The 1940s
1940
- Stout enrollment is 607.
- Defense training classes are taught by Floyd Keith and H.C. Milnes.
- F.D.R. elected to third term as president.
- Popular songs include "You Are My Sunshine."
1941
- Bell tower falls silent when parts of the striking mechanism wear out.
- Football team shares title with La Crosse.
- Bachelor's degree program in Vocational Education introduced.
- Students have the opportunity to study a new "flourescent lamp"
installed in a lab.
- A soft drink dispensing machine is installed in Lynwood Hall, possibly
the first on campus.
- Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.
- United States declares war on Germany, Italy, Japan.
- Joe DiMaggio hits safely in a record 56 consecutive games.
- Baseball player Lou Gehrig dies.
1942
- Fifty Stout junior and senior men called to train teachers at Rantoul
and at the Navy Pier in Chicago -- nearly 100 Stout people are on staff
at Chanute Field.
- Basketball team wins Northern Teacher's College Conference and NICA
tourney trip.
- Enrico Fermi splits the atom.
- Sugar and coffee rationing begins.
- The murder of millions of Jews in Nazi gas chambers begins.
- Disney produces "Bambi."
1943
- Stout enrollment drops to lowest figures since 1918 -- of 246 students,
only 42 are men.
- Students feel sting of United Mine Worker's strike when lack of coal
reduces lights to a minimum and cuts temperatures in classrooms and shops.
- Basketball team wins conference crown and AAU tourney berth.
- Supreme Court rules that children need not salute flag in school if
it violates their religion.
- Rationing begins in U.S.
- Rogers' and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" opens on Broadway.
1944
- Athlete's foot outbreak prompts front page notice in Stoutonia encouraging
students to refrain from going barefoot.
- Students request Spanish classes in view of warming relationships with
South American countries.
- D-Day -- troops land in Normandy on June 6.
- Cost of living in United States rises almost 30 percent.
- Aaron Copeland's "Appalachian Spring" danced by Martha Graham.
1945
- Louis Smith Tainter House added to the Stout Institute campus.
- World War II ends -- atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki leads
to Japanese surrender.
- F.D.R. dies and is succeeded by Harry Truman.
- League of Nations holds final meeting and turns over assets to United
Nations.
1946
- Stout Institute enrollment jumps from 342 in 1945 to 806 in 1946, causing
shortages in faculty, classrooms, equipment, student housing.
- Churchill delivers "Iron Curtain" speech.
- Eugene O'Neill writes "The Iceman Cometh."
- Irving Berlin produces "Annie Get Your Gun."
1947
- Stout Institute provides its first parking lot for staff and students.
- Baseball team earns conference title.
- India gains independence.
- "The Diary of Anne Frank" published.
- First U.S. airplane flies at supersonic speeds.
- Jackie Robinson becomes first black in major league baseball.
1948
- William Stout, son of James Huff Stout, attends ceremonies celebrating
the 100th anniversary of the founder's birth and Wisconsin's centennial.
- Evening shop classes relieve overcrowding.
- Gandhi assassinated.
- The Jewish state formed.
- Joe Louis retires from boxing after fighting 25 title bouts since 1937.
1949
- An on-campus fashion show touts orange as the fashion color of the year.
- Infirmary space runs short as students contract measles and chicken
pox.
- High winds in October cause moderate damage on campus.
- Harry Truman inaugurated president.
- Rodgers and Hammerstein produce "South Pacific."
