Germany launches the first V2 rocket on London, over the next six months Germany launched 1,400 at Britain ending in March 1945. At the end of world war II both the US and the Soviet Union tried to gain as many V2's and more importantly the scientists who had worked on them, there is a V2 on display in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington alongside a Saturn rocket. The V2 rocket is the base of the early space rockets and inter ballistic rockets with the three main components needed for a rocket, large liquid-fuel rocket engines, supersonic aerodynamics, and guidance and control systems developed for the V2.

Statistical evidence linking heavy smoking with heart disease was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Drs. Daniel J Nathan and Dr. David M. Spain had studed 3,000 men. They found that for smokers of over 40 cigarettes daily and aged under 51 years, their chance of having coronary heart disease almost doubled. Further, among those studied that had coronary heart disease, 57% of heavy smokers suffered heart attacks, as compared to only 31% of light smokers. The doctors said it remained an "open question" whether the statistics were proof that heavy smoking was a cause of hardening of coronary arteries. Only a four-sentence article on page 3 appeared in the New York Times.