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Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, one of the most celebrated films of the century, premiered in 1941.

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Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941 drawing the United States into War

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A fungus destroyed rice crops outside of Bombay, India, spreading famine and killing 1.6 million people in 1942.

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A team of scientists working at Harvard University and funded in part by IBM constructed the first automatic, general purpose computer in 1944.

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In 1945, an estimated 6 million people died in Concentration camps at Auschwitz.

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World War II ended in 1945.  Total human casualties from the war exceeded 50 million people.

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In South Africa, racial apartheid was instituted in 1949.

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Birth control activist Margaret Sanger founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1948.

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43 year old psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Spock published The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care, forever changing Americans' thoughts about child care in 1943.

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Television began it's boom in 1948; close to one million households had television sets, compared to 5,000 in 1945.