1942

A classic arcade game released by Capcom in 1985, it was later ported to the Nintendo, and now has been revived for the Game Boy Color.

You play a fighter plane advancing on Tokyo in World War II.

Movement was in all directions, but the game would only advance as the screen slowly scrolled upwards. One button would shoot, and another would do a loop downwards to temporarily escape enemies.

Powerups included extra guns and loops. One would kill all enemies on the screen.

While a fun game, the end was truly awful. The word "Congratulations" was simply printed across the screen. Pressing start at this point would take you back to the main menu.

I shall return!

Douglas MacArthur, upon leaving the Philippines, March 30, 1942.

I want freedom immediately, this very night before dawn if it can be had....We shall free India or die in the attempt. We shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.

Mahatma Ghandi, speech promoting the Quit India Movement, August, 1942.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Winston Churchill, speech after the British victory at the second Battle of El Alamein, November 10, 1942.

In the year 1942...

• World War II rages across the globe. In the Pacific, Japan captures Malaysia and Singapore, invades Burma and Indonesia, defeats the last US forces in the Philippines, sending the captured prisoners on the Bataan Death March, and even bombs California and Australia, but the tide begins to turn when the US Navy checks the Japanese advance at the Battle of the Coral Sea and scores its first victory in the closely fought Battle of Midway. In the European theater, the Germans initiate the "Final Solution," beginning the extermination of the Jews now known to history as The Holocaust, but on the battlefields the once invincible German war machine meets defeat after defeat as Hitler calls off plans to invade England, signaling a British victory in the Battle of Britain, and German armies are turned back in Russia at the brutal Battle of Stalingrad. German forces are also checkmated in Africa when Erwin Rommel is defeated by the British at the Battle of El Alamein and US forces finally enter the European war by landing troops at Rommel's rear as part of Operation Torch.
• Mahatma Gandhi initiates the Quit India Movement, his final, and ultimately successful, drive to force the British out of India.
• US president Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, clearing the way for the Internment of Japanese-Americans.
• As part of the top secret Manhattan Project, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi successfully initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction underneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.
• A hurricane smashes Bombay, India, killing more than 40,000 in severe flooding.
• British social reformer William Beveridge presents "The Report to the Parliament on Social Insurance and Allied Services," better known as the Beveridge Report, to the British Parliament, laying out his vision for a British social services network that would serve as the basis of the postwar British Welfare State.
• The Grand Coulee Dam is completed on the Columbia River, becoming the largest dam in the world up to this time.
• Anne Frank begins writing in a diary she receives on her 13th birthday.
• Permanent Daylight Savings Time, called "War Time" by FDR, is initiated in the United States as a wartime energy-saving measure.
• The comic book Archie appears for the first time.
• Albert Camus publishes his existentialist classic, L'Etranger ("The Stranger").
• Isaac Asimov begins publishing the first stories in his "Foundation" series in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction.

These people were born in 1942:

• The Beatles' Paul McCartney.
• American actor Harrison Ford.
• British physicist Stephen Hawking.
• American boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
• American guitar immortal Jimi Hendrix.
• Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi.
• American author Michael Crichton.
• American film director Martin Scorsese.
• Lybian dictator Moammar Al Qadhafi.
• Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.
• German film director Werner Herzog.
• American football great Dick Butkus.
• American football great Roger Staubach.
• American folksinger Jim Croce.
• American soul singer Aretha Franklin.
• American country singer Tammy Wynette.
• American blues singer Taj Mahal.
• British commedian Terry Jones, best known as a member of Monty Python.
• Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan.
• American attorney general John Ashcroft.
• American politician and vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman.
• American serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
• American terrorist Theodore Kaczynski.
• American film critic Roger Ebert.
• Chilean author Isabel Allende.
• Legendary Russian weightlifter Vasily Alexeev.
• American pornographer and free speech advocate Larry Flynt.
• Portuguese author António Lobo Antunes.
• American humorist Garrison Keillor.

These people died in 1942:

• Chen Duxiu, co-founder and first Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party.
• American composer George M. Cohan.
• Sabina Spielrein, Russian-Jewish psychoanalytic theorist, patient of Jung and a friend of Freud, burned to death with her daughters by Nazi troops in the synagogue of her native Rostov.
• Hopi potter Iris Nampeyo.
• Italian-born silent film actress, model, photographer and secret agent Tina Modotti.
• American painter Grant Wood, best known for his inconic 1930 painting "American Gothic."
• Carmelite nun Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, executed by the Nazis at Auschwitz for her Jewish heritage, later made a Catholic saint in 1998 by Pope John Paul II.
• American actor John Barrymore.
• American novelist and children's author Rachel Field.
• British composer Benjamin Britten.

These films hit theaters in 1942:

• Casablanca
• Bambi
• Mrs. Miniver

1941 - 1942 - 1943

20th century