Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool on June 18, 1942. The son of a local cotton exchange worker and a midwife, he grew up in a typical working-class household where music and singing songs around the piano were standard.
In 1957, a chance meeting with John Lennon led to McCartney joining Lennon’s skiffle band, the Quarrymen, which—after several lineup changes and name changes—eventually morphed into the Beatles. The band exploded onto the international music scene in the early 1960s, eventually becoming the biggest band in rock and pop history.
Now in his early 80s, McCartney is still not slowing down, and he recently released his 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, to considerable critical acclaim. And as he celebrates his 84th birthday alongside its release, here are six more things that turn 84 years old this year.
- The Manhattan Project
- The Battle of Stalingrad
- The Battle of El Alamein
- The Battle of Midway
- The Fall of Singapore
- “White Christmas” Is Recorded
The Manhattan Project
Although the world’s first atomic bomb wouldn’t be detonated until 1945, the project that created it—named after the New York borough where its offices were housed—was formally established on August 13, 1942.
By that time, the United States was busy conducting its World War II Pacific campaign, pushing back island by island towards eastern Asia. Atomic weaponry had been on the cards for some time by then. The U.S. government was determined to win the race to create the first atomic bomb, and the Manhattan Project, overseen by Brigadier General Leslie Groves, was the driving force behind those efforts.
The Battle of Stalingrad
1942 marked the midpoint of World War II, so this year understandably saw several of the war’s most significant events occur, including the monumental Battle of Stalingrad.
One of the most decisive of all battles on the war’s European Eastern Front, this battle was instigated in the summer of 1942 when Nazi Germany made another effort at pushing east across Europe. They aimed to weaken Stalin’s Soviet Army, and by doing so, seize control of the strategically important oilfields of the Caucasus region.
Hitler himself, however, personally amended these aims to specifically include the capture and occupation of the Russian city of Stalingrad—Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s namesake (and now modern-day Volgograd). By October, the German campaign had largely been successful; Luftwaffe raids had reduced much of the city to rubble, and German forces had largely taken control.
The Soviets, however, maintained control of the Volga waterfront, where supplies could still reach their troops, and where a Russian fightback was organized. The result was a staggering reversal of Soviet fortunes, which eventually led to a Nazi surrender the following February.
The domino effect of the Battle of Stalingrad was monumental, and proved pivotal to the remainder of the war. With more than two million troops involved on both sides, nearly half a million German soldiers killed, and over a million estimated total casualties, Hitler was forced to pull back troops from his Western Front to bolster forces in the East, setting in motion Germany’s eventual defeat in 1945. The Battle of Stalingrad was the bloodiest and biggest battle of World War II, and remains perhaps the bloodiest battle in human history.
The Battle of El Alamein
While Germany and Russia were fighting the Battle of Stalingrad in the far north, down in Africa, the Axis armies of both Germany and Italy were gearing up for the climax of their North Africa campaign, the Second Battle of El Alamein.
Fought in Egypt in late October and early November, El Alamein saw chiefly British forces under the command of General Bernard Montgomery secure a crushing defeat over the Axis forces, thereby ending Hitler’s planned takeover of the Suez Canal and oil-rich Levant regions. German forces in North Africa surrendered the following year, effectively ending the Nazi campaign on the continent.
The Battle of Midway
On the other side of the world in June of 1942, meanwhile, American forces in the war’s Pacific Theater secured a similarly crushing defeat of Japan’s naval Combined Fleet at the Battle of Midway.
Fought from June 4 to 7, just over six months after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor the previous December, the Battle of Midway proved pivotal in securing American dominance of the Pacific. U.S. forces had previously cracked Japanese coded messages, and were therefore aware that an attack on the U.S. base on Midway Island was being planned.
As a result, when Japanese forces attacked the base on June 4, U.S. carrier forces were already in the region and ready to respond. Japan ultimately suffered immense losses in the battle, and in the aftermath had to reconfigure their entire Pacific campaign.
The Fall of Singapore
1942 may have seen a number of strategically significant Allied victories, but the year got off to a rather inauspicious start with the Fall of Singapore. The island of Singapore, at the tip of what is now the Malaysian mainland, was a major British base in southeast Asia by the early 1940s.
But when Japanese forces began moving down the Malay Peninsula toward the region, British forces wrongly believed the base to be impenetrable thanks to the terrain and dense jungle that surrounded it, and so the eventual Japanese attack on the island swiftly proved successful.
A mix of inexperienced troops, misguided orders, and surprise tactics from the Japanese eventually led to the island falling into Axis hands after a week of intense fighting on February 15. The entire event proved a bloody and brutal disaster for Britain, and gave Japan a strong foothold in the region.
“White Christmas” Is Recorded
1942 wasn’t all doom and gloom and wartime milestones, however. The year also saw several landmark cultural events, including the release of Casablanca and Bambi, the publication of Margaret Wise Brown’s classic The Runaway Bunny, and Paul Robeson’s groundbreaking multicultural production of Shakespeare’s Othello.
It was in this year too, though, that Bing Crosby recorded the iconic festive hit “White Christmas,” which went on to spend a staggering 11 weeks at the top of the Billboard charts (and eventually sold somewhere in the region of 50 million copies). Not bad for a song that reportedly took just 18 minutes to record!