In November of 1940, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler acquired a powerful mystic weapon known as the Spear of Destiny. With it, he intended on manipulating its power to dominate all of Europe. A British officer named Smythe learned of Hitler's plans and informed American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt, pressured by Congress to maintain an isolationist stance, refused to openly involve the United States in England's war with Germany. Instead, he selected two "Mystery Men" from a top-secret dossier to use as civilian agents against Hitler's forces – the Flash and the Green Lantern. Jay would go to Midwestern University in Keystone City where he would double-major in chemistry and physics. An experiment he was working on during his junior year was to purify hard water without any residual radiation in a cyclotron. When a test tube of the hard water was accidentally spilled, the fumes knocked him out. His friend Elliot Shapiro dragged him from the lab. After a week of unconsciousness, during which Jay's metabolism increased and his body rejected nutrients, he discovered that he had been given superhuman speed by the accident, and he used this speed as the superhero, Flash.
