" The term made an impact into English pulp science fiction starting from Jack Williamson's The Cometeers ( 1936 ) and the distinction between mechanical robots and fleshy androids was popularized by Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future ( 1940 – 1944 ).

* 1940 – Homero Aridjis, Mexican writer and diplomat

* 1940 – Pedro Armendáriz Jr., Mexican actor

* 1874 – William B. Bankhead, American politician ( d. 1940 )

* 1892 – Johnny Dodds, American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist ( d. 1940 )

* 1940 – John Hagee, American pastor and televangelist

* 1940 – Herbie Hancock, American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer

* 1857 – Eugen Bleuler, Swiss psychiatrist ( d. 1940 )

* 1940 – Burt Young, American actor

* 1874 – Carl Bosch, German chemist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate ( d. 1940 )

* 1940 – Sonny Sharrock, American guitarist ( Last Exit ) ( d. 1994 )

* 1940 – Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union.

* 1940 – Mukhu Aliyev, Russian politician

* 1940 – Louise Sorel, American actress

* 1857 – Manuel de Escandón, Mexican polo player ( d. 1940 )

* 1940 – Bill Musselman, American basketball coach ( d. 2000 )

* 1940 – Beko Ransome-Kuti, Nigerian doctor and activist ( d. 2006 )

* 1940 – Will Tura, Belgian singer-songwriter, musician, and composer

2 # 1 ( Jan., 1940 ), pp. 87 – 104 in JSTOR

* 1881 – Otto Toeplitz, German mathematician ( d. 1940 )

* 1940 – Mervyn Kitchen, English cricketer and umpire

* 1940 – Ram Loevy, Israeli screenwriter and director

* 1940 – World War II: Italian forces begin the invasion of British Somaliland.

* 1940 – Lance Alworth, American football player

* 1940 – Martin Sheen, American actor

* 1863 – Augustus Edward Hough Love, English mathematician ( d. 1940 )

Other areas damaged during World War II bombing included: in September 1940 two unexploded bombs hit the Edward VII galleries, the King's Library received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb, incendiaries fell on the dome of the Round Reading Room but did little damage ; on the night of 10 to 11 May 1941 several incendiaries fell on the south west corner of the Museum, destroying the book stack and 150, 000 books in the courtyard and the galleries around the top of the Great Staircase – this damage was not fully repaired until the early 1960s.

* 1870 – Edward LeSaint, American actor and director ( d. 1940 )

* 1940 – Edward Frederic Benson, English writer ( b. 1867 )

Chess historian Edward Winter has questioned this, stating that the earliest known sources that support this story are an article by Robert Lewis Taylor in the June 15, 1940, issue of The New Yorker and Marshall's autobiography My 50 Years of Chess ( 1942 ).

* 1874 – Edward Harkness, American philanthropist ( d. 1940 )

Newman's father was Jewish, which was of particular concern in the face of Nazi Germany, and Lyn, Edward and William were evacuated to America in July 1940.

* Edward Kasner and James Newman: Mathematics and the Imagination, Simon and Schuster, 1940.

David Edward Sutch ( 10 November 1940 – 16 June 1999 ), also known as " Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow ", or simply " Screaming Lord Sutch ", was a musician from the United Kingdom.

In January 1940, Smith was sent to Berlin, where he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System under Edward R. Murrow.

* Edward Kasner & James Newman ( 1940 ) Mathematics and the Imagination, pp 196 – 200, Simon & Schuster.

Edward G. Robinson portrayed Reuter in the Warner Bros. biopic A Dispatch from Reuter's ( 1940 ).

His parents, George Philip Gein ( 1873 – 1940 ) and Augusta Wilhelmine ( Lehrke ) Gein ( 1878 – 1945 ), both natives of Wisconsin, had two sons: Henry George Gein ( 1901 – 1944 ), and his younger brother, Edward Theodore Gein.

* C. Edward McVaney ( born 1940 ), co-founder of JD Edwards.

* George Edward Smith ( born 1940 ), mayor of Frederick, Maryland, 1901 – 1910

* George Edward Smith ( born 1940 ), POW in Vietnam for 2 years, released in 1965

Sir Evan Edward Charteris ( 1864 – 1940 ), sixth son of the tenth Earl, was a historian, biographer and barrister and notably published biographies of John Singer Sargent and of Edmund Gosse.

* Edward LeSaint ( 1870 – 1940 ), actor

Edward James Martin " Ted " Koppel ( born February 8, 1940 ) is an English-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline from the program's inception in 1980 until his retirement in late 2005.

Hatcher, William B., Edward Livingston: Jeffersonian Republican and Jacksonian Democrat, Louisiana State University Press ( 1940 ).

John Edward Warnock ( born October 6, 1940 ) is an American computer scientist best known as the co-founder with Charles Geschke of Adobe Systems Inc., the graphics and publishing software company.

* Edward Joseph Byrne, Archbishop of Dublin ( 1921 – 1940 )

Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, ( 16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959 ), known as The Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and as The Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was one of the most senior British Conservative politicians of the 1930s, during which he held several senior ministerial posts, most notably as Foreign Secretary from 1938 to 1940.

In 1940, Edward Fallows died virtually destitute after wasting all his own money on trying to obtain the Tsar's non-existent fortune for the Grandanor Corporation.