  Adolf Hitler comes to power in Germany   Germany invades Poland Starts WWII (1939-1945)   France falls to German invasion   Empire State Building is completed   The Richter Scale completed by seismologist Charles Richter   Precursor to first computer is outlined by Alan Turing   Xerography invented by Chester Carlson   Nation of Islam founded by Wallace Ford Muhammad   Aldous Huxley, Brave New World   Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer   Frank Lloyd Wright builds Falling Water, Bear Run, PA   Earnest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls   Walter Benjamin writes essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”   Walker Evans and others document America as part of New Deal   Laszlo Moholy-Nagy begins teaching at the School of Design, Chicago |   Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brings USA into WWII   India gains independence from Britain   First nuclear reactor built by Enrico Fermi   Microwave oven invented by Percy Spenser   The transistors is invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories   Citizen Kane is released in cinemas   John Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness   George Orwell, Animal Farm   Anti-Communist HUAC hearings in Hollywood   Matisse begins cut-paper collage technique   Jean Dubuffet causes scandal with exhibition at Galerie Rene Drouin   Alberto Giacometti holds his first post-war exhibition |   Korean War begins   Dwight Eisenhower becomes US president   Treaty of Rome establishes European Economic Union   Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba   Francis Crick and James Watson discover structure of DNA   Launch of Sputnik I, first artificial satellite   Theodore Maiman produces first laser   JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye   JRR Tolkein publishes Lord of the Rings (Vol I)   Jack Keroac, On the Road   Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita   The Independent Group begin meeting in London   Jasper Johns begins work on Flag   Hard-edged abstraction debuts in Los Angeles |   East German government builds Berlin Wall   John F. Kennedy assassinated. LB Johnson becomes US president   Malcolm X assassinated   Cultural Revolution begins in China   Six Day War. Israel defeats Egypt, Syria and Jordan   The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland   US troops invade Cambodia   Theodore Maiman produces first laser   Yuri Gagarin becomes first man in space   Broadcast of first transatlantic television signals via satellite   Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discover cosmic background radiation   Christiaan Barnard completes first successful heart transplant   Neil Armstrong becomes first man on moon   Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth   Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique   Roy Lichtenstein stages his first Pop art exhibition   Andy Warhol stages his first Pop art exhibition   ADonald Judd publishes essay “Specific Objects” Joseph Kosuth creates One and Three Chairs   Joseph Beuys performs How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare “The Responsive Eye” exhibition at MoMA   Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol   Survey of Conceptual art, “Information,” at MoMA, NY   Robert Smithson creates Spiral Jetty |