No longer needed, the Works Progress Administration came to an end.
Coming in an era of desperation, when Americans turned to the government instead of reviling it, many great projects were built by the WPA during its eight-year run.
The number of projects built in Wyoming alone is stunning. Every community has some, some of which they're so used to, that they were government projects is hardly recalled.
What is amazing, however, is that it took until 1943 for the Government to conclude that unemployment was now low enough to do away with the program.
The British 8th Army commenced the Moro River Campaign in Italy.
Yugoslav partisans, just recognized as a legitimate fighting force by the Allies, formed a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in exile with Communist lawyer Ivan Ribar appointed as head of state to serve at the war's end. An existing government in exile under King Peter already was functioning in the United Kingdom, but clear its days were coming to an end.
The Bolivian Congress ratified President Enrique Peñaranda's declaration of war against the Axis powers, which had occured six months earlier.
Seventy percent of wholesale and retail merchants in Bolivia were German operated, and this had resulted in fears that the declaration would create economic unrest. It did not, but it did lead to his overthrow. The Congress followed through nonetheless. Given the stretch of colonial empires, this meant that at this point in time a mere nine independent nations were not committed to one of the two warring sides.
Truly a world war.
The Japanese escort carrier Chūyō was sunk in the Pacific by the submarine USS Sailfish.
The USS Lexington was hit by an airborne torpedo off of the Gilberts just after midnight, resulting in "Tokyo Rose" reporting her sunk. The ship was damaged, but far from sunk. Repeated erroneous Japanese reports of her having been sunk lead to her being nicknamed "The Blue Ghost". She had been leaving for Kwajalein where a major U.S. Navy strike occured on this day.
