March 28 – American adventurer Richard Halliburton delivers a last message from a Chinese junk, before he disappears on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
June 4 – The SS St. Louis, a ship carrying a cargo of 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida after already having been turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of the passengers later die in Nazideath camps during the Holocaust.
June 7 – British King George IV and Queen Elizabeth cross the Canadian border into the United States being the first reigning British monarch to visit the United States.[4]
June 10 – MGM's first successful animated character, Barney Bear, makes his debut in The Bear That Couldn't Sleep. However, it is not until 1942 that his name is adopted.
July 4 – Lou Gehrig gives his "Farewell to Baseball" speech at Yankee Stadium. In it, he says, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
August 15 – MGM's classic color musical film The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum's famous novel, and starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. On August 25 it is released in movie theaters throughout the United States.
September 3 – World War II: SS Athenia, a British ocean liner is torpedoed by a German submarine off the Irish coast with 30 Americans onboard dying.[7]
September 5 – World War II: The United States declares its neutrality in the war.[8]
September 29 – Gerald J. Cox, speaking at an American Water Works Association meeting, becomes the first person to publicly propose the fluoridation of public water supplies in the United States.
November 4 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act of 1939 into law.[7] The arms embargo previously put into place by the Neutrality Act of 1937 is lifted and put any trade with nations engaged in war under cash-and-carry grounds.[8] American ships and planes are prohibited as part of the Act from visiting any belligerent state in a war along with transporting anything.[9]
November 6 – Hedda Hopper's Hollywood debuts on radio with Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as host (the show runs until 1951, making Hopper a powerful figure in the Hollywood elite).
^California. Board of State Harbor Commissioners for San Francisco Harbor (1936). Report. p. 35.
^Clark, Laura. "he Great Goldfish Swallowing Craze of 1939 Never Really Ended". smithsonianmag.com. The Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
^Auken, Robin (2002). The Little League Baseball World Series. Charleston, S.C: Arcadia. p. 16. ISBN 9780738510262.
^Wapshott, Nicholas (2014). The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393245820 – via Google Books.
^Geological Survey Water-supply Paper. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1973. p. 5.
^Lanouette, William; Silard, Bela (1992). Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilárd: The Man Behind The Bomb. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 978-0-684-19011-2.
^ abWilk, Gavin (2021). "Hasty Departures: The Evacuation of American Citizens from Europe at the Outbreak of World War II". Journal of Transnational American Studies. 12 (1): 108–128. doi:10.5070/T812139136 – via eScholarship.
^ ab"The Neutrality Acts, 1930s". United States Department of State - Office of the Historian (Digital). Retrieved December 23, 2022.
^Fellmeth, Aaron Xavier (1997). "A Divorce Waiting to Happen: Franklin Roosevelt and the Law of Neutrality, 1935-1941" (PDF). Yale Journal of International Law. 3 (2) – via Digital Commons @ University of Buffalo School of Law.
^"Early Television Stations – W2XAB/W2XAX/WCBW – CBS, New York". Early Television Museum. Hilliard, OH. Retrieved 2014-11-26.
^The Southern Lumberman. J. H. Baird Publishing Company. 1960. p. 103. Archived from the original on July 24, 2020. Retrieved November 10, 2019.
^Paul Henderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning Seattle Times reporter who championed the underdog, dies at 79 | The Seattle Times
^Zimet, Abby (March 20, 2019). "In Praise Of Jonathan Daniels and Ruby Sales: Greater Love Hath No Man Than This". Common Dreams. Retrieved March 21, 2019.
^"Space Shuttle Challenger Fast Facts". CNN. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
^Goldstein, Richard. "Lou Brock, Baseball Hall of Famer Known for Stealing Bases, Dies at 81". The New York Times.
^Bob Neuwirth, Folk-Music Fixture and Bob Dylan Confidant, Dead at 82
^Charles Jencks, co-founder of Maggie's cancer charity, dies age 80
^Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Finzel resident Stephen Dunn dies at 82
^"Judy Chicago". Britannica Presents 100 Women Trailblazers. 26 February 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
^Renowned pop music chart historian, and Menomonee Falls native, Joel Whitburn has died
^Focus Midwest. FOCUS/Midwest Publishing Company. 1974. p. 27.
^Clifton J., Philips (1971). "Fearn, Anne Walter". In James, Edward T. (ed.). Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1. p. 603. ISBN 978-0-67462-734-5.