The 1940s Lifestyles and Social Trends: Chronology

1940:      A new kind of glass improves visibility through automobile windshields by 62 percent.

1940:      Architect Frank Lloyd Wright completes the People's Church in Kansas City.

1940:      Americans own 69 percent of the world's cars.

1940:      Colorfast textiles are introduced, making clothes more durable during washing.

1941:     May 22 Pope Pius XII warns that wearing "daring" dresses can be dangerous for the souls of Catholic girls.

1941:     June 25 President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8802, banning racial discrimination in the defense industries and setting up the Fair Employment Practices Committee.

1942:     April 14 The Saturday Evening Post denies that an article called "The Case Against the Jew" is anti-Semitic (prejudiced against Jews).

1943:      Sales of Bibles are up 25 percent.

1943:      Long-distance telephone calls are restricted to a maximum of five minutes.

1943:      Companies introduce piped-in music, coffee breaks, and suggestion boxes to make up for long working hours in wartime factories.

1943:      Teenagers enjoy slumber parties, beach parties, and dates at soda shops and hamburger "joints."

1943:     June 20 Race riots break out in Detroit and last for forty-eight hours.

1943:     April 26 U.S. Jews begin a six-week period of prayer and mourning for European Jews killed by the Nazis.

1944:      Air-conditioning is introduced in American automobiles.

1944:      Fifty-eight percent of women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four are married.

1944:     January 2 The Federal Council of Churches announces that 68,501,186 Americans are members of 256 religious groups.

1944:     May 18 The number of Catholics in the United States increases by 46,222 over the previous year. The total stands at 23,419,701.

1945:      Eighty percent of the eighteen million women who work outside the home say they want to continue working after the war ends.

1945:      Many schools have air-raid drills.

1945:     April 12 President Roosevelt dies at Warm Springs, Georgia. Vice President Harry S Truman becomes the thirty-third president of the United States.

1945:     August 6 A hydrogen bomb, with a picture of movie actress Rita Hayworth wearing a bathing suit, is dropped on the Bikini Islands in the Pacific. Four days later, Hayworth's bathing suit is named after the islands.

1946:      Life magazine reports that consumers have begun a frenzy of shopping.

1946:      The Franklin D. Roosevelt dime goes into circulation.

1946:      With the birth rate 20 percent higher than 1945, the baby boom begins. Seventy-four percent of couples have their first child within their first year of marriage.

1946:      RCA puts a television set with a ten-inch screen on sale to the public. It costs $374.

1946:     July 2 Blacks vote in the Mississippi Democratic primary for the first time since Reconstruction.

1947:      Vogue magazine compares the new Oldsmobile design with the modern architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

1947:      The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered by two Bedouin boys in a cave in British-occupied Palestine.

1947:     January The number of war veterans in college peaks at 1.2 million. The college population reaches an all-time high of 6.1 million students.

1947:     June 11 Ice-cream sales rocket when sugar rationing ends.

1948:     January 10 A Gallup poll reveals that 94 percent of Americans believe in God.

1948:     August 1 A record 77,386,188 Americans are church members. This shows a gain of more than 3 million in just two years.

1948:     September 28 The construction firm Levitt and Sons sells fifty-three houses on Long Island at a total cost of $1.1 million, a new world record for house-selling on one day. By the end of the week, the company has sold an additional forty-seven houses.

1949:      For the first time since 1927, Chrysler is able to announce sales of more than $1 million.

1949:     January For the first time, black people attend events surrounding a presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., African Americans even stay in the same hotels as whites.

1949:     September 25 Religious leader Billy Graham begins an evangelical revival in Los Angeles. More than 350,000 people attend his meetings.