Timeline April 1942

Events in April 1942 8

• 1870 – 1942 Jean Perrin (1870-1942) Died 17 April 1942, aged 71 Jean Perrin was a French physicist whose experiments on Brownian motion confirmed that atoms and molecules exist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 and helped found the CNRS. He fled occupied France and died in New York.
• 1874 – 1942 Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) Died 24 April 1942, aged 67 Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908, and its sequels. Her books, set on Prince Edward Island, have been translated into dozens of languages. She died in Toronto.
• 1880 – 1942 Robert Musil (1880-1942) Died 15 April 1942, aged 61 Robert Musil was an Austrian writer best known for his unfinished modernist novel The Man Without Qualities. He left Austria after the Anschluss and lived in exile in Switzerland. He died in poverty in Geneva.
• 1942 Heisenberg is made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics The army hands the institute back to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society The project turned from weapons toward a reactor, and kept its war-important status.
• 1942 Fall of Bataan and the Bataan Death March Captured US and Filipino troops forced on a brutal march About 75,000 American and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula surrendered to Japan on 9 April. The prisoners were forced to march roughly 100 km to prison camps, with little food or water. Thousands died from beatings, executions, disease and exhaustion.
• 1942 – 2006 Ken Lay (1942-2006) Died 5 July 2006, aged 64 Kenneth Lay, founder and former chairman of Enron, died of a heart attack at his home in Colorado weeks before his scheduled sentencing. He had been convicted of fraud and conspiracy over the company's 2001 collapse. His conviction was later vacated because he died before sentencing.
• 1942 Doolittle Raid First American air raid on the Japanese home islands Sixteen B-25 bombers led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle took off from the carrier USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The damage was slight, but the raid lifted American morale. It also pushed Japan to attack Midway.
• 1942 – 1970 Jochen Rindt Posthumous Champion The only driver to be awarded the World Championship posthumously after a fatal accident at Monza.