Timeline January 1941

Events in January 1941 14

• 1857 – 1941 Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) Died 8 January 1941, aged 83 Robert Baden-Powell was a British army officer and the defender of Mafeking who founded the worldwide Scout movement. He died in Kenya, where he had retired.
• 1859 – 1941 Henri Bergson (1859-1941) Died 4 January 1941, aged 81 Henri Bergson was a French philosopher known for his ideas of duration and the élan vital, and he won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in German-occupied Paris.
• 1868 – 1941 Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941) Died 11 January 1941, aged 72 Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player who held the World Championship for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, longer than anyone else. He was also a mathematician and died in New York.
• 1868 – 1941 Emanuel Lasker Longest reigning World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker held the World Chess Championship for 27 years from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign in chess history. He combined psychology, positional play and tactical skill.
• 1871 – 1941 Ioannis Metaxas (1871-1941) Died 29 January 1941, aged 69 Ioannis Metaxas ruled Greece as dictator from 1936. He rejected Mussolini's ultimatum in October 1940, the refusal Greeks commemorate as Ohi Day, and died in office while Greece was fighting Italy.
• 1879 – 1941 Frank Bridge (1879-1941) Died 10 January 1941, aged 61 Frank Bridge was an English composer and viola player whose later works are notably modernist. He was also the teacher of Benjamin Britten.
• 1882 – 1941 James Joyce (1882-1941) Died 13 January 1941, aged 58 The Irish novelist James Joyce wrote Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He died in Zurich after surgery for a perforated ulcer.
• 1882 – 1941 Virginia Woolf English modernist writer Woolf pioneered stream-of-consciousness writing and explored identity and time in modernist literature.
• 1903 – 1941 Amy Johnson (1903-1941) Died 5 January 1941, aged 37 Amy Johnson was an English aviator and the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia, in 1930. She died after ditching in the Thames Estuary while flying for the Air Transport Auxiliary.
• 1941 New Fourth Army Incident Nationalist troops ambush the Communist army Kuomintang forces surrounded and attacked the headquarters of the Communist New Fourth Army in southern Anhui. Thousands were killed or captured, and the Second United Front effectively collapsed.
• 1941 – 2010 Don Van Vliet (1941-2010) Died 17 December 2010, aged 69 Van Vliet, known by his stage name Captain Beefheart, was an American musician and artist whose avant-garde album Trout Mask Replica influenced generations of experimental rock musicians. He retired from music in the early 1980s to focus full-time on painting. He died of complications from multiple sclerosis.
• 1941 Battle of Ko Chang French navy defeats Thailand at sea A Vichy French naval squadron sank or disabled much of the Thai fleet off the island of Ko Chang in the Gulf of Thailand. Japanese mediation nonetheless gave Thailand territory in Laos and Cambodia.
• 1941 Subhas Chandra Bose escapes house arrest Indian nationalist leader flees British India Subhas Chandra Bose slipped out of his Calcutta home in disguise and travelled through Afghanistan to Germany. He later led the Indian National Army alongside Japan.
• 1941 – 2025 Dick Cheney (1941-2025) Died 3 November 2025, aged 84 American politician who was the 46th vice president of the United States and, earlier, secretary of defense. As vice president he wielded exceptional power and divided opinion sharply.