* 1939 – 1945, the Second Battle of the Atlantic.

Subsequent formalizations were framed as attempts to define " effective calculability " or " effective method "; those formalizations included the Gödel – Herbrand – Kleene recursive functions of 1930, 1934 and 1935, Alonzo Church's lambda calculus of 1936, Emil Post's " Formulation 1 " of 1936, and Alan Turing's Turing machines of 1936 – 7 and 1939.

* 1890 – Anthony Fokker, Dutch aviation engineer ( d. 1939 )

* 1939 – André Ouellet, French-Canadian politician

* 1852 – Ferdinand von Lindemann, German mathematician ( d. 1939 )

* 1939 – Alan Ayckbourn, English writer

* 1939 – Johnny Raper, Australian rugby league footballer

* 1939 – The 1939-40 New York World's Fair opens.

* 1939 – NBC inaugurates its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's N. Y. World's Fair opening day ceremonial address.

* 1939 – First flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft.

* 1939 – William Least Heat-Moon, American author

* 1939 – Edward Patten, American singer-songwriter and producer ( Gladys Knight & the Pips ) ( d. 2005 )

* 1939 – Bulle Ogier, French actress

* 1939 – Romano Prodi, Italian politician and statesman

* 1939 – Hércules Brito Ruas, Brazilian footballer

* 1939 – Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.

* 1939 – Benjamin Barber, American theorist

* 1939 – Wes Craven, American director

* 1939 – John W. Snow, American politician, 73rd United States Secretary of the Treasury

* 1984 – Marvin Gaye, American singer ( The Moonglows ) ( b. 1939 )

* 2001 – Trinh Cong Son, Vietnamese composer ( b. 1939 )

Eastern European theorists include Pyotr Stolypin ( 1862 – 1911 ) and Alexander Chayanov ( 1888 – 1939 ) in Russia ; Adolph Wagner ( 1835 – 1917 ), and Karl Oldenberg in Germany, and Bolesław Limanowski ( 1835 – 1935 ) in Poland.

* 1939 – Billy Joe Shaver, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

He co-starred with Esther Williams in Billy Rose's Aquacade during the NEW YORK World's Fair, 1939 – 41, pursuing her throughout a span of two years.

Further highlights of this period included Tom, Dick, and Harry, a 1941 comedy in which she dreams of marrying three different men ; I'll Be Seeing You, with Joseph Cotten ; La Cava's 5th Avenue Girl ( 1939 ), where she played an out-of-work girl sucked into the lives of a wealthy family ; and especially the sharp and highly successful comedies: Bachelor Mother ( 1939 ), with David Niven, in which she played Polly Parrish, a shop girl who is falsely thought to have abandoned her baby ; and Billy Wilder's first Hollywood feature film: The Major and the Minor ( 1942 ), in which she played a woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old to get a cheap train ticket and finds herself obliged to continue the ruse for an extended period.

Pickens appeared in dozens of films, including Old Oklahoma Plains ( 1952 ), Down Laredo Way ( 1953 ), One-Eyed Jacks ( 1961 ) with Marlon Brando, Dr. Strangelove ( 1964 ), Major Dundee ( 1965 ) with Charlton Heston, the remake of Stagecoach ( 1966 ; Pickens played the driver, portrayed in the 1939 film by Andy Devine ), Never a Dull Moment ( 1968 ), The Cowboys ( 1972 ) with John Wayne, Ginger in the Morning ( 1974 ) with Fred Ward, Blazing Saddles ( 1974 ), Poor Pretty Eddy ( 1975 ), Rancho Deluxe ( 1975 ), The Getaway with Steve McQueen, Tom Horn ( 1980 ), also with McQueen, An Eye for an Eye ( 1966 ) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid ( 1973 ) in a small but memorable role.

Australia entered the Second World War on 3 September 1939 and a special War Cabinet was created after war was declared – initially composed of Prime Minister Menzies and five senior ministers including Billy Hughes.

* 1939 ( 1 ) Walter Hagen 25th Anniversary ( with Billy Burke )

At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Billy Rose's Aquacade starred Olympian Eleanor Holm in what the fair program called " a brilliant girl show of spectacular size and content ".

* Billy the Kid ( 1939 )-ballet to the music of Aaron Copland-dancer

Although he continued to occasionally play leads – notably when he was a playboy in Billy Wilder's Midnight with Claudette Colbert and John Barrymore in 1939 – in the late 1930s Lederer began to expand his film acting repertoire with offbeat character parts, even playing villains.

The return of Billy Southworth in 1939 brought another league championship to Rochester.

A stylish leading man in dozens of movies, today George Raft is mostly known for his gangster roles in Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot, the original Scarface ( 1932 ), and Each Dawn I Die ( 1939 ), and as a dancer in Bolero ( 1934 ) and a truck driver in They Drive by Night ( 1940 ).

Butlin had several children from his three marriages: Shirley ( born 1931 to Dolly ), Robert ( born to Nora in 1934 as Robert F. Reeves ), Cherie ( also known as Cherry ) ( born to Nora in 1939 ), Sandra ( born 1941 ), William Jr ( also known as Billy ) ( born 1960 to Sheila ), and Jacquie ( born to Sheila ).

* Billy Reid ( Irish republican ) ( 1939 – 1971 ), volunteer and Staff Officer in C Company, Third Battalion of the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

* Billy Robinson ( born 1939 ), British professional wrestler and trainer

* Billy Ellis ( 1895 – 1939 ), English footballer

Adnan Bin Abdulkareem Ahmed Alkaissy El Farthie ( born March 1, 1939 ), better known professionally as Adnan Al-Kaissie, is a former Iraqi professional wrestler and manager best known as Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissy, Billy White Wolf, or General Adnan.

Midnight is a 1939 romantic comedy ( with some elements of screwball comedy ) directed by Mitchell Leisen and written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder based on a story by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz.

On June 8, 1939, contracts were let to the Fogal Boat Yard, Inc., later known as the Miami Shipbuilding Co., of Miami, Florida, for PT-1 and-2 " Crash Boats ", and to the Fisher Boat Works, Detroit, Michigan, for PT-3 and-4.

* Day, Richard B 1981 The ‘ Crisis ’ and the ‘ Crash ’: Soviet Studies of the West ( 1917 – 1939 ) NLB