In 1940, World War II was already raging in Europe and east Asia.  France fell to the Nazi blitzkrieg that spring, and Japanese forces kept grinding away in China and Indonesia.  Great Britain was alone against Axis aggression, since the other two most powerful Allied nations in that war—the Soviet Union and the United States—wouldn’t join on Britain’s side until the next year.  The Soviets had made a pact with Germany, agreeing to split Poland between the two and to allow Soviet aggression to proceed unchecked against the Baltic states and Finland.  Germany wouldn’t betray its Soviet neighbor until the following June, so Josef Stalin was content to sit the war in Europe out.  His country had gotten what it wanted—he thought. In the United States, there was a sense that entering the war was somewhere between likely and inevitable.  There had been talk about American intervention against Nazi aggression since before the war broke out, but the wil...

Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, who started it all.  Maybe. According to legend, presidents elected during years ending in zero will die in office.  This did happen to a long string of American presidents who were elected in zero years, so it was widely attributed to the Curse of Tecumseh.  This Curse has its roots in the Battle of Tippecanoe, which took place in Indiana in 1811.  American forces were led by General William Henry Harrison, who were victorious over the Shawnee people and their allies in the war.  The allied peoples rallied together to stop American westward expansion following a shady treaty that Harrison had negotiated with Tecumseh, the leader of the Shawnee, before the war. Following the defeat, legend has it that Tecumseh’s brother, popularly known as The Prophet, put a curse on Harrison and all other presidents elected in years ending with the same digit as he was.  This seems unlikely, since the war ended in 1811, and Harri...