Timeline March 1938

Events in March 1938 16

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 1938 Samsung founded as trading company Lee Byung-chul founds Samsung Trading Company in Suwon, Korea on 1 March 1938 with 30,000 won in capital and 40 employees. The business exports dried fish, vegetables and fruit to Manchuria and Beijing. The name Samsung (三星) means "three stars" in Korean — chosen to represent something powerful, numerous and eternal. Nobody in 1938 could imagine that this modest grocery trading company would become one of the most recognised brands in the world.
• 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 The Anschluss Annexation by Nazi Germany The entry of German troops into Austria and its subsequent incorporation into the Third Reich.
• 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.