On this day

December 31, 1944

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from December 31, 1944

5 FOOTBALL GAMES ON CARD TOMORROW WILL DRAW 300,000; Southern California to Meet Tennessee Before 93,000 -- East Favored Over West 72,000 WILL WATCH DUKE Blue Devils Battle Alabama -- Georgia Tech Faces Tulsa, Okla. Aggies Play T.C.U. 5 FOOTBALL GAMES WILL DRAW 300,000

By Allison Danzig

Whatever 1945 holds in store for football in a war-torn world, the new year will start tomorrow with the usual array of bowl attractions and the all-star Shrine game for charity at San Francisco.

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Notable Births

Taylor Hackford

1944Taylor Hackford, American director, producer, and screenwriter[†]

Taylor Edwin Hackford is an American film director and former president of the Directors Guild of America. He won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Teenage Father (1979). Hackford went on to direct a number of highly regarded feature films, including An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), The Devil's Advocate (1997) and Ray (2004), the latter of which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Picture.

Historical Events

Operation Northwind (1944)

1944World War II: Operation Nordwind, the last major Wehrmacht offensive on the Western Front, begins.[†]

Operation Northwind was the last major German offensive of World War II on the Western Front. Northwind was launched to support the German Ardennes offensive campaign in the Battle of the Bulge, which by late December 1944 had decisively turned against the German forces. It began on 31 December 1944 in Rhineland-Palatinate, Alsace and Lorraine in southwestern Germany and northeastern France, and ended on 25 January 1945. The German offensive was an operational failure, with its main objectives not achieved.