December 18, 1939

1939Harold E. Varmus, American biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate^[†]

Harold Eliot Varmus is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center.

1939Ernest Lawson, Canadian-American painter (born 1873)^[†]

Ernest Lawson was a Canadian-American painter and exhibited his work at the Canadian Art Club and as a member of the American group The Eight, artists who formed a loose association in 1908 to protest the narrowness of taste and restrictive exhibition policies of the conservative, powerful National Academy of Design. Though Lawson was primarily a landscape painter, he also painted a small number of realistic urban scenes. His painting style is heavily influenced by the art of John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and Alfred Sisley. Though considered a Canadian-American Impressionist, Lawson falls stylistically between Impressionism and realism.

1939World War II: The Battle of the Heligoland Bight, the first major air battle of the war, takes place.^[†]

World War II or the Second World War was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.