U.S. officially enters World War I

German invasion of Norway

Primo Levi dies, age 67

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies, age 63

Soviet Union officially accepts responsibility for Katyn Massacre (5,000 Polish military officers murdered and buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest).

Ft. Sumter, South Carolina, fired upon, launching the Civil War

Odd Nansen’s daughter Siri Nansen was born

Doolittle Raid on Japan

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began

Robert Losey, America's first soldier casualty of WWII, dies in Norway

Sachsenhausen (including Buergenthal) liberated

Josef Terboven appointed Reichskommissar of Norway

U.S. and Soviet troops meet up for the first time at the Elbe River, near Torgau in Germany

From Day to Day, One Man's Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps, is republished for the first time in 67 years.

Gerda Buergenthal, Tom Buergenthal's mother, is liberated at Malchow, a subcamp of Ravensbruck

Odd Nansen's diary ends

Odd Nansen evacuated from Neuengamme on White Buses to Denmark, then Sweden.

Dachau is liberated

Last gassing of the Holocaust occurs at Mauthausen

Hitler commits suicide

The S.S. Cap Arcona sunk by British warplanes; only 350 of 5,000 concentration camp inmates hidden aboard survive

British forces arrive at Neuengamme Concentration Camp--to find it empty.

The Battle of Coral Sea begins.  The first naval battle fought entirely by planes from opposing carriers.

Mauthausen Concentration Camp liberated by 11th Armored Division, Third United States Army