An Almost Warless Timeline of the 1940s Quiz

Born Lev Davidovich Brunstein in 1879, Leon Trotsky was one of the protagonists of the Russian Revolution of 1917. All his political clout, however, evaporated after Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, and Joseph Stalin's subsequent rise to power. In 1928, he was expelled from the Communist Party, and eventually exiled from the Soviet Union. After spending a few years in Turkey, France and Norway, in 1937 he settled in Mexico, where he devoted himself to writing as well as politics.

Stalin, however, had not forgotten about him. After two failed attempts to have Trotsky assassinated (March 1939 and May 1940), on 20 August 1940 Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born agent of the NKVD, the Soviet dictator's secret police, attacked Trotsky in his studio with an ice axe, though without killing him instantly. Trotsky survived his grievous wounds for more than one day, but was eventually overcome by shock and loss of blood. He was buried in the gardens of his house in Mexico City, which is now a museum. Mercader spent 19 years in a Mexican prison, but after his release was hailed as a Hero of the Soviet Union; he died in Cuba in 1978.

Directed and produced by Orson Welles (who also wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz and starred in the main role), "Citizen Kane" chronicles the life of Charles Foster Kane, a character based on a number of real-life people - notably media baron William Randolph Hearst. Kane's story is told mostly in a flashback while a reporter tries to discover the meaning of "Rosebud", the last word uttered by Kane before his death. The film also stars Joseph Cotten (as Kane's best friend), Dorothy Comingore (as Kane's mistress and second wife), and Agnes Moorehead (as Kane's mother).

Though often cited as one of the greatest films ever made (if not the greatest of them all), at the time of release "Citizen Kane" got a mixed reception after its release on 1 May 1941 in New York. While the majority of critics praised it, the movie was not equally well received at the box office, failing to recoup the costs. In addition, William Randolph Hearst tried to suppress the film, and engaged in a series of personal attacks on Welles. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, "Citizen Kane" only won one, Best Original Screenplay. The film's reevaluation began in the late 1950s, and in the following decades its status has grown to near-legendary proportions.

Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was forced to leave his native country by Mussolini's racial laws - which affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon, as well as many of his collaborators at the University of Rome. After receiving the Nobel Prize in December 1938, he and his family headed to New York and settled there. In the US Fermi continued his research into nuclear reaction, becoming involved with the Manhattan Project. Towards the end of 1942, he moved to Chicago, where the world's first artificial nuclear reactor - named Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) - was built under the bleachers of Stagg Field, at the University of Chicago.

On 2 December 1942, a team led by Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. This momentous event was communicated to President Franklin D. Roosevelt via a coded message, "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world". In 1944, Fermi joined J. Robert Oppenheimer's Los Alamos Laboratory, and was present at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945 - though the news of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left him somewhat troubled.

Sadly, like Marie Curie and other great scientists, Fermi sacrificed his health on the altar of scientific progress. Though he was aware of the risks of working near a nuclear reactor, he disregarded his personal safety in order to advance his research. Fermi died of stomach cancer in 1954, at the age of 53.

While Southeast and East Asia were being torn apart by WWII, in the Indian subcontinent another tragedy took place in 1943. One of a long series of anthropogenic (human-generated) famines in British India, the Bengal famine of 1943 can be indirectly laid at the war's door, as the Japanese conquest of Burma (Myanmar) in 1942 was instrumental in triggering the disaster. The massive influx of Burmese refugees into Bengal, whose economy - heavily dependent on rice cultivation - had already suffered the effects of a series of natural disasters, increased the demand for food and medical care. Burmese rice imports, on which the whole subcontinent relied, were cut off at a time when Bengal, India's main rice-growing region, was struggling.

This already critical situation was compounded by the British administration, which adopted a scorched-earth policy to forestall any hostile initiatives from the Japanese invaders. This involved destroying rice supplies deemed surplus, and blocking boat access to coastal areas accessible from the Bay of Bengal. Beginning at the end of 1942, the food crisis escalated to full-blown famine in just a few months - claiming the lives of at least 800,000 people out of a population of 60.3 million. The scholarly consensus is of 2.1 million deaths, though some sources report figures of nearly 4 million. Besides those who died of starvation, many lives were claimed by diseases such as malaria, cholera and smallpox.

The mismanagement of the crisis by the colonial British government - which, according to some historians, was motivated by racist attitudes towards the people of India - played a large role in strengthening the Indian independence movement.

The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference was held on 1-22 July 1944 at the Mount Washington Hotel, located in Bretton Woods (New Hampshire, USA) - hence the name by which the conference is commonly known. Attended by 730 delegates from all 44 allied nations, the conference was organized to establish an international monetary and financial system that would encourage collaboration among participating countries after the end of WWII - with a view to preventing the difficulties that had plagued the 21 years between the two global conflicts.

During the conference, a number of agreements were signed, which would be later ratified by the governments of the member countries. These agreements led to the establishment of two important institutions - the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD - now part of the World Bank group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The creation of the Bretton Woods system introduced new rules for commercial relations among the US, Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and another 44 countries. The IMF's role was to monitor currency exchange rates and act as a lender of last resort to national governments.

Though, strictly speaking, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was not the very first electronic computer ever built, it was the first that had all of the features that we now associate with computers - being a programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital machine. ENIAC was designed at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering by physicist John Mauchly and electrical engineer J. Presper Eckert, with the original purpose of calculating artillery firing tables for the US Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory.

Dubbed "the Giant Brain" by the press, the huge machine - which was about 2 m (8 ft) tall, occupied 28 m˛ (300 sq ft), and weighed 27 tons (30 short tons) - was composed of individual panels that performed different functions. ENIAC was first put to work on 10 December 1945, and formally dedicated on 15 February 1946; it was in operation at the University of Pennsylvania until 1955. One of the first operations it performed was to calculate thermonuclear reactions to support research on the hydrogen bomb. Various parts of ENIAC are now held by a number of international institutions.

The referendum held in Italy on 2 June 1946 was decreed by Prince Umberto of Savoy, the heir to the Italian throne, on 16 March of the same year, and was organized at the same time as the election of a constituent assembly. A month before the vote, King Victor Emmanuel III - who had stood by while Benito Mussolini seized power in 1922 - abdicated in favour of his son. Umberto II, nicknamed "the May King", ruled for only one month, as the referendum rejected the monarchy, though not by a huge margin. Most of Northern and Central Italy voted in favour of the republic, while the South (notably the city and the province of Naples) went overwhelmingly for the monarchy. Sadly, the days following the referendum were marred by clashes between monarchists and republicans, which claimed a number of lives. To avoid further unrest, Umberto II left Italy on 13 June, and went into exile in Portugal. He died in 1983, without ever setting foot in his native country again.

The importance of 2 June 1946 in the recent history of Italy cannot be overstated. Not only were Italians called to choose the form of government they wanted the country to have after the devastation of WWII, but the day marked the very first time in which all citizens over the age of 21 were allowed to vote. Since 1947, the birth of the Italian Republic has been celebrated on 2 June, which is also a public holiday.

Born in 1923, Charles Elwood Yaeger began his military career in 1941, when he became an aircraft mechanic for the Army Air Forces. The following year, he entered pilot training, and was soon promoted to the rank of flight officer. On 12 October 1944, he attained the status of "ace in a day" by shooting down five enemy aircraft in a single mission. After the end of WWII, Yaeger became a test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a federal agency founded in 1915 to promote aeronautical research. At the age of 24, Yeager was selected to fly the rocket-powered Bell XS-1 as part of a NACA programme that researched high-speed flight.

On 14 October 1947, despite the pain of two ribs broken in a fall from a horse, Yeager piloted the plane - named "Glamorous Glennis" for his wife - and broke the sound barrier, flying at Mach 1.05 over the Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. The following year, Yaeger was awarded two prestigious aviation awards, the Mackay Trophy and the Collier Trophy. He went on to a successful career as an officer of the US Air Force, reaching the rank of Brigadier General in 1969, a few years before retiring. Chuck Yeager died in 2020, at the age of 97. The Bell XS-1 is now on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

The 14th Summer Olympic Games took place in London from 29 July to 14 August 1948. The international multi-sport event had been held in abeyance for 12 years. The 1936 edition, held in Berlin, was used by Adolf Hitler to promote the Nazi regime, while the 1940 edition - scheduled for Tokyo, and then for Helsinki - was cancelled after the outbreak of WWII in September 1939. In the original planning, London was due to host the 1944 Games, which were also cancelled along with the 5th Winter Olympics, due to be held in Cortina d'Ampezzo (Italy). Though neither the 1940 nor the 1944 Games happened, they are still counted as the 12th and 13th editions of the event.

London was awarded the 1944 Games in 1939. The UK capital had already hosted the Summer Olympics in 1908, and would host them for a third time in 2012. The 1948 Olympics became known as the "Austerity Games", as the rationing of food and fuel was still in force, and no new venues or accommodations were built - using instead structures that were already available (such as Wembley Stadium, built in the 1920s). In spite of that, the event was attended by a record 59 nations, for a total of 4,104 athletes competing in 19 disciplines. Germany and Japan were not invited (while Italy was, because of its defection from the Axis after Mussolini's deposition); the URSS, on the other hand, sent observers instead of athletes in order to prepare for the 1952 Games in Helsinki.

Probably the most famous of the many dystopian novels written in the 20th century, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was published on 8 June 1949. It was George Orwell's ninth book, the last he completed in his lifetime: he died of tuberculosis just a few months later, on 21 January 1950, at the age of 46. Orwell wrote most of the novel on the island of Jura, in the Inner Hebrides, despite his rapidly worsening condition. His nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society dominated by the all-seeing eye of "Big Brother" was based on Stalinist Russia (which had also inspired "Animal Farm") and Nazi Germany, though the former was definitely more relevant to Orwell, a staunch supporter of democratic socialism, who saw Stalinism as a betrayal of left-wing ideals. The novel also contains references to life in wartime Britain.

Critically acclaimed upon its release, in the following decades "Nineteen Eighty-Four" has cemented its status as a classic of English-language literature, inspiring a wide range of adaptations in different media. Its cultural impact has been considerable, especially in recent times, when issues related to surveillance (both by governments and private entities) have become extremely urgent. The novel has also influenced the English language, in particular by introducing words modeled on "doublethink" (such as "groupthink") or "Newspeak" (such as "mediaspeak").