1941
Events
January-February
March
April
May
June
July-August
September-October
November
December
unknown dates
Ongoing events
Year in topic
- 1941 in film
- 1941 in literature
- 1941 in music
- 1941 in sports
- May 15 - Joe DiMaggio starts his record-breaking 56-game hitting streak.
- One of the greatest race horses of his time, Epinard, was taken during the German occupation of France and used as a delivery wagon horse.
- 1941 in television
- April 30 - The FCC approves the NTSC standards of 525 lines and 30 frames per second, and authorizes commercial TV to begin on July 1.
- May 2 - 10 television stations were granted commercial TV licenses (effective July 1). These stations were required to broadcast 15 hours per week. Bulova Watch Co., Sun Oil Co., Lever Bros. Co. and Procter & Gamble sign on as sponsors of the first commercial telecasts from WNBT in New York.
- July 1 - Commercial TV authorized by the FCC.
- July 1 - Ralph Edwards hosted the first game show broadcast on television, Truth Or Consequences, simulcast on radio and TV and sponsored by Ivory Soap. The first legal TV commercial in the United States for Bulova watches occurs at 2:29, superimposed over a test pattern.
Births
January
- January 3 - Van Dyke Parks, musician, composer
- January 4 - Henri Bergson, writer
- January 5 - Miyazaki Hayao, Japanese film maker
- January 5 - Grady Thomas, singer (P-Funk)
- January 8 - Graham Chapman, comedian
- January 14 - Faye Dunaway, actress
- January 14 - Milan Kučan, Slovene politician, statesman
- January 15 - Captain Beefheart, singer
- January 18 - David Ruffin, singer (d. 1991)
- January 21 - Richie Havens, musician
- January 21 - Plácido Domingo, opera singer
- January 26 - Henry Jaglom, director
- January 26 - Scott Glenn, actor
- January 30 - Richard B. "Dick" Cheney, politician
- January 31 - Richard A. "Dick" Gephardt, American politician
February-March
- February 5 - Kaspar Villiger, former member of the Swiss Federal Council
- February 8 - Nick Nolte, actor
- February 10 - Michael Apted, director
- February 11 - Glenn Randall Jr, stuntman
- February 11 - Jeremy Mackenzie, general
- February 13 - Sigmar Polke, painter
- February 17 - Julia McKenzie, actress
- February 17 - Gene Pitney, singer
- February 20 - Buffy Sainte-Marie, singer
- February 27 - Paddy Ashdown, British politician
- March 3 - Jutta Hoffmann, actress
- March 4 - Adrian Lyne, director
- March 6 - Willie Stargell, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 2001)
- March 14 - Wolfgang Petersen, director, Das Boot
- March 15 - Mike Love, musician ("The Beach Boys")
- March 16 - Bernardo Bertolucci, film director
- March 18 - Wilson Pickett, singer
- March 26 - Richard Dawkins, British scientist
- March 30 - Wasim Sajjad, former President of Pakistan
April-December
- April 6 - Hans W. Geissendörfer, German film director
- April 14 - Pete Rose, baseball star
- April 23 - Paavo Lipponen, Prime Minister of Finland
- May 13 - Ritchie Valens, singer (d. 1959)
- May 13 - Senta Berger, actress
- May 15 - K.T. Oslin, country musician
- May 19 - Nora Ephron, screenwriter
- May 24 - Bob Dylan, US poet and musician
- June 5 - Martha Argerich, Argentinian pianist
- June 5 - Spalding Gray, actor, screenwriter, and monologue artist (d. 2004)
- June 27 - Krzysztof Kieslowski, film director
- July 14 - Maulana Karenga, author & activist
- July 31 - Amarsinh Chaudhary, politician
- August 22 - Bill Parcells, NFL coach
- September 4 - Sushilkumar Shinde, Indian politician
- September 9 - Otis Redding, musician (d. 1967)
- September 9 - Dennis Ritchie, computer scientist
- September 19 - Cass Elliott, singer (d. 1974)
- October 4 - Anne Rice, horror/fantasy writer
- October 5 - Eduardo Duhalde former president of Argentina
- November 29 - Bill Freehan, baseball player
- December 18 - His Royal Highness Prince William of Gloucester
- December 23 - Tim Hardin, musician
- December 30 - Mel Renfro, Pro Football Hall of Famer
unknown dates
Deaths
- January 4 - Henri Bergson, French philiosopher
- January 5 - Amy Johnson, aviator
- January 8 - Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of Scouting
- January 10 - Joe Penner, comedian, actor
- January 13 - James Joyce, writer
- February 11 - Rudolf Hilferding, German economist, Minister of Finance
- February 28 - King Alfonso XIII of Spain
- March 6 - Gutzon Borglum, sculptor
- March 8 - Sherwood Anderson, author
- March 15 - Alexej von Jawlensky, Russian impressionist painter
- March 28 - Virginia Woolf, writer
- April 13 - Annie Jump Cannon, astronomer (b. 1863)
- June 2 - Lou Gehrig, baseball legend (b. 1903)
- June 6 - Louis Chevrolet, automobile builder
- July 10 - Jelly Roll Morton - jazz musician & composer (b. 1890)
- July 11 - Arthur Evans, archaeologist
- July 26 - Henri Lebesgue, mathematician
- August 31 - Marina Tsvetaeva, Russian poet (suicide)
- August 7 - Rabindranath Tagore, author
- August 13 - James Stuart Blackton, American film producer of the Silent Era
- September 13 - Elias Disney, American farmer and father of Walt Disney.
- November 18 - Chris Watson, third Prime Minister of Australia
- December 3 - Christian Sinding, composer
1941 is also the title of a Steven Spielberg movie made in 1979 see 1941 (film).