A decade and a half later, the Polish anthropology student, Bronisław Malinowski ( 1884 – 1942 ), was beginning what he expected to be a brief period of fieldwork in the old model, collecting lists of cultural items, when the outbreak of the First World War stranded him in New Guinea.

He was the fourth child of Ondrej Varchola ( Americanized as Andrew Warhola, Sr., 1889 – 1942 ) and Júlia ( née Zavacká, 1892 – 1972 ), whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U. S. Andy had two older brothers, Paul, born about 1923, and John, born about 1925.

* 1942 – Barry Levinson, American producer and director

* 1942 – Carlos Reutemann, Argentine race car driver and politician

* 1942 – Jacob Zuma, African politician, President of South Africa

* 1942 – Daryl Dragon, American keyboardist ( Captain & Tennille )

* 1942 – Brian Peckford, Canadian politician, 3rd Premier of Newfoundland

* 1942 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands becomes the first reigning queen to address a joint session of the United States Congress.

* 1942 – George Jung, American convicted drug smuggler

* 1942 – Byard Lancaster, American saxophonist ( d. 2012 )

* 1942 – Indian leader Mohanda Gandhi is arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement.

* 1942 – World War II: Battle of Savo Island – Allied naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force.

* 1942 – Tommie Agee, American baseball player ( d. 2001 )

* 1942 – Jack DeJohnette, American drummer, pianist, and composer ( Gateway and Trio Beyond )

* 1942 – David Steinberg, Canadian comedian, actor, director, and author

* 1942 – Major General Eugene Reybold of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers authorizes the construction of facilities that would house the " Development of Substitute Materials " project, better known as the Manhattan Project.

* 1872 – Richard Willstätter, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate ( d. 1942 )

* 1942 – Isabel Allende, Chilean author

* 2012 – Jamaa Fanaka, American director, producer, and screenwriter ( b. 1942 )

* 1942 – André Gagnon, Canadian pianist and composer

* 1942 – Jerry Garcia, American singer-songwriter and guitarist ( Grateful Dead, Legion of Mary, Reconstruction, Old and in the Way, and New Riders of the Purple Sage ) ( d. 1995 )

* 1942 – Giancarlo Giannini, Italian actor

* 1942 – Richard Willstätter, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate ( b. 1872 )

The story of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became popular after a Pravda article which was written by Pyotr Lidov, was published on January 27, 1942.

Pyotr Alexandrovich Blinov (; Pekshur village, Uvinsky District, Udmurtia-near Smolensk, January 7, 1942 ) was a Soviet Udmurt writer and journalist.

Pinhas Rutenberg ( February 5, 1879 – January 3, 1942 ;, Pyotr Moiseyevich Rutenberg ; ) was a prominent engineer and a businessman, a Russian socialist and a Zionist leader.

* 1942 – World War II: Siege of Leningrad – Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad.

The Russians, whose side lost, failed to keep up and despite newer models coming into service, I-16s were outfought by the improved Bf 109s in World War II, while remaining the most common Soviet front-line fighter into 1942.

On 21 June 1941, the day before invasion of the Soviet Union, Himmler commissioned the preparation of the Generalplan Ost ( General Plan for the East ); the plan was finalised in July 1942.

In 1942, Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to conquer oil fields vital to a long-term German war effort.

In July 1942, Hitler praised the efficiency of the Soviet military industry and Stalin:

During 1942, Goebbels continued to press for the " final solution to the Jewish question " to be carried forward as quickly as possible now that Germany had occupied a huge swathe of Soviet territory into which all the Jews of German-controlled Europe could be deported.

* 1942 – World War II: The United States agrees to send Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.

* 1942 – Diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet Union are established.

* 1942 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issues Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union.

In December 1942, during a meeting with the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, who brought a message from Mussolini asking for the Germans to go on the defensive in the Soviet Union in order to focus on North Africa, Ribbentrop joined with Hitler in belittling Italy's war effort.

Fuchs told interrogators the KGB acquired an agent in Berkeley, California, who informed the Soviet Union about electromagnetic separation research of uranium-235 in 1942 or earlier.

It would later be discontinued and then reinstated by the Soviet government in 1942 as the Order of Alexander Nevsky.

It also extended trade regulation of the 1940 German – Soviet Commercial Agreement until August 1, 1942, increased deliveries above the levels of year one of that agreement, settled trading rights in the Baltics and Bessarabia, calculated the compensation for German property interests in the Baltic States now occupied by the Soviets and other issues.

Soviet forces initially faced disastrous losses from 1941 to 1942.

* 1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.

* 1942 – The Soviet Union establishes diplomatic relations with Australia.

In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera.

* SS Stalingrad, a Soviet steamship active in the Arctic convoys, and sunk in 1942

During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 – 1942, the mountains became a key element in Nazi planning for the territories which they expected to conquer in the USSR.

Though the Allies ' economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkrieg attacks of Germany and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United States and Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of attrition.

As Roosevelt's personal representative, he traveled to Britain and the Middle East in late 1941, and to the Soviet Union and China in 1942.

* May 26 – WWII Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942 to help establish military and political alliance between the USSR and the British Empire is signed in London by foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

The numbers of Tito's Yugoslav partisans were roughly similar to those of the Polish and Soviet partisans in the first years of the war ( 1941 – 1942 ), but grew rapidly in the latter years, outnumbering the Polish and Soviet partisans by 2: 1 or more ( estimates give Yugoslavian forces about 800, 000 in 1945, to Polish and Soviet forces of 400, 000 in 1944 ).