thousand tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast. The first Allied paratroopers landed in Normandy. Gillian Hills born in Cairo.
One hundred and fifty thousand Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, beginning Operation Overlord. The BBC transmitted a coded message ('wound my heart with a monotonous languor' from Chanson d'automne, a poem by Paul Verlaine) to resistance fighters in France warning that the invasion was about to begin. The Allied soldiers quickly broke through the Atlantic Wall and pushed inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history. The Americans got the worst of it at Omaha Beach but, by the end of the day, the Allies had gained a vital foothold in Normandy.
Bayeux was liberated by British troops.
Carol Reed's The Way Ahead - starring David Niven, Stanley Holloway, William Hartnell, James Donald, Jimmy Hanley, Raymond Huntley and James Laurie - premiered.
At Oradour-sur-Glane (near Limoges), over six hundred men, women and children were murdered by the SS in response to local Resistance activities. After the war the village remained a ruin, its story becoming more widely known internationally when it was used as the opening sequence of the 1973 TV series The World At War: ('Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead.')
The first V-1 flying bomb attack on London. Eight civilians were killed in the blast. In France, the Battle of Villers-Bocage took place. The US Naval bombardment of Saipan began.
John Blakeley's Demobbed - starring Norman Evans, Nat Jackley, Dan Young and Betty Jumel - premiered.
The United States Fifth Fleet won a decisive naval battle over the Imperial Japanese Navy near the Mariana Islands. Over two hundred Japanese planes were shot down while the Americans only lost thirty to enemy action. A severe Channel storm destroyed one of the Allies' Mulberry harbours in Normandy. The Red Army prepared for Operation Bagration, a huge offensive in Byelorussia.
Raymond Douglas Davies born in Fortis Green, North London. In Burma, the Battle of Kohima ended with a British victory.
Peter Asher born in London.
Julian Holloway born in Watlington, Oxfordshire.
Cherbourg was liberated by American troops.
Minsk was liberated by Soviet forces. Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity - starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G Robinson and with a screenplay co-written by Raymond Chandler - premiered. Paul Young born in Edinburgh.
Joe May's Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore - starring Simone Simon, Robert Mitchum and Gladys Blake - premiered.
After heavy resistance Caen was liberated by the British troops on the left flank of the Allied advance. Following the largest Banzai charge of the war, Saipan was declared secure, the Japanese having lost over thirty thousand troops; in the finals stages numerous civilians committed ritual suicide with the encouragement of Japanese military.
Douglas Sirk's Summer Storm - starring Linda Darnell, George Sanders and Anna Lee - premiered.
Angharad Mary Rees born in Edgware.
Field Marshal Rommel was badly wounded when his car was strafed from the air in France. Katherina Freiin Schell Von Bauschlott born in Budapest, Hungary.
The failed July Plot was carried out by Colomel Claus von Stauffenberg in an attempt to assassinate Hitler (who only had one). Hitler was visiting headquarters at Rastenburg but, sadly, survived the bomb blast. Swift, vicious and terrible reprisals followed against many of the plotters and their families, including Rommel. John Cromwell's Since You Went Away - starring Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton and Shirley Temple - and Dragon Seed - starring Katharine Hepburn - premiered.
US Marines landed on Guam. Michel Ray de Carvalho born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.
Nicholas Brimble born in Bristol.
Carmen Isabella Miller born in Weston-Super-Mare. Maurice Elvey's Medal For The General - starring Godfrey Tearle, Jeanne de Casalis and Petula Clark - premiered.
Fred Zinnemann's The Seventh Cross - starring Spencer Tracy - premiered.
Valerie Van Ost born in Beckhamstead.
The first aerial victory for a jet fighter occurred, with an Me 262 of the Luftwaffe's Ekdo 262 damaging an RAF de Havilland Mosquito.
Harold French's English Without Tears - starring Michael Wilding, Penelope Dudley-Ward and Lilli Palmer - premiered.
Frances J De Lautour born in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire.
The Warsaw Uprising, staged by the Polish Home Army, began: the Polish people rose, expecting aid from the approaching Soviet Union armies, but it never came. Henry King's Wilson - starring Charles Coburn and Alexander Knox - and Roy William Neil's The Pearl Of Death - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Evelyn Ankers - premiered.
Dietlinde Zechner born in Bad Polzin, Germany.
The Education Act, promoted by Rab Butler, created a Tripartite System of secondary education in England and Wales with Secondary Modern, Technical and Grammar schools.
Florence was liberated by British and South African troops. Before exiting, the Germans under General Albert Kesselring destroyed some historic bridges and buildings. Rennes was liberated by American forces.
The first trials of the 'July Plot' bomb conspirators against Hitler began in a court presided over by notorious Judge Roland Freisler. The plotters were mostly found extremely guilty and executed with their bodies hanged on meat hooks.
Preston Sturges's Hail The Conquering Hero premiered.
Ian McDiarmid born in Carnoustie.
The failure of the Allies to fully close the Falaise pocket proved advantageous to the Germans fleeing to the East who escaped the pincer movement of the Allies.
Veronica Mary Glazier born in Emley, West Yorkshire.
The French Resistance began an uprising in Paris, partly inspired by the Allied approach to the Seine River.
The Battle of the Falaise Gap concluded with an Allied victory and lots of Germans getting their heads kicked in. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale - starring Eric Portman, John Sweet, Sheila Sim and Dennis Price - premiered. Susan Marueen Fleetwood born in St Andrew's, Fife.
Kismet - starring Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich - premiered.
Paris was liberated when the German garrison surrendered following an uprising by the French Resistance. De Gaulle and the Free French paraded triumphantly down the Champs-Élysées. The German military disobeyed Hitler's orders to 'burn' the city. Southern Allied forces moved up from the Riviera, to take Grenoble and Avignon.
Stephen Greif born in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire.
The first of several alleged 'attacks' initially attributed to The Mad Gasser of Mattoon took place in Illinois. Police remained skeptical of the accounts throughout the entire incident as no physical evidence was ever found and many reported gassings had simple explanations, such as spilled nail polish or odours emanating from animals or local factories. Victims made quick recoveries from their symptoms and suffered no long-term effects. Nevertheless, local newspapers ran alarmist articles about the reported attacks and treated the accounts as fact. The attacks are widely considered to be a case of mass hysteria.
Canadian troops captured Dieppe. Frank Capra's Arsenic & Old Lace - starring Cary Grant, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane and Jack Carson - premiered.
Michael Curtiz's Janie - starring Joyce Reynolds - premiered.
Brussels was liberated by Allies forces.
Martin Potter born in Nottingham.
Antwerp was liberated by British Eleventh Armoured Division with the aid of local resistance forces.
The first V-2 attack on London.
The first Allied troops entered Germany, at Aachen.
Winifred Jacqueline Fraser Bisset born in Weybridge.
Lim Phaik-Seng born in Penang.
The beginning of Operation Market Garden, the ultimately unsuccessful attempt by Allied forces to liberate Arnham, encircle the heart of German industry, the Ruhr, in a pincer movement and end the war in 1944.
Coles John Jeremy Child born in Woking.
Anne Josephine Robinson born in Liverpool.
Frazer Simpson Frederick Hines born in Horsforth, Yorkshire. Isla Blair born in Bangalore. Tall In The Saddle - starring John Wayne, Ella Raines, Gabby Hayes, Elizabeth Risdon and Ward Bond - premiered.
The German garrison in Calais surrendered to Canadian troops. Lesley Selander's Cheyenne Wildcat - starring Wild Bill Elliott, Bobby Blake and Peggy Stewart - premiered.
Philip Michael Hinchcliffe born in Dewsbury.
The Germans finally succeeded in putting down the Warsaw Uprising. Allied forces landed on Crete.
Canadian troops crossed the Belgian border into the Netherlands.
John Alec Entwistle born in Chiswick. The Moscow Conference: Churchill and Stalin discussed spheres of influence in the postwar Balkans.
Otto Preminger's Laura - starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price and Clifton Webb - and Howard Hawks's To Have & Have Not - starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Walter Brennan - premiered.
Mrs Parkington - starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon - premiered.
British troops entered Athens. Field Marshal Rommel, under suspicion as one of the July bomb plotters voluntarily committed suicide to save his family. He was later buried with full military honours.
The Red Army and Yugoslav partisans under the command of Josip Broz Tito liberated Belgrade. Chu Chin Chow broadcast on The Home Service.
None But The Lonely Heart - starring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore - premiered.
Clive William Hornby born in Liverpool. Geraldine Sherman born in Hampton Court, Surrey.
Ian Don Marter born in Coventry.
Norman Lugard Beaton born in Georgetown, British Guyana.
General Patton's troops crossed the Moselle River and advanced on Metz.
After numerous bombings while anchored in a fjord at Tromsø, the German battleship Tirpitz was sunk.
Laurence Olivier's Henry V - the first work of Shakespeare filmed in technicolour - and Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me In St Louis - starring Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien and Mary Astor - premiered. The USS Intrepid was hit by kamikazes for the third time. Paul Brooke born in London.
Paul Mackriell Copley born in Denby Dale, West Yorkshire.
Heinrich Himmler ordered the crematoriums and gas chambers of Auschwitz II-Birkenau dismantled and blown up. His Butler's Sister - starring Deanna Durbin - premiered.
Joseph Santley's Brazil premiered. George Formby's 'Our Fanny's Gone All Yankee'/'Unconditional Surrender' released.
The British Home Guard was stood down. Paul Oscar Beuselinck born in Peterborough.
Sam Taylor's Nothing But Trouble - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered.
John Brahm's Guest In The House (aka Satan In Skirts) - starring Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, Aline MacMahon and Ruth Warrick - premiered.
Neil James Innes born in Danbury.
Kenneth Cranham born in Dunfermline.
Clarence Brown's National Velvet - starring Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney - premiered.
The band leader Glenn Miller's single-engine UC-64 Norseman, departed from RAF Twinwood Farm in Clapham and disappeared while flying over the English Channel. The House Of Frankenstein - starring Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jnr, John Carradine and Glenn Strange - and The Keys Of The Kingdom - starring Gregory Peck - premiered.
The beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, the last majpr German offensive campaign of the war launched through the densely forested Ardennes. The main object of Hitler's deranged - and, ultimately unsuccessful - plan was the retaking of Antwerp.
The Malmedy Massacre: SS troops executed eighty four American prisoners during the Ardennes offensive. The SS soldiers were led by the infamous commander Joachim Peiper. Bernard Hill born in Manchester.
Henry Koster's Music For Millions - starring Margaret O'Brien, Jimmy Durante, June Allyson and Marsha Hunt - premiered. Angela Richards born in London.
AA Milne's Michael & Mary broadcast in The Home Service's Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
The skies cleared over the Ardennes, permitting Allied aircraft to begin their attacks on the German offensive. An American counter-attack at the Bulge began.
Christmas At Eight featuring Arthur Askey, Kenneth Horne, Richard Murdoch and Elsie and Doris Waters broadcast on The Home Service. Maurice James Christopher Cole born in Liverpool.
The siege of Bastogne was broken and, with it, the German Ardennes offensive collapsed. Jane Elizabeth Marie Burgess born in Ipswich.
A production of Handel's Messiah broadcast from Huddersfield Town Hall.
Babes In The Wood broadcast.
Jacques Tourneur's Experiment Perilous - starring Hedy Lamarr - premiered.
An adaptation of Charles Dickens' The Chimes broadcast in The Home Service's Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
The Soviet-backed Hungarian Provisional Government declared war on Germany.
The first episode of Vaudville Of 1944 broadcast. The Late Christopher Bean - starring Edith Evans and Edward Chapman - broadcast in The Home Service's Saturday-Night Theatre strand. John Harlow's Candles At Nine - starring Jessie Matthews, John Stuart and Beatrix Lehmann - premiered.
We're All Together and The Young Man Who Stroked Cats broadcast.
Colin Wills' A Waltz Dream broadcast.
Ronald Pertwee and Harold Dearden's Interference broadcast in the Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
James Patrick Page born in Heston, Middlesex.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressubrger's The Volunteer premiered.
Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister and Mussolini's son-in-law, was executed by Mussolini's revived Fascist government sympathisers. Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat - starring Tallulah Bankhead - released.
Joseph William Frazier born in Beaufort, South Carolina.
The first Battle of Monte Cassino began when the British X Corps attacked along the Garigliano river at the Western end of the German Gustav Line.
The Allies launched Operation Shingle, landing at Anzio. The Allies had hoped to break the stalemate in Southern Italy, but they were unable to break out of the beachhead and the line held until late May.John Harlow's Headline - starring David Farrar, Anne Crawford and William Hartnell - premiered.
Sam Newfield's Nabonga - starring Buster Crabbe, Julie London and Fifi D'Orsay - premiered.
The lifting of the Siege of Leningrad after eight hundred and seventy two days.
The Russian Army completed the encirclement of two German Army corps at the Korsun pocket, South of Kiev. Two-thirds of the Germans escaped in the breakout the following month albeit with the loss of most heavy equipment. Carlos Hugo Christensen's La Pequeña Señora De Pérez - starring Mirtha Legrand - premiered.
None Shall Escape - starring Alexander Knox - and The Fighting Sullivans premiered. Patricia Ann Ruth Noble born in Marrickville, New South Wales.
Paula Topham born in Westminster.
The prototype computer Colossus Mark 1 - developed by British codebreakers to help in the cryptanalysis of the German's Lorenz cipher - began operations at Bletchley Park. Colossus was designed by research telephone engineer Tommy Flowers to solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman and using algorithms written by Bill Tutte. Alan Turing's use of probability in cryptanalysis also contributed to its design. It has sometimes been erroneously stated that Turing himself designed Colossus to aid the cryptanalysis of the earlier Enigma. Turing's machine which helped decode Enigma was the electromechanical Bombe.
Geoffrey Hughes born in Wallasey.
Roger Lloyd-Pack born in Islington.
The second Battle of Monte Cassino began with the destruction of the historic Benedictine monastery by Allied bombing. The Allies believed - possibly incorrectly - that the grounds were used as an observation post by the Germans.
Diplomats from the USSR and Finland met to sign an armistice. Michael Curtiz's Passage To Marseille - starring Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains - premiered.Leipzig was bombed for two straight nights. This marked the beginning of The Big Week bombing campaign against German industrial cities by Allied bombers.
David Bernard Wood born in Sutton, Surrey. Charles Frend's Sam Demetrio London - starring Arthur Young, Walter Fitzgerald, Ralph Michael and Barry Letts - premiered.
Shipmates Ashore broadcast from Newcastle on The Forces Programme.
The first day of the - renamed - General Forces Programme, highlights included All Together Now.
Valerie Stanton born in Kensington.
Roger Harry Daltrey born in Hammersmith.
Robert Wise's The Curse Of The Cat People - starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph and Ann Carter - premiered.
Ranulph Tiwselton-Wykeham-Fiennes born in Windsor.
The third Battle of Monte Cassino began. The town of Cassino was destroyed by Allied bombers.
Peter Cleall born in Finchley.
Knickerbocker Holiday - starring Nelson Eddy - premiered. Petra Mavis Markham born in Prestbury, Cheshire. Christian Charles Roberts born in Southmoor, Oxfordshire. Patricia Anne Boyd born in Taunton.
German forces occupied Hungary in Operation Margarethe. Yugoslav partisans attack Trieste on the border of Italy and Slovenia.
Charles Vidor's Cover Girl - starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly - premiered.
Roger Michael Hilary Minster born in Surey.
The Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Rome. Three hundred and thirty five Italians were killed, including seventy five Jews and over two hundred members of various Italian Resistance groups; this was a German response to a bomb blast which had killed German troops. Orde Wingate was killed in a plane crash.
Ann Sidney born in Poole.
Gabrielle Mary Drake born in Lahore.
The Forces Network's Mediterranean Merry-Go-Round included the first episode of Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne's Much Binding In The Marsh.
Helen Duncan - a fake medium - became the last person to be jailed (for nine months) under the 1735 Witchcraft Act at the Old Bailey for 'falsely claiming to procure spirits.' Myfanwy Talog Williams born in Caerwys, Flintshire.
Hywel Thomas Bennett born in Garnant, Carmarthenshire.
Soviet forces took Kerch, beginning the reconquest of the Crimea. Roy Del Ruth's Broadway Rhythm - starring George Murphy, Ginny Simms, Charles Winninger and Gloria DeHaven - premiered.
Basil Dearden's The Halfway House - starring Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns, Esmond Knight, Valerie White and Sally Ann Howes - premiered.
Vivienne Rose Crisp born in London.
Diane Fletcher born in Derby.
George Marshall's And The Angels Sing - starring Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynnt and Fred MacMurray - premiered.
The Slapton Sands tragedy: Over seven hundred American soldiers were killed in a training exercise in preparation for D-Day at Slapton in Devon.
Nicolas Michael Angelis born in Liverpool.
Cyd Hayman born in Chippenham.
George Cukor's adaptation of Gaslight - starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotton - premired.
Leo McCarey's Going My Way - starring Bing Crosby - premiered. Carlo Forgione born in Dundee.
The first episode of Archie Takes The Helm, featuring ventriloquist Peter Brough and Archie Andrews broadcast as part of the Navy Mixture strand on the General Forces Network.
John Rhys-Davies born in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Roger Rees born in Aberystwyth. Zubair Ahmed Siddiqi born in Lucknow, India.
Richard O'Sullivan born in Chiswick.
Anthony Asquith's Fanny By Gaslight - starring Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Wilfrid Lawson and Stewart Granger - premiered.
Nigel Lambert born in Southend On Sea.
Sara Kestelman born in London.
Vivien Heilbron born in Glasgow.
After months of carnage, the - fourth - Battle of Monte Cassino concluded with an Allied victory as Polish troops of the Second Polish Corps led by general Władysław Anders captured Monte Cassino. Leslie S Hiscott's Welcome Mister Washington - starring Barbara Mullen, Donald Stewart, Peggy Cummins and Leslie Bradley - premiered. Doran Godwin born in Harrow.
Colin Spaull born in Surrey.
Keith Wiliam Robert Fletcher born in Worcester.
Fiona Walker born in London.
Allies at Anzio linked up with colleagues from South Italy. Though Harold Alexander wished to trap the German Tenth Army, American Fifth Army commander Mark Clark ordered Truscott to turn North toward Rome. Vincent Sherman's Mister Skefflington - starring Bette Davis - premiered. Stephanie Turner born in Bradford.
Roy William Neil's The Scarlet Claw - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Paul Cavanagh - premiered.
Patricia Quinn born in Belfast. Eunice Irene Carroll born in Liverpool.
David Lean's adaptation of Noel Coward's This Happy Breed - starring Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway and John Mills - premiered. Robert Powell born in Salford.
This Is The Life - starring Donald O'Connor, Susanna Foster and Peggy Ryan - premiered.
Richard Thorpe's Two Girls & A Sailor - starring June Allyson and Van Johnson - premiered.
Rome was liberated by the Americans. George Formby's 'The "V" Sign Song'/'The Old Cane Bottom Chair' released.
Operation Overlord commenced when more than a thousand British bombers drop five thousand tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast. The first Allied paratroopers landed in Normandy. Gillian Hills born in Cairo.
One hundred and fifty thousand Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, beginning Operation Overlord. The BBC transmitted a coded message ('wound my heart with a monotonous languor' from Chanson d'automne, a poem by Paul Verlaine) to resistance fighters in France warning that the invasion was about to begin. The Allied soldiers quickly broke through the Atlantic Wall and pushed inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history. The Americans got the worst of it at Omaha Beach but, by the end of the day, the Allies had gained a vital foothold in Normandy.
Bayeux was liberated by British troops.
Carol Reed's The Way Ahead - starring David Niven, Stanley Holloway, William Hartnell, James Donald, Jimmy Hanley, Raymond Huntley and James Laurie - premiered.
At Oradour-sur-Glane (near Limoges), over six hundred men, women and children were murdered by the SS in response to local Resistance activities. After the war the village remained a ruin, its story becoming more widely known internationally when it was used as the opening sequence of the 1973 TV series The World At War: ('Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead.') The first V-1 flying bomb attack on London. Eight civilians were killed in the blast. In France, the Battle of Villers-Bocage took place. The US Naval bombardment of Saipan began.
John Blakeley's Demobbed - starring Norman Evans, Nat Jackley, Dan Young and Betty Jumel - premiered.
The United States Fifth Fleet won a decisive naval battle over the Imperial Japanese Navy near the Mariana Islands. Over two hundred Japanese planes were shot down while the Americans only lost thirty to enemy action. A severe Channel storm destroyed one of the Allies' Mulberry harbours in Normandy. The Red Army prepared for Operation Bagration, a huge offensive in Byelorussia.
Raymond Douglas Davies born in Fortis Green, North London. In Burma, the Battle of Kohima ended with a British victory.
Peter Asher born in London.
Julian Holloway born in Watlington, Oxfordshire.
Cherbourg was liberated by American troops.
Minsk was liberated by Soviet forces. Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity - starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G Robinson and with a screenplay co-written by Raymond Chandler - premiered. Paul Young born in Edinburgh.
Joe May's Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore - starring Simone Simon, Robert Mitchum and Gladys Blake - premiered.
After heavy resistance Caen was liberated by the British troops on the left flank of the Allied advance. Following the largest Banzai charge of the war, Saipan was declared secure, the Japanese having lost over thirty thousand troops; in the finals stages numerous civilians committed ritual suicide with the encouragement of Japanese military.
Douglas Sirk's Summer Storm - starring Linda Darnell, George Sanders and Anna Lee - premiered.
Angharad Mary Rees born in Edgware.
Field Marshal Rommel was badly wounded when his car was strafed from the air in France. Katherina Freiin Schell Von Bauschlott born in Budapest, Hungary.
The failed July Plot was carried out by Colomel Claus von Stauffenberg in an attempt to assassinate Hitler (who only had one). Hitler was visiting headquarters at Rastenburg but, sadly, survived the bomb blast. Swift, vicious and terrible reprisals followed against many of the plotters and their families, including Rommel. John Cromwell's Since You Went Away - starring Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton and Shirley Temple - and Dragon Seed - starring Katharine Hepburn - premiered.
US Marines landed on Guam. Michel Ray de Carvalho born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.
Nicholas Brimble born in Bristol.
Carmen Isabella Miller born in Weston-Super-Mare. Maurice Elvey's Medal For The General - starring Godfrey Tearle, Jeanne de Casalis and Petula Clark - premiered.Fred Zinnemann's The Seventh Cross - starring Spencer Tracy - premiered.
Valerie Van Ost born in Beckhamstead.
The first aerial victory for a jet fighter occurred, with an Me 262 of the Luftwaffe's Ekdo 262 damaging an RAF de Havilland Mosquito.
Harold French's English Without Tears - starring Michael Wilding, Penelope Dudley-Ward and Lilli Palmer - premiered.
Frances J De Lautour born in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire.
The Warsaw Uprising, staged by the Polish Home Army, began: the Polish people rose, expecting aid from the approaching Soviet Union armies, but it never came. Henry King's Wilson - starring Charles Coburn and Alexander Knox - and Roy William Neil's The Pearl Of Death - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Evelyn Ankers - premiered.
Dietlinde Zechner born in Bad Polzin, Germany.
The Education Act, promoted by Rab Butler, created a Tripartite System of secondary education in England and Wales with Secondary Modern, Technical and Grammar schools.
Florence was liberated by British and South African troops. Before exiting, the Germans under General Albert Kesselring destroyed some historic bridges and buildings. Rennes was liberated by American forces.
The first trials of the 'July Plot' bomb conspirators against Hitler began in a court presided over by notorious Judge Roland Freisler. The plotters were mostly found extremely guilty and executed with their bodies hanged on meat hooks.
Preston Sturges's Hail The Conquering Hero premiered.
Ian McDiarmid born in Carnoustie.
The failure of the Allies to fully close the Falaise pocket proved advantageous to the Germans fleeing to the East who escaped the pincer movement of the Allies.
Veronica Mary Glazier born in Emley, West Yorkshire.
The French Resistance began an uprising in Paris, partly inspired by the Allied approach to the Seine River.
The Battle of the Falaise Gap concluded with an Allied victory and lots of Germans getting their heads kicked in. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale - starring Eric Portman, John Sweet, Sheila Sim and Dennis Price - premiered. Susan Marueen Fleetwood born in St Andrew's, Fife.
Kismet - starring Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich - premiered.
Paris was liberated when the German garrison surrendered following an uprising by the French Resistance. De Gaulle and the Free French paraded triumphantly down the Champs-Élysées. The German military disobeyed Hitler's orders to 'burn' the city. Southern Allied forces moved up from the Riviera, to take Grenoble and Avignon.
Stephen Greif born in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire.
The first of several alleged 'attacks' initially attributed to The Mad Gasser of Mattoon took place in Illinois. Police remained skeptical of the accounts throughout the entire incident as no physical evidence was ever found and many reported gassings had simple explanations, such as spilled nail polish or odours emanating from animals or local factories. Victims made quick recoveries from their symptoms and suffered no long-term effects. Nevertheless, local newspapers ran alarmist articles about the reported attacks and treated the accounts as fact. The attacks are widely considered to be a case of mass hysteria.
Canadian troops captured Dieppe. Frank Capra's Arsenic & Old Lace - starring Cary Grant, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane and Jack Carson - premiered.
Michael Curtiz's Janie - starring Joyce Reynolds - premiered.
Brussels was liberated by Allies forces.
Martin Potter born in Nottingham.
Antwerp was liberated by British Eleventh Armoured Division with the aid of local resistance forces.
The first V-2 attack on London.
The first Allied troops entered Germany, at Aachen.
Winifred Jacqueline Fraser Bisset born in Weybridge.
Lim Phaik-Seng born in Penang.
The beginning of Operation Market Garden, the ultimately unsuccessful attempt by Allied forces to liberate Arnham, encircle the heart of German industry, the Ruhr, in a pincer movement and end the war in 1944.
Coles John Jeremy Child born in Woking.
Anne Josephine Robinson born in Liverpool.
Frazer Simpson Frederick Hines born in Horsforth, Yorkshire. Isla Blair born in Bangalore. Tall In The Saddle - starring John Wayne, Ella Raines, Gabby Hayes, Elizabeth Risdon and Ward Bond - premiered.
The German garrison in Calais surrendered to Canadian troops. Lesley Selander's Cheyenne Wildcat - starring Wild Bill Elliott, Bobby Blake and Peggy Stewart - premiered.
Philip Michael Hinchcliffe born in Dewsbury.
The Germans finally succeeded in putting down the Warsaw Uprising. Allied forces landed on Crete.
Canadian troops crossed the Belgian border into the Netherlands.
John Alec Entwistle born in Chiswick. The Moscow Conference: Churchill and Stalin discussed spheres of influence in the postwar Balkans.
Otto Preminger's Laura - starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price and Clifton Webb - and Howard Hawks's To Have & Have Not - starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Walter Brennan - premiered.
Mrs Parkington - starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon - premiered.
British troops entered Athens. Field Marshal Rommel, under suspicion as one of the July bomb plotters voluntarily committed suicide to save his family. He was later buried with full military honours.The Red Army and Yugoslav partisans under the command of Josip Broz Tito liberated Belgrade. Chu Chin Chow broadcast on The Home Service.
None But The Lonely Heart - starring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore - premiered.
Clive William Hornby born in Liverpool. Geraldine Sherman born in Hampton Court, Surrey.
Ian Don Marter born in Coventry.
Norman Lugard Beaton born in Georgetown, British Guyana.
General Patton's troops crossed the Moselle River and advanced on Metz.
After numerous bombings while anchored in a fjord at Tromsø, the German battleship Tirpitz was sunk.
Laurence Olivier's Henry V - the first work of Shakespeare filmed in technicolour - and Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me In St Louis - starring Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien and Mary Astor - premiered. The USS Intrepid was hit by kamikazes for the third time. Paul Brooke born in London.
Paul Mackriell Copley born in Denby Dale, West Yorkshire.
Heinrich Himmler ordered the crematoriums and gas chambers of Auschwitz II-Birkenau dismantled and blown up. His Butler's Sister - starring Deanna Durbin - premiered.
Joseph Santley's Brazil premiered. George Formby's 'Our Fanny's Gone All Yankee'/'Unconditional Surrender' released.
The British Home Guard was stood down. Paul Oscar Beuselinck born in Peterborough.
Sam Taylor's Nothing But Trouble - starring Laurel and Hardy - premiered.
John Brahm's Guest In The House (aka Satan In Skirts) - starring Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, Aline MacMahon and Ruth Warrick - premiered.
Neil James Innes born in Danbury.
Kenneth Cranham born in Dunfermline.
Clarence Brown's National Velvet - starring Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney - premiered.
The beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, the last majpr German offensive campaign of the war launched through the densely forested Ardennes. The main object of Hitler's deranged - and, ultimately unsuccessful - plan was the retaking of Antwerp.
The Malmedy Massacre: SS troops executed eighty four American prisoners during the Ardennes offensive. The SS soldiers were led by the infamous commander Joachim Peiper. Bernard Hill born in Manchester.
Henry Koster's Music For Millions - starring Margaret O'Brien, Jimmy Durante, June Allyson and Marsha Hunt - premiered. Angela Richards born in London.
AA Milne's Michael & Mary broadcast in The Home Service's Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
The skies cleared over the Ardennes, permitting Allied aircraft to begin their attacks on the German offensive. An American counter-attack at the Bulge began.
Christmas At Eight featuring Arthur Askey, Kenneth Horne, Richard Murdoch and Elsie and Doris Waters broadcast on The Home Service. Maurice James Christopher Cole born in Liverpool.
The siege of Bastogne was broken and, with it, the German Ardennes offensive collapsed. Jane Elizabeth Marie Burgess born in Ipswich.
A production of Handel's Messiah broadcast from Huddersfield Town Hall.
Babes In The Wood broadcast.
Jacques Tourneur's Experiment Perilous - starring Hedy Lamarr - premiered.
An adaptation of Charles Dickens' The Chimes broadcast in The Home Service's Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
The Soviet-backed Hungarian Provisional Government declared war on Germany.
