The World in 1942 the year Singapore fell and Stalingrad held

That first V-2 climbed about 50 miles before falling back to earth. Airliners cruise around six miles up, so the rocket went roughly eight times higher than anything people flew in.

Life back then

Car showrooms had nothing new to sell after February, because the assembly lines were turning out tanks and bombers instead. In Britain clothes went on coupons and posters told people to Dig for Victory, so lawns, parks and railway banks were turned over to potatoes and cabbages. Coastal towns on both sides of the Atlantic taped their windows and hooded their headlights. Sugar went on ration in American shops in May, coffee in November. Women signed on at aircraft plants and shipyards in numbers nobody had seen before.

The year in 8 events

• 🕯️Jan 20 German officials meet at Wannsee, outside Berlin, and organise the murder of Europe's Jews.
• ⚔️Feb 15 Singapore surrenders to Japan. About 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops are taken prisoner.
• 🕯️Feb 19 Roosevelt signs an order that leads to about 120,000 Japanese Americans being moved to internment camps.
• ⚓Jun 4 The US Navy sinks four Japanese aircraft carriers near Midway over three days of fighting.
• 📔Jul 6 The Frank family goes into hiding in rooms behind an Amsterdam office. Anne is thirteen and keeps a diary.
• 🏜️Oct 23 British and Commonwealth troops attack at El Alamein in Egypt and start pushing the Germans west.
• ❄️Nov 19 Soviet armies counterattack at Stalingrad and trap a whole German army in the ruined city.
• ⚛️Dec 2 Under a Chicago football stadium, scientists produce the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.

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