Roosevelt orders youth registration for Dec 11-31, provides for day-by-day registration of those who reach draft age before Jan 1; no lottery necessary; Hershey directive on deferments

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Notable Births

1942Roland Clift, English engineer and academic^[†]

Roland Clift is a chemical engineering professor widely known for his work and media contributions on the topic of sustainability.

1942Larry Gilbert, American golfer (died 1998)^[†]

Lawrence Allen Gilbert Sr. was an American professional golfer best known for winning the 1997 Senior Players Championship, one of the major championships on the Senior PGA Tour.

1942Calvin Klein, American fashion designer, founded Calvin Klein Inc.^[†]

Calvin Richard Klein is an American fashion designer. In 1968, he launched the company that later became Calvin Klein. In addition to clothing, he has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewellery.

1942Sharon Olds, American poet and academic^[†]

Sharon Olds is an American poet. She won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.

Notable Deaths

1942Bruno Schulz, Polish painter and critic (born 1892)^[†]

Bruno Schulz was a Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. Several of Schulz's works were lost in the Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novel The Messiah. Schulz was shot and killed by a Gestapo officer in 1942 while walking back home toward Drohobycz Ghetto with a loaf of bread.

Historical Events

1942World 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.^[†]

The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II, beginning when Nazi Germany and its Axis allies attacked and became locked in a protracted struggle with the Soviet Union for control over the Soviet city of Stalingrad in southern Russia. The battle was characterized by fierce close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in aerial raids; the battle epitomized urban warfare, and it was the single largest and costliest urban battle in military history. It was the bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entirety of World War II—and arguably in all of human history—as both sides suffered tremendous casualties amidst ferocious fighting in and around the city. The battle is commonly regarded as the turning point in the European theatre of World War II, as Germany's Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was forced to withdraw a considerable amount of military forces from other regions to replace losses on the Eastern Front. By the time the hostilities ended, the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army had been destroyed and Army Group B was routed. The Soviets' victory at Stalingrad shifted the Eastern Front's balance of power in their favour, while also boosting the morale of the Red Army.

1942Mutesa II is crowned the 35th and last Kabaka (king) of Buganda, prior to the restoration of the kingdom in 1993.^[†]

Sir Edward Frederick William David Walugembe Mutebi Luwangula Mutesa II was a Ugandan royal and statesman who served as the first president of Uganda from 1962 to 1966, when he was overthrown by Milton Obote. Mutesa was also the Kabaka (King) of the traditional kingdom of Buganda in Uganda from 22 November 1939 until his death in 1969.