* 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.

Eisenhower returned to the U. S. in 1939 and held a series of staff positions in Washington, D. C., California and Texas.

Other leading films included Mr. Deeds Goes to Town ( 1936 ), Lost Horizon ( 1937 ), You Can't Take It With You ( 1938 ), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ( 1939 ), Meet John Doe ( 1941 ), Arsenic and Old Lace ( 1944 ), It's a Wonderful Life ( 1946 ) and State of the Union ( 1948 ).

Although It's a Wonderful Life is his most well-known film, Friedman notes that it was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ( 1939 ) which most represented the " Capra myth.

He was one of four black players on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team ; the others were Woody Strode, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett.

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First lady Dolley Madison rescued a painting of George Washington, and in 1939, a Canadian man returned a jewelry box to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, claiming that his grandfather had taken it from Washington.

In a 1939 citywide track meet, Washington placed first in the 110 meter high hurdles event, and second in the 220 meter low hurdles event.

He was assigned to the Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines, expecting to be transferred shortly to the Bureau of Engineering in Washington D. C. After a trip overland across China, Burma, and India, by air across the Mideast to Athens and then London, and by ship to the U. S., Rickover arrived in Washington and took up his duties as assistant chief of the Electrical section of the Bureau of Engineering on 15 August 1939.

The United States obtained portions of a Purple machine from the Japanese Embassy in Germany following Germany's defeat in 1945 ( see image above ) and discovered that the Japanese had used precisely the same " stepping switch " in its construction that Leo Rosen of SIS had chosen when building a " duplicate " ( or Purple analog machine ) in Washington in 1939 and 1940.

On 1 July 1939, he was posted to the War Department General Staff in Washington, D. C.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American drama film starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart about one man's effect on American politics.

When it was first released, the film premiered in Constitution Hall in Washington, D. C., on October 17, 1939, sponsored by the National Press Club, an event to which 4, 000 guests were invited, including 45 senators.

He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man ( 1933 ), The Wolf Man ( 1941 ), a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ( 1939 ), Mr. Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia ( 1962 ), and, perhaps his most notable performance, as Captain Renault in Casablanca ( 1942 ).

Following The Invisible Man, Universal Studios tried to typecast him in horror films, but he broke free, starting with the gleefully evil role of Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood ( 1938 ), then with his Academy Award-nominated performance as the conflicted corrupt US senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ( 1939 ), and followed with probably his most famous role, the flexible French police Captain Renault in Casablanca ( 1942 ).

He was also nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ( 1939 ), Casablanca ( 1942 ), Mr. Skeffington ( 1944 ), and Notorious ( 1946 ).

On May 19, 1945, DuMont opened experimental W3XWT in Washington, D. C. A minority shareholder in DuMont Laboratories was Paramount Pictures, which had advanced $ 400, 000 in 1939 for a 40 % share in the company.

* Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ( Hollywood film 1939 )

Marian Anderson: the Lincoln Memorial Concert is a 1939 documentary film which documents a concert performance by African American opera singer Marian Anderson after the Daughters of the American Revolution ( DAR ) had her barred from singing in Washington D. C .' s Constitution Hall because she was black.

With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. She sang before a crowd of more than 75, 000 people and a radio audience in the millions.

** Darius Kinsey Photographs Images from 1890 – 1939, documenting the logging industry in Washington State.

In 1939, he was ordered to attend the Army War College in Washington, D. C. and after graduating was named Executive Officer of the Division of Plans and Policies, USMC.

In 1939 he was under contract to appear in black theatres in New York, Baltimore, Boston and Washington D. C ..