1941

1845–1958	Germany [earth sciences]	German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion.
1940–1944	USA [everyday life]	A large-scale migration of people from rural areas of the USA to the cities creates major urban problems.
1940–1949	USA [statistics and demography]	Immigration into the USA for the period 1940–49 stands at 856,608.
1941	France [solo and chamber music]	The French composer Olivier Messiaen completes his Quartet for the End of Time, written while he is in a German prisoner-of-war camp.
1941	USA [World War II (1939–45)]	The United Service Organization (USO) is formed in the USA to organize entertainments for Allied soldiers by performers such as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
1941	Russia [orchestral music]	The Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich completes his Symphony No. 7 during the siege of Leningrad by German forces. Dedicated to the defenders of the city, it becomes known as the Leningrad Symphony. It is first performed in Kuibyshev in the USSR in 1942.
1941	England [orchestral music]	The English composer Michael Tippett completes his choral work A Child of Our Time.
1941	Spain [painting]	The Spanish artist Joan Miró completes his series of paintings Constellations.
1941	France [philosophy]	The French philosopher Etienne Gilson publishes God and Philosophy, lectures delivered at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
1941	USA [plays]	The US writer Eugene O'Neill completes one of his best-known plays, Long Day's Journey into Night. It will not open until 1956.
1941	Germany, Switzerland [plays]	The play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder/Mother Courage and her Children, by the German writer Bertolt Brecht, is first performed, in Zürich, Switzerland.
1941	England, USA [poetry]	The English-born US writer W H Auden publishes his poetry collection The Double Man (published in Britain as New Year Letter).
1941	USA [religion]	The US theologian Reinhold Niebuhr publishes the first volume of The Nature and Destiny of Man. The second volume will appear in 1943.
1941	UK [everyday life]	The UK government introduces ‘double summer time’, with clocks running two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.
1941	USA [cinema and film]	The film Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, is released in the USA. He also cowrites and stars in it, with Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, and Everett Sloane. The US millionaire William Randolph Hearst threatens to sue the makers, regarding the film as personally defamatory.
1941	USA [fiction]	The Last Tycoon, an unfinished novel by the US writer F Scott Fitzgerald, is published posthumously.
1941	USA [art]	The US photographer Ansel Adams takes Moonrise, Hernandez.
1941	USSR [World War II (1939–45)]	One thousand three hundred and sixty Soviet heavy industrial plants are moved further east to continue production after the German invasion of the USSR.
1941	Panama [women's rights]	Women in Panama gain the right to vote on the same basis as men.
1941	UK [work and unemployment]	Unemployment is virtually eliminated in the UK.
1 January 1941	USA [television]	The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) begins regular television broadcasting (in competition with NBC).
13 January 1941	Ireland [births and deaths]	James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet, dies in Zürich, Switzerland (58).
24 March 1941	Libya, Germany, Italy, UK, Egypt [World War II (1939–45)]	German and Italian forces commanded by the German general Erwin Rommel take El Algheila in Libya from the British 8th Army, the start of an offensive that will clear British troops from all of Libya apart from the besieged coastal town of Tobruk.
27 March 1941	Yugoslavia [revolution]	Prince Paul, Regent of Yugoslavia, is deposed in a coup organized by air force officers exploiting the unpopularity of adherence to the Tripartite Pact between the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan).
28 March 1941	England [births and deaths]	Virginia Woolf, English author and critic, dies near Rodmell, Sussex, England (59).
April 1941	Japan [food and drink]	Rice-rationing is introduced in Japan.
6 April 1941	Yugoslavia, Greece, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria [World War II (1939–45)]	German, Italian, and Bulgarian forces invade Yugoslavia, and German forces attack the Metaxas Line, Greece's main system of defences.
17 April 1941	Yugoslavia, Germany [World War II (1939–45)]	Yugoslavia formally surrenders to the invading German forces.
21 April 1941	Greece, Germany, UK [World War II (1939–45)]	The Greek army surrenders to the invading German forces; the last British forces are evacuated from mainland Greece on 28 April.
20 May 1941	USA [legislation]	President Roosevelt moves Thanksgiving to the last Thursday of November, ending a two-year experiment in which it was the fourth Thursday of the month.
24 May 1941	USA [births and deaths]	Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman), US singer and songwriter, known for his ‘protest songs’ of the 1960s, born in Duluth, Minnesota.
27 May 1941	Germany, UK [World War II (1939–45)]	The German battleship Bismarck, on its first and only sortie into the Atlantic, is sunk, after a long hunt, by units of Britain's Royal Navy west of Brest, France.
29 May - 31 May 1941	Greece, UK, Germany [World War II (1939–45)]	British and allied forces evacuate the port of Iráklion, Crete, and withdraw to Egypt, leaving the Greek island of Crete under German occupation.
1 June 1941	UK [World War II (1939–45)]	Clothes are rationed in the UK and ‘utility’ clothing and furniture are introduced.
4 June 1941	German Empire, Prussia [births and deaths]	Kaiser Wilhelm II, German emperor and king of Prussia 1888–1918, dies in Doorn, the Netherlands (82).
22 June 1941	USSR [World War II (1939–45)]	Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR, begins.
29 July 1941	Romania, USSR [World War II (1939–45)]	Romania reoccupies the territories of Bessarabia and Bukovina, which it had ceded to the USSR in June 1940.
14 August 1941	UK, USA [human rights]	The British prime minister Winston Churchill and the US president Franklin D Roosevelt meet at the Placentia Bay conference on board the US cruiser Augusta. They sign the Atlantic Charter, condemning territorial changes and affirming human rights, which subsequently becomes the basis of the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights.
3 October 1941	USA [everyday life]	The US chemists Lyle D Goodhue and W N Sullivan patent the aerosol container.
December 1941	USA [food and drink]	In the USA, food prices are 61% above prewar levels.
5 December 1941 - 5 January 1942	USSR, Germany [World War II (1939–45)]	Soviet armies of the Northwest, Volkhov, and Kalinin fronts, reinforced by units from Siberia, launch a counteroffensive north and south of Moscow to relieve pressure from the German Army Group Centre's advance on the Soviet capital.
6 December 1941	USA [weapons]	The ‘Manhattan Project’ starts in Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, before being concentrated at Los Alamos in 1943 under the direction of US physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer. Its aim is to develop an atomic bomb.
7 December 1941	USA, Japan [World War II (1939–45)]	Japanese naval aircraft make a surprise air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four battleships and 140 aircraft are destroyed and 2,330 troops killed.
8 December 1941	Poland [Holocaust]	The use of gas in the so-called ‘final solution’ to the Jewish problem begins when 2,300 Polish Jews are gassed at Chelmno, western Poland.
8 December 1941	USA, UK, Japan [diplomacy]	The USA and Britain declare war on Japan, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the previous day.
9 December 1941	UK [everyday life]	The National Service Bill in the UK lowers the age of call-up to 18½ and renders single women aged 20–30 liable to military service.
9 December - 10 December 1941	Malaya [World War II (1939–45)]	Japanese aircraft sink the British battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse off the east coast of Malaya, leaving the Allies with no active battleship in the Pacific and severely weakening the defences of Singapore.
20 December 1941	USA [legislation]	President Roosevelt signs the Draft Act, which calls for all men 18 to 64 to register and all men 20 to 44 to be eligible for active duty.