Date in year · 1939 · The 1930s

December 12, 1939

On December 12, 1939, hMS Duchess sinks after a collision with HMS Barham off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 124 men. Clay Shaw, Ali Khamenei, Karel Gott would arrive in the same year.

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Year

1939

1930s

Around 1939

The year in brief

1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1939th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 939th year of the 2nd millennium, the 39th year of the 20th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1930s decade.

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What happened

On December 12, 1939

  1. 1939 HMS Duchess sinks after a collision with HMS Barham off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 124 men.

    British D-class destroyer

    HMS Duchess was a D-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the early 1930s. The ship was initially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet before she was transferred to the China Station in early 1935. She was temporarily deployed in the Red Sea during late 1935 during the Abyssinia Crisis, before returning to her duty station where she remained until mid-1939.

  2. 1939 Winter War: The Battle of Tolvajärvi, also known as the first major Finnish victory in the Winter War, begins.

    1939–1940 war between the Soviet Union and Finland

    The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway.

Elsewhere that year

Other moments from 1939

The class of 1939

Others born in 1939

Clay Shaw 1939– American accountant, judge, and politician (died 2013)
Ali Khamenei 1939– Supreme Leader of Iran (died 2026)
Karel Gott 1939– Czech singer-songwriter and actor (died 2019)
George Edgar Slusser 1939– American scholar and author (died 2014)
Louis Andriessen 1939– Dutch pianist and composer (died 2021)
Yuli Turovsky 1939– Russian-Canadian cellist, conductor and educator (died 2013)

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