March 28 – American adventurer Richard Halliburton delivers a last message from a Chinese junk, before he disappears on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
June 4 – The SS St. Louis, a ship carrying a cargo of 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida after already having been turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, many of the passengers later die in Nazideath camps during the Holocaust.
June 7 – British King George IV and Queen Elizabeth cross the Canadian border into the United States being the first reigning British monarch to visit the United States.[4]
June 10 – MGM's first successful animated character, Barney Bear, makes his debut in The Bear That Couldn't Sleep. However, it is not until 1942 that his name is adopted.
July 4 – Lou Gehrig gives his "Farewell to Baseball" speech at Yankee Stadium. In it, he says, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
August 15 – MGM's classic color musical film The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum's famous novel, and starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. On August 25 it is released in movie theaters throughout the United States.
September 3 – World War II: SS Athenia, a British ocean liner is torpedoed by a German submarine off the Irish coast with 30 Americans onboard dying.[7]
September 5 – World War II: The United States declares its neutrality in the war.[8]
September 29 – Gerald J. Cox, speaking at an American Water Works Association meeting, becomes the first person to publicly propose the fluoridation of public water supplies in the United States.
November 4 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act of 1939 into law.[7] The arms embargo previously put into place by the Neutrality Act of 1937 is lifted and put any trade with nations engaged in war under cash-and-carry grounds.[8] American ships and planes are prohibited as part of the Act from visiting any belligerent state in a war along with transporting anything.[9]
November 6 – Hedda Hopper's Hollywood debuts on radio with Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as host (the show runs until 1951, making Hopper a powerful figure in the Hollywood elite).
^Focus Midwest. FOCUS/Midwest Publishing Company. 1974. p. 27.
^Clifton J., Philips (1971). "Fearn, Anne Walter". In James, Edward T. (ed.). Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1. p. 603. ISBN978-0-67462-734-5.