Date in year · 1944 · The 1940s

June 20, 1944

On June 20, 1944, world War II: The Battle of the Philippine Sea concludes with a decisive U.S. naval victory. The lopsided naval air battle is also known as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot". Kathy Acker, Philip Jackson, James Heckman would arrive in the same year.

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Year

1944

1940s

Around 1944

The year in brief

1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1944th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 944th year of the 2nd millennium, the 44th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1940s decade.

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What happened

On June 20, 1944

  1. 1944 World War II: The Battle of the Philippine Sea concludes with a decisive U.S. naval victory. The lopsided naval air battle is also known as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".

    Major naval battle of World War II

    The Battle of the Philippine Sea was a major naval battle of World War II on 19–20 June 1944 that eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy's ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions. It took place during the United States' amphibious reconquest of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War. The battle was the last of five major "carrier-versus-carrier" engagements between American and Japanese naval forces, and pitted elements of the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet against ships and aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Mobile Fleet and nearby island garrisons.

  2. 1944 World War II: During the Continuation War, the Soviet Union demands unconditional surrender from Finland during the beginning of partially successful Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive. The Finnish government refuses.

    Finnish war against the Soviet Union (1941–44)

    The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet–Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 September 1944 with the Moscow Armistice. The Soviet Union and Finland had previously fought the Winter War from 1939 to 1940, which ended with the Soviet failure to conquer Finland and the Moscow Peace Treaty.

  3. 1944 The experimental MW 18014 V-2 rocket reaches an altitude of 176 km, becoming the first man-made object to reach outer space.

    1944 German rocket that entered space

    MW 18014 was a German A-4 test rocket launched on 20 June 1944, at the Peenemünde Army Research Center in Peenemünde. It was the first man-made object to reach outer space, attaining an apogee of 176 kilometres (109 mi), well above the Kármán line that was established later as the lowest altitude of space. As a vertical test launch that was not intended to reach orbital velocity, it returned and impacted Earth, making it the first sub-orbital spaceflight.

Elsewhere that year

Other moments from 1944

The class of 1944

Others born in 1944

Kathy Acker 1944– American author and poet (died 1997)
Philip Jackson 1944– Scottish sculptor and photographer
James Heckman 1944– American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
Bernie Worrell 1944– American keyboard player and songwriter (died 2016)
Monty Alexander 1944– Jamaican jazz pianist
Phillip Allen Sharp 1944– American molecular biologist; 1993 Nobel Prize laureate (Physiology or Medicine)

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