1938

Events in 1938 122

• 1857 – 1938 Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) Died 13 March 1938, aged 80 Darrow was an American defence lawyer and civil libertarian. He was famous for the Leopold and Loeb case and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial.
• 1859 – 1938 Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) Died 27 April 1938, aged 79 Husserl was a German philosopher and the founder of phenomenology. He was barred from university facilities under Nazi racial laws in his final years.
• 1860 – 1938 Kanō Jigorō (1860-1938) Died 4 May 1938, aged 77 Kanō Jigorō founded judo and was the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee.
• 1860 – 1938 Owen Wister (1860-1938) Died 21 July 1938, aged 78 Wister was an American writer whose novel The Virginian helped establish the Western as a literary genre.
• 1861 – 1938 Georges Méliès (1861-1938) Died 21 January 1938, aged 76 Méliès was a French illusionist and pioneer film-maker who invented many early special effects. His best-known film is A Trip to the Moon (1902).
• 1863 – 1938 Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) Died 1 March 1938, aged 74 D'Annunzio was an Italian poet, novelist and nationalist adventurer. He seized Fiume in 1919, and his political style influenced Italian Fascism.
• 1863 – 1938 Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) Died 7 August 1938, aged 75 Stanislavski co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre. His system of actor training is the foundation of modern method acting.
• 1865 – 1938 Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) Died 7 April 1938, aged 72 Valadon was a French painter and a former artists' model. She was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and was the mother of Maurice Utrillo.
• 1868 – 1938 George Ellery Hale (1868-1938) Died 21 February 1938, aged 69 Hale was an American solar astronomer who founded the Yerkes and Mount Wilson observatories. He also launched the project that built the 200-inch Palomar telescope.
• 1868 – 1938 Harvey Firestone (1868-1938) Died 7 February 1938, aged 69 Firestone founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, one of the first global makers of automobile tyres.
• 1869 – 1938 Maud of Wales (1869-1938) Died 20 November 1938, aged 68 Maud was Queen of Norway as the wife of King Haakon VII, and a daughter of Edward VII of the United Kingdom.
• 1870 – 1938 Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870-1938) Died 9 July 1938, aged 68 Cardozo was an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court and one of the most influential American common-law judges.
• 1870 – 1938 Ernst Barlach (1870-1938) Died 24 October 1938, aged 68 Barlach was a German Expressionist sculptor and playwright. The Nazis condemned his work, and many of his public memorials were removed.
• 1873 – 1938 Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938) Died 12 April 1938, aged 65 Chaliapin was a Russian operatic bass who was famous for the title role in Boris Godunov. He was one of the most celebrated singers of his time.
• 1875 – 1938 Marie of Romania (1875-1938) Died 18 July 1938, aged 62 Marie was Queen consort of Romania and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She lobbied at the Paris Peace Conference for the creation of Greater Romania.
• 1877 – 1938 Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) Died 21 April 1938, aged 60 Iqbal was a poet and philosopher who wrote in Urdu and Persian. His call for a Muslim homeland in north-west India made him the spiritual father of Pakistan.
• 1880 – 1938 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) Died 15 June 1938, aged 58 Kirchner was a German Expressionist painter and a founder of Die Brücke. The Nazis condemned his work as degenerate, and he took his own life in Switzerland.
• 1881 – 1938 Alexei Rykov (1881-1938) Died 15 March 1938, aged 57 Rykov succeeded Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union. He was executed after the Trial of the Twenty-One.
• 1881 – 1938 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) Died 10 November 1938, aged 57 Atatürk founded the Republic of Turkey and was its first president. He led the Turkish War of Independence and carried out wide-ranging secular, legal and alphabet reforms.
• 1883 – 1938 Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko (1883-1938) Died 10 February 1938, aged 54 Antonov-Ovseenko led the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 and later served as Soviet consul in Barcelona. He was shot during the Great Purge.
• 1886 – 1938 Béla Kun (1886-1938) Died 29 August 1938, aged 52 Béla Kun led the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. He was later arrested in the Great Purge and shot in Moscow.
• 1888 – 1938 Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938) Died 15 March 1938, aged 49 Bukharin was a Bolshevik theorist, editor of Pravda and head of the Comintern. He was convicted in the third Moscow show trial and shot.
• 1889 – 1938 Carl von Ossietzky (1889-1938) Died 4 May 1938, aged 48 Ossietzky was a German pacifist journalist who exposed secret German rearmament. He won the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize while held in a concentration camp and died in custody from tuberculosis.
• 1889 – 1938 Pearl White (1889-1938) Died 4 August 1938, aged 49 Pearl White was an American silent film actress who starred in the serial The Perils of Pauline.
• 1889 – 1938 Vasily Blyukher (1889-1938) Died 9 November 1938, aged 48 Blyukher was a Marshal of the Soviet Union and commander in the Far East. He was arrested after the Lake Khasan battle and died under NKVD interrogation.
• 1890 – 1938 Karel Čapek (1890-1938) Died 25 December 1938, aged 48 Čapek was a Czech writer whose play R.U.R. introduced the word "robot". He was a prominent critic of fascism and died a few months after the Munich Agreement.
• 1890 – 1938 Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) Died 25 June 1938, aged 48 Trubetzkoy was a Russian linguist and a founder of the Prague School of structural phonology.
• 1891 – 1938 Genrikh Yagoda (1891-1938) Died 15 March 1938, aged 46 Yagoda headed the NKVD during the first Moscow show trials. He was himself convicted in the Trial of the Twenty-One and shot.
• 1891 – 1938 Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) Died 27 December 1938, aged 47 Mandelstam was one of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. He was arrested for an epigram mocking Stalin and died in a transit camp near Vladivostok.
• 1899 – 1938 Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899-1938) Died 30 November 1938, aged 39 Codreanu founded Romania's fascist Iron Guard. He was killed in custody on the orders of King Carol II's government.
• 1900 – 1938 Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) Died 15 September 1938, aged 37 Thomas Wolfe was an American novelist and the author of Look Homeward, Angel. He died of tuberculosis of the brain.
• 1901 – 1938 Ödön von Horváth (1901-1938) Died 1 June 1938, aged 36 Horváth was an Austro-Hungarian playwright and novelist, known for Tales from the Vienna Woods. He was killed in Paris by a falling branch during a storm.
• 1911 – 1938 Robert Johnson (1911-1938) Died 16 August 1938, aged 27 Robert Johnson was a Mississippi Delta blues singer and guitarist. His handful of recordings deeply influenced rock and blues, and he became the subject of the legend that he sold his soul at a crossroads.
• 1938 – 2021 Bernard Madoff (1938-2021) Died 14 April 2021, aged 82 American financier who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding investors of some $65 billion.
• 1938 – 1968 Bill Masterton (1938-1968) Died 15 January 1968, aged 29 The Minnesota North Stars forward died two days after suffering a severe head injury in a National Hockey League game against the Oakland Seals, having been checked and falling backward onto the ice without a helmet. He remains the only player to die from injuries sustained during an NHL game. His death spurred the eventual introduction of mandatory helmets in the league.
• 1938 – 2024 Duane Eddy (1938-2024) Died 30 April 2024, aged 86 American guitarist responsible for twang, one of rock music's elemental sounds.
• 1938 – 2025 Frederick Forsyth (1938-2025) Died 9 June 2025, aged 86 British thriller writer whose journalistic style and fast plots, from The Day of the Jackal onward, redefined the political thriller.
• 1938 – 2026 Georg Baselitz (1938-2026) Died 30 April 2026, aged 88 German painter, printmaker and sculptor, a pioneer of Neo-Expressionism known for inverting his subjects.
• 1938 – 2024 Jerry West (1938-2024) Died 12 June 2024, aged 86 American basketball player, coach and executive whose silhouette became the NBA logo.
• 1938 – 2025 Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938-2025) Died 28 May 2025, aged 87 Kenyan writer regarded as East Africa's leading novelist. Weep Not, Child was the first major English-language novel by an East African.
• 1938 – 2025 Peter Yarrow (1938-2025) Died 7 January 2025, aged 86 American singer of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, at the forefront of the 1960s folk revival.
• 1938 – 2024 Richard Serra (1938-2024) Died 26 March 2024, aged 85 American sculptor whose vast curving steel works redefined the relationship between sculpture and the body.
• 1938 – present Samsung Samsung Group — founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-chul as a small trading company in Suwon, Korea — has grown into one of the world's largest conglomerates, encompassing electronics, semiconductors, shipbuilding, construction and life insurance. Its electronics division, Samsung Electronics, is the world's largest manufacturer of smartphones, memory chips and television sets. The Samsung brand is present in virtually every country on earth and generates revenues exceeding South Korea's entire state budget.
• 1938 Superman first appears Superman first appears Superman appeared in Action Comics #1 in June 1938, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who sold the rights for $130. The issue established the costumed superhero as a genre and made DC Comics the industry leader. Siegel and Shuster spent decades fighting for credit and compensation.
• 1938 – 2026 Ted Turner (1938-2026) Died 6 May 2026, aged 87 American broadcasting entrepreneur who built a media empire and founded CNN, the first 24-hour television news network.
• 1938 Australian Open 1938 Men: Don Budge · Women: Dorothy Bundy Budge completed the calendar Grand Slam in 1938.
• 1938 – 1995 Wolfman Jack (1938-1995) Died 1 July 1995, aged 57 Wolfman Jack, born Robert Smith, was an American disc jockey famous for his gravelly voice and his broadcasts on powerful border-blaster radio stations heard across North America. He gained wider fame through his appearance in the 1973 film American Graffiti. His persona became a fixture of American radio and pop culture.
• 1938 – 2012 Etta James (1938-2012) Died 20 January 2012, aged 73 American singer known for the ballad "At Last," blending blues, jazz, R&B, and rock and roll across her career. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
• 1938 Blomberg-Fritsch affair Hitler takes personal command of the armed forces War Minister Werner von Blomberg and army chief Werner von Fritsch were forced out after manufactured scandals. Hitler abolished the War Ministry and created the OKW with himself as supreme commander.
• 1938 Our Town premieres on Broadway Thornton Wilder's play opens in New York Thornton Wilder's play about the fictional town of Grover's Corners opened at Henry Miller's Theatre. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is one of the most frequently staged American plays.
• 1938 – 1999 Oliver Reed (1938-1999) Died 2 May 1999, aged 61 Oliver Reed was an English actor known for films including Oliver!, The Three Musketeers, and Gladiator, his final role. He died of a heart attack in a bar in Valletta, Malta, while filming Gladiator. The film was completed using body doubles and digital effects and was dedicated to his memory.
• 1938 Trial of the Twenty-One The third Moscow show trial Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Genrikh Yagoda and eighteen other defendants were tried on invented charges of treason and conspiracy. Almost all were sentenced to death and shot. It was the last of the great Moscow show trials.
• 1938 Oil struck in commercial quantities in Saudi Arabia Dammam No. 7 well strikes oil After years of dry wells, Dammam No. 7, drilled by the Standard Oil of California subsidiary CASOC, struck oil in commercial quantities. The find turned Saudi Arabia into one of the world's leading oil producers.
• 1938 – 2025 David Baltimore (1938-2025) Died 6 September 2025, aged 87 American virologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of reverse transcriptase.
• 1938 Anschluss Nazi Germany annexes Austria German troops crossed into Austria on 12 March and the country was declared part of the German Reich the next day. Hitler entered Vienna to cheering crowds, and Austrian Jews immediately faced public humiliation and persecution.
• 1938 Bombing of Barcelona Italian aircraft bomb the city for three days Italian bombers based on Majorca attacked Barcelona repeatedly on behalf of the Nationalists and killed about a thousand civilians. The raids caused international outrage and were an early example of terror bombing of a city.
• 1938 – 1993 Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993) Died 6 January 1993, aged 54 Rudolf Nureyev was a Soviet-born ballet dancer celebrated as one of the greatest of the 20th century, known for his 1961 defection to the West and his long partnership with Margot Fonteyn. He later directed the Paris Opera Ballet. He died in Paris of complications from AIDS.
• 1938 Mexican oil expropriation Cárdenas nationalises foreign oil companies President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated the assets of foreign oil companies operating in Mexico. The state company Pemex was created to run the industry. Mexico still marks the anniversary as a national day.
• 1938 Battle of Taierzhuang The first major Chinese victory of the war with Japan Chinese forces under Li Zongren surrounded and defeated a Japanese force at Taierzhuang in Shandong. The victory greatly boosted Chinese morale.
• 1938 – 2026 Anthony J. Leggett (1938-2026) Died 8 March 2026, aged 87 British physicist who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics for his foundational work on superfluidity.
• 1938 1938 World Snooker Championship Joe Davis Title 12 Winner: Joe Davis; Runner-up: Sidney Smith. Score: 37–24.
• 1938 Nescafé launched Nestlé introduces instant coffee Nestlé launched Nescafé in Switzerland, a soluble coffee powder developed by chemist Max Morgenthaler. It went on to become one of the world's best-known coffee brands.
• 1938 – 1989 A. Bartlett Giamatti (1938-1989) Died 1 September 1989, aged 51 A. Bartlett Giamatti was a Renaissance literature scholar who served as President of Yale University before becoming Commissioner of Major League Baseball. He presided over the investigation that led to Pete Rose's lifetime ban from baseball just before his death. He died of a heart attack days after the Rose decision.
• 1938 Teflon discovered Roy Plunkett accidentally creates PTFE While working on refrigerants at DuPont, Roy Plunkett found that a cylinder of tetrafluoroethylene gas had polymerised into a slippery white solid. Polytetrafluoroethylene was later sold as Teflon.
• 1938 – 2018 Kofi Annan (1938-2018) Died 18 August 2018, aged 80 Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 for his work revitalizing the organization and its humanitarian efforts. He remained active in international diplomacy after leaving office.
• 1938 Austrian Anschluss plebiscite Over 99 percent approve union with Germany A referendum held under Nazi control in Germany and Austria approved the annexation with a reported 99.7 percent in favour. Jews and political opponents were barred from voting, and the ballot was openly intimidating.
• 1938 – 2024 Lilly Ledbetter (1938-2024) Died 12 October 2024, aged 86 American activist whose equal-pay lawsuit led to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.
• 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow The British Empire Exhibition is held at Bellahouston Park The exhibition showcased industry and culture across the Empire and drew over 12 million visitors. Thomas Tait's modernist Tower of Empire was its centrepiece.
• 1938 – 1988 Raymond Carver (1938-1988) Died 2 August 1988, aged 50 Raymond Carver was an American short story writer and poet credited with reviving the American short story through his minimalist style. His collections include What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. He died of lung cancer in Port Angeles, Washington.
• 1938 House Un-American Activities Committee created The US House sets up the Dies Committee The House of Representatives set up a special committee chaired by Martin Dies to investigate subversive activity. It later became the House Un-American Activities Committee, known for its anti-communist investigations during the McCarthy era.
• 1938 – 2024 John Prescott (1938-2024) Died 20 November 2024, aged 86 British politician who was deputy prime minister under Tony Blair and deputy leader of the Labour Party for thirteen years.
• 1938 French Open 1938 Men: Don Budge · Women: Simone Mathieu Budge won all four Grand Slams in 1938 — the first ever calendar Grand Slam.
• 1938 FIFA World Cup in France Italy retains the world title The third World Cup was played in France. Italy beat Hungary 4-2 in the final in Paris, becoming the first team to defend the title.
• 1938 Yellow River flood Chinese Nationalists breach the dikes to halt the Japanese Nationalist forces broke the Yellow River dikes at Huayuankou to slow the Japanese advance. The resulting floods killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and left millions homeless.
• 1938 Battle of Wuhan Japan captures China's temporary capital after months of fighting More than a million Chinese troops fought a long defence of Wuhan against the Japanese advance up the Yangtze. The city fell in October, but the delay allowed the Nationalist government to move to Chongqing.
• 1938 Bíró patents the ballpoint pen László Bíró files a British patent Hungarian journalist László Bíró and his brother György patented a pen that used quick-drying ink and a rotating ball. The design was later developed in Argentina and spread worldwide.
• 1938 Joe Louis defeats Max Schmeling Louis knocks out Schmeling in the first round In a rematch at Yankee Stadium, heavyweight champion Joe Louis knocked out the German Max Schmeling in two minutes and four seconds. The fight carried strong political meaning on the eve of the war, and Louis became an American hero.
• 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act signed US establishes a federal minimum wage President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the act, which introduced a national minimum wage and a 40-hour standard work week with overtime pay. It also banned most child labour.
• 1938 Wimbledon 1938 Men: Don Budge · Women: Helen Wills Moody Budge completed the calendar Grand Slam in 1938 — first ever.
• 1938 Mallard sets steam speed record LNER locomotive reaches 126 mph The LNER Class A4 locomotive Mallard reached 126 mph (203 km/h) on a descent near Stoke Bank, south of Grantham. No steam locomotive has officially gone faster.
• 1938 – 2020 Bill Withers (1938-2020) Died 30 March 2020, aged 81 Bill Withers was an American soul singer-songwriter behind classics including "Lean on Me," "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Lovely Day." He died of heart complications on 30 March 2020.
• 1938 Évian Conference Nations meet on Jewish refugees and do little Delegates from 32 countries met at Évian-les-Bains to discuss Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Almost every country refused to take in more refugees, and only the Dominican Republic offered substantial numbers of places.
• 1938 Howard Hughes round-the-world flight Hughes circles the globe in under four days Howard Hughes and a crew of four flew a Lockheed Super Electra around the world in about 91 hours, a new record. They received a ticker-tape parade in New York.
• 1938 "Wrong Way" Corrigan flight Douglas Corrigan flies to Ireland instead of California Refused permission for a transatlantic flight, Douglas Corrigan took off from New York supposedly bound for California and landed in Dublin 28 hours later. He claimed it was a navigational error and became a folk hero.
• 1938 – 2020 Diana Rigg Born July 20, 1938 — Actress, The Avengers & Game of Thrones Dame Diana Rigg was born on July 20, 1938 in Doncaster, England. She became famous as Emma Peel in The Avengers (1965–68) and later as Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. She died September 10, 2020.
• 1938 – 1981 Natalie Wood (1938-1981) Died 29 November 1981, aged 43 American actress Natalie Wood, known for films including Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, drowned off Santa Catalina Island, California, on 29 November 1981. She had been a leading Hollywood star since childhood. The circumstances of her death remain the subject of continuing investigation.
• 1938 First ascent of the Eiger north face Heckmair, Vörg, Harrer and Kasparek climb the Nordwand A German-Austrian team made the first ascent of the Eiger's north face in the Bernese Alps. Several earlier attempts had ended in deaths. Heinrich Harrer later wrote the classic account "The White Spider".
• 1938 – 2016 Janet Reno (1938-2016) Died 7 November 2016, aged 78 Reno served as U.S. Attorney General from 1993 to 2001, the first woman to hold the position and the longest-serving Attorney General in the 20th century. Her tenure included the Waco siege and the Elian Gonzalez custody case. She later lived with Parkinson's disease.
• 1938 Battle of the Ebro The longest and largest battle of the Spanish Civil War The Republican army crossed the Ebro River in a last major offensive and was then worn down by Nationalist counterattacks. Its defeat destroyed the Republic's army and sealed the fall of Catalonia.
• 1938 – 2024 Alberto Fujimori (1938-2024) Died 11 September 2024, aged 86 Peruvian politician who was president from 1990 to 2000 and was later convicted of ordering death squad killings.
• 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan Soviet and Japanese forces clash on the Manchurian border Japanese troops tried to dislodge Soviet forces from disputed hills near Lake Khasan. The Red Army drove them back, and a ceasefire restored the status quo.
• 1938 – 2005 Peter Jennings (1938-2005) Died 7 August 2005, aged 67 Peter Jennings, the Canadian-born anchor of "ABC World News Tonight" for over two decades, died on 7 August 2005 of lung cancer, only months after announcing his diagnosis. He was one of the most recognizable figures in American television news, anchoring coverage of major world events including the September 11 attacks. Jennings had anchored the broadcast since 1983.
• 1938 US Championships 1938 Men: Don Budge · Women: Alice Marble Budge completed the calendar Grand Slam in 1938.
• 1938 – present Rod Laver The Rocket Only player to achieve the Calendar Grand Slam twice (1962 and 1969).
• 1938 Robert Johnson dies near Greenwood, Mississippi Aged 27 Dies at 27, reputedly poisoned.
• 1938 – 2016 The 27 Club Artists who died at 27 Musicians and artists who died at the age of 27 — Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and others. A coincidence that became a legend.
• 1938 – 2020 Kenny Rogers (1938-2020) Died 20 March 2020, aged 81 Kenny Rogers was an American country singer known for hits including "The Gambler" and "Islands in the Stream," selling over 100 million records worldwide. He died at home on 20 March 2020.
• 1938 – present Lucerne Festival Classical Music Summer One of the leading international festivals in the world of classical music.
• 1938 Fourth International founded Trotskyists launch a rival to the Comintern Supporters of Leon Trotsky met near Paris to found the Fourth International as an alternative to the Stalinist Communist International.
• 1938 New England hurricane A Category 3 hurricane strikes Long Island and New England The hurricane made landfall on Long Island with almost no warning and then tore through Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. About 700 people died, and storm surges flooded Providence.
• 1938 – 1982 Romy Schneider (1938-1982) Died 29 May 1982, aged 43 Austrian-French actress best known for the Sissi film trilogy. She died in Paris a year after the death of her teenage son.
• 1938 Launch of RMS Queen Elizabeth Cunard's largest liner is launched on the Clyde Queen Elizabeth launched the liner named after her at John Brown's shipyard in Clydebank. It was the largest passenger ship in the world at the time and served as a troopship in the Second World War.
• 1938 Munich Agreement Britain and France accept German annexation of the Sudetenland Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler and Mussolini agreed that Germany could annex the German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was not invited to the talks. On his return Chamberlain declared "peace for our time", and the agreement became the defining example of appeasement.
• 1938 German occupation of the Sudetenland Wehrmacht marches into Czechoslovak border regions Under the terms of the Munich Agreement, German troops occupied the Sudetenland in stages over ten days. Czechoslovakia lost its border fortifications and much of its industry, leaving it unable to defend itself.
• 1938 Poland annexes Zaolzie Poland seizes the Czechoslovak part of Cieszyn Silesia After an ultimatum, Poland took over the Zaolzie region from Czechoslovakia as the country was being carved up after Munich. The annexation badly damaged Poland's reputation in the West.
• 1938 – 1997 Fela Kuti (1938-1997) Died 2 August 1997, aged 58 Fela Kuti was a Nigerian musician and political activist who created the Afrobeat genre, fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Yoruba music. His outspoken criticism of Nigeria's military governments led to repeated arrests and violent raids on his compound. He died of complications from AIDS in Lagos.
• 1938 First xerographic copy Chester Carlson makes the first electrophotographic image Working in a room in Astoria, Queens, Chester Carlson and Otto Kornei produced the first xerographic copy, which read "10-22-38 Astoria". The process later became the basis of the Xerox photocopier.
• 1938 Polenaktion Germany expels Polish Jews The Nazi regime rounded up about 17,000 Jews with Polish citizenship and forced them across the Polish border. Grynszpan's parents were among the deportees, and his response led to Kristallnacht.
• 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast Orson Welles dramatises a Martian invasion on CBS radio The Mercury Theatre on the Air presented H. G. Wells's novel as a series of realistic news bulletins. Newspapers reported widespread panic among listeners, and the broadcast made Orson Welles famous.
• 1938 Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral A match race at Pimlico Seabiscuit beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral by four lengths in a two-horse race at Pimlico. An estimated 40 million people listened on the radio.
• 1938 First Vienna Award Hungary gains southern Slovakia Arbitration by Germany and Italy transferred southern Slovakia and part of Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia to Hungary. The award was annulled after the Second World War.
• 1938 Kristallnacht Nationwide pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria Using the shooting of the diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan as a pretext, Nazi paramilitaries and civilians burned synagogues and wrecked Jewish shops and homes across the Reich. About 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. Afterwards the Jewish community was fined one billion Reichsmarks.
• 1938 – 1979 Jean Seberg (1938-1979) Died 30 August 1979, aged 40 American actress Jean Seberg, known for Breathless and Saint Joan, was found dead in her car in Paris of a barbiturate overdose ruled a probable suicide. She had been the target of an FBI harassment campaign over her support for the Black Panther Party. Her body was discovered on 8 September, though her death is dated to 30 August 1979.
• 1938 LSD first synthesised Albert Hofmann creates lysergic acid diethylamide Chemist Albert Hofmann synthesised LSD at Sandoz in Basel while searching for a circulatory stimulant. The compound was put aside, and Hofmann did not discover its psychedelic effects until 1943.
• 1938 – 2002 Robert Nozick (1938-2002) Died 23 January 2002, aged 63 The American philosopher Robert Nozick made his name with Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974, a libertarian argument for a minimal state that became the main counterpoint to John Rawls's liberalism. He ranged widely in later books across decision theory, ethics and the meaning of life. He taught at Harvard for more than three decades.
• 1938 – present Oscar Robertson The Big O First player to average a triple-double for an entire season.
• 1938 First Kindertransport arrives in Britain Jewish refugee children reach Harwich After Kristallnacht, Britain agreed to admit unaccompanied Jewish children from the Reich. The first group arrived at Harwich on 2 December. Nearly 10,000 children were rescued before the war began.
• 1938 Fermi awarded Nobel Prize and leaves Italy Fermi uses the Stockholm ceremony to escape Fascist Italy Enrico Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on neutron-induced radioactivity. Italy's new racial laws threatened his Jewish wife, so the family went on to the United States instead of returning home.
• 1938 Pearl S. Buck awarded Nobel Prize in Literature The first American woman to win the literature prize Pearl S. Buck received the prize for her portrayals of peasant life in China and her biographical works. She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1938 Discovery of nuclear fission Hahn and Strassmann split the uranium nucleus In Berlin, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann found barium among the products of uranium bombarded with neutrons. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch explained the result as the nucleus splitting apart, which led directly to nuclear reactors and the atomic bomb.
• 1938 Living coelacanth discovered A fish thought extinct for 66 million years is found off South Africa Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer spotted an unusual fish in a trawler's catch near East London, South Africa. Ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith identified it as a coelacanth, a group known previously only from fossils.
• 1938 Big Bill Broonzy plays From Spirituals to Swing Carnegie Hall Takes the place of the dead Robert Johnson at John Hammond's concert.