World War II shaped the culinary experiences of Japanese Americans in incarceration camps.

Known as the “Ace of Aces,” Major Richard Ira Bong is credited with the downing of an impressive confirmed total of 40 enemy aircraft.

General George S. Patton, Jr., one of America’s greatest battlefield commanders, died on December 21, 1945 in an Army hospital in Heidelberg, Germany.

On July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexican desert, releasing a level of destructive power unknown in the existence of humanity. Emitting as much energy as 21,000 tons of TNT and creating a fireball that measured roughly 2,000 feet in diameter, the first successful test of an atomic bomb, known as the Trinity Test, forever changed the history of the world.

Even as World War II in Europe officially ended in May 1945, bitter fighting erupted across Eastern Europe as local partisans fought the Soviet occupation.