The 1939 Ice Hockey World Championships were held between February 3 and February 12, 1939 in Zürich and Basel, Switzerland. The fourteen teams participating in the 1939 World Championship were initially divided into four preliminary groups: two groups of four and two groups of three. The top two teams in each group advanced to the second round. The eight teams in the second round played in two groups of four, with the top two from each group advancing to the third (final) round. The six teams not advancing to the second round played a consolation round in two groups of 3 teams with the winners of each group playing a one game play-off for 9th place. The four teams not advancing from the second round played a consolation round for placed 5 through 8.
Canada won its eleventh world championship title while the host, Switzerland, won its third European championship. Switzerland and Czechoslovakia both earned one point in the final round but Switzerland won a one-game playoff (and thus the European Championship) after the World Championships were completed.
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or ice:
“But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself no cost,
No past, no people else at all
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)