Timeline 1950
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1950 Jan 3, Bart (Clair Barth) Johnson baseball, was born.: pitcher: Chicago White Sox.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1950 Jan 3, Rick MacLeish, hockey player, was born: London Nationals, Oklahoma City Blazers, Philadelphia Flyers, Hartford Whalers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit Red Wings.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1950 Jan 3, Victoria Principal, actress, was born: Dallas, Fantasy Island, Scott Turow’s The Burden of Proof, Naked Lie, Blind Witness, Mistress, Pleasure Palace, Earthquake, Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1950 Jan 5, Carson McCuller's "Member of the Wedding," premiered in NYC.
(www.carson-mccullers.com/mccullers/timeline.htm)
1950 Jan 6, Britain recognized the Communist government of China.
(AP, 1/6/00)
1950 Jan 6, Isaiah Bowman (b.1878), Canadian-born geographer, died in Baltimore, Md. He served as the director of the American Geographical Society 1916-1935 and then became president of John Hopkins Univ.
(www.bookrags.com/biography-isaiah-bowman/index.html)
1950 Jan 8, Joseph A. Schumpeter (b.1883), Austrian-German-American economist, died in Connecticut. In 1911 while teaching at Czernowitz (now in the Ukraine), he wrote his “Theory of Economic Development," where he first outlined his famous theory of entrepreneurship. In 1942 he published his fifth book "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy." In 2007 Thomas K. McCraw authored “Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction."
(WSJ, 4/5/07, p.D7)(Econ, 4/28/07, p.94)
1950 Jan 12, Sec. of State Dean Acheson in a speech placed South Korea and Formosa outside the US defense perimeter in Asia. Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, and the Aleutians were inside the perimeter to be defended.
(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.W8)(http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/acheson.html)
1950 Jan 14, US recalled all consular officials from China.
(www.tibetjustice.org/reports/chron.html)
1950 Jan 14, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).
(www.sparknotes.com/history/american/koreanwar/timeline.html)
1950 Jan 17, In Boston 11 men robbed the Brink's office of $1.2M cash & $1.5M securities. The 1978 film "The Brink’s Job" starred Peter Falk and Peter Boyle. It was based on the nonfiction book "The Big Stick-Up at Brink’s" by Noel Behn.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Brinks_Robbery)
1950 Jan 19, Communist Chinese leader Mao recognized the Republic of Vietnam.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1950 Jan 21, Former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty in New York of lying to a grand jury. Hiss, who always maintained his innocence, was sentenced to five years in prison; he served less than four.
(AP, 1/21/00)
1950 Jan 21, George Orwell (46), author, died in London of tuberculosis. His books included Down and Out in Paris and London" (1933) and "1984." William Abrahams (d.1998), editor and novelist, co-authored the 2-volume biography of Orwell: "Life, Death and Art in the Second World War," and "Journey to the Frontier" with Peter Stansky. In 2000 Jeffrey Meyers authored the biography "Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation." Orwell married Sonia Brownell (1918-1980) on his deathbed. In 2003 Hilary Spurling authored "The Gril from the Fiction Department," a biography of Sonia Orwell. In 2003 D.J. Taylor authored "Orwell : The Life."
(AP, 1/21/98)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.D7)(SFC, 6/25/98, p.B12)(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.W10)(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.M2)
1950 Jan 23, The Israeli Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)(AP, 1/23/98)(HN, 1/23/99)
1950 Jan 24, Jackie Robinson signed highest contract ($35,000) in Dodger history.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/R/Robinson_Jackie.stm)
1950 Jan 26, India officially proclaimed itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president.
(AP, 1/26/98)
1950 Jan 29, Ann Jillian, actress (Mr. Mom, Jennifer Slept Here), was born in Cambridge, Mass.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0422713/)
1950 Jan 29, Riots broke out in Johannesburg, South Africa, over Apartheid.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1950 Jan 29, The French National Assembly approved legislation granting autonomy to Bao Dai's State of Vietnam.
(www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html)
1950 Jan 31, President Truman announced that he had ordered full-speed development of the hydrogen bomb.
(TMC, 1994, p.1950)(AP, 1/31/98)
1950 Jan 31, Paris protested the Soviet recognition of Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1950 Jan, The Federal Hourly Minimum Wage was set at $0.75 an hour.
(http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/blminwage.htm)
1950 Feb 2, Nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs was arrested on spy charges. The Klaus Fuchs (d.1988) confession revealed that the Soviet Union obtained the atomic bomb from sources within the Manhattan Project. It was later revealed that Theodore Alvin Hall, a scientist on the project, passed information to the Soviets. The story is told in the 1997 book: "Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Spy Conspiracy" by Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel. Fuchs served 9 ½ years in a British prison. Ruth Werner (d.2000) served as a contact for Fuchs in Britain.
(http://tinyurl.com/kjpk5)(WSJ, 10/20/97, p.A19)(SFEC, 12/21/97, BR p.7)(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A23)
1950 Feb 3, Morgan Fairchild, [Patsy McClenny], actress (Falcon Crest), born in Dallas, Tx.
(en.wikipedia org/wiki/Morgan_Fairchild))
1950 Feb 3, The song "Rag Mop" by The Ames Brothers hit #1.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_in_music)
1950 Feb 6, Natalie Cole, vocalist (Pink Cadillac, Miss You Like Crazy, Mona Lisa), was born in LA, Calif.
(www.smoothjazznow.com/birthdays_feb_dates.htm)
1950 Feb 7, The United States recognized Vietnam under the leadership of Emperor Bao Dai, not Ho Chi Minh who was recognized by the Soviets.
(HN, 2/7/99)
1950 Feb 9, In a speech at the Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, W. Va., Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., charged the State Department was riddled with Communists and that he had a list of them. He asserted that Sec. of State Dean Acheson knew this and refused to do anything about it. McCarthy said there were 205 communists working in the US State Dept.
(AP, 2/9/99)(WSJ, 12/6/99, p.A32)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.A26)(WSJ, 5/12/98, p.A20)
1950 Feb 10, Mark Spitz, Modesto Calif, swimmer (Oly-9 gold/silver/bronze-68,72), was born.
(www.thisdaythatyear.com/feb/people10.htm)
1950 Feb 12, Albert Einstein warned against the hydrogen bomb on US national TV.
(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/eins-s03.shtml)
1950 Feb 13, A US Air Force B-36 crashed near the coast of northern British Columbia during a simulated nuclear attack on San Francisco. 12 of 17 men on board survived. A Mark 4 bomb, which lacked a plutonium core needed for a nuclear blast, was dropped over the ocean before the plane crashed.
(SFC, 5/25/12, p.A16)(www.air-and-space.com/b-36%20wrecks.htm#44-92075)
1950 Feb 13, Albania recognized Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese government, becoming the sixth Eastern bloc country to do so.
(HN, 2/13/98)
1950 Feb 15, WM Inge's "Come Back, Little Sheba," premiered in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=1867)
1950 Feb 15, Walt Disney's animated "Cinderella" was released.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0042332/)(WSJ, 6/28/08, p.W6)
1950 Feb 15, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung signed a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1950 Feb 17, In New York 31 people died in a train crash at Long Island’s Rockville Center.
(www.emergency-management.net/pass_train.htm)
1950 Feb 18, John Hughes, director (Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Weird Science), was born in Lansing, Mich.
(http://movies.yahoo.com)
1950 Feb 20, Welsh author-poet Dylan Thomas arrived in NYC for his 1st US poetry reading tour.
(www.swansea.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2488&articleaction=print)
1950 Feb 21, The United States formally broke relations with Bulgaria.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1950 Feb 23, New York’s Metropolitan Museum exhibited a collection of Hapsburg art. It was the first showing of this collection in the U.S.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1950 Feb 25, The comedy-variety program "Your Show of Shows," starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and, later, Howard Morris, debuted on NBC-TV. The show’s writers included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon & Woody Allen.
(AP, 2/25/00)(www.abilene2000.com/moments/mom0225k.html)
1950 Feb 25, George Richards Minot (b.1885), physician (Nobel-1934), died.
(WUD, 1994 p.913)(Internet)
1950 Feb 25, In Czechoslovakia Josef Toufar (b.1902), a Catholic priest was tortured to death by investigators after the secret police claimed he staged a fake miracle in his church in Cihost where a cross began to move for no obvious reason during a Mass.
(www.multilingualarchive.com/ma/dewiki/en/Josef_Toufar)
1950 Feb 26, Leonard Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" premiered in NYC.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1950 Feb 26, Harry Lauder (b.1870), notable Scottish entertainer, died. He was, at one time, the highest-paid performer in the world, making the equivalent of £12,700 a night plus expenses, and was the first British performer to sell more than a million records.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lauder)
1950 Feb 28, The French Assembly in Paris decided to limit the sale of Coca-Cola.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1950 Feb, Frank McNamara paid for a meal at Major’s Cabin Grill in NYC with his newly invented Diners Club card. The cardboard card was the first charge card that could be used at multiple establishments.
(WSJ, 2/5/99, p.A1)(Econ, 12/10/05, p.88)
1950 Feb, The Viet Minh began an offensive against French troops in Indo China.
(http://tinyurl.com/zho2c)
1950 Mar 1, Chiang Kai-shek resumed the presidency of Nationalist China in Taipei.
(www.taiwan.com.au/Polieco/Symbols/report07.html)
1950 Mar 1, Klaus Fuchs was sentenced in London to 14 years for atomic espionage.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1950 Mar 1, Kim Soo-im (b.1911), a former US-employed assistant and lover to provost marshal Col. John E. Baird, was arrested by South Korean police, joining thousands of others ensnared in President Syngman Rhee's roundups of leftists — workers and writers, teachers, peasants and others with suspect politics. She was soon tried and executed in June by South Korea as an alleged spy.
(AP, 8/17/08)
1950 Mar 1, USSR issued golden rubles.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1950 Mar 2, Karen Carpenter was born. (drummer, singer: Grammy Award-winning group: The Carpenters: Best New Artist, Group w/Vocal: Close to You [1970], We've Only Just Begun, Top of the World, Please Mr. Postman)
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)
1950 Mar 2, Silly Putty was introduced to the public. Silly Putty was accidentally invented in 1943 by James Wright of General Electric.
(www.sillyputty.com/silly_science/silly_science.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/zwree)
1950 Mar 5, Edgar Lee Masters (b.1868), poet (Spoon River Anthology), novelist, died in Philadelphia.
(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3088)
1950 Mar 8, Marshall Voroshilov of the USSR announced the Soviet Union had developed an atomic bomb. [see August 29, 1949]
(PC, 1992 ed, p.922)
1950 Mar 9, Space Patrol debuted as a local, 15-minute show that aired live five days a week in Los Angeles and ran to 1955. Norman Jolley (d.2002), evil Agent X, acted in the series and wrote scripts. Ed Kemmer (1921-2004) played Commander Buzz Corry. Joanne Jordan played the evil Queen Mirtha. In 2005 Jean-Noel Bassior authored “Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the name of Early Television."
(SFC, 8/23/02, p.A27)(SFC, 11/17/04, p.B8)(SFC, 10/17/08, p.B8)(SFC, 9/25/09, p.D10)
1950 Mar 9, Willie Sutton robbed the NYC Manufacturers Bank of $64,000.
(www.astorialic.org/topics/timeline/1950.shtml)
1950 Mar 11, Jerry Zucker, film director and TV producer, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0958387/)
1950 Mar 14, The FBI began its "10 Most Wanted" list after a reporter asked for the names and descriptions of the "toughest guys" the FBI would like to capture.
(SFEC, 4/30/00, Par p.4)
1950 Mar 15, "Consul" opened at Barrymore Theater in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/venue.asp?ID=1147)
1950 Mar 16, Acheson called for a seven-point cooperation plan with the Russians.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1950 Mar 17, Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced they had created a new radioactive element, which they named "californium."
(AP, 3/17/97)
1950 Mar 18, Nationalist troops landed on the mainland of China and captured Communist held Sungmen.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1950 Mar 19, Edgar Rice Burroughs (74), sci-fi author and the creator of Tarzan, died. He wrote 24 Tarzan novels and 50 other thrillers. In 1999 John Taliaferro authored the biography "Tarzan Forever."
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Par p.8)(http://deadpool.rotten.com/occupations/author.html)
1950 Mar 20, The government of Poland decided to confiscate the property of Polish church.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950)
1950 Mar 22, A one-page memo was addressed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Guy Hottel, then head of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office. It relayed some information from an informant. The subject: FLYING SAUCERS INFORMATION CONCERNING: "An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots." The file was released in April 2011 under the Freedom of Information Act. The memo is dated nearly three years after the infamous events in Roswell in July 1947.
(http://tinyurl.com/cwg4uwp)
1950 Mar 23, At the Academy Awards, "All the King's Men" won best picture of 1949; its star, Broderick Crawford, won best actor. Olivia de Havilland won best actress for "The Heiress."
(AP, 3/23/00)
1950 Mar 23, "Great to Be Alive" opened at Winter Garden Theater in NYC for 52 performances.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1950 Mar 23, UN World Meteorological Organization was established.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1950 Mar 23, Sophocles Venizelos formed liberal Greeks government.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1950 Mar 26, Senator Joe McCarthy named Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1950 Mar 27, Maria Ewing, opera singer, was born in Detroit, Mich.
(http://classicalmanac.blogspot.com/2006/03/march-27.html)
1950 Mar 30, President Truman denounced Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1950 Mar 30, Phototransistor invention was announced in Murray Hill, NJ. It was invented by Dr. John Northrup Shive of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
(http://tinyurl.com/ewxqh)
1950 Apr 1, The SF population was 775,357. The census later said 4 of 10 people in SF owned their own homes with a median value of $11,930. The average SF adult completed 11.7 years of school and over 19% went on to college.
(SFC, 12/28/01, WB p.G7)(SFC, 1/31/03, p.E4)
1950 Apr 1, Charles R. Drew (45), surgeon, developer of blood bank concept, died.
(http://wa.essortment.com/whoischarlesr_rkbb.htm)
1950 Apr 3, Kurt Julian Weill (50), German composer (Dreigroschenoper), died. His best known work is the music for "The Threepenny Opera." His work also included "Der Jasager." He was married to the singer Lotte Lenya. Letters between the two over a period of 26 years have been edited and translated in a book by Lys Symonette and Kim H Kowalke: "Speak Low (When You Speak Love)." His work also included the theater piece "Der Weg der Verheissung" (The Eternal Road). In 2002 Foster Hirsch authored "Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway."
(SFC, 5/26/96, BR p.6)(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)(SSFC, 3/17/02, p.M3)
1950 Apr 3, Carter G. Woodson (b.1875), black historian, died. Woodson is best known for is the creation of what became "Black History Month," begun in 1926 as "Negro History Week." The idea of learning more about black history caught on in schools all over the country. Many scholars recognize him as the “Father of Black History." His work included “The Negro in Our History" (1922).
(WSJ, 5/19/05, p.D8)(www.biography.com/articles/Carter-G.-Woodson-9536515)
1950 Apr 8, A US Navy Privateer airplane flew from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet Union with 10 people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spotted the plane over Latvia and shot it down.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.A26)(www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/baltic_incident.html)
1950 Apr 8, Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky (b.1889), Ukraine-born ballet dancer, died in London. He created 4 ballets that included "The Afternoon of a Fawn" and "Jeux" with music by Claude Debussy.
(AP, 4/8/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaslav_Nijinsky)
1950 Apr 9, Bob Hope made his first television appearance. Hope began his career on an NBC television special after years on radio. "I’d better get into television before Milton Berle used up my material."
(SFC, 10/24/96, p.D5)(HN, 4/9/98)
1950 Apr 11, Bill Irwin, actor and choreographer, was born.
(HN, 4/11/01)
1950 Apr 14, A national security report , NSC-68, was presented to Pres. Truman. It was in response to a directive issued by Truman on January 31: “to undertake a reexamination of our objectives in peace and war and of the effect of these objectives on our strategic plans, in the light of the probable fission bomb capability and possible thermonuclear bomb capability of the Soviet Union."
(www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nsc-68/nsc68-1.htm)
1950 Apr 18, The first transatlantic jet passenger trip was made.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1950 Apr 23, Chiang Kai-shek evacuated Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao and the communists.
(AP, 4/23/98)(HN, 4/23/99)
1950 Apr 24, "Peter Pan" opened at Imperial Theater in NYC for 320 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/venue.asp?ID=1208)
1950 Apr 24, Jordan annexed the West Bank and offered citizenship to all Palestinians wishing to claim it.
(SFC, 2/8/99, p.A6)
1950 Apr 25, Steve Ferrone, drummer (Average White Band), was born.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1950 Apr 25, Chuck Cooper became the 1st black to play in the NBA.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1950 Apr 27, South Africa passed the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
(HN, 4/27/98)
1950 May 1, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry called "Annie Allen."
(HN, 5/1/99)
1950 May 1, Lothrop Stoddard (1883), American political theorist, historian, eugenicist, and anti-immigration advocate, died. He wrote a number of prominent books of early 20th-century scientific racism including “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" (1920).
(WSJ, 1/4/08, p.W5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothrop_Stoddard)
1950 May 1, New marriage laws were enforced in People's Republic China.
(www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/restricted/marriage.htm)
1950 May 1, South Africa’s 1927 Immorality Act, which prohibited sex between whites and blacks, was amended to prohibit sex between whites and all non-whites.
(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Immorality_Amendment_Act,_1950)
1950 May 6, Liz Taylor wed Conrad Hilton Jr. in her first marriage.
(www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,291072~7~~,00.html)
1950 May 6, Agnes Smedley, American journalist and writer, died. She was best known for her chronicling of the Chinese revolution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States)
1950 May 8, The US Government convinced that neither national independence nor democratic evolution exist in any area dominated by Soviet imperialism, considers the situation to be such as to warrant its according economic aid and military equipment to the Associated State of Indochina and to France in order to assist them in restoring stability and permitting these states to pursue their peaceful and democratic development.
(www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html)
1950 May 13, Steveland Morris Hardaway (AKA Stevie Wonder) was born prematurely, in Saginaw, Mi., as Steveland Judkins. Too much oxygen in the incubator caused the baby to become permanently blind. At the age of ten, Little Stevie Wonder, as he was called by Berry Gordy at Motown, was discovered singing and playing the harmonica. He had many hits during his teens including "Fingertips" and as an adult he has earned an Oscar and at least 16 Grammy Awards. He has stood up for civil rights and campaigned against cancer, AIDS, drunk driving and the plight of Ethiopians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Wonder)
1950 May 13, Diner's Club issued its 1st credit cards.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1950 May 14, In Turkey the Democratic Party won 52% of the votes in its first free elections and Adnan Menderes (b.1899) became prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Menderes)
1950 May 18, "Liar" opened at Broadhurst Theater in NYC for 12 performances.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1950 May 21, French sources reported that Viet Minh guerrillas had infiltrated Cambodia and opened an arms-smuggling corridor to Thailand.
(www.geocities.com/khmerchronology/1950.htm)
1950 May 22, Richard Strauss' "4 Last Songs" (4 letzte Lieder) were performed in London.
(www.richard-strauss.com/biography.html)
1950 May 25, Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel opened in NYC.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1950 May 29, Rebbie [Maureen] Jackson, singer (R U Tuff Enuff), was born in Gary, IN.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1950 May, The magazine Astounding Science Fiction published "Dianetics" by L. Ron Hubbard. His book "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was published later in this year. The Church of Scientology was later based on Dianetics.
(WSJ, 5/12/97, p.A15)(SFC, 2/12/01, p.A13)
1950 Jun 2, Joanna Gleason, actress (Morgan-Hello Larry), was born in Toronto, Canada.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1950 Jun 3, French expedition reached the top of Himalayan peak of Annapurna in Nepal. Maurice Herzog (1919-2012) became the first man to climb the 8,000-meter peak despite losing all his fingers and toes to frostbite. He later went on to scale the heights of French politics.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna)(AP, 12/15/12)
1950 Jun 8, Alex Van Halen, drummer for the hard rock group Van Halen, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Van_Halen)
1950 Jun 17, Surgeon Richard Lawler performed the first kidney transplant operation in Chicago.
(HN, 6/17/01)
1950 Jun 23, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501, a DC-4 propliner operating its daily transcontinental service between New York City and Seattle, crashed into Lake Michigan killing 58 people. This was to date the worst commercial airliner accident in American history.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Orient_Airlines_Flight_2501)(AP, 3/30/11)
1950 Jun 23, Swiss parliament refused voting rights for women.
(www.todayinhistory.com/s60-6-23-event-results.html)
1950 Jun 24, In Brazil the Maracana stadium in Rio was officially inaugurated for the opening of soccer’s World Cup, the first in 12 years due to WW II.
(www.soccerhall.org/history/WorldCup_1950.htm)
1950 Jun 25, The Korean War started as forces from the communist North invaded the South. It lasted till 1953. A Truman administration statement that Korea was “outside the US defense perimeter" in the Pacific was said to have invited the attack. Gen. McArthur led a UN expeditionary force in response to North Korea’s attack on South Korea. The Chinese entered the war and the UN forces were pushed into a Christmas retreat. 2.5 million people were killed. No peace treaty was ever signed. About 1.7 million Americans were involved and there was an estimated 3 mil casualties including 150,000 (54,246) Americans and over 1 mil Chinese. In 1990 North Korean officials revealed that Stalin knew about and encouraged North Korea’s aggression as did Mao Tse-Tung.
(NG, Aug., 1974, p.255)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A15)(SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-9)(SFEM, 11/10/96, p.12)(SFC, 2/17/96, p.A26)(AP, 6/25/97)(WSJ, 7/21/97, p.A22)
1950 Jun 26, President Truman authorized the US Air Force and Navy to enter the Korean conflict.
(AP, 6/26/07)
1950 Jun 27, Julia Duffy, actress (Stephanie-Newhart, Baby Talk), was born in Minneapolis, Minn.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1950 Jun 27, President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict following a call from the United Nations Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.
(AP, 6/27/97)
1950 Jun 27, North Koreans troop reached Seoul. UN Security Council called on members for troops to aid South Korea.
(HN, 6/27/98)(MC, 6/27/02)
1950 Jun 27, US sent 35 military advisers to South Vietnam.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1950 Jun 27, Milada Horakova (b.1901), a Czechoslovak politician, was executed by Communists on trumped-up charges of conspiracy and treason. As a one of few women ever executed in Czechoslovakia she is regarded as a symbol of anti-Communist resistance for her firm and courageous stance during her trial. In 2007 Ludmila Brozova-Polednova (86), former communist prosecutor, was found guilty of a charge of abetting judicial murder.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milada_Hor%C3%A1kov%C3%A1)(AP, 11/1/07)
1950 Jun 28, The South Korean government blew up the Han River Bridge, the southern escape route for many Seoul residents, just hours before the North Koreans arrived.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.A13)
1950 Jun 28, General Douglas MacArthur arrived in South Korea as Seoul fell to the North Korean forces.
(AP, 6/28/97)(HN, 6/28/98)
1950 Jun 29, President Harry S. Truman authorized a sea blockade of Korea.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1950 Jun 30, President Harry Truman ordered U.S. troops into Korea and authorizes the draft. On that same day B-29 ‘Superfortresses’ bombed targets in North Korea.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1950 Jun, The FBI arrested David Greenglass, younger brother of Ethel Rosenberg. He confessed to spying the same day.
(WSJ, 10/1/01, p.A22)
1950 Jun-1950 Jul, The South Korean government of Syngman Rhee arrested tens of thousands due to fear that leftists would collaborate with the North Koreans sweeping down the peninsula. Rhee ordered the murders of thousands of political opponents and some of their mass graves were not found until the late 1990s. In 2009 a government commission said South Korean soldiers and police executed nearly 5,000 citizens during the early months of the 1950-53 Korean War, fearing they could collaborate with invading North Korean troops.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)(WSJ, 6/5/00, p.A32)(AP, 7/6/08)(AP, 11/26/09)
1950 Jul 1, American ground troops arrived in South Korea to stem the tide of the advancing North Korean army.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1950 Jul 1, The European Payment Union (EPU) came into being, by agreement of the country members of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). The latter had replaced the original Committee of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC), in April, 1948, and is an organization of European recipients of U.S. economic assistance.
(www.eagletraders.com)
1950 Jul 3, US Pres. Truman signed public law 600. It provided federal statutory authorization for the people of Puerto Rico to write their own constitution.
(www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/2004/vol8n34/CBRoadComnwlth.shtml)
1950 Jul 3, American and North Korean forces clashed for the first time in the Korean War. U.S. carrier-based planes attacked airfields in the Pyongyang-Chinnampo area of North Korea in the first air-strike of the Korean War.
(AP, 7/3/98)(HN, 7/3/98)
1950 Jul 5, American forces engaged the North Koreans for the first time at Osan, South Korea.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1950 Jul 5, Private Kenneth Shadrick of Skin Fork, West Virginia, became the first US serviceman to die in the Korean War.
(AP, 7/5/00)
1950 Jul 5, Salvatore Giuliano (b.1922), Sicilian bandit, was shot by police in Castelvetrano.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Giuliano)
1950 Jul 7, South Africa’s Population Registration Act commenced. It required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with their racial characteristics as part of the system of apartheid. It was repealed by section 1 of the Population Registration Act, Repeal Act No 114 of 1991.
(http://africanhistory.about.com/od/apartheidlaws/g/No30of50.htm)
1950 Jul 8, President Harry Truman named US Gen. Douglas MacArthur as commander-in-chief of United Nations forces assisting the South Koreans.
(WSJ, 6/24/96, C1)(AP, 7/8/97)(HN, 7/8/99)
1950 Jul 10, "Your Hit Parade" premiered on NBC (later CBS) TV.
(www.bookrags.com/history/popculture/your-hit-parade-sjpc-05)
1950 Jul 16, Brazil, host for soccer’s World Cup, lost the final game to Uruguay 2-1. Uruguay’s goals came in 13 minutes late in the second half.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.33)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_FIFA_World_Cup)
1950 Jul 18, Richard Branson, British music entrepreneur (Virgin Atlantic), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Richard_Branson)
1950 Jul 18, Carl Clinton Van Doren (b.1885), US literary critic and biographer, died in Torrington, Connecticut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Clinton_Van_Doren)
1950 Jul 20, In one of the first American actions in the Korean War, the U.S. Army’s Task Force Smith was pushed back into the Naktong perimeter by superior North Korean forces.
(HN, 7/20/98)
1950 Jul 20, US planes strafed refugees south of Yusong.
(SFC, 12/29/99, p.A12)
1950 Jul 23, American soldiers ordered villagers from Chu Gok Ri and warned them of approaching North Koreans. The villagers fled to Im Ke Ri.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 24, The U.S. Fifth Air Force relocated from Japan to Korea.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1950 Jul 24, Robert W. Lehnhoff, [Executioner of Groningen], SS Führer, was executed.
(www.homestead.com/andakerkhoven/Story6.html)
1950 Jul 24-1950 Jul 27, US orders in the 25th Infantry Division were issued to treat civilians in the Korea battle zone as enemy.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 25, Top staff officers of the US 8th Army, Muccio's representative Harold J. Noble and South Korean officials met and decided on a policy of air-dropping leaflets telling South Korean civilians not to head south toward US defense lines, and of shooting them if they did approach US lines despite warning shots. This information was in a letter from ambassador John J. Muccio to US Sec. of State Dean Rusk. The letter was declassified in 1982 .
(AP, 5/30/06)
1950 Jul 25, American soldiers In Korea ordered villagers away from Im Ke Ri and sent them on the road to Hwanggan.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 25, The Goethe Link Observatory discovered asteroids #1799 Koussevitsky, #1822 Waterman & #2842.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroids_%281001-2000%29)
1950 Jul 26, United States military involvement in Vietnam began as President Harry Truman authorized $15 million in military aid to the French.
(www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html)
1950 Jul 26-1950 Jul 29, US troops killed up to 300 South Korean refugees trapped under a bridge at No Gun Ri. The villagers had gathered there to avoid strafing from US planes which killed some 100. US troops feared the refugees included infiltrators from North Korea. The killings were not made public until 1999. On Jan 11, 2001 the US Army admitted that civilians were massacred and Pres. Clinton offered his regrets. The US Army blamed the "fog of war" in apology and acknowledgement. In 2007 the Army acknowledged it had found, but did not divulge, that a high-level document said the US military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.
(SFC, 9/30/99, p.A1,16)(WSJ, 6/5/00, p.A32)(SSFC, 12/30/01, p.D2)(AP, 4/13/07)
1950 Jul 29, After 3 days of US fire into underpasses, the 2nd Battalion pulled away. Koreans said 300 were left dead at the bridge at No Gun Ri.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 31, India and Nepal signed a treaty of peace and friendship.
(http://tinyurl.com/mdf3sk5)(Econ, 8/2/14, p.32)
1950 Jul, In Korea the US Army lost 2,834 soldiers with 2,486 wounded in July.
(WSJ, 10/6/99, p.A22)
1950 Jul, Some 1800 political prisoners were executed over 3 days at Taejon (Daejeon). The executions were ordered to prevent the release of the prisoners by advancing North Korean military. Later evidence indicated that South Korean executioners killed between 3,000 and 7,000 at Daejeon.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)(AP, 5/19/08)
1950 Aug 1, Lead elements of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division arrived in Korea from the United States.
(HN, 8/1/98)
1950 Aug 2, Lance Ito, judge in the OJ Simpson trial, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Ito)
1950 Aug 2, The U.S. First Provisional Marine Brigade arrived in Korea from the United States.
(AP, 8/2/98)
1950 Aug 3, John Landis, American film director, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Landis)
1950 Aug 3, A US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) of 35 men arrives in Saigon. By the end of the year, the US was bearing half of the cost of France's war effort in Vietnam. Pres. Truman gave military aid to the Vietnamese regime of Bao-Dai.
(www.oakton.edu/user/~wittman/chronol.htm)
1950 Aug 3, In South Korea Maj. Gen'l. Hobart R. Gay ordered the demolition of the Waegwan Bridge over the Naktong River to prevent enemy crossings. The bridge was filled with refugees. 25 miles down river the 650-foot long Tuksong-dong bridge was also destroyed as refugees crossed.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.A6)
1950 Aug 8, U.S. troops repelled the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1950 Aug 8, Florence Chadwick (1918-1995) swam the English Channel from France to Dover in 13 hours and 23 minutes. A year later she swam the reverse in 16:22.
(http://www.ishof.org/70fchadwick.html)
1950 Aug 8, Nicolai Yakovlevich Miaskovsky (b.1891), Russian composer, died.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0583975/)
1950 Aug 10, President Harry S. Truman called the National Guard to active duty to fight in the Korean War.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1950 Aug 10, In South Korea some 200-300 prisoners were killed by South Korean police near Dokchon.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)
1950 Aug 14, Gary Larson, cartoonist (Far Side), was born in Tacoma, Washington.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Larson)
1950 Aug 14, Indonesia’s legislature adopted a provisional constitution that called for a parliamentary democracy with government to be responsible to a unicameral House of Representatives elected directly by the people. Sukarno became president under the new system.
(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-6198.html)
1950 Aug 15, Two U.S. divisions were badly mauled by the North Korean Army at the Battle of the Bowling Alley in South Korea, which raged on for five more days.
(HN, 8/15/98)
1950 Aug 15, A magnitude 8.6 earthquake in Assam, Tibet, killed at least 780 people.
(AP, 2/27/10)
1950 Aug 18-1950 Aug 25, The Battles of the Bowling Alley took place during the Korean War in a narrow valley north of Tabu-dong, Korea on the Taegu-Sangju road. There the U.S. Army‘s 27th Infantry Division and the Republic of Korea‘s (ROK) 1st Infantry Division faced off against a determined effort by the North Korean People‘s Army‘s 1st and 13th Infantry Divisions to break through that segment of the Pusan perimeter. It was part of the overall effort of the ROK forces and the U.S. Eighth Army to stop the North Korean advance.
(HNQ, 8/24/00)
1950 Aug 19, Edith Sampson became the first African-American representative to the United Nations.
(HN, 8/19/98)
1950 Aug 20, South Korean police and soldiers killed 210 people on the southern island of Cheju.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)
1950 Aug 22, Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to be accepted in competition for the national championship.
(AP, 8/22/00)
1950 Aug 23, Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps were called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.
(HN, 8/23/98)
1950 Aug 25, President Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike. The railroads were returned to their owners 2 years later.
(AP, 8/25/97)(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A17)
1950 Aug 25, The navy hospital ship USS Benevolence sank after it was struck by the SS Mary Luckenbach in dense fog in the Golden Gate. 23 crew members of the Benevolence died. San Francisco fisherman John A. Napoli single-handedly rescued 70 people from the Benevolence. Napoli hurt his back wand was forced to sell his crab boat. In 1961 US Congress passed a bill to pay Napoli for his efforts.
(SSFC, 5/15/11, DB p.46)
1950 Aug 27, Charles Fleischer, comedian (Roger Rabbit), was born in Wash, DC.
(www.hollywood.com/celebs/fulldetail/id/188514)
1950 Aug 31, Three North Korean divisions opened an assault on UN lines on the Naktong River in a push to take Pusan.
(SSFC, 11/7/04, Par p.4)
1950 Aug, In Belgium as Prince Baudouin took the oath to succeed his father after years of tumult over the monarchy, Communist leader Julien Lahaut shouted from the crowd: "Long Live the Republic!" A week later two men turned up at Lahaut's door and shot him four times with a Colt 45 revolver at point blank range. The case was officially shelved in 1972. In 2012 the government has approved fresh funds to solve the crime.
(AP, 10/27/12)
1950 Sep 1, West Berlin was granted a constitution.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1950 Sep 1, In South Korea the USS DeHaven received an order from its Shore Fire Control Party to open fire on a large group of refugee personnel located on Pohang beach. Witnesses said 100 to 200 civilians were killed in the Navy shelling.
(AP, 4/13/07)
1950 Sep 1, US Company C, 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, was almost completely annihilated as North Korean divisions opened an assault on UN lines on the Naktong River. Only Company C and other elements of the 2nd Infantry Division stood in the path.
(SSFC, 11/7/04, Par p.4)
1950 Sep 4, The Beetle Bailey cartoon appeared for the 1st time in syndication. Beatle Bailey, the laziest private in the army, was created by Mort Walker.
(USAT, 8/31/00, p.1D)(SFC, 6/18/96, p.B2)
1950 Sep 4, The 1st helicopter rescue of American pilot behind enemy lines.
(www.rafmuseum.org.uk/milestones-of-flight/world/1950.html)
1950 Sep 4, A heavy typhoon struck Japan and killed about 250 people.
(www.todayinhistory.com/s75-9-04-event-results.html)
1950 Sep 5, Cathy Guisewite, cartoonist and creator of the “Cathy" cartoon strip, was born in Dayton, Ohio. In 2010 Guisewite said her cartoon strip, begun in 1976, would end on Oct 3.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Guisewite)(SFC, 8/12/10, p.A12)
1950 Sep 9, "Where's Charley?" closed at St James Theater NYC after 792 performances.
(www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/theaters/broadwaytheater/history.html)
1950 Sep 9, There were massive arrests of communists in France.
(www.todayinhistory.com/s75-9-09-event-results.html)
1950 Sep 10, In South Korea 43 American war planes dropped 93 napalm canisters over Wolmi to clear out its eastern slope for UN troops. Village residents later said dozens of people were killed.
(SSFC, 8/3/08, p.A16)
1950 Sep 11, The 1st typesetting machine to dispense with metal type was exhibited.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1950 Sep 11, Jan C. Smuts, co-founder of British RAF and S. African PM (1919-48), died at 80.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1950 Sep 15, During the Korean conflict, United Nations forces landed at Inchon in the south and began their drive toward Seoul. Considered the greatest amphibious attack in history, it was the zenith of General Douglas MacArthur's career. The newly organized X Corps under the command of General Douglas MacArthur launched an amphibious invasion of Korea’s western coast at Inchon, the port of the Korean capital, Seoul. After two days of naval bombardment, U.S. Marines, seen here using scaling ladders to climb up to dry land, seized the offshore island of Wolmi-do and proceeded inland against surprisingly light resistance. By September 26, American forces had captured Seoul.
(AP, 9/15/97)(HN, 9/15/99)(HNPD, 9//99)
1950 Sep 15, US troop landed on Wolmi-Do island off of Seoul.
(www.history.navy.mil)
1950 Sep 16, Henry Louis Gates Jr., critic and scholar, was born.
(HN, 9/16/00)
1950 Sep 16, The U.S. 8th Army broke out of the Pusan Perimeter in South Korea and began heading north to meet MacArthur’s troops heading south from Inchon.
(HN, 9/16/98)
1950 Sep 19, Allied foreign ministers announced in NY that they regarded Adenauer's government to be "the only German Government freely and legitimately constituted and therefore entitled to speak for Germany as the representative of the German people in international affairs."
(http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/gray_germanys.html)
1950 Sep 19, The UN rejected membership of China's People Republic.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1950 Sep 22, Meryl Streep, actress (Silkwood), was born.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1950 Sep 22, Omar N. Bradley was promoted to the rank of five-star general, joining an elite group that included Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall and Henry H. "Hap" Arnold.
(AP, 9/22/00)
1950 Sep 23, Congress adopted the Internal Security Act, which provided for registration of communists. The Act was ruled later unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. US Sen. Pat McCarran (Nevada) legislated the Internal Security Act, which included a jumble of restrictions on speech and association. Pres. Truman attempted an unsuccessful veto of the McCarran Act, which gave the government unprecedented powers.
(WSJ, 3/18/99, p.W17)(MC, 9/23/01)(WSJ, 10/13/04, p.D18)
1950 Sep 23, US Mustangs accidentally bombed British troops on Hill 282 in Korea. 17 were killed.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1950 Sep 24, In "Operation Magic Carpet" all Jews from Yemen moved to Israel.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1950 Sep 26, The California state legislature passed a bill requiring state employees to sign a loyalty oath.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1950 Sep 26, General Douglas MacArthur's American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, linked up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter. United Nations troops recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul from the North Koreans. [see Sep 27]
(AP, 9/26/97)(HN, 9/26/99)
1950 Sep 26, Because of forest fire in British Columbia a blue moon appeared in England.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1950 Sep 26, Indonesia was admitted to the UN.
(www.gimonca.com/sejarah/sejarah09.shtml)
1950 Sep 27, U.S. Army and Marine troops liberated Seoul, South Korea.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1950 Sep 29, General Douglas MacArthur officially returned Seoul, South Korea, to President Syngman Rhee.
(HN, 9/29/98)
1950 Sep 30, Radio's "Grand Ole Opry" was broadcasted on TV for 1st time.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1950 Sep 30, U.N. forces crossed the 38th parallel separating North and South Korea as they pursued the retreating North Korean Army.
(HN, 9/30/98)
1950 Sep, A secret US Army and Navy experiment spread Serratia marcescens bacteria, because of its red pigment, and Bacillus globigii, because of its formed spores similar to anthrax, off the coast of San Francisco Bay from a mine laying ship for 6 days. The bacteria was thought to be harmless, but the germs sent 11 people to hospitals and killed one person. Edward J. Nevin, from a heart infection. In 1977 Senate subcommittee hearings the Army revealed that it had staged the mock biological attack.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A15)(WSJ, 10/22/01, p.A1)(AH, 6/03, p.49)
1950 Oct 2, The comic strip "Peanuts," created by Charles M. Schulz (28), was syndicated to seven newspapers as "Li'l Folks." It started with only four characters: Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty (Reichardt), Shermy and the world's most famous beagle, Snoopy. Schulz announced his retirement in 1999 with the last Peanuts to appear Feb 13, 2000.
(SFC, 11/29/97, p.C1)(SFC, 12/15/99, p.E1)(AP, 10/2/08)
1950 Oct 2, Mao Tse Tung sent a telegram to Stalin. China intervened in Korea.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1950 Oct 7, Mother Teresa (1910-1997), known in India as the "saint of the gutters", received permission from the Vatican to start a diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity order of nuns in Calcutta.
(AP, 9/26/04)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa)
1950 Oct 7, The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to establish a unified and democratic Korea.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1950 Oct 7, The United Nations General Assembly approved an advance by UN forces north of the 38th Parallel in the Korean Conflict.
(AP, 10/7/00)
1950 Oct 9, U.N. forces, led by the First Cavalry Division, crossed the 38th parallel in South Korea and began attacking northward towards the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Photographer Edwin Hoffman (d.1998 at 74) was the first correspondent to cross the 38th parallel.
(HN, 10/9/98)
1950 Oct 11, The Federal Communications Commission authorized the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) to begin commercial color TV broadcasts.
(HN, 10/11/98)
1950 Oct 14, In Washington state westbound traffic opened on the new fortified bridge over the Tacoma Narrows. The new design was approved after a model passed wind tunnel tests designed by engineering Prof. Frederick Burt Farquharson.
(ON, 6/09, p.8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge)
1950 Oct 14, Chinese Communist Forces began to infiltrate the North Korean Army.
(HN, 10/14/98)
1950 Oct 14, Rev. Sun Young Moon was liberated from Hung Nam prison (Korea).
(MC, 10/14/01)
1950 Oct 15, President Harry Truman met with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.
(HN, 10/15/98)
1950 Oct 15, John Jacob Raskob (b.1879), former General Motors executive and developer of the Empire State Building, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Raskob)
1950 Oct 18, Wendy Wasserstein, playwright, was born. Her work included "The Heidi Chronicles."
(HN, 10/18/00)
1950 Oct 18, Connie Mack, the "Grand Old Man" of major league baseball, announced he was retiring as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.
(AP, 10/18/00)
1950 cOct 18, US forces drove north across the 38th parallel into the Peoples Republic of North Korea.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, zone 1 p.5)
1950 Oct 18, The First Turkish Brigade arrived in Korea to assist the U.N. forces fighting there.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1950 Oct 19, United Nations forces entered the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
(AP, 10/19/97)(HN, 10/19/98)
1950 Oct 20, Henry L. Stimson (b.1867), former Secretary of War and Secretary of State, died.
(HN, 3/1/00)
1950 Oct 21, Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. C1)(MC, 10/21/01)
1950 Oct 21, North Korean Premier Kim Il-sung established a new capital at Sinuiju on the Yalu River opposite the Chinese City of Antung.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1950 Oct 23, Al Jolson (64), singer and actor (Jazz Singer), died. He was born in Russia as Asa Yoelson
(MC, 10/23/01)
1950 Oct 25, Chinese Communist Forces launched their first phase offensive across the Yalu River into North Korea.
(HN, 10/25/98)
1950 Oct 25, Sukarno was appointed president of Republic Indonesia.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1950 Oct 26, Mother Theresa (d.1997), known in India as the "saint of the gutters", founded the Missionaries of Charity global order of nuns in Calcutta.
(MC, 10/26/01)(AP, 9/26/04)
1950 Oct 26, A reconnaissance platoon for a South Korean division reached the Yalu River. They were the only elements of the U.N. force to reach the river before the Chinese offensive pushed the whole army down into South Korea.
(HN, 10/26/98)
1950 Oct 27, Fran Leibowitz, writer, was born. Her work included "Metropolitan Life" and "Social Studies."
(HN, 10/27/00)
1950 Oct 30, The First Marine Division was ordered to replace the entire South Korean I Corps at the Chosin Reservoir area.
(HN, 10/30/98)
1950 Oct 30, Gen'l. Douglas McArthur ordered a combined Marine and Army outfit to cross the 38th parallel and "mop up" remaining North Korean soldiers. 12,000 Marines found themselves surrounded by 8 Chinese divisions. The marines lost 4,000 men and the Chinese lost 37,500. Joseph Owen later authored "Colder Than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at the Chosin Reservoir," a first person account of the fighting. In 1999 Martin Russ published "Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign." The novel "The Marines of Autumn" by Michael Brady was based on this campaign.
(WSJ, 8/6/99, p.W7)(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.W8)
1950 Oct 31, John Candy, comedian (SCTV, Uncle Buck), was born in Ontario, Canada.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1950 Oct, Hank Ketcham began his cartoon strip "Dennis the Menace."
(SFC, 9/20/97, p.E1)(SFC, 12/15/99, p.E1)
1950 Oct, The TV show “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" (1950-1955) premiered with Frankie Thomas (1921-2006) as Tom Corbett.
(SFC, 5/17/06, p.B7)
1950 Oct, Franciscan Friar Alfred Boeddeker founded St. Anthony’s Dining Room in San Francisco to feed the poor and luckless. He started from St. Boniface Church on Jones St. in the Tenderloin with 350 meals a day. In 1953 his organization acquired a farm in Sonoma County for therapeutic discourse and physical work.
(SFC, 5/23/96, p.A24)(SFC, 1/7/05, p.B1)
1950 Oct, Chamdo, Tibet, fell to Chinese occupation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chamdo)(Econ, 10/5/13, p.98)
1950 Nov 1, Two members of a Puerto Rican nationalist movement, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington to assassinate President Truman. The attempt failed, and one of the pair Griselio Torresola, was shot dead. On July 24, 1952, Truman commuted Collazo’s death sentence to life imprisonment, on the same day he signed an act enlarging the self-government of Puerto Rico. In 2005 Stephen Hunter authored “American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman."
(AP, 11/1/97)(HN, 11/1/98)(HNQ, 1/24/02)(WSJ, 11/8/05, p.D8)
1950 Nov 1, In North Korea US Rev. Emil Kapaun (b.1916) began helping the wounded at the 2-day battle of Unsan, where his 8th Cavalry regiment was overrun by Chinese forces. He died in a North Korean POW camp in May, 1951. In 2013 he was awarded the Medal of Honor, an upgrade from an earlier Distinguished Service Cross.
(SFC, 4/12/13, p.A6)
1950 Nov 2, George Bernard Shaw (b.1856), Irish-born, English dramatist (Pygmalion), critic and social reformer, died. Michael Holroyd later authored a 3-volume biography of Shaw.
(V.D.-H.K.p.237)(HN, 7/26/98)(SFEC, 3/5/00, DB p.4)
1950 Nov 4, The European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome. 5 protocols were added later. Alleged violations were handled by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
(www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html)(WSJ, 4/26/06, p.A1)
1950 Nov 5, Billy Graham’s “Hour of Decision" was first broadcast as a live radio program from Atlanta, Georgia.
(http://www.billygraham.org/HOD_Index.asp)
1950 Nov 5, A US bomber caught fire and crashed while flying over China’s southern Guangdong province. Its mission was not known. Records and eyewitness accounts indicated that four bodies were buried at the crash site, while the fate of the other 11 on board wasn't clear.
(AP, 10/27/09)
1950 Nov 6, A Chinese offensive was halted at Chongchon River, North Korea.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1950 Nov 7, Alexa Canady, first female African American neurosurgeon, was born.
(HN, 11/7/98)
1950 Nov 7, Richard Nixon won a seat in the US Senate.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1950 Nov 8, During the Korean conflict the first all-jet air combat took place over Korea as U.S. Air Force Lieut. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15. It lasted about 30 seconds.
(SFC, 10/11/97, p.E3)(AP, 11/8/97)
1950 Nov 10, Spanish dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco ended war in Gibraltar.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1950 Nov 16, US Pres. Truman proclaimed an emergency crisis caused by communist threat.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1950 Nov 16, Egyptian king Farouk demanded the departure of all British troops.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1950 Nov 18, Bureau of Mines disclosed its first production of oil from coal in practical amounts.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1950 Nov 18, South Korea Pres. Syngman Rhee was forced to end mass executions.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1950 Nov 20, U.S. troops pushed to Yalu River within five miles of Manchuria.
(HN, 11/20/98)
1950 Nov 20, Francesco Cilea (84), opera composer, died.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1950 Nov 22, In New York 78 died in a train crash in Richmond Hills (later Kew Gardens), NY.
(www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-lirr/lirr-0650-OL.html)
1950 Nov 24, The musical "Guys and Dolls," based on the writings of Damon Runyon and featuring songs by Frank Loesser, opened on Broadway.
(AP, 11/24/06)
1950 Nov 24, UN troops began an assault with the intent to end the Korean War by Christmas.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1950 Nov 25, UN gave Eritrea to Ethiopia.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1950 Nov 26, China entered the Korean conflict, launching a counter-offensive across the Yalu River against soldiers from the United Nations, the United States and South Korea. North Korean and Chinese troops halted the UN offensive.
(WSJ, 6/24/96, C1)(AP, 11/26/97)(HN, 11/26/98)(MC, 11/26/01)
1950 Nov 27, East of the Chosin River, Chinese forces annihilated an American task force. Col. Barber (d.2002 at 82) and 220 soldiers in Fox Company withstood a 5-day assault to protect an escape pass.
(HN, 11/27/98)(SFC, 4/23/02, p.A18)
1950 Nov 28, Ed Harris, actor (Right Stuff, Swing Shift, Walker, Coma), was born in Tenafly, NJ.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1950 Nov 28, In Korea, 200,000 Communist troops launched attack on UN forces.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1950 Nov 30, President Truman declared that the U.S. would use the A-bomb to get peace in Korea.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1950 Nov, Inexperienced but well trained and eager to show their mettle, the first Turkish troops arrived in Korea just in time to face the Chinese onslaught.
(HN, 6/27/98)
1950 Nov, The 1st Turkish Brigade was commanded by Brig. Gen. Tahsin Yazici. He was highly regarded in the Turkish military establishment and willingly stepped down a rank in order to command the first contingent of Turks in Korea. He had only one drawback—no real command of English—yet he was attached to an American division. Later, that lack of language proficiency would prove to be a major hindrance to his understanding of orders and troop deployments.
(HNQ, 7/27/00)
1950 Dec 1, In North Korea a US company of soldiers encountered a swarming Chinese assault near Kunu-ri. Army Sgt. Richard Desautels was among those captured and taken to a POW compound, known as Camp 5, near Pyoktong. In 2003 Chinese authorities said Desautels became mentally ill and died on April 29, 1953, and was buried in a Chinese cemetery.
(SFC, 6/20/08, p.A11)
1950 Dec 2, Dinu Lipatti (b.1917), Romania-born pianist, died of leukemia in Geneva, Switz.
(www.inkpot.com/classical/lipatti.html)
1950 Dec 3, The Chinese closed in on Pyongyang, Korea and UN forces withdrew southward.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1950 Dec 4, University of Tennessee defied court rulings by rejecting five Negro applicants.
(HN, 12/4/98)
1950 Dec 4, In North Korea the US Navy's first black pilot, Ensign Jesse Brown, was downed in his fighter plane in the Jangjin Reservoir. Wing man Lt. j.g. Thomas Hudner crashed landed his plane in a failed attempt to save Brown. In 2013 Hudner returned to the site of the crash.
(AP, 7/19/13)
1950 Dec 5, Pyongyang in Korea fell to the invading Chinese army.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1950 Dec 9, President Truman banned U.S. exports to Communist China.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 9, Harry Gold got 30 years imprisonment for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 10, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche (b.1904) became the first African-American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 12/10/97)(HN, 12/10/98)
1950 Dec 13, James Dean began his career with an appearance in a Pepsi commercial.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1950 Dec 16, President Truman proclaimed a state of National Emergency (as Chinese communists invaded deeper into South Korea) in order to fight "Communist imperialism."
(AP, 12/16/97)(HN, 12/16/98)
1950 Dec 17, French named Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny to command their troops in Vietnam.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1950 Dec 19, The North Atlantic Council named General Eisenhower supreme commander of Western European defense forces of NATO.
(www.nato.int/multi/photos/1950/m501219a.htm)(AP, 12/19/00)
1950 Dec 19, Tibet's Dalai Lama fled a Chinese invasion.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1950 Dec 20, "Harvey," starring James Stewart, premiered in NY.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1950 Dec 23, General Walton H. Walker, the commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, was killed in a jeep accident. Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgeway was named his successor.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1950 Dec 25, Scottish nationalists stole the Stone of Scone from the British coronation throne in Westminster Abbey. The 485 pound stone was recovered in April 1951.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1950 Dec 26, Emile Enthoven (47), composer, died.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1950 Dec 27, U.S. and Spain resumed relations.
(HN, 12/27/98)
1950 Dec 27, Max Beckmann (b.1884), German painter, died in New York. The Nazis had branded him a degenerate artist in 1937 and he moved to the US in 1946. His work included the triptychs Departure (1932-1935) and Beginning (1946-1949), and the Self-Portrait in Tails (1937). He was a figurative painter in an age of abstraction.
(SSFC, 1/27/02, p.C7)(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.D8)(WSJ, 9/17/05, p.P20)
1950 Dec 28, Chinese troops crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1950 Dec 30, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became independent states in a French Union.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1950 Dec 31, Charles Koechlin (b.1867), French composer, teacher and writer on music, died in France. He visited the USA four times to lecture and teach in 1918-19, 1928, 1929 and 1937. On the second and third visits he taught at the University of California, Berkeley.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koechlin)
1950 By this year Americans broke off in gestural and coloristic directions under the broad umbrella called abstract expressionism also called the New York School.
(WSJ, 9/10/96, p.A16)
1950 The first possible "happening" occurred at Black Mountain College with John Cage, Charles Olson, Robert Rauschenberg, Franz Kline and Mary Richards.
(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)
1950 Alberto Giacometti made his sculpture "Walking man III." It sold for $2.9 million in 1998.
(WSJ, 5/15/98, p.W12)
1950 Ellsworth Kelly painted his abstract "La Combe I."
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.F3)
1950 Willem de Kooning, leading light of the New York School, painted "Excavation," maelstroms of weaving and careening lines and roiling forms.
(WSJ, 12/5/96, p.A16)(SFC, 3/20/97, p.A6)(SFC, 6/28/02, p.D1)
1950 Pierre Molinier painted "Oh...Marie! Mere de Dieu." It was a sexually explicit crucifixion scene with a hermaphroditic Christ swathed in fishnet.
(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A14)
1950 Georgia O’Keeffe painted "In the Patio VIII."
(SFEC, 9/7/97, BR p.9)
1950 Jackson Pollock painted "Autumn Rhythm" and "Number 29, 1950," which incorporated wire, string, colored glass and pebbles. His work "Number 3" was composed of oil, enamel and aluminum paint on fiberboard.
(WSJ, 11/5/97, p.A20)(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)(SFC, 2/10/01, p.B10)
1950 Charles Preston conceived the "Pepper and Salt" cartoon for the Wall Street Journal.
(WSJ, 11/2/99, p.A24)
1950 Robert Rauschenberg painted "Mother of God."
(WSJ, 9/25/97, p.A20)
c1950 Shozo Shimamoto made his delicately perforated newspaper collage "Work (Holes)."
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.E4)
1950 Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German philosopher, authored “The Authoritarian Personality," an inquiry into the fascist potential of American citizens.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)
1950 Jean Anouilh wrote the play "The Rehearsal."
(WSJ, 11/27/96, p.A10)
1950 Isaac Asimov published “I, Robot," a book of short stories. In the book he wrote the Three Laws of Robotics, which were designed to prevent robots from harming people.
(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.18)
1950 Samuel Taylor wrote the play "The Happy Time," based on a novel by Robert Fontaine.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A26)
1950 Herb Caen quit the SF Chronicle and joined the rival SF Examiner where he stayed until 1958. He also wrote his 3rd book "Baghdad 1951."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A12,13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Caen)
1950 Alistair Cooke published "A Generation on Trial" It was about the Alger Hiss trial.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, Z1 p.7)
1950 Catherine Cookson (d.1998 at 91), English writer, published her first book, an autobiographical novel titled "Kate Hannigan." She went on write over 90 novels and was made a Dame in 1993.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A21)
1950 Elizabeth David (1913-1992), nee Gwynne, published "A Book of Mediterranean Food," which changed British cuisine. In 2001 Artemis Cooper authored "Writing At the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David."
(SSFC, 3/18/01, BR p.7)
1950 Thor Heyerdahl published "Kon-Tiki." He had led a six-man expedition that sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia in 1947.
(AP, 4/28/97)(WSJ, 5/22/97, p.A13)
1950 Dr. Paul Holmer (d.1997 at 98) wrote "The Authoritarian Personality."
(SFC, 6/27/97, p.A24)
1950 L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, authored his sci-fi novel “To the Stars."
(SSFC, 12/26/04, p.E2)
1950 Walter Henry Judd (1898-1994), American politician, authored “Autopsy on our Blunders in Asia."
(www.worldcat.org/search?q=no:010145103)
1950 Felicia Kaplan (d.1999 at 83), poet and writer, authored her first book, the best-selling novel "Mink on Weekdays."
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.B4)
1950 Jack Kerouac published his 1st novel "The Town and the City."
(SFEC, 6/18/00, BR p.7)
1950 Walter Korn (d.1997 at 89), chess authority, wrote "The Brilliant Touch in Chess."
(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A18)
1950 Doris Lessing (1919-2013), British writer, authored her first novel “The Grass Is Singing." a look at race in Rhodesia and the effect that harsh colonial experience had on both oppressor and oppressed.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.101)(Econ, 11/30/13, p.90)
1950 Alan Lomax authored “Mister Jelly Roll"
(WSJ, 9/27/08, p.W10)
1950 Judith Merril (d. 1997 at 74), science fiction writer and sci-fi collector, wrote "Shadow on the Hearth," a novel about nuclear war.
(SFC, 9/18/97, p.C2)
1950 Octavio Paz (36), poet and essayist, published "The Labyrinth of Solitude," his classical study of the Mexican character.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)
1950 Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) authored his fantasy novel “Gormenghast." It was the 2nd of a 3-novel cycle. The first was “Titus Groan" (1946) and the 3rd was “Titus Alone" (1959).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_series)
1950 David Riesman (d.2002) co-authored "The Lonely Crowd" with Reuel Denney and Nathan Glazer. It described how one can live in a culture of conformity and still feel a sense of alienation. The terms "inner directed" and "outer directed" were here introduced.
(WSJ, 5/15/02, p.A18)
1950 G. Ledyard Stebbins (d.2000 at age 94) published "Variation and Evolution in Plants." He provided detailed argument that plants were subject to the same processes of evolution as animals.
(SFC, 1/22/00, p.A21)
1950 Prof. Stefan Reisenfeld (d.1999 at 90) of UC Berkeley published "Modern Social Welfare" along with UCLA Law Dean Richard Maxwell.
(SFC, 2/23/99, p.A22)
1950 Darcy Ribeiro, anthropologist (1923-1997), wrote "Kadiweu Religion and Mythology." He studied the Kadiweu and Kaapor Indians of Brazil.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A20)
1950 Lillian Ross wrote a naughty and intoxicating portrait of Ernest Hemingway.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.W10)
1950 Ray Bradbury, science fiction writer, published his "Martian Chronicles." A CD-ROM based on the book was released in 1995.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A-3)
1950 Ernest Hemingway wrote his novel "Across the River and into the Trees."
(HT, 3/97, p.52)
1950 "The Beautiful Visit" by Elizabeth Jane Howard was published. This prize-winning novel began Howard’s career.
(WSJ, 8/2/96, p.A10)
1950 "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1950 Dr. Seuss authored "If I Ran the Zoo." In it he introduced the word "nerd."
(SFEC, 4/16/00, Z1 p.2)
1950 Kazuo Shimada (1907-1996), Japanese mystery writer, won the Mystery Writer Of Japan award for his book "Shakai-bu Kisha" (City Reporter).
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.A17)
1950 The editors of Gourmet Magazine published the "Gourmet Cookbook."
(SFEM, 8/10/97, p.23)
1950 The noir film “Tension" starred Audrey Totter.
(SFC, 12/18/13, p.A11)
1950 The Broadway musical "Guys and Dolls" featured Stubby Kaye (d.1997 at 79). It was made into a film in 1955.
(SFC,12/16/97, p.B4)
1950 Robert Sidney (1909-2008) stage-directed “Bing Crosby on Broadway."
(SFC, 4/2/08, p.B9)
1950 The Arthur Murray Party began showing on TV and ran intermittently to 1960. The show was hosted by Kathryn Murray (d.1999 at 92) used comedy and celebrity to sell ballroom dancing to the public. Arthur Murray died in 1991.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.D8)
1950 The Jack Benny Show featured Eddie "Rochester" Anderson as a foil for Benny.
(SSFC, 2/11/01, BR p.1)
1950 The "Broadway Open House" TV show began and later evolved into the "Tonight Show."
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.B2)
1950 The "Cisco Kid" TV series began with Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo. The series lasted to 1956.
(SFC, 12/27/00, p.C6)
1950 George Francis Hayes (1865-1969) moved to television and hosted The Gabby Hayes Show, a western series, from 1950 to 1954, and a new version in 1956.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_'Gabby'_Hayes)
1950 The TV show "You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx began and George Fenneman (1919-1997) began. The show lasted until 1961.
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.A26)
1950 Hot Springs, NM, voted 1,294-295 to change its name to Truth or Consequences. Radio show host Ralph Edwards had promised to broadcast from the town that agreed to change its name to that of his radio show.
(SFC, 11/17/05, p.B5)
1950 The Carter Family joined the Grand Ole Opry radio show.
(SFC, 7/31/99, p.A17)
1950 Baby Face Leroy recorded "Rollin’ and Tumblin’" with Muddy Waters and Litter Walter. A copy of the record sold for $4,400 in 1997.
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.D5)
1950 Bob Merrill had success with his song "If I Knew You Were Coming I’d've Baked a Cake."
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A22)
1950 Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote two hit songs: "Peter Cottontail" and "Frostie the Snowman."
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.C3,8)
1950 Hank Snow (d.1999 at 85), Canadian born singer and songwriter, made a hit with "I'm Moving On." His follow-up song was "The Golden Rocket." He released some 140 albums over his career.
(SFC, 12/21/99, p.A27)
1950 Seymour Solomon (d.2002) founded Vanguard Records with his brother Maynard. It became the dominant label for American folk music.
(SFC, 7/22/02, p.B5)
1950 Walter Paepcke, chairman of Container Corp. of America, founded the Aspen Institute in Colorado as a gathering place for business leaders, artists and philosophers to contemplate society’s underlying values: "a global forum for leveraging the power of leaders to improve the human condition;" "an educational institute that promotes leadership based on values."
(WSJ, 1/31/03, p.W13)
1950 The US National Council of Churches was founded.
(WSJ, 8/9/96, p.A1)
1950 Billy Graham founded the Evangelistic Association and began the weekly "Hour of Decision" radio program.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, Z1 p.3)
1950 The Nature Conservancy was founded by a handful of biologists and ecologists that included Richard H. Pough (d.2003 at 99), who served as the 1st president.
(SFC, 6/26/03, p.A20)
1950 Pope Pius XII declared that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven was the "infallible" dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.A15)
1950 Cedar Waters Village, a Christian nudist resort in Nottingham, N.H., was founded.
(WSJ, 8/11/97, p.A1)
1950 Sam Walton in Bentonville, Ark., hit on the idea of a large retail store in rural areas stocked with the lowest-priced goods available and founded Wal-Mart. In 1962 he started his Wal-Mart discount chain.
(WSJ, 11/18/98, p.A20)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1950 The first "Yield" sign was installed in Tulsa. Okla. It read "Yield Right-Of-Way. Clinton E. Riggs (d.1997 at 86), Tulsa police officer, developed the sign after a decade of experimentation.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.C10)
1950 Colin Hampton (1911-1996) and Margaret Rowell founded the California Cello Club. He was a member of the 36-year-old Griller Quartet, renowned in England for playing noon concerts at the National Gallery while bombs were falling on London.
(SFC, 8/15/96, p.C4)
1950 The National Maritime Museum in San Francisco was founded by newspaper editor Scott Newhall.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A15)
1950 In San Francisco a redevelpment agency was formed. Diamond Heights became its first project area.
(SFC, 4/17/13, p.E5)
1950 In San Francisco Laguna Honda Hospital added a rehabilitation program to help disabled people of all ages enjoy more active, fulfilling lives.
(SFC, 8/26/08, p.B5)
1950 Elizabeth Taylor spent her first honeymoon with Nicky Hilton in his El Paso, Texas, downtown hotel.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.39)
1950 The first annual Sucker Day was established in Wetumka, Okla., when it was sold a circus that never showed by one F. Bam Morrison.
(WSJ, 8/22/96, p.B1)
1950 Edwin O. Guthman (1919-2008) received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for his stories in the Seattle Times on the Washington legislature’s Un-American Activities Committee.
(SFC, 9/2/08, p.B3)
1950 Two doctors at the Mayo Clinic were awarded the Nobel Prize for isolating cortisone to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Edward Kendall, chemist, won a Nobel Prize for isolating cortisone.
(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.5)(MC, 3/8/02)
1950 Babe Didrikson Zaharias, golfer, was named Woman Athlete of the Half-Century by AP.
(SFC, 5/21/03, p.A1)
1950 In the World Cup soccer match the US had one upset win over England but lost its other 2 games. The team did not qualify again until 1990.
(WSJ, 5/15/98, p.W7)
1950 Bertrand Russell, mathematician and philosopher, won the Nobel Prize for literature.
(WUD, 1994, p.1255)
1950 US Pres. Harry Truman sent military personnel to Vietnam to aid French forces.
(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.A19)
1950 Rules for discharging US homosexual service members were established in the Uniform Code of Military Service and signed by Pres. Harry Truman.
(SFC, 12/23/10, p.A8)
1950 The NSC-68 document by Paul Nitze (1907-2004) called for containment of the Soviet Union and the building up of American nuclear forces. The 1958 document laid the foundation for the strategy of global containment.
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 11/28/99, BR p.3)(SFC, 10/21/04, p.B7)
1950 Charles Stokes (1904-1996) became the first black Washington state legislator. He served 3 House terms from the 37th district of Seattle.
(SFC, 12/2/96, p.D2)
1950 Richard Nixon ran against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the US Senate. The race was documented in the 1998 book: "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady" by Greg Mitchell.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.3)
1950 The Feres doctrine was set by the US Supreme Court in a ruling that barred active-duty military personnel from suing for injuries caused by governmental action.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.A2)
1950 The US put forward its “uniting for peace" resolution to the UN to overcome the Soviet veto on military intervention in Korea.
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.40)
1950 The US government lifted the passport of singer Paul Robeson for his pro-Russian politics.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)
1950 The US Congress gave corporate stock options beneficial tax treatment.
(WSJ, 12/27/06, p.A6)
1950 US Congress chartered the Girl Scouts organization, which was founded in 1912.
(USAT, 3/23/04, p.9D)
1950 Alger Hiss (1904-1996), former state dept. official, was convicted for lying to a grand jury about Communist espionage activity.
(SFC, 11/16/96, p.A3)
1950 J. Parnell Thomas, R-N.J. and chairman of the 1947 HUAC committee, was charged with padding his congressional payroll and sentenced to jail. he was pardoned in 1952 by Pres. Truman.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.66)
1950 A Uniform Code of Military Justice was adopted. Article 88 prohibited commissioned officers from using "contemptuous words" against the president.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.A6)
1950 Military spending this year totaled $12 billion.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.A4)
1950 A real bear from a New Mexico fire that ravaged 17,000 acres near Capitan was pressed into service as Smokey the Bear. He lived until 1976 at the Washington National Zoo. The image of "Smokey the Bear" was created by an artist in 1944 as the official forest-fire spokesbear. He was named in 1945 reportedly in honor of Smokey Joe Martin, asst. chief of the New York City Fire Dept.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.T6)
1950 Joel Barr (d.1998 at 82), an electronics engineer, defected to Czechoslovakia and later settled in the Soviet Union. He was linked to Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg and was suspected of passing secret technology information to the Soviets. Alfred Sarant, another electronics engineer, also defected and the two men were instrumental in developing microelectronics and the computer industry in the Soviet Union.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.D10)
1950 Milton S. Merlin (1905-1996), producer and writer, was blacklisted when he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He produced "Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry," the first film that teamed Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. He later co-authored "May You Live to Be 200."
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.A21)
1950 Morton Sobell was arrested in Mexico for conspiracy to commit espionage. He was a co-defendant in the Rosenberg trial and was sentenced to 30 years. He was released in 1969 for good behavior.
(SFC, 4/19/02, p.A27)
1950 A rally in Washington DC was organized to protest racial injustice. The rally led to the formation of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights by Arnold Aronson, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)
1950 John W. Nichols (1914-2008) registered the first oil and gas drilling fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission, creating a new kind of tax shelter.
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.A12)
1950 German physicist and engineer Wernher von Braun and a team of some 118 German scientists, described as “prisoners of peace," began arriving in Huntsville, Alabama, to work on the US space program at Redstone Arsenal.
(WSJ, 11/10/04, p.A1)(Econ, 3/13/10, p.34)
1950 Becton Dickinson Corp. acquired its Canadian sales agent, the Norman S. Wright Company, and soon after MAPAD, SA, BD’s distributor in Mexico, and Industrias Cirurgicas in Brazil.
(Echo, 12/09, p.3)
1950 General Motors agreed to free health-care coverage for life along with generous pensions. Chrysler and Ford were forced to offer similar benefits.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.61)
1950 Dinky Toys made the its 2nd garbage truck toy, a Ford garbage truck.
(SFC, 2/4/98, Z1 p.6)
1950 Laclede Gas Light Co., St. Louis, changed its name to Laclede Gas Co. It had begun in 1857.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1950 John Chancellor, reporter, began his career with NBC at a Chicago affiliate known as WNBQ.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p.A5)
1950 Rimo C. Bacigalupi (1900-1996) became the first curator of the Univ. of California’s Jepson Herbarium.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A26)
1950 Major floods hit northern California. In Modesto the Tuolumne River crested at 69 feet, 9 feet over flood level.
(SFC, 1/4/97, p.A1)
1950 Hazel Bishop (d.1998 at 92) formed Hazel Bishop Inc. to manufacture and market her kiss proof lipstick. It was introduced in the summer at $1 a tube.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A25)
1950 Sam Phillips formed Sun Records in Memphis, Ten. In 1954 Elvis Presley, who walked into his studio to record a present for his mother.
(WSJ, 6/16/00, p.W2)
1950 Nash-Kelvinator introduced the compact Rambler, a marked departure from big US cars.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1950 The Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. was sold to Remington Rand. It later evolved into Sperry Univac and then to Unisys.
(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A12)
1950 Joseph Glickauf, engineer for Arthur Anderson & Co., constructed the "Glickiac" computer, which allowed the firm to help General Electric automate its payroll.
(WSJ, 6/7/02, p.A6)
1950 Pfizer Corp. received FDA approval for the antibiotic Terramycin.
(SFEC, 8/27/00, p.B4)
1950 Drs. Ernst L. Wynder and Evarts A. Graham published one of the first studies that showed smokers had a greater risk of lung cancer than nonsmokers.
(SFEM, 6/2/96, p.12)
1950 In England Dr. Richard Doll (1913-2005) and statistician Austin Bradford Hill published a report that linked lung cancer to cigarette smoking.
(SFC, 7/26/05, p.B5)
1950 Luke Williams (d.2004) and his brother Chuck invented a time-temperature sign that later became common on office buildings throughout the world. The 1st one was placed on a bank in downtown Spokane, Wa. In 1951 they formed American Sign and Indicator.
(ST, 4/6/04, p.B5)
1950 The Wayne State Univ. Council of Deans renamed their former high school building to “Old Main."
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.10)
1950 In London Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin (d.1958) produced pictures of X-ray diffraction in aligned fibers of DNA. The lab for X-ray crystallography was set up by physicist John Randall. Data from these pictures led Watson and Crick to understand the structure of DNA. In 1975 Anne Sayre (d.1998) published "Rosalind Franklin and DNA."
(Wired, 2/98, p.135)(SFC, 3/19/98, p.C4)
1950 About 3 million tons of artificial nitrogen fertilizers were used on a global scale.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.51)
1950 A stem rust outbreak destroyed nearly 70% of North American wheat crops before a resistant wheat was developed. In 2005 a mutating strain dubbed Ug99 spread across East Africa and threatened crops worldwide.
(SFC, 9/17/05, p.B8)
1950 By this time chestnut trees were little more than a memory in most parts of North America. The fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, which causes chestnut blight, had arrived in infected saplings from Asia in the late 19th century and began decimating the estimated 4 billion trees.
(Econ, 5/4/13, p.78)
1950 Alfred Kinsey, pioneer sex researcher, wrote: "Human sexual behavior represents one of the least explored segments of biology, psychology, and sociology."
(PacDis, Spring/’94, p. 48)
1950 Mathematician John Nash 1st published his equilibrium theory.
(AARP, 11/05, p.85)
1950 Astronomer Fred L. Whipple (1907-2004) proposed that comets consisted of ice with some rock mixed in. His theory was validated in 1986 with observations of Haley’s comet.
(SFC, 9/1/04, p.B7)
1950 The US census recorded 151,325,798 Americans.
(TMC, 1994, p.1950)
1950 Florida’s population was about 2.8 million.
(Econ, 1/14/12, p.61)
1950 The population of Buffalo, NY, was around 580,000. By 2006 it dropped to 280,000. In 2006 Diana Dillaway authored “Power Failure," a look at Buffalo’s decline.
(WSJ, 6/30/06, p.W4)(Econ, 12/23/06, p.42)
1950 Ten million US households had television in this year.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p.A5)
1950 Martha Matilda Harper (b.1857), Canadian-born hair-care businesswoman, died. She was probably the 1st person to perfect the franchise system of business organization.
(WSJ, 4/23/02, p.D7)(WSJ, 4/22/03, D7)
1950 Ransom E. Olds (1864-1950) died. He assembled 425 curved-dash Oldsmobiles in 1901 and thus became the first mass producer of gas automobiles. He founded Olds Motor Works that later became part of General Motors.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1950 Helen Rowland (b.1875), American writer and humorist, died. "Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever."
(AP, 7/20/00)
1950 Edna St. Vincent Millay (b.1892), poet, died. In 2001 Nancy Milford authored "Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay." Daniel Mark Epstein authored the biography: "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed."
(SSFC, 9/2/01, DB p.59)(WSJ, 9/6/01, p.A20)
1950 The William Morris Gallery opened on the site of the artist’s teenaged home in Walthamstow, Essex, England. The Victorian designer (1834-1896) was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement.
(Economist, 9/22/12, p.98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris)
1950 Alan Sainsbury (1902-1998) pioneered Britain’s first self-service grocery.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.B6)
1950 In British Guyana Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan founded the People’s Progressive Party, the first modern political organization in the colony.
(SFC, 3/7/97, p.A24)
1950 In Burma an Emergency Provision Act was enacted that provided up to 20-year jail terms for inciting unrest and disturbing the peace and tranquility of the state.
(SFC, 8/15/98, p.A14)
1950 Sein Lwin commanded a military unit that tracked down and shot dead the leader of a rebellion against the government of Burma by the country's ethnic Karen minority.
(AP, 4/10/04)
1950 Canada stopped discharging refinery waste from its Ottawa mint into the Ottawa River.
(WSJ, 9/25/96, p.C19)
1950 In Canada there was a major flood on the Red River that forced 25% of the residents of Winnipeg, Manitoba, from their homes.
(SFC, 4/30/97, p.A11)
1950 Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. C1)
1950 In Czechoslovakia the communist government confiscated church property and arrested more than 13,000 priests and religious and put them in concentration camps.
(www.highbeam.com/library/docFree.asp?DOCID=1G1:82803349)
1950 Milan Kundera (b.1929), later renowned as a Czech writer, informed on Miroslav Dvoracek, who had been recruited in Germany by the Czech emigre intelligence network to work as a spy against the Communist regime. Dvoracek was later sentenced to 22 years in prison and eventually served 14, working in uranium mines. Kundera had joined the Communist Party as a student, but was later expelled after criticizing its totalitarian nature. This information was only made public in 2008.
(AP, 10/13/08)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.98)
1950 Minerva Bernardino (d.1998 at 91) was appointed a representative of the Dominican Republic at the United Nations. She was one of the only 4 women to sign the 1945 UN Charter in San Francisco. She had insisted that the document include the phrase "to ensure respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without discrimination against race, sex, condition or creed."
(SFC, 9/5/98, p.A23)
1950 A French law forbidding pretenders to the throne was rescinded. Royalists wanted to see Henri, count of Paris, crowned as King Henry VI of France.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, p.C5)(SFC, 7/15/03, p.A19)
1950 The first German Book Trade Peace Prize was awarded to Max Tau (Adolf Grimme).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Prize_of_the_German_Book_Trade)
1950 German writer Ernst Juenger (1895-1998) went into a self-imposed exile in Wilflingen where he wrote over 50 books.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_J%C3%BCnger)
1950 Volkswagen debuted its iconic microbus. It became a favorite of hippies for its unique styling and copious space for travelers. The Bulli was the brainchild of a Dutch Volkswagen importer, Ben Pon, who in 1947 sketched out a simple public bus built on the wheels of the Volkswagen Beetle. The original Bulli was made from 1950 to 1967. A new version was unveiled in 2011.
(AP, 3/1/11)
1950 Ernst Grafenberg, a German gynecologist, identified a small area behind the pubic bone of women, the G-spot, that he said became an erogenous zone when stimulated. In 2005 Dr. David Matlock of Los Angeles invented and trademarked the G-shot, a collagen injection to the G-spot, promoted to amplify sexual arousal.
(SSFC, 6/3/07, p.F1)
1950 Some 20,000 Jews remained in Germany. 8,000 of these were native German Jews and some 12,000 came from eastern Europe, mostly from Poland.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.41)
1950 The Indian film "Barsaat" was a blockbuster written by Ramanand Sagar.
(WSJ, 4/22/98, p.A1)
1950 The Muslim Tablighi Ijtimah (Congregation of Preaching) movement was founded in India. They believed Islam should be spread by setting a good example, one of modesty and non-violence.
(SFC, 11/3/01, p.A7)
1950 The Indian Institutes of Technology was established. The first IIT was built on the site of a former British prison camp in Kharagpur. By 2007 the institute had 7 campuses taking in 4,500 new students each year.
(SSFC, 2/25/07, p.B1)
1950 Mysore became an Indian state. The former Maharaja became its rajpramukh, or governor, until 1975.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka)
1950 India’s lowest castes and tribes were allowed claim to just over 20% of government and other public-sector jobs. A presidential order excluded any “person who professes a religion different from Hinduism" from entitlement to affirmative action programs. The rule was amended in 1956 to include Dalit Sikhs. The system was extended in 1990 to include another 27% for other backward castes.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.46)(WSJ, 9/19/07, p.A18)
1950 A great earthquake ravaged half of northern India’s Assam state. Thousands of dead rats were caught in fisherman’s nets just before the quake.
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.A4)
1950 Aurobindo Ghose, Bengalese-born and Western educated guru and yogi, died. "Man lives mostly in his surface mind, life and body, but there is an inner being within him with greater possibilities to which he has to awake to greater beauty, harmony, power and knowledge."
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.A17)
1950 The Italian film "Mamma Mia, Che Impressione!" starred Alberto Sordi in his first role.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1950 Giaur was formed in Italy by the great Berardo Taraschi (previously of Urania) and the Giannini brothers, the name coming from Giannini and Urania. The engines were mainly Giannini units, although Fiat and Crosley items were also used.
(http://ferrariexperts.com/giaur.htm)(SSFC, 7/20/08, p.J3)
1950 Israel enacted an Absentee Property Law which allowed the state to confiscate land within Israel if its owners spent any time at all away in Arab countries.
(Econ, 2/5/05, p.46)
1950 Japan enacted the tax proposals of Carl S. Shoup (d.2000 at 97). Shoup, an economist from Colombia Univ., had been invited to Japan by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1949 to overhaul the tax system. The value-added tax system (VAT) eliminated the need for some 80% of the population to file tax individual tax returns.
(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A26)(Econ, 8/3/13, p.63)
1950 Hiroshi Yamauchi took over control and refocused Nintendo along modern business lines. He first consolidated automated manufacturing and then began to mass produce plastic playing cards. The traditional names of the kings are David, Alexander, Caesar and Charles. The traditional names of the queens are Argine, Esther, Judith and Pallas.
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)(SFEC, 1/10/99, Z1 p.8)
1950 Korea suffered its worst winter of the century.
(HN, 8/2/98)
1950 The Mina El Eden in Zacateca, Mexico was closed.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1950 The Polish Catholic church and government signed an accord over relations. The Catholic Church was dispossessed of its principal charitable organization, Caritas, including numerous residential facilities and community resources such as soup kitchens and missions in rail stations.
(http://tinyurl.com/fw8yd)(http://tinyurl.com/fpsdk)
c1950 In Romania Brother Cleopa under pressure from the Communist party to stop receiving visitors, who sought his guidance, left the Sihastra Monastery and became a hermit in the mountain forests for 3 years. He ate 1 potato a day.
(SFC, 12/7/98, p.A25)
1950 The South Africa Nationalist government banned Communists and forced them to go underground to struggle against apartheid.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)
1950 In South Africa Nelson Mandela (1918-1913) became president of the ANC Youth League and was elected to the ANC national executive committee.
(SFC, 12/6/13, p.A18)
1950 South Africa set up Sasol as a state-owned company and authorized funds for the development of a coal-to-liquids facility called Sasolburg.
(WSJ, 8/16/06, p.A12)
1950 The Club Mediterranean resort opened catering to singles. Gilbert Trigano (d.2000 at 80) of France and Gerard Blitz, a Belgium water polo champion, founded the 1st Club Med with 200 tents on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)(SFC, 2/5/01, p.A21)(Econ, 5/31/14, p.60)
1950 In Turkey PM Adnan Menderes was warned of an impending coup and sacked 15 generals and 150 colonels.
(Econ, 8/6/11, p.43)
1950 Between Uzbekistan and Kazakstan the surface area of the Aral Sea was 67,000 sq. km. and shrinking.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A18)
1950-1951 The Texaco Star Theater was the top ranking network show on television with a ranking of 61.6%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1950-1951 In late 1950 and early 1951, in Namyangju, 16 miles northeast of Seoul, South Korea, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated in 2008 that police and a local militia slaughtered more than 460 people, including at least 23 children under the age of 10.
(AP, 12/7/08)
1950-1953 The Korean War. It started on Jun 25, 1950 and 2.5 million people were killed with over 2 million of them civilians. No peace treaty was ever signed. About 1.7 million Americans were involved and there was an estimated 3 mil casualties including 150,000 (54,246) Americans and over 1 mil Chinese. In 1999 W.D. Ehrhart and Philip K. Jason edited "Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War."
(NG, Aug., 1974, H. E. Kim, p.255)(SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-9)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A15) (SFEM, 11/10/96, p.12)(SFC, 2/17/96, p.A26)(SFEC, 8/29/99, BR p.3)(WSJ, 10/6/99, p.A22)
1950-1953 The United Nations employed 39,000 ground forces that joined with the United States in the Korean War.
(HNQ, 4/14/00)
1950-1953 Soviet pilots ran the air war over North Korea and accounted for 70% of the casualties in that part of the conflict.
(WSJ, 6/13/00, p.A1)
c1950-1953 Baseball player Ted Williams and future astronaut John Glenn flew combat missions together as part of Marine jet fighter squadron VMF-311 during the Korean War.
(HNQ, 8/23/01)
1950-1953 Wayne Johnson, Korean War POW, managed to record the names of over 500 fellow soldiers killed in captivity. In 1996 he was awarded a Silver Star by the US Army.
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.A8)
1950-1959 Alfred Russell (b.1920), artist, announced "Now is the time to paint the wrong picture in the wrong century and the wrong place." Russell was considered the father of post-modernism.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, DB p.25)
1950-1959 Scripts from the popular 1950s television show, Your Show of Shows , were found in a closet in New York City in September 2000. Workers in a New York City office building discovered a closet containing 137 scripts, some of them with hand-written notations, from one of the country’s most beloved shows from the `50s. The closet had served as storage for the show’s producer, Max Liebman, who died in 1981.
(HNQ, 3/4/01)
1950-1959 This was the last decade of the century in which the traditional elements in society held the cultural upper hand.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.3)
1950-1959 Fred Coe (1914-1979) was considered the greatest producer in television’s Golden Age in the 1950s. John Krampner wrote "The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television" in 1996. Coe produced the Philco-Goodyear Playhouse, Studio One, Kraft Television Theater and Robert Montgomery Presents.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.18)
1950-1959 Lawrence Payton (d.1997 at 59) began singing with a group called the Four Aims (Payton, Levi Stubbs, Abdul "Duke" Fakir, and Renaldo "Obie" Benson). They sang backup for Billy Eckstine and signed with Motown Records, run by Berry Gordy, in 1963. Their songs included: "Baby I Need Your Loving," "Reach Out," and I Can’t Help Myself." In 2002 Geral Posner authored "Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power."
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A18)(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.M1)
1950-1959 Charles Samuel Johnson, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois and Aaron Douglas were all members of the Harlem Renaissance and taught at Fisk University.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.14)
1950-1959 The US CIA led secret missions in Indonesia.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)
1950-1959 The Lockheed WV-2, a modified Super Constellation airliner, provided early airborne warning to the East Coast in the late 1950s during the Cold War. It operated with VW-11 the first of three squadrons to comprise the Atlantic Early Warning Wing, known as "Barrier Force Atlantic." The planes, based at wintry Argentina, Newfoundland, operated in some of the worst weather imaginable over the Atlantic. They would fly to the Azores and back on 15-to 17-hour missions constantly scanning radar scopes for Russian intruders who, though they never came, would have been spotted in time for defensive measures to be called upon.
(HNQ, 7/11/02)
1950-1959 The US Army Corps of Engineers diverted Florida’s Kissimmee River allowing Miami and Fort Lauderdale to grow on the old river bed.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.31)
1950-1959 Alexander Guterma manipulated stocks and eventually faced a prison sentence in a major scandal of the decade.
(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.A8)
1950-1959 Howard Hughes bought 25,000 acres around Las Vegas.
(WSJ, 1/16/98, p.A1)
1950-1959 Denham Harmon, Univ. of Neb. med. prof., provided a theoretical framework of how Vitamin E worked against free radicals. In the late 1940s Canadian doctors, Evan and Wilfred Shute treated heart patients with vitamin E and were denounced by the med. profession which then focused on diet as the best source of all nutrients.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.B9)
1950-1959 Seymour Cray began working on the Univac 1103 in the mid 50s.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, C12)
1950-1959 Fred Lip (Frederic Lipmann 1901-1996) with a team of engineers and technicians introduced the first electronic wristwatch.
(SFC, 11/12/96, p.B2)
1950-1959 Richard W. Porter (1913-1996), A General Electric electrical engineer, was put in charge of the US space program in the mid 50s.
(SFC, 10/11/96, p.A24)
1950-1959 Joe Thompson built up 7-Eleven (Southland Corp.) to some 400 stores during this time. He founded the company following WW II service in the Navy.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A16)
1950-1959 The pebble-bed nuclear reactor was developed. It used fuel pebbles of coated uranium and helium gas to drive turbines. A research reactor in Germany ran for 22 years.
(SSFC, 2/11/01, p.B5)
1950-1959 In Nebraska Charles Starkweather went on a slaying spree. This inspired the 1973 film "Badlands" starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.
(SFEM, 2/8/98, p.8)
1950-1959 In 2006 Peter Hennessey authored “Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties."
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.86)
1950-1959 Mennonites from Canada emigrated to Belize in search of religious freedom. Some still speak Low German. Mennonites from Canada and Pennsylvania had fled persecution in 1922 and settled near Chihuahua, Mexico.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.T3)(SFEC, 11/5/00, p.T4)
1950-1959 During the 1950s bicycles took over the flat streets of Beijing from rickshaws.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D4)
1950-1959 The Chinese government updated the system for spelling Chinese words with Roman letters. It also introduced simplified written Chinese characters in a system called pinyin.
(SFC, 5/8/06, p.A1)
1950-1959 In France Guy Debord and the Situationists staged disruptive events and practiced "detournement," or cut-up art.
(SFC, 8/8/98, p.E1)
1950-1959 Emma Berger, a German Christian, founded a sect of fervent believers in Stuttgart and led a portion of them to Israel in 1963, where they founded a commune called Bethel-El.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A1)
1950-1959 In Indonesia Lt. Col. Suharto was a supply officer to an army division in central Java. He dealt with Liem Sioe Liong, later head of the conglomerate, the Salim Group. When Suharto took power in 1965 Liem’s business flourished. The relationship is documented by Adam Schwarz in his book "A Nation in Waiting."
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A23)
1950-1959 In Japan Shinichi Suzuki (d.1998 at 99) pioneered the Suzuki method for teaching music to young children.
(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A20)
1950-1959 Nigeria passed legislation that became known as the "Four Obnoxious Bills." The laws ensured that revenues from natural resources were collected at the center and doled out to the rest of the 36 states without proportion to their role in generating the wealth.
(WSJ, 4/15/03, p.A14)
1950-1959 Panama disease in the 1950s obliterated the Gros Michel variety of bananas. By the 1960s it was close to extinction. It was replaced by the Cavendish variety. Most edible bananas do not have seeds and are sprouted from shoots of original trees that date back 10,000 years.
(SFC, 4/5/04, p.D5)(Econ, 3/1/14, p.62)
1950-1959 Cannibalism was banned in Papua New Guinea.
(SFC, 4/11/03, p.A6)
1950-1959 The first outsiders to regularly contact the Bahinemo people of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s were traders looking for crocodile skins and carvings.
(SFC, 5/29/96, p.A8)
1950-1959 In Venezuela Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez was a popular dictator for 10 years. He prided himself on colossal public works that included the Central University.
(WSJ, 4/27/98, p.A16)(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.T6)
1950-1959 From Yugoslavia Tito’s security chief, Alexander Rankovic, a Serb, repressed Kosovo separatism.
(SFC, 3/3/98, p.A8)
1950-1959 Zambia’s chibuku beer was developed in the 1950s by Max Heinrich, a German brewer. He ramped the indigenous home-brew to a commercial scale. In 1999, after passing through many hands, it was acquired by SAB.
(Econ, 5/31/14, p.56)
1950-1960 A chemical firm in Japan dumped mercury waste into the Minimata Bay and caused mercury poisoning during the 1950s. Victims reached a settlement in 1996.
(WSJ, 5/23/96, p.A-1)
1950-1960 In North Korea the Songbun caste system began to take shape. The word translates as "ingredient" but effectively means "background." Thus was a time when founder Kim Il Sung was forging one of the world's most repressive states and seeking ways to reward supporters and isolate potential enemies. The system pushed peasants to the top of the caste ladder; aristocrats and landlords toward the bottom.
(AP, 12/29/12)
1950-1960s Harry Harlow (1905-1981) conducted psychology experiments on baby rhesus monkeys at the Univ. of Wisconsin. In 2003 Deborah Blum authored “Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection."
(NYTBR, 2/2/03, p.19)
1950-1960s In Britain the Butskellite consensus of the 1950s was based on strong bipartisan support for Keynesian economic management and the welfare state. It was named for Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Butler and Labor's shadow Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell. it entailed an agreement by Tories not to attack the new Welfare State; in exchange, Labor helped to maintain industrial peace. This enabled a quiet time of economic stagnation in 1950s, which continued into the 1960s.
(http://faculty.smu.edu/jhollifi/Britain.htm)
1950-1967 The US Congress for Cultural Freedom was a CIA front organization headed by Michael Josselson. It sponsored art exhibition, high profile conferences and rewarded artists and musicians with prizes and commissions to counter Communist cultural propaganda during the Cold War. In 2000 Frances Stonor Saunders authored "The Cultural Cold War."
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A46)
1950-1970 Japan staged an economic miracle with a growth rate of 9.2% in the 50s and 10.7% in the 60s.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1950-1973 During this period the world GDP per head increased an average of 2.9% a year.
(Econ, 9/16/06, Survey p.4)
1950-1975 John Peter (d.1998 at 81) in 1994 published "The Oral History of Modern Architecture." It was accompanied by a CD based on interviews with some of the leading architects of this period: i.e. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A21)
1950s-1970s Operation SOLO, a covert US mission, lasted nearly 20 years. John Barron later authored "Operation SOLO: The FBI’s Man Inside the Kremlin."
(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A19)
1950-1980 About 3.5 million blacks were forcibly trucked off to ethnic territories, often abandoning land, houses and cattle.
(WSJ, 5/17/96,p.A-10)
1950-1985 Property taxes in Baltimore, Maryland, were increased 21 times over this period. By 2008 some 30,000 housing units were abandoned and waited for demolition.
(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.A9)
1950-1996 It has been reported that 1.2 million Tibetans have been slain under Chinese rule.
(SFC, 6/16/96, p.B5)
1950-2000 Two books on the abortion issue over period were published in 1988: "Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars" by Cynthia Gorney," and "Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle" a series of articles by 22 pro-choice authors ed. by Rickie Solinger.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.5)
Return to home
www.fiftiesweb.com/home.htm
1950 Jan 3, Bart (Clair Barth) Johnson baseball, was born.: pitcher: Chicago White Sox.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1950 Jan 3, Rick MacLeish, hockey player, was born: London Nationals, Oklahoma City Blazers, Philadelphia Flyers, Hartford Whalers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit Red Wings.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1950 Jan 3, Victoria Principal, actress, was born: Dallas, Fantasy Island, Scott Turow’s The Burden of Proof, Naked Lie, Blind Witness, Mistress, Pleasure Palace, Earthquake, Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1950 Jan 5, Carson McCuller's "Member of the Wedding," premiered in NYC.
(www.carson-mccullers.com/mccullers/timeline.htm)
1950 Jan 6, Britain recognized the Communist government of China.
(AP, 1/6/00)
1950 Jan 6, Isaiah Bowman (b.1878), Canadian-born geographer, died in Baltimore, Md. He served as the director of the American Geographical Society 1916-1935 and then became president of John Hopkins Univ.
(www.bookrags.com/biography-isaiah-bowman/index.html)
1950 Jan 8, Joseph A. Schumpeter (b.1883), Austrian-German-American economist, died in Connecticut. In 1911 while teaching at Czernowitz (now in the Ukraine), he wrote his “Theory of Economic Development," where he first outlined his famous theory of entrepreneurship. In 1942 he published his fifth book "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy." In 2007 Thomas K. McCraw authored “Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction."
(WSJ, 4/5/07, p.D7)(Econ, 4/28/07, p.94)
1950 Jan 12, Sec. of State Dean Acheson in a speech placed South Korea and Formosa outside the US defense perimeter in Asia. Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, and the Aleutians were inside the perimeter to be defended.
(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.W8)(http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/acheson.html)
1950 Jan 14, US recalled all consular officials from China.
(www.tibetjustice.org/reports/chron.html)
1950 Jan 14, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).
(www.sparknotes.com/history/american/koreanwar/timeline.html)
1950 Jan 17, In Boston 11 men robbed the Brink's office of $1.2M cash & $1.5M securities. The 1978 film "The Brink’s Job" starred Peter Falk and Peter Boyle. It was based on the nonfiction book "The Big Stick-Up at Brink’s" by Noel Behn.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Brinks_Robbery)
1950 Jan 19, Communist Chinese leader Mao recognized the Republic of Vietnam.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1950 Jan 21, Former State Department official Alger Hiss, accused of being part of a Communist spy ring, was found guilty in New York of lying to a grand jury. Hiss, who always maintained his innocence, was sentenced to five years in prison; he served less than four.
(AP, 1/21/00)
1950 Jan 21, George Orwell (46), author, died in London of tuberculosis. His books included Down and Out in Paris and London" (1933) and "1984." William Abrahams (d.1998), editor and novelist, co-authored the 2-volume biography of Orwell: "Life, Death and Art in the Second World War," and "Journey to the Frontier" with Peter Stansky. In 2000 Jeffrey Meyers authored the biography "Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation." Orwell married Sonia Brownell (1918-1980) on his deathbed. In 2003 Hilary Spurling authored "The Gril from the Fiction Department," a biography of Sonia Orwell. In 2003 D.J. Taylor authored "Orwell : The Life."
(AP, 1/21/98)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.D7)(SFC, 6/25/98, p.B12)(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.W10)(SSFC, 9/28/03, p.M2)
1950 Jan 23, The Israeli Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)(AP, 1/23/98)(HN, 1/23/99)
1950 Jan 24, Jackie Robinson signed highest contract ($35,000) in Dodger history.
(www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/R/Robinson_Jackie.stm)
1950 Jan 26, India officially proclaimed itself a republic as Rajendra Prasad took the oath of office as president.
(AP, 1/26/98)
1950 Jan 29, Ann Jillian, actress (Mr. Mom, Jennifer Slept Here), was born in Cambridge, Mass.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0422713/)
1950 Jan 29, Riots broke out in Johannesburg, South Africa, over Apartheid.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1950 Jan 29, The French National Assembly approved legislation granting autonomy to Bao Dai's State of Vietnam.
(www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html)
1950 Jan 31, President Truman announced that he had ordered full-speed development of the hydrogen bomb.
(TMC, 1994, p.1950)(AP, 1/31/98)
1950 Jan 31, Paris protested the Soviet recognition of Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1950 Jan, The Federal Hourly Minimum Wage was set at $0.75 an hour.
(http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/blminwage.htm)
1950 Feb 2, Nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs was arrested on spy charges. The Klaus Fuchs (d.1988) confession revealed that the Soviet Union obtained the atomic bomb from sources within the Manhattan Project. It was later revealed that Theodore Alvin Hall, a scientist on the project, passed information to the Soviets. The story is told in the 1997 book: "Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Spy Conspiracy" by Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel. Fuchs served 9 ½ years in a British prison. Ruth Werner (d.2000) served as a contact for Fuchs in Britain.
(http://tinyurl.com/kjpk5)(WSJ, 10/20/97, p.A19)(SFEC, 12/21/97, BR p.7)(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A23)
1950 Feb 3, Morgan Fairchild, [Patsy McClenny], actress (Falcon Crest), born in Dallas, Tx.
(en.wikipedia org/wiki/Morgan_Fairchild))
1950 Feb 3, The song "Rag Mop" by The Ames Brothers hit #1.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_in_music)
1950 Feb 6, Natalie Cole, vocalist (Pink Cadillac, Miss You Like Crazy, Mona Lisa), was born in LA, Calif.
(www.smoothjazznow.com/birthdays_feb_dates.htm)
1950 Feb 7, The United States recognized Vietnam under the leadership of Emperor Bao Dai, not Ho Chi Minh who was recognized by the Soviets.
(HN, 2/7/99)
1950 Feb 9, In a speech at the Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, W. Va., Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., charged the State Department was riddled with Communists and that he had a list of them. He asserted that Sec. of State Dean Acheson knew this and refused to do anything about it. McCarthy said there were 205 communists working in the US State Dept.
(AP, 2/9/99)(WSJ, 12/6/99, p.A32)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.A26)(WSJ, 5/12/98, p.A20)
1950 Feb 10, Mark Spitz, Modesto Calif, swimmer (Oly-9 gold/silver/bronze-68,72), was born.
(www.thisdaythatyear.com/feb/people10.htm)
1950 Feb 12, Albert Einstein warned against the hydrogen bomb on US national TV.
(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/eins-s03.shtml)
1950 Feb 13, A US Air Force B-36 crashed near the coast of northern British Columbia during a simulated nuclear attack on San Francisco. 12 of 17 men on board survived. A Mark 4 bomb, which lacked a plutonium core needed for a nuclear blast, was dropped over the ocean before the plane crashed.
(SFC, 5/25/12, p.A16)(www.air-and-space.com/b-36%20wrecks.htm#44-92075)
1950 Feb 13, Albania recognized Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese government, becoming the sixth Eastern bloc country to do so.
(HN, 2/13/98)
1950 Feb 15, WM Inge's "Come Back, Little Sheba," premiered in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=1867)
1950 Feb 15, Walt Disney's animated "Cinderella" was released.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0042332/)(WSJ, 6/28/08, p.W6)
1950 Feb 15, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung signed a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1950 Feb 17, In New York 31 people died in a train crash at Long Island’s Rockville Center.
(www.emergency-management.net/pass_train.htm)
1950 Feb 18, John Hughes, director (Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Weird Science), was born in Lansing, Mich.
(http://movies.yahoo.com)
1950 Feb 20, Welsh author-poet Dylan Thomas arrived in NYC for his 1st US poetry reading tour.
(www.swansea.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2488&articleaction=print)
1950 Feb 21, The United States formally broke relations with Bulgaria.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1950 Feb 23, New York’s Metropolitan Museum exhibited a collection of Hapsburg art. It was the first showing of this collection in the U.S.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1950 Feb 25, The comedy-variety program "Your Show of Shows," starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and, later, Howard Morris, debuted on NBC-TV. The show’s writers included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon & Woody Allen.
(AP, 2/25/00)(www.abilene2000.com/moments/mom0225k.html)
1950 Feb 25, George Richards Minot (b.1885), physician (Nobel-1934), died.
(WUD, 1994 p.913)(Internet)
1950 Feb 25, In Czechoslovakia Josef Toufar (b.1902), a Catholic priest was tortured to death by investigators after the secret police claimed he staged a fake miracle in his church in Cihost where a cross began to move for no obvious reason during a Mass.
(www.multilingualarchive.com/ma/dewiki/en/Josef_Toufar)
1950 Feb 26, Leonard Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" premiered in NYC.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1950 Feb 26, Harry Lauder (b.1870), notable Scottish entertainer, died. He was, at one time, the highest-paid performer in the world, making the equivalent of £12,700 a night plus expenses, and was the first British performer to sell more than a million records.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lauder)
1950 Feb 28, The French Assembly in Paris decided to limit the sale of Coca-Cola.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1950 Feb, Frank McNamara paid for a meal at Major’s Cabin Grill in NYC with his newly invented Diners Club card. The cardboard card was the first charge card that could be used at multiple establishments.
(WSJ, 2/5/99, p.A1)(Econ, 12/10/05, p.88)
1950 Feb, The Viet Minh began an offensive against French troops in Indo China.
(http://tinyurl.com/zho2c)
1950 Mar 1, Chiang Kai-shek resumed the presidency of Nationalist China in Taipei.
(www.taiwan.com.au/Polieco/Symbols/report07.html)
1950 Mar 1, Klaus Fuchs was sentenced in London to 14 years for atomic espionage.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1950 Mar 1, Kim Soo-im (b.1911), a former US-employed assistant and lover to provost marshal Col. John E. Baird, was arrested by South Korean police, joining thousands of others ensnared in President Syngman Rhee's roundups of leftists — workers and writers, teachers, peasants and others with suspect politics. She was soon tried and executed in June by South Korea as an alleged spy.
(AP, 8/17/08)
1950 Mar 1, USSR issued golden rubles.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1950 Mar 2, Karen Carpenter was born. (drummer, singer: Grammy Award-winning group: The Carpenters: Best New Artist, Group w/Vocal: Close to You [1970], We've Only Just Begun, Top of the World, Please Mr. Postman)
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)
1950 Mar 2, Silly Putty was introduced to the public. Silly Putty was accidentally invented in 1943 by James Wright of General Electric.
(www.sillyputty.com/silly_science/silly_science.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/zwree)
1950 Mar 5, Edgar Lee Masters (b.1868), poet (Spoon River Anthology), novelist, died in Philadelphia.
(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3088)
1950 Mar 8, Marshall Voroshilov of the USSR announced the Soviet Union had developed an atomic bomb. [see August 29, 1949]
(PC, 1992 ed, p.922)
1950 Mar 9, Space Patrol debuted as a local, 15-minute show that aired live five days a week in Los Angeles and ran to 1955. Norman Jolley (d.2002), evil Agent X, acted in the series and wrote scripts. Ed Kemmer (1921-2004) played Commander Buzz Corry. Joanne Jordan played the evil Queen Mirtha. In 2005 Jean-Noel Bassior authored “Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the name of Early Television."
(SFC, 8/23/02, p.A27)(SFC, 11/17/04, p.B8)(SFC, 10/17/08, p.B8)(SFC, 9/25/09, p.D10)
1950 Mar 9, Willie Sutton robbed the NYC Manufacturers Bank of $64,000.
(www.astorialic.org/topics/timeline/1950.shtml)
1950 Mar 11, Jerry Zucker, film director and TV producer, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0958387/)
1950 Mar 14, The FBI began its "10 Most Wanted" list after a reporter asked for the names and descriptions of the "toughest guys" the FBI would like to capture.
(SFEC, 4/30/00, Par p.4)
1950 Mar 15, "Consul" opened at Barrymore Theater in NYC.
(www.ibdb.com/venue.asp?ID=1147)
1950 Mar 16, Acheson called for a seven-point cooperation plan with the Russians.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1950 Mar 17, Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced they had created a new radioactive element, which they named "californium."
(AP, 3/17/97)
1950 Mar 18, Nationalist troops landed on the mainland of China and captured Communist held Sungmen.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1950 Mar 19, Edgar Rice Burroughs (74), sci-fi author and the creator of Tarzan, died. He wrote 24 Tarzan novels and 50 other thrillers. In 1999 John Taliaferro authored the biography "Tarzan Forever."
(SFEC, 5/9/99, Par p.8)(http://deadpool.rotten.com/occupations/author.html)
1950 Mar 20, The government of Poland decided to confiscate the property of Polish church.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950)
1950 Mar 22, A one-page memo was addressed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Guy Hottel, then head of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office. It relayed some information from an informant. The subject: FLYING SAUCERS INFORMATION CONCERNING: "An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots." The file was released in April 2011 under the Freedom of Information Act. The memo is dated nearly three years after the infamous events in Roswell in July 1947.
(http://tinyurl.com/cwg4uwp)
1950 Mar 23, At the Academy Awards, "All the King's Men" won best picture of 1949; its star, Broderick Crawford, won best actor. Olivia de Havilland won best actress for "The Heiress."
(AP, 3/23/00)
1950 Mar 23, "Great to Be Alive" opened at Winter Garden Theater in NYC for 52 performances.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1950 Mar 23, UN World Meteorological Organization was established.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1950 Mar 23, Sophocles Venizelos formed liberal Greeks government.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1950 Mar 26, Senator Joe McCarthy named Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1950 Mar 27, Maria Ewing, opera singer, was born in Detroit, Mich.
(http://classicalmanac.blogspot.com/2006/03/march-27.html)
1950 Mar 30, President Truman denounced Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1950 Mar 30, Phototransistor invention was announced in Murray Hill, NJ. It was invented by Dr. John Northrup Shive of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
(http://tinyurl.com/ewxqh)
1950 Apr 1, The SF population was 775,357. The census later said 4 of 10 people in SF owned their own homes with a median value of $11,930. The average SF adult completed 11.7 years of school and over 19% went on to college.
(SFC, 12/28/01, WB p.G7)(SFC, 1/31/03, p.E4)
1950 Apr 1, Charles R. Drew (45), surgeon, developer of blood bank concept, died.
(http://wa.essortment.com/whoischarlesr_rkbb.htm)
1950 Apr 3, Kurt Julian Weill (50), German composer (Dreigroschenoper), died. His best known work is the music for "The Threepenny Opera." His work also included "Der Jasager." He was married to the singer Lotte Lenya. Letters between the two over a period of 26 years have been edited and translated in a book by Lys Symonette and Kim H Kowalke: "Speak Low (When You Speak Love)." His work also included the theater piece "Der Weg der Verheissung" (The Eternal Road). In 2002 Foster Hirsch authored "Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway."
(SFC, 5/26/96, BR p.6)(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)(SSFC, 3/17/02, p.M3)
1950 Apr 3, Carter G. Woodson (b.1875), black historian, died. Woodson is best known for is the creation of what became "Black History Month," begun in 1926 as "Negro History Week." The idea of learning more about black history caught on in schools all over the country. Many scholars recognize him as the “Father of Black History." His work included “The Negro in Our History" (1922).
(WSJ, 5/19/05, p.D8)(www.biography.com/articles/Carter-G.-Woodson-9536515)
1950 Apr 8, A US Navy Privateer airplane flew from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet Union with 10 people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spotted the plane over Latvia and shot it down.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.A26)(www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/baltic_incident.html)
1950 Apr 8, Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky (b.1889), Ukraine-born ballet dancer, died in London. He created 4 ballets that included "The Afternoon of a Fawn" and "Jeux" with music by Claude Debussy.
(AP, 4/8/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaslav_Nijinsky)
1950 Apr 9, Bob Hope made his first television appearance. Hope began his career on an NBC television special after years on radio. "I’d better get into television before Milton Berle used up my material."
(SFC, 10/24/96, p.D5)(HN, 4/9/98)
1950 Apr 11, Bill Irwin, actor and choreographer, was born.
(HN, 4/11/01)
1950 Apr 14, A national security report , NSC-68, was presented to Pres. Truman. It was in response to a directive issued by Truman on January 31: “to undertake a reexamination of our objectives in peace and war and of the effect of these objectives on our strategic plans, in the light of the probable fission bomb capability and possible thermonuclear bomb capability of the Soviet Union."
(www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nsc-68/nsc68-1.htm)
1950 Apr 18, The first transatlantic jet passenger trip was made.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1950 Apr 23, Chiang Kai-shek evacuated Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao and the communists.
(AP, 4/23/98)(HN, 4/23/99)
1950 Apr 24, "Peter Pan" opened at Imperial Theater in NYC for 320 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/venue.asp?ID=1208)
1950 Apr 24, Jordan annexed the West Bank and offered citizenship to all Palestinians wishing to claim it.
(SFC, 2/8/99, p.A6)
1950 Apr 25, Steve Ferrone, drummer (Average White Band), was born.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1950 Apr 25, Chuck Cooper became the 1st black to play in the NBA.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1950 Apr 27, South Africa passed the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
(HN, 4/27/98)
1950 May 1, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry called "Annie Allen."
(HN, 5/1/99)
1950 May 1, Lothrop Stoddard (1883), American political theorist, historian, eugenicist, and anti-immigration advocate, died. He wrote a number of prominent books of early 20th-century scientific racism including “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" (1920).
(WSJ, 1/4/08, p.W5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothrop_Stoddard)
1950 May 1, New marriage laws were enforced in People's Republic China.
(www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/restricted/marriage.htm)
1950 May 1, South Africa’s 1927 Immorality Act, which prohibited sex between whites and blacks, was amended to prohibit sex between whites and all non-whites.
(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Immorality_Amendment_Act,_1950)
1950 May 6, Liz Taylor wed Conrad Hilton Jr. in her first marriage.
(www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,291072~7~~,00.html)
1950 May 6, Agnes Smedley, American journalist and writer, died. She was best known for her chronicling of the Chinese revolution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States)
1950 May 8, The US Government convinced that neither national independence nor democratic evolution exist in any area dominated by Soviet imperialism, considers the situation to be such as to warrant its according economic aid and military equipment to the Associated State of Indochina and to France in order to assist them in restoring stability and permitting these states to pursue their peaceful and democratic development.
(www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html)
1950 May 13, Steveland Morris Hardaway (AKA Stevie Wonder) was born prematurely, in Saginaw, Mi., as Steveland Judkins. Too much oxygen in the incubator caused the baby to become permanently blind. At the age of ten, Little Stevie Wonder, as he was called by Berry Gordy at Motown, was discovered singing and playing the harmonica. He had many hits during his teens including "Fingertips" and as an adult he has earned an Oscar and at least 16 Grammy Awards. He has stood up for civil rights and campaigned against cancer, AIDS, drunk driving and the plight of Ethiopians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Wonder)
1950 May 13, Diner's Club issued its 1st credit cards.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1950 May 14, In Turkey the Democratic Party won 52% of the votes in its first free elections and Adnan Menderes (b.1899) became prime minister.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Menderes)
1950 May 18, "Liar" opened at Broadhurst Theater in NYC for 12 performances.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1950 May 21, French sources reported that Viet Minh guerrillas had infiltrated Cambodia and opened an arms-smuggling corridor to Thailand.
(www.geocities.com/khmerchronology/1950.htm)
1950 May 22, Richard Strauss' "4 Last Songs" (4 letzte Lieder) were performed in London.
(www.richard-strauss.com/biography.html)
1950 May 25, Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel opened in NYC.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1950 May 29, Rebbie [Maureen] Jackson, singer (R U Tuff Enuff), was born in Gary, IN.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1950 May, The magazine Astounding Science Fiction published "Dianetics" by L. Ron Hubbard. His book "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was published later in this year. The Church of Scientology was later based on Dianetics.
(WSJ, 5/12/97, p.A15)(SFC, 2/12/01, p.A13)
1950 Jun 2, Joanna Gleason, actress (Morgan-Hello Larry), was born in Toronto, Canada.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1950 Jun 3, French expedition reached the top of Himalayan peak of Annapurna in Nepal. Maurice Herzog (1919-2012) became the first man to climb the 8,000-meter peak despite losing all his fingers and toes to frostbite. He later went on to scale the heights of French politics.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna)(AP, 12/15/12)
1950 Jun 8, Alex Van Halen, drummer for the hard rock group Van Halen, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Van_Halen)
1950 Jun 17, Surgeon Richard Lawler performed the first kidney transplant operation in Chicago.
(HN, 6/17/01)
1950 Jun 23, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501, a DC-4 propliner operating its daily transcontinental service between New York City and Seattle, crashed into Lake Michigan killing 58 people. This was to date the worst commercial airliner accident in American history.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Orient_Airlines_Flight_2501)(AP, 3/30/11)
1950 Jun 23, Swiss parliament refused voting rights for women.
(www.todayinhistory.com/s60-6-23-event-results.html)
1950 Jun 24, In Brazil the Maracana stadium in Rio was officially inaugurated for the opening of soccer’s World Cup, the first in 12 years due to WW II.
(www.soccerhall.org/history/WorldCup_1950.htm)
1950 Jun 25, The Korean War started as forces from the communist North invaded the South. It lasted till 1953. A Truman administration statement that Korea was “outside the US defense perimeter" in the Pacific was said to have invited the attack. Gen. McArthur led a UN expeditionary force in response to North Korea’s attack on South Korea. The Chinese entered the war and the UN forces were pushed into a Christmas retreat. 2.5 million people were killed. No peace treaty was ever signed. About 1.7 million Americans were involved and there was an estimated 3 mil casualties including 150,000 (54,246) Americans and over 1 mil Chinese. In 1990 North Korean officials revealed that Stalin knew about and encouraged North Korea’s aggression as did Mao Tse-Tung.
(NG, Aug., 1974, p.255)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A15)(SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-9)(SFEM, 11/10/96, p.12)(SFC, 2/17/96, p.A26)(AP, 6/25/97)(WSJ, 7/21/97, p.A22)
1950 Jun 26, President Truman authorized the US Air Force and Navy to enter the Korean conflict.
(AP, 6/26/07)
1950 Jun 27, Julia Duffy, actress (Stephanie-Newhart, Baby Talk), was born in Minneapolis, Minn.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1950 Jun 27, President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict following a call from the United Nations Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.
(AP, 6/27/97)
1950 Jun 27, North Koreans troop reached Seoul. UN Security Council called on members for troops to aid South Korea.
(HN, 6/27/98)(MC, 6/27/02)
1950 Jun 27, US sent 35 military advisers to South Vietnam.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1950 Jun 27, Milada Horakova (b.1901), a Czechoslovak politician, was executed by Communists on trumped-up charges of conspiracy and treason. As a one of few women ever executed in Czechoslovakia she is regarded as a symbol of anti-Communist resistance for her firm and courageous stance during her trial. In 2007 Ludmila Brozova-Polednova (86), former communist prosecutor, was found guilty of a charge of abetting judicial murder.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milada_Hor%C3%A1kov%C3%A1)(AP, 11/1/07)
1950 Jun 28, The South Korean government blew up the Han River Bridge, the southern escape route for many Seoul residents, just hours before the North Koreans arrived.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.A13)
1950 Jun 28, General Douglas MacArthur arrived in South Korea as Seoul fell to the North Korean forces.
(AP, 6/28/97)(HN, 6/28/98)
1950 Jun 29, President Harry S. Truman authorized a sea blockade of Korea.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1950 Jun 30, President Harry Truman ordered U.S. troops into Korea and authorizes the draft. On that same day B-29 ‘Superfortresses’ bombed targets in North Korea.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1950 Jun, The FBI arrested David Greenglass, younger brother of Ethel Rosenberg. He confessed to spying the same day.
(WSJ, 10/1/01, p.A22)
1950 Jun-1950 Jul, The South Korean government of Syngman Rhee arrested tens of thousands due to fear that leftists would collaborate with the North Koreans sweeping down the peninsula. Rhee ordered the murders of thousands of political opponents and some of their mass graves were not found until the late 1990s. In 2009 a government commission said South Korean soldiers and police executed nearly 5,000 citizens during the early months of the 1950-53 Korean War, fearing they could collaborate with invading North Korean troops.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)(WSJ, 6/5/00, p.A32)(AP, 7/6/08)(AP, 11/26/09)
1950 Jul 1, American ground troops arrived in South Korea to stem the tide of the advancing North Korean army.
(HN, 7/1/98)
1950 Jul 1, The European Payment Union (EPU) came into being, by agreement of the country members of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). The latter had replaced the original Committee of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC), in April, 1948, and is an organization of European recipients of U.S. economic assistance.
(www.eagletraders.com)
1950 Jul 3, US Pres. Truman signed public law 600. It provided federal statutory authorization for the people of Puerto Rico to write their own constitution.
(www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/2004/vol8n34/CBRoadComnwlth.shtml)
1950 Jul 3, American and North Korean forces clashed for the first time in the Korean War. U.S. carrier-based planes attacked airfields in the Pyongyang-Chinnampo area of North Korea in the first air-strike of the Korean War.
(AP, 7/3/98)(HN, 7/3/98)
1950 Jul 5, American forces engaged the North Koreans for the first time at Osan, South Korea.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1950 Jul 5, Private Kenneth Shadrick of Skin Fork, West Virginia, became the first US serviceman to die in the Korean War.
(AP, 7/5/00)
1950 Jul 5, Salvatore Giuliano (b.1922), Sicilian bandit, was shot by police in Castelvetrano.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Giuliano)
1950 Jul 7, South Africa’s Population Registration Act commenced. It required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with their racial characteristics as part of the system of apartheid. It was repealed by section 1 of the Population Registration Act, Repeal Act No 114 of 1991.
(http://africanhistory.about.com/od/apartheidlaws/g/No30of50.htm)
1950 Jul 8, President Harry Truman named US Gen. Douglas MacArthur as commander-in-chief of United Nations forces assisting the South Koreans.
(WSJ, 6/24/96, C1)(AP, 7/8/97)(HN, 7/8/99)
1950 Jul 10, "Your Hit Parade" premiered on NBC (later CBS) TV.
(www.bookrags.com/history/popculture/your-hit-parade-sjpc-05)
1950 Jul 16, Brazil, host for soccer’s World Cup, lost the final game to Uruguay 2-1. Uruguay’s goals came in 13 minutes late in the second half.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.33)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_FIFA_World_Cup)
1950 Jul 18, Richard Branson, British music entrepreneur (Virgin Atlantic), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Richard_Branson)
1950 Jul 18, Carl Clinton Van Doren (b.1885), US literary critic and biographer, died in Torrington, Connecticut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Clinton_Van_Doren)
1950 Jul 20, In one of the first American actions in the Korean War, the U.S. Army’s Task Force Smith was pushed back into the Naktong perimeter by superior North Korean forces.
(HN, 7/20/98)
1950 Jul 20, US planes strafed refugees south of Yusong.
(SFC, 12/29/99, p.A12)
1950 Jul 23, American soldiers ordered villagers from Chu Gok Ri and warned them of approaching North Koreans. The villagers fled to Im Ke Ri.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 24, The U.S. Fifth Air Force relocated from Japan to Korea.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1950 Jul 24, Robert W. Lehnhoff, [Executioner of Groningen], SS Führer, was executed.
(www.homestead.com/andakerkhoven/Story6.html)
1950 Jul 24-1950 Jul 27, US orders in the 25th Infantry Division were issued to treat civilians in the Korea battle zone as enemy.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 25, Top staff officers of the US 8th Army, Muccio's representative Harold J. Noble and South Korean officials met and decided on a policy of air-dropping leaflets telling South Korean civilians not to head south toward US defense lines, and of shooting them if they did approach US lines despite warning shots. This information was in a letter from ambassador John J. Muccio to US Sec. of State Dean Rusk. The letter was declassified in 1982 .
(AP, 5/30/06)
1950 Jul 25, American soldiers In Korea ordered villagers away from Im Ke Ri and sent them on the road to Hwanggan.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 25, The Goethe Link Observatory discovered asteroids #1799 Koussevitsky, #1822 Waterman & #2842.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroids_%281001-2000%29)
1950 Jul 26, United States military involvement in Vietnam began as President Harry Truman authorized $15 million in military aid to the French.
(www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html)
1950 Jul 26-1950 Jul 29, US troops killed up to 300 South Korean refugees trapped under a bridge at No Gun Ri. The villagers had gathered there to avoid strafing from US planes which killed some 100. US troops feared the refugees included infiltrators from North Korea. The killings were not made public until 1999. On Jan 11, 2001 the US Army admitted that civilians were massacred and Pres. Clinton offered his regrets. The US Army blamed the "fog of war" in apology and acknowledgement. In 2007 the Army acknowledged it had found, but did not divulge, that a high-level document said the US military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.
(SFC, 9/30/99, p.A1,16)(WSJ, 6/5/00, p.A32)(SSFC, 12/30/01, p.D2)(AP, 4/13/07)
1950 Jul 29, After 3 days of US fire into underpasses, the 2nd Battalion pulled away. Koreans said 300 were left dead at the bridge at No Gun Ri.
(SFC, 1/12/01, p.A8)
1950 Jul 31, India and Nepal signed a treaty of peace and friendship.
(http://tinyurl.com/mdf3sk5)(Econ, 8/2/14, p.32)
1950 Jul, In Korea the US Army lost 2,834 soldiers with 2,486 wounded in July.
(WSJ, 10/6/99, p.A22)
1950 Jul, Some 1800 political prisoners were executed over 3 days at Taejon (Daejeon). The executions were ordered to prevent the release of the prisoners by advancing North Korean military. Later evidence indicated that South Korean executioners killed between 3,000 and 7,000 at Daejeon.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)(AP, 5/19/08)
1950 Aug 1, Lead elements of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division arrived in Korea from the United States.
(HN, 8/1/98)
1950 Aug 2, Lance Ito, judge in the OJ Simpson trial, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Ito)
1950 Aug 2, The U.S. First Provisional Marine Brigade arrived in Korea from the United States.
(AP, 8/2/98)
1950 Aug 3, John Landis, American film director, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Landis)
1950 Aug 3, A US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) of 35 men arrives in Saigon. By the end of the year, the US was bearing half of the cost of France's war effort in Vietnam. Pres. Truman gave military aid to the Vietnamese regime of Bao-Dai.
(www.oakton.edu/user/~wittman/chronol.htm)
1950 Aug 3, In South Korea Maj. Gen'l. Hobart R. Gay ordered the demolition of the Waegwan Bridge over the Naktong River to prevent enemy crossings. The bridge was filled with refugees. 25 miles down river the 650-foot long Tuksong-dong bridge was also destroyed as refugees crossed.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.A6)
1950 Aug 8, U.S. troops repelled the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1950 Aug 8, Florence Chadwick (1918-1995) swam the English Channel from France to Dover in 13 hours and 23 minutes. A year later she swam the reverse in 16:22.
(http://www.ishof.org/70fchadwick.html)
1950 Aug 8, Nicolai Yakovlevich Miaskovsky (b.1891), Russian composer, died.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0583975/)
1950 Aug 10, President Harry S. Truman called the National Guard to active duty to fight in the Korean War.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1950 Aug 10, In South Korea some 200-300 prisoners were killed by South Korean police near Dokchon.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)
1950 Aug 14, Gary Larson, cartoonist (Far Side), was born in Tacoma, Washington.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Larson)
1950 Aug 14, Indonesia’s legislature adopted a provisional constitution that called for a parliamentary democracy with government to be responsible to a unicameral House of Representatives elected directly by the people. Sukarno became president under the new system.
(www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-6198.html)
1950 Aug 15, Two U.S. divisions were badly mauled by the North Korean Army at the Battle of the Bowling Alley in South Korea, which raged on for five more days.
(HN, 8/15/98)
1950 Aug 15, A magnitude 8.6 earthquake in Assam, Tibet, killed at least 780 people.
(AP, 2/27/10)
1950 Aug 18-1950 Aug 25, The Battles of the Bowling Alley took place during the Korean War in a narrow valley north of Tabu-dong, Korea on the Taegu-Sangju road. There the U.S. Army‘s 27th Infantry Division and the Republic of Korea‘s (ROK) 1st Infantry Division faced off against a determined effort by the North Korean People‘s Army‘s 1st and 13th Infantry Divisions to break through that segment of the Pusan perimeter. It was part of the overall effort of the ROK forces and the U.S. Eighth Army to stop the North Korean advance.
(HNQ, 8/24/00)
1950 Aug 19, Edith Sampson became the first African-American representative to the United Nations.
(HN, 8/19/98)
1950 Aug 20, South Korean police and soldiers killed 210 people on the southern island of Cheju.
(SFC, 4/21/00, p.A19)
1950 Aug 22, Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to be accepted in competition for the national championship.
(AP, 8/22/00)
1950 Aug 23, Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps were called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.
(HN, 8/23/98)
1950 Aug 25, President Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike. The railroads were returned to their owners 2 years later.
(AP, 8/25/97)(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A17)
1950 Aug 25, The navy hospital ship USS Benevolence sank after it was struck by the SS Mary Luckenbach in dense fog in the Golden Gate. 23 crew members of the Benevolence died. San Francisco fisherman John A. Napoli single-handedly rescued 70 people from the Benevolence. Napoli hurt his back wand was forced to sell his crab boat. In 1961 US Congress passed a bill to pay Napoli for his efforts.
(SSFC, 5/15/11, DB p.46)
1950 Aug 27, Charles Fleischer, comedian (Roger Rabbit), was born in Wash, DC.
(www.hollywood.com/celebs/fulldetail/id/188514)
1950 Aug 31, Three North Korean divisions opened an assault on UN lines on the Naktong River in a push to take Pusan.
(SSFC, 11/7/04, Par p.4)
1950 Aug, In Belgium as Prince Baudouin took the oath to succeed his father after years of tumult over the monarchy, Communist leader Julien Lahaut shouted from the crowd: "Long Live the Republic!" A week later two men turned up at Lahaut's door and shot him four times with a Colt 45 revolver at point blank range. The case was officially shelved in 1972. In 2012 the government has approved fresh funds to solve the crime.
(AP, 10/27/12)
1950 Sep 1, West Berlin was granted a constitution.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1950 Sep 1, In South Korea the USS DeHaven received an order from its Shore Fire Control Party to open fire on a large group of refugee personnel located on Pohang beach. Witnesses said 100 to 200 civilians were killed in the Navy shelling.
(AP, 4/13/07)
1950 Sep 1, US Company C, 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, was almost completely annihilated as North Korean divisions opened an assault on UN lines on the Naktong River. Only Company C and other elements of the 2nd Infantry Division stood in the path.
(SSFC, 11/7/04, Par p.4)
1950 Sep 4, The Beetle Bailey cartoon appeared for the 1st time in syndication. Beatle Bailey, the laziest private in the army, was created by Mort Walker.
(USAT, 8/31/00, p.1D)(SFC, 6/18/96, p.B2)
1950 Sep 4, The 1st helicopter rescue of American pilot behind enemy lines.
(www.rafmuseum.org.uk/milestones-of-flight/world/1950.html)
1950 Sep 4, A heavy typhoon struck Japan and killed about 250 people.
(www.todayinhistory.com/s75-9-04-event-results.html)
1950 Sep 5, Cathy Guisewite, cartoonist and creator of the “Cathy" cartoon strip, was born in Dayton, Ohio. In 2010 Guisewite said her cartoon strip, begun in 1976, would end on Oct 3.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Guisewite)(SFC, 8/12/10, p.A12)
1950 Sep 9, "Where's Charley?" closed at St James Theater NYC after 792 performances.
(www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/theaters/broadwaytheater/history.html)
1950 Sep 9, There were massive arrests of communists in France.
(www.todayinhistory.com/s75-9-09-event-results.html)
1950 Sep 10, In South Korea 43 American war planes dropped 93 napalm canisters over Wolmi to clear out its eastern slope for UN troops. Village residents later said dozens of people were killed.
(SSFC, 8/3/08, p.A16)
1950 Sep 11, The 1st typesetting machine to dispense with metal type was exhibited.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1950 Sep 11, Jan C. Smuts, co-founder of British RAF and S. African PM (1919-48), died at 80.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1950 Sep 15, During the Korean conflict, United Nations forces landed at Inchon in the south and began their drive toward Seoul. Considered the greatest amphibious attack in history, it was the zenith of General Douglas MacArthur's career. The newly organized X Corps under the command of General Douglas MacArthur launched an amphibious invasion of Korea’s western coast at Inchon, the port of the Korean capital, Seoul. After two days of naval bombardment, U.S. Marines, seen here using scaling ladders to climb up to dry land, seized the offshore island of Wolmi-do and proceeded inland against surprisingly light resistance. By September 26, American forces had captured Seoul.
(AP, 9/15/97)(HN, 9/15/99)(HNPD, 9//99)
1950 Sep 15, US troop landed on Wolmi-Do island off of Seoul.
(www.history.navy.mil)
1950 Sep 16, Henry Louis Gates Jr., critic and scholar, was born.
(HN, 9/16/00)
1950 Sep 16, The U.S. 8th Army broke out of the Pusan Perimeter in South Korea and began heading north to meet MacArthur’s troops heading south from Inchon.
(HN, 9/16/98)
1950 Sep 19, Allied foreign ministers announced in NY that they regarded Adenauer's government to be "the only German Government freely and legitimately constituted and therefore entitled to speak for Germany as the representative of the German people in international affairs."
(http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/gray_germanys.html)
1950 Sep 19, The UN rejected membership of China's People Republic.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1950 Sep 22, Meryl Streep, actress (Silkwood), was born.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1950 Sep 22, Omar N. Bradley was promoted to the rank of five-star general, joining an elite group that included Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall and Henry H. "Hap" Arnold.
(AP, 9/22/00)
1950 Sep 23, Congress adopted the Internal Security Act, which provided for registration of communists. The Act was ruled later unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. US Sen. Pat McCarran (Nevada) legislated the Internal Security Act, which included a jumble of restrictions on speech and association. Pres. Truman attempted an unsuccessful veto of the McCarran Act, which gave the government unprecedented powers.
(WSJ, 3/18/99, p.W17)(MC, 9/23/01)(WSJ, 10/13/04, p.D18)
1950 Sep 23, US Mustangs accidentally bombed British troops on Hill 282 in Korea. 17 were killed.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1950 Sep 24, In "Operation Magic Carpet" all Jews from Yemen moved to Israel.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1950 Sep 26, The California state legislature passed a bill requiring state employees to sign a loyalty oath.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1950 Sep 26, General Douglas MacArthur's American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, linked up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter. United Nations troops recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul from the North Koreans. [see Sep 27]
(AP, 9/26/97)(HN, 9/26/99)
1950 Sep 26, Because of forest fire in British Columbia a blue moon appeared in England.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1950 Sep 26, Indonesia was admitted to the UN.
(www.gimonca.com/sejarah/sejarah09.shtml)
1950 Sep 27, U.S. Army and Marine troops liberated Seoul, South Korea.
(HN, 9/27/98)
1950 Sep 29, General Douglas MacArthur officially returned Seoul, South Korea, to President Syngman Rhee.
(HN, 9/29/98)
1950 Sep 30, Radio's "Grand Ole Opry" was broadcasted on TV for 1st time.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1950 Sep 30, U.N. forces crossed the 38th parallel separating North and South Korea as they pursued the retreating North Korean Army.
(HN, 9/30/98)
1950 Sep, A secret US Army and Navy experiment spread Serratia marcescens bacteria, because of its red pigment, and Bacillus globigii, because of its formed spores similar to anthrax, off the coast of San Francisco Bay from a mine laying ship for 6 days. The bacteria was thought to be harmless, but the germs sent 11 people to hospitals and killed one person. Edward J. Nevin, from a heart infection. In 1977 Senate subcommittee hearings the Army revealed that it had staged the mock biological attack.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A15)(WSJ, 10/22/01, p.A1)(AH, 6/03, p.49)
1950 Oct 2, The comic strip "Peanuts," created by Charles M. Schulz (28), was syndicated to seven newspapers as "Li'l Folks." It started with only four characters: Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty (Reichardt), Shermy and the world's most famous beagle, Snoopy. Schulz announced his retirement in 1999 with the last Peanuts to appear Feb 13, 2000.
(SFC, 11/29/97, p.C1)(SFC, 12/15/99, p.E1)(AP, 10/2/08)
1950 Oct 2, Mao Tse Tung sent a telegram to Stalin. China intervened in Korea.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1950 Oct 7, Mother Teresa (1910-1997), known in India as the "saint of the gutters", received permission from the Vatican to start a diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity order of nuns in Calcutta.
(AP, 9/26/04)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa)
1950 Oct 7, The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to establish a unified and democratic Korea.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1950 Oct 7, The United Nations General Assembly approved an advance by UN forces north of the 38th Parallel in the Korean Conflict.
(AP, 10/7/00)
1950 Oct 9, U.N. forces, led by the First Cavalry Division, crossed the 38th parallel in South Korea and began attacking northward towards the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Photographer Edwin Hoffman (d.1998 at 74) was the first correspondent to cross the 38th parallel.
(HN, 10/9/98)
1950 Oct 11, The Federal Communications Commission authorized the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) to begin commercial color TV broadcasts.
(HN, 10/11/98)
1950 Oct 14, In Washington state westbound traffic opened on the new fortified bridge over the Tacoma Narrows. The new design was approved after a model passed wind tunnel tests designed by engineering Prof. Frederick Burt Farquharson.
(ON, 6/09, p.8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge)
1950 Oct 14, Chinese Communist Forces began to infiltrate the North Korean Army.
(HN, 10/14/98)
1950 Oct 14, Rev. Sun Young Moon was liberated from Hung Nam prison (Korea).
(MC, 10/14/01)
1950 Oct 15, President Harry Truman met with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.
(HN, 10/15/98)
1950 Oct 15, John Jacob Raskob (b.1879), former General Motors executive and developer of the Empire State Building, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Raskob)
1950 Oct 18, Wendy Wasserstein, playwright, was born. Her work included "The Heidi Chronicles."
(HN, 10/18/00)
1950 Oct 18, Connie Mack, the "Grand Old Man" of major league baseball, announced he was retiring as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.
(AP, 10/18/00)
1950 cOct 18, US forces drove north across the 38th parallel into the Peoples Republic of North Korea.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, zone 1 p.5)
1950 Oct 18, The First Turkish Brigade arrived in Korea to assist the U.N. forces fighting there.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1950 Oct 19, United Nations forces entered the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
(AP, 10/19/97)(HN, 10/19/98)
1950 Oct 20, Henry L. Stimson (b.1867), former Secretary of War and Secretary of State, died.
(HN, 3/1/00)
1950 Oct 21, Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. C1)(MC, 10/21/01)
1950 Oct 21, North Korean Premier Kim Il-sung established a new capital at Sinuiju on the Yalu River opposite the Chinese City of Antung.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1950 Oct 23, Al Jolson (64), singer and actor (Jazz Singer), died. He was born in Russia as Asa Yoelson
(MC, 10/23/01)
1950 Oct 25, Chinese Communist Forces launched their first phase offensive across the Yalu River into North Korea.
(HN, 10/25/98)
1950 Oct 25, Sukarno was appointed president of Republic Indonesia.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1950 Oct 26, Mother Theresa (d.1997), known in India as the "saint of the gutters", founded the Missionaries of Charity global order of nuns in Calcutta.
(MC, 10/26/01)(AP, 9/26/04)
1950 Oct 26, A reconnaissance platoon for a South Korean division reached the Yalu River. They were the only elements of the U.N. force to reach the river before the Chinese offensive pushed the whole army down into South Korea.
(HN, 10/26/98)
1950 Oct 27, Fran Leibowitz, writer, was born. Her work included "Metropolitan Life" and "Social Studies."
(HN, 10/27/00)
1950 Oct 30, The First Marine Division was ordered to replace the entire South Korean I Corps at the Chosin Reservoir area.
(HN, 10/30/98)
1950 Oct 30, Gen'l. Douglas McArthur ordered a combined Marine and Army outfit to cross the 38th parallel and "mop up" remaining North Korean soldiers. 12,000 Marines found themselves surrounded by 8 Chinese divisions. The marines lost 4,000 men and the Chinese lost 37,500. Joseph Owen later authored "Colder Than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at the Chosin Reservoir," a first person account of the fighting. In 1999 Martin Russ published "Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign." The novel "The Marines of Autumn" by Michael Brady was based on this campaign.
(WSJ, 8/6/99, p.W7)(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.W8)
1950 Oct 31, John Candy, comedian (SCTV, Uncle Buck), was born in Ontario, Canada.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1950 Oct, Hank Ketcham began his cartoon strip "Dennis the Menace."
(SFC, 9/20/97, p.E1)(SFC, 12/15/99, p.E1)
1950 Oct, The TV show “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" (1950-1955) premiered with Frankie Thomas (1921-2006) as Tom Corbett.
(SFC, 5/17/06, p.B7)
1950 Oct, Franciscan Friar Alfred Boeddeker founded St. Anthony’s Dining Room in San Francisco to feed the poor and luckless. He started from St. Boniface Church on Jones St. in the Tenderloin with 350 meals a day. In 1953 his organization acquired a farm in Sonoma County for therapeutic discourse and physical work.
(SFC, 5/23/96, p.A24)(SFC, 1/7/05, p.B1)
1950 Oct, Chamdo, Tibet, fell to Chinese occupation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chamdo)(Econ, 10/5/13, p.98)
1950 Nov 1, Two members of a Puerto Rican nationalist movement, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington to assassinate President Truman. The attempt failed, and one of the pair Griselio Torresola, was shot dead. On July 24, 1952, Truman commuted Collazo’s death sentence to life imprisonment, on the same day he signed an act enlarging the self-government of Puerto Rico. In 2005 Stephen Hunter authored “American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman."
(AP, 11/1/97)(HN, 11/1/98)(HNQ, 1/24/02)(WSJ, 11/8/05, p.D8)
1950 Nov 1, In North Korea US Rev. Emil Kapaun (b.1916) began helping the wounded at the 2-day battle of Unsan, where his 8th Cavalry regiment was overrun by Chinese forces. He died in a North Korean POW camp in May, 1951. In 2013 he was awarded the Medal of Honor, an upgrade from an earlier Distinguished Service Cross.
(SFC, 4/12/13, p.A6)
1950 Nov 2, George Bernard Shaw (b.1856), Irish-born, English dramatist (Pygmalion), critic and social reformer, died. Michael Holroyd later authored a 3-volume biography of Shaw.
(V.D.-H.K.p.237)(HN, 7/26/98)(SFEC, 3/5/00, DB p.4)
1950 Nov 4, The European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome. 5 protocols were added later. Alleged violations were handled by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
(www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html)(WSJ, 4/26/06, p.A1)
1950 Nov 5, Billy Graham’s “Hour of Decision" was first broadcast as a live radio program from Atlanta, Georgia.
(http://www.billygraham.org/HOD_Index.asp)
1950 Nov 5, A US bomber caught fire and crashed while flying over China’s southern Guangdong province. Its mission was not known. Records and eyewitness accounts indicated that four bodies were buried at the crash site, while the fate of the other 11 on board wasn't clear.
(AP, 10/27/09)
1950 Nov 6, A Chinese offensive was halted at Chongchon River, North Korea.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1950 Nov 7, Alexa Canady, first female African American neurosurgeon, was born.
(HN, 11/7/98)
1950 Nov 7, Richard Nixon won a seat in the US Senate.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1950 Nov 8, During the Korean conflict the first all-jet air combat took place over Korea as U.S. Air Force Lieut. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15. It lasted about 30 seconds.
(SFC, 10/11/97, p.E3)(AP, 11/8/97)
1950 Nov 10, Spanish dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco ended war in Gibraltar.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1950 Nov 16, US Pres. Truman proclaimed an emergency crisis caused by communist threat.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1950 Nov 16, Egyptian king Farouk demanded the departure of all British troops.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1950 Nov 18, Bureau of Mines disclosed its first production of oil from coal in practical amounts.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1950 Nov 18, South Korea Pres. Syngman Rhee was forced to end mass executions.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1950 Nov 20, U.S. troops pushed to Yalu River within five miles of Manchuria.
(HN, 11/20/98)
1950 Nov 20, Francesco Cilea (84), opera composer, died.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1950 Nov 22, In New York 78 died in a train crash in Richmond Hills (later Kew Gardens), NY.
(www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-lirr/lirr-0650-OL.html)
1950 Nov 24, The musical "Guys and Dolls," based on the writings of Damon Runyon and featuring songs by Frank Loesser, opened on Broadway.
(AP, 11/24/06)
1950 Nov 24, UN troops began an assault with the intent to end the Korean War by Christmas.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1950 Nov 25, UN gave Eritrea to Ethiopia.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1950 Nov 26, China entered the Korean conflict, launching a counter-offensive across the Yalu River against soldiers from the United Nations, the United States and South Korea. North Korean and Chinese troops halted the UN offensive.
(WSJ, 6/24/96, C1)(AP, 11/26/97)(HN, 11/26/98)(MC, 11/26/01)
1950 Nov 27, East of the Chosin River, Chinese forces annihilated an American task force. Col. Barber (d.2002 at 82) and 220 soldiers in Fox Company withstood a 5-day assault to protect an escape pass.
(HN, 11/27/98)(SFC, 4/23/02, p.A18)
1950 Nov 28, Ed Harris, actor (Right Stuff, Swing Shift, Walker, Coma), was born in Tenafly, NJ.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1950 Nov 28, In Korea, 200,000 Communist troops launched attack on UN forces.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1950 Nov 30, President Truman declared that the U.S. would use the A-bomb to get peace in Korea.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1950 Nov, Inexperienced but well trained and eager to show their mettle, the first Turkish troops arrived in Korea just in time to face the Chinese onslaught.
(HN, 6/27/98)
1950 Nov, The 1st Turkish Brigade was commanded by Brig. Gen. Tahsin Yazici. He was highly regarded in the Turkish military establishment and willingly stepped down a rank in order to command the first contingent of Turks in Korea. He had only one drawback—no real command of English—yet he was attached to an American division. Later, that lack of language proficiency would prove to be a major hindrance to his understanding of orders and troop deployments.
(HNQ, 7/27/00)
1950 Dec 1, In North Korea a US company of soldiers encountered a swarming Chinese assault near Kunu-ri. Army Sgt. Richard Desautels was among those captured and taken to a POW compound, known as Camp 5, near Pyoktong. In 2003 Chinese authorities said Desautels became mentally ill and died on April 29, 1953, and was buried in a Chinese cemetery.
(SFC, 6/20/08, p.A11)
1950 Dec 2, Dinu Lipatti (b.1917), Romania-born pianist, died of leukemia in Geneva, Switz.
(www.inkpot.com/classical/lipatti.html)
1950 Dec 3, The Chinese closed in on Pyongyang, Korea and UN forces withdrew southward.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1950 Dec 4, University of Tennessee defied court rulings by rejecting five Negro applicants.
(HN, 12/4/98)
1950 Dec 4, In North Korea the US Navy's first black pilot, Ensign Jesse Brown, was downed in his fighter plane in the Jangjin Reservoir. Wing man Lt. j.g. Thomas Hudner crashed landed his plane in a failed attempt to save Brown. In 2013 Hudner returned to the site of the crash.
(AP, 7/19/13)
1950 Dec 5, Pyongyang in Korea fell to the invading Chinese army.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1950 Dec 9, President Truman banned U.S. exports to Communist China.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 9, Harry Gold got 30 years imprisonment for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.
(HN, 12/9/98)
1950 Dec 10, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche (b.1904) became the first African-American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 12/10/97)(HN, 12/10/98)
1950 Dec 13, James Dean began his career with an appearance in a Pepsi commercial.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1950 Dec 16, President Truman proclaimed a state of National Emergency (as Chinese communists invaded deeper into South Korea) in order to fight "Communist imperialism."
(AP, 12/16/97)(HN, 12/16/98)
1950 Dec 17, French named Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny to command their troops in Vietnam.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1950 Dec 19, The North Atlantic Council named General Eisenhower supreme commander of Western European defense forces of NATO.
(www.nato.int/multi/photos/1950/m501219a.htm)(AP, 12/19/00)
1950 Dec 19, Tibet's Dalai Lama fled a Chinese invasion.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1950 Dec 20, "Harvey," starring James Stewart, premiered in NY.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1950 Dec 23, General Walton H. Walker, the commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, was killed in a jeep accident. Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgeway was named his successor.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1950 Dec 25, Scottish nationalists stole the Stone of Scone from the British coronation throne in Westminster Abbey. The 485 pound stone was recovered in April 1951.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1950 Dec 26, Emile Enthoven (47), composer, died.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1950 Dec 27, U.S. and Spain resumed relations.
(HN, 12/27/98)
1950 Dec 27, Max Beckmann (b.1884), German painter, died in New York. The Nazis had branded him a degenerate artist in 1937 and he moved to the US in 1946. His work included the triptychs Departure (1932-1935) and Beginning (1946-1949), and the Self-Portrait in Tails (1937). He was a figurative painter in an age of abstraction.
(SSFC, 1/27/02, p.C7)(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.D8)(WSJ, 9/17/05, p.P20)
1950 Dec 28, Chinese troops crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1950 Dec 30, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became independent states in a French Union.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1950 Dec 31, Charles Koechlin (b.1867), French composer, teacher and writer on music, died in France. He visited the USA four times to lecture and teach in 1918-19, 1928, 1929 and 1937. On the second and third visits he taught at the University of California, Berkeley.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koechlin)
1950 By this year Americans broke off in gestural and coloristic directions under the broad umbrella called abstract expressionism also called the New York School.
(WSJ, 9/10/96, p.A16)
1950 The first possible "happening" occurred at Black Mountain College with John Cage, Charles Olson, Robert Rauschenberg, Franz Kline and Mary Richards.
(SFC, 9/21/99, p.E4)
1950 Alberto Giacometti made his sculpture "Walking man III." It sold for $2.9 million in 1998.
(WSJ, 5/15/98, p.W12)
1950 Ellsworth Kelly painted his abstract "La Combe I."
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.F3)
1950 Willem de Kooning, leading light of the New York School, painted "Excavation," maelstroms of weaving and careening lines and roiling forms.
(WSJ, 12/5/96, p.A16)(SFC, 3/20/97, p.A6)(SFC, 6/28/02, p.D1)
1950 Pierre Molinier painted "Oh...Marie! Mere de Dieu." It was a sexually explicit crucifixion scene with a hermaphroditic Christ swathed in fishnet.
(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A14)
1950 Georgia O’Keeffe painted "In the Patio VIII."
(SFEC, 9/7/97, BR p.9)
1950 Jackson Pollock painted "Autumn Rhythm" and "Number 29, 1950," which incorporated wire, string, colored glass and pebbles. His work "Number 3" was composed of oil, enamel and aluminum paint on fiberboard.
(WSJ, 11/5/97, p.A20)(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)(SFC, 2/10/01, p.B10)
1950 Charles Preston conceived the "Pepper and Salt" cartoon for the Wall Street Journal.
(WSJ, 11/2/99, p.A24)
1950 Robert Rauschenberg painted "Mother of God."
(WSJ, 9/25/97, p.A20)
c1950 Shozo Shimamoto made his delicately perforated newspaper collage "Work (Holes)."
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.E4)
1950 Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German philosopher, authored “The Authoritarian Personality," an inquiry into the fascist potential of American citizens.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)
1950 Jean Anouilh wrote the play "The Rehearsal."
(WSJ, 11/27/96, p.A10)
1950 Isaac Asimov published “I, Robot," a book of short stories. In the book he wrote the Three Laws of Robotics, which were designed to prevent robots from harming people.
(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.18)
1950 Samuel Taylor wrote the play "The Happy Time," based on a novel by Robert Fontaine.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A26)
1950 Herb Caen quit the SF Chronicle and joined the rival SF Examiner where he stayed until 1958. He also wrote his 3rd book "Baghdad 1951."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A12,13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Caen)
1950 Alistair Cooke published "A Generation on Trial" It was about the Alger Hiss trial.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, Z1 p.7)
1950 Catherine Cookson (d.1998 at 91), English writer, published her first book, an autobiographical novel titled "Kate Hannigan." She went on write over 90 novels and was made a Dame in 1993.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A21)
1950 Elizabeth David (1913-1992), nee Gwynne, published "A Book of Mediterranean Food," which changed British cuisine. In 2001 Artemis Cooper authored "Writing At the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David."
(SSFC, 3/18/01, BR p.7)
1950 Thor Heyerdahl published "Kon-Tiki." He had led a six-man expedition that sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia in 1947.
(AP, 4/28/97)(WSJ, 5/22/97, p.A13)
1950 Dr. Paul Holmer (d.1997 at 98) wrote "The Authoritarian Personality."
(SFC, 6/27/97, p.A24)
1950 L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, authored his sci-fi novel “To the Stars."
(SSFC, 12/26/04, p.E2)
1950 Walter Henry Judd (1898-1994), American politician, authored “Autopsy on our Blunders in Asia."
(www.worldcat.org/search?q=no:010145103)
1950 Felicia Kaplan (d.1999 at 83), poet and writer, authored her first book, the best-selling novel "Mink on Weekdays."
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.B4)
1950 Jack Kerouac published his 1st novel "The Town and the City."
(SFEC, 6/18/00, BR p.7)
1950 Walter Korn (d.1997 at 89), chess authority, wrote "The Brilliant Touch in Chess."
(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A18)
1950 Doris Lessing (1919-2013), British writer, authored her first novel “The Grass Is Singing." a look at race in Rhodesia and the effect that harsh colonial experience had on both oppressor and oppressed.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.101)(Econ, 11/30/13, p.90)
1950 Alan Lomax authored “Mister Jelly Roll"
(WSJ, 9/27/08, p.W10)
1950 Judith Merril (d. 1997 at 74), science fiction writer and sci-fi collector, wrote "Shadow on the Hearth," a novel about nuclear war.
(SFC, 9/18/97, p.C2)
1950 Octavio Paz (36), poet and essayist, published "The Labyrinth of Solitude," his classical study of the Mexican character.
(SFC, 4/20/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)
1950 Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) authored his fantasy novel “Gormenghast." It was the 2nd of a 3-novel cycle. The first was “Titus Groan" (1946) and the 3rd was “Titus Alone" (1959).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_series)
1950 David Riesman (d.2002) co-authored "The Lonely Crowd" with Reuel Denney and Nathan Glazer. It described how one can live in a culture of conformity and still feel a sense of alienation. The terms "inner directed" and "outer directed" were here introduced.
(WSJ, 5/15/02, p.A18)
1950 G. Ledyard Stebbins (d.2000 at age 94) published "Variation and Evolution in Plants." He provided detailed argument that plants were subject to the same processes of evolution as animals.
(SFC, 1/22/00, p.A21)
1950 Prof. Stefan Reisenfeld (d.1999 at 90) of UC Berkeley published "Modern Social Welfare" along with UCLA Law Dean Richard Maxwell.
(SFC, 2/23/99, p.A22)
1950 Darcy Ribeiro, anthropologist (1923-1997), wrote "Kadiweu Religion and Mythology." He studied the Kadiweu and Kaapor Indians of Brazil.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A20)
1950 Lillian Ross wrote a naughty and intoxicating portrait of Ernest Hemingway.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.W10)
1950 Ray Bradbury, science fiction writer, published his "Martian Chronicles." A CD-ROM based on the book was released in 1995.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A-3)
1950 Ernest Hemingway wrote his novel "Across the River and into the Trees."
(HT, 3/97, p.52)
1950 "The Beautiful Visit" by Elizabeth Jane Howard was published. This prize-winning novel began Howard’s career.
(WSJ, 8/2/96, p.A10)
1950 "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1950 Dr. Seuss authored "If I Ran the Zoo." In it he introduced the word "nerd."
(SFEC, 4/16/00, Z1 p.2)
1950 Kazuo Shimada (1907-1996), Japanese mystery writer, won the Mystery Writer Of Japan award for his book "Shakai-bu Kisha" (City Reporter).
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.A17)
1950 The editors of Gourmet Magazine published the "Gourmet Cookbook."
(SFEM, 8/10/97, p.23)
1950 The noir film “Tension" starred Audrey Totter.
(SFC, 12/18/13, p.A11)
1950 The Broadway musical "Guys and Dolls" featured Stubby Kaye (d.1997 at 79). It was made into a film in 1955.
(SFC,12/16/97, p.B4)
1950 Robert Sidney (1909-2008) stage-directed “Bing Crosby on Broadway."
(SFC, 4/2/08, p.B9)
1950 The Arthur Murray Party began showing on TV and ran intermittently to 1960. The show was hosted by Kathryn Murray (d.1999 at 92) used comedy and celebrity to sell ballroom dancing to the public. Arthur Murray died in 1991.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.D8)
1950 The Jack Benny Show featured Eddie "Rochester" Anderson as a foil for Benny.
(SSFC, 2/11/01, BR p.1)
1950 The "Broadway Open House" TV show began and later evolved into the "Tonight Show."
(SFC, 10/29/96, p.B2)
1950 The "Cisco Kid" TV series began with Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo. The series lasted to 1956.
(SFC, 12/27/00, p.C6)
1950 George Francis Hayes (1865-1969) moved to television and hosted The Gabby Hayes Show, a western series, from 1950 to 1954, and a new version in 1956.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_'Gabby'_Hayes)
1950 The TV show "You Bet Your Life" with Groucho Marx began and George Fenneman (1919-1997) began. The show lasted until 1961.
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.A26)
1950 Hot Springs, NM, voted 1,294-295 to change its name to Truth or Consequences. Radio show host Ralph Edwards had promised to broadcast from the town that agreed to change its name to that of his radio show.
(SFC, 11/17/05, p.B5)
1950 The Carter Family joined the Grand Ole Opry radio show.
(SFC, 7/31/99, p.A17)
1950 Baby Face Leroy recorded "Rollin’ and Tumblin’" with Muddy Waters and Litter Walter. A copy of the record sold for $4,400 in 1997.
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.D5)
1950 Bob Merrill had success with his song "If I Knew You Were Coming I’d've Baked a Cake."
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A22)
1950 Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote two hit songs: "Peter Cottontail" and "Frostie the Snowman."
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.C3,8)
1950 Hank Snow (d.1999 at 85), Canadian born singer and songwriter, made a hit with "I'm Moving On." His follow-up song was "The Golden Rocket." He released some 140 albums over his career.
(SFC, 12/21/99, p.A27)
1950 Seymour Solomon (d.2002) founded Vanguard Records with his brother Maynard. It became the dominant label for American folk music.
(SFC, 7/22/02, p.B5)
1950 Walter Paepcke, chairman of Container Corp. of America, founded the Aspen Institute in Colorado as a gathering place for business leaders, artists and philosophers to contemplate society’s underlying values: "a global forum for leveraging the power of leaders to improve the human condition;" "an educational institute that promotes leadership based on values."
(WSJ, 1/31/03, p.W13)
1950 The US National Council of Churches was founded.
(WSJ, 8/9/96, p.A1)
1950 Billy Graham founded the Evangelistic Association and began the weekly "Hour of Decision" radio program.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, Z1 p.3)
1950 The Nature Conservancy was founded by a handful of biologists and ecologists that included Richard H. Pough (d.2003 at 99), who served as the 1st president.
(SFC, 6/26/03, p.A20)
1950 Pope Pius XII declared that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven was the "infallible" dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.A15)
1950 Cedar Waters Village, a Christian nudist resort in Nottingham, N.H., was founded.
(WSJ, 8/11/97, p.A1)
1950 Sam Walton in Bentonville, Ark., hit on the idea of a large retail store in rural areas stocked with the lowest-priced goods available and founded Wal-Mart. In 1962 he started his Wal-Mart discount chain.
(WSJ, 11/18/98, p.A20)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1950 The first "Yield" sign was installed in Tulsa. Okla. It read "Yield Right-Of-Way. Clinton E. Riggs (d.1997 at 86), Tulsa police officer, developed the sign after a decade of experimentation.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.C10)
1950 Colin Hampton (1911-1996) and Margaret Rowell founded the California Cello Club. He was a member of the 36-year-old Griller Quartet, renowned in England for playing noon concerts at the National Gallery while bombs were falling on London.
(SFC, 8/15/96, p.C4)
1950 The National Maritime Museum in San Francisco was founded by newspaper editor Scott Newhall.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A15)
1950 In San Francisco a redevelpment agency was formed. Diamond Heights became its first project area.
(SFC, 4/17/13, p.E5)
1950 In San Francisco Laguna Honda Hospital added a rehabilitation program to help disabled people of all ages enjoy more active, fulfilling lives.
(SFC, 8/26/08, p.B5)
1950 Elizabeth Taylor spent her first honeymoon with Nicky Hilton in his El Paso, Texas, downtown hotel.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.39)
1950 The first annual Sucker Day was established in Wetumka, Okla., when it was sold a circus that never showed by one F. Bam Morrison.
(WSJ, 8/22/96, p.B1)
1950 Edwin O. Guthman (1919-2008) received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for his stories in the Seattle Times on the Washington legislature’s Un-American Activities Committee.
(SFC, 9/2/08, p.B3)
1950 Two doctors at the Mayo Clinic were awarded the Nobel Prize for isolating cortisone to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Edward Kendall, chemist, won a Nobel Prize for isolating cortisone.
(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.5)(MC, 3/8/02)
1950 Babe Didrikson Zaharias, golfer, was named Woman Athlete of the Half-Century by AP.
(SFC, 5/21/03, p.A1)
1950 In the World Cup soccer match the US had one upset win over England but lost its other 2 games. The team did not qualify again until 1990.
(WSJ, 5/15/98, p.W7)
1950 Bertrand Russell, mathematician and philosopher, won the Nobel Prize for literature.
(WUD, 1994, p.1255)
1950 US Pres. Harry Truman sent military personnel to Vietnam to aid French forces.
(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.A19)
1950 Rules for discharging US homosexual service members were established in the Uniform Code of Military Service and signed by Pres. Harry Truman.
(SFC, 12/23/10, p.A8)
1950 The NSC-68 document by Paul Nitze (1907-2004) called for containment of the Soviet Union and the building up of American nuclear forces. The 1958 document laid the foundation for the strategy of global containment.
(WSJ, 1/21/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 11/28/99, BR p.3)(SFC, 10/21/04, p.B7)
1950 Charles Stokes (1904-1996) became the first black Washington state legislator. He served 3 House terms from the 37th district of Seattle.
(SFC, 12/2/96, p.D2)
1950 Richard Nixon ran against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the US Senate. The race was documented in the 1998 book: "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady" by Greg Mitchell.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.3)
1950 The Feres doctrine was set by the US Supreme Court in a ruling that barred active-duty military personnel from suing for injuries caused by governmental action.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.A2)
1950 The US put forward its “uniting for peace" resolution to the UN to overcome the Soviet veto on military intervention in Korea.
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.40)
1950 The US government lifted the passport of singer Paul Robeson for his pro-Russian politics.
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)
1950 The US Congress gave corporate stock options beneficial tax treatment.
(WSJ, 12/27/06, p.A6)
1950 US Congress chartered the Girl Scouts organization, which was founded in 1912.
(USAT, 3/23/04, p.9D)
1950 Alger Hiss (1904-1996), former state dept. official, was convicted for lying to a grand jury about Communist espionage activity.
(SFC, 11/16/96, p.A3)
1950 J. Parnell Thomas, R-N.J. and chairman of the 1947 HUAC committee, was charged with padding his congressional payroll and sentenced to jail. he was pardoned in 1952 by Pres. Truman.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.66)
1950 A Uniform Code of Military Justice was adopted. Article 88 prohibited commissioned officers from using "contemptuous words" against the president.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.A6)
1950 Military spending this year totaled $12 billion.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.A4)
1950 A real bear from a New Mexico fire that ravaged 17,000 acres near Capitan was pressed into service as Smokey the Bear. He lived until 1976 at the Washington National Zoo. The image of "Smokey the Bear" was created by an artist in 1944 as the official forest-fire spokesbear. He was named in 1945 reportedly in honor of Smokey Joe Martin, asst. chief of the New York City Fire Dept.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.T6)
1950 Joel Barr (d.1998 at 82), an electronics engineer, defected to Czechoslovakia and later settled in the Soviet Union. He was linked to Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg and was suspected of passing secret technology information to the Soviets. Alfred Sarant, another electronics engineer, also defected and the two men were instrumental in developing microelectronics and the computer industry in the Soviet Union.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.D10)
1950 Milton S. Merlin (1905-1996), producer and writer, was blacklisted when he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He produced "Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry," the first film that teamed Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. He later co-authored "May You Live to Be 200."
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.A21)
1950 Morton Sobell was arrested in Mexico for conspiracy to commit espionage. He was a co-defendant in the Rosenberg trial and was sentenced to 30 years. He was released in 1969 for good behavior.
(SFC, 4/19/02, p.A27)
1950 A rally in Washington DC was organized to protest racial injustice. The rally led to the formation of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights by Arnold Aronson, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)
1950 John W. Nichols (1914-2008) registered the first oil and gas drilling fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission, creating a new kind of tax shelter.
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.A12)
1950 German physicist and engineer Wernher von Braun and a team of some 118 German scientists, described as “prisoners of peace," began arriving in Huntsville, Alabama, to work on the US space program at Redstone Arsenal.
(WSJ, 11/10/04, p.A1)(Econ, 3/13/10, p.34)
1950 Becton Dickinson Corp. acquired its Canadian sales agent, the Norman S. Wright Company, and soon after MAPAD, SA, BD’s distributor in Mexico, and Industrias Cirurgicas in Brazil.
(Echo, 12/09, p.3)
1950 General Motors agreed to free health-care coverage for life along with generous pensions. Chrysler and Ford were forced to offer similar benefits.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.61)
1950 Dinky Toys made the its 2nd garbage truck toy, a Ford garbage truck.
(SFC, 2/4/98, Z1 p.6)
1950 Laclede Gas Light Co., St. Louis, changed its name to Laclede Gas Co. It had begun in 1857.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, R45)
1950 John Chancellor, reporter, began his career with NBC at a Chicago affiliate known as WNBQ.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p.A5)
1950 Rimo C. Bacigalupi (1900-1996) became the first curator of the Univ. of California’s Jepson Herbarium.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A26)
1950 Major floods hit northern California. In Modesto the Tuolumne River crested at 69 feet, 9 feet over flood level.
(SFC, 1/4/97, p.A1)
1950 Hazel Bishop (d.1998 at 92) formed Hazel Bishop Inc. to manufacture and market her kiss proof lipstick. It was introduced in the summer at $1 a tube.
(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A25)
1950 Sam Phillips formed Sun Records in Memphis, Ten. In 1954 Elvis Presley, who walked into his studio to record a present for his mother.
(WSJ, 6/16/00, p.W2)
1950 Nash-Kelvinator introduced the compact Rambler, a marked departure from big US cars.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1950 The Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. was sold to Remington Rand. It later evolved into Sperry Univac and then to Unisys.
(WSJ, 11/22/96, p.A12)
1950 Joseph Glickauf, engineer for Arthur Anderson & Co., constructed the "Glickiac" computer, which allowed the firm to help General Electric automate its payroll.
(WSJ, 6/7/02, p.A6)
1950 Pfizer Corp. received FDA approval for the antibiotic Terramycin.
(SFEC, 8/27/00, p.B4)
1950 Drs. Ernst L. Wynder and Evarts A. Graham published one of the first studies that showed smokers had a greater risk of lung cancer than nonsmokers.
(SFEM, 6/2/96, p.12)
1950 In England Dr. Richard Doll (1913-2005) and statistician Austin Bradford Hill published a report that linked lung cancer to cigarette smoking.
(SFC, 7/26/05, p.B5)
1950 Luke Williams (d.2004) and his brother Chuck invented a time-temperature sign that later became common on office buildings throughout the world. The 1st one was placed on a bank in downtown Spokane, Wa. In 1951 they formed American Sign and Indicator.
(ST, 4/6/04, p.B5)
1950 The Wayne State Univ. Council of Deans renamed their former high school building to “Old Main."
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.10)
1950 In London Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin (d.1958) produced pictures of X-ray diffraction in aligned fibers of DNA. The lab for X-ray crystallography was set up by physicist John Randall. Data from these pictures led Watson and Crick to understand the structure of DNA. In 1975 Anne Sayre (d.1998) published "Rosalind Franklin and DNA."
(Wired, 2/98, p.135)(SFC, 3/19/98, p.C4)
1950 About 3 million tons of artificial nitrogen fertilizers were used on a global scale.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.51)
1950 A stem rust outbreak destroyed nearly 70% of North American wheat crops before a resistant wheat was developed. In 2005 a mutating strain dubbed Ug99 spread across East Africa and threatened crops worldwide.
(SFC, 9/17/05, p.B8)
1950 By this time chestnut trees were little more than a memory in most parts of North America. The fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, which causes chestnut blight, had arrived in infected saplings from Asia in the late 19th century and began decimating the estimated 4 billion trees.
(Econ, 5/4/13, p.78)
1950 Alfred Kinsey, pioneer sex researcher, wrote: "Human sexual behavior represents one of the least explored segments of biology, psychology, and sociology."
(PacDis, Spring/’94, p. 48)
1950 Mathematician John Nash 1st published his equilibrium theory.
(AARP, 11/05, p.85)
1950 Astronomer Fred L. Whipple (1907-2004) proposed that comets consisted of ice with some rock mixed in. His theory was validated in 1986 with observations of Haley’s comet.
(SFC, 9/1/04, p.B7)
1950 The US census recorded 151,325,798 Americans.
(TMC, 1994, p.1950)
1950 Florida’s population was about 2.8 million.
(Econ, 1/14/12, p.61)
1950 The population of Buffalo, NY, was around 580,000. By 2006 it dropped to 280,000. In 2006 Diana Dillaway authored “Power Failure," a look at Buffalo’s decline.
(WSJ, 6/30/06, p.W4)(Econ, 12/23/06, p.42)
1950 Ten million US households had television in this year.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p.A5)
1950 Martha Matilda Harper (b.1857), Canadian-born hair-care businesswoman, died. She was probably the 1st person to perfect the franchise system of business organization.
(WSJ, 4/23/02, p.D7)(WSJ, 4/22/03, D7)
1950 Ransom E. Olds (1864-1950) died. He assembled 425 curved-dash Oldsmobiles in 1901 and thus became the first mass producer of gas automobiles. He founded Olds Motor Works that later became part of General Motors.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1950 Helen Rowland (b.1875), American writer and humorist, died. "Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever."
(AP, 7/20/00)
1950 Edna St. Vincent Millay (b.1892), poet, died. In 2001 Nancy Milford authored "Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay." Daniel Mark Epstein authored the biography: "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed."
(SSFC, 9/2/01, DB p.59)(WSJ, 9/6/01, p.A20)
1950 The William Morris Gallery opened on the site of the artist’s teenaged home in Walthamstow, Essex, England. The Victorian designer (1834-1896) was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement.
(Economist, 9/22/12, p.98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris)
1950 Alan Sainsbury (1902-1998) pioneered Britain’s first self-service grocery.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.B6)
1950 In British Guyana Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan founded the People’s Progressive Party, the first modern political organization in the colony.
(SFC, 3/7/97, p.A24)
1950 In Burma an Emergency Provision Act was enacted that provided up to 20-year jail terms for inciting unrest and disturbing the peace and tranquility of the state.
(SFC, 8/15/98, p.A14)
1950 Sein Lwin commanded a military unit that tracked down and shot dead the leader of a rebellion against the government of Burma by the country's ethnic Karen minority.
(AP, 4/10/04)
1950 Canada stopped discharging refinery waste from its Ottawa mint into the Ottawa River.
(WSJ, 9/25/96, p.C19)
1950 In Canada there was a major flood on the Red River that forced 25% of the residents of Winnipeg, Manitoba, from their homes.
(SFC, 4/30/97, p.A11)
1950 Chinese forces occupied Tibet.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. C1)
1950 In Czechoslovakia the communist government confiscated church property and arrested more than 13,000 priests and religious and put them in concentration camps.
(www.highbeam.com/library/docFree.asp?DOCID=1G1:82803349)
1950 Milan Kundera (b.1929), later renowned as a Czech writer, informed on Miroslav Dvoracek, who had been recruited in Germany by the Czech emigre intelligence network to work as a spy against the Communist regime. Dvoracek was later sentenced to 22 years in prison and eventually served 14, working in uranium mines. Kundera had joined the Communist Party as a student, but was later expelled after criticizing its totalitarian nature. This information was only made public in 2008.
(AP, 10/13/08)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.98)
1950 Minerva Bernardino (d.1998 at 91) was appointed a representative of the Dominican Republic at the United Nations. She was one of the only 4 women to sign the 1945 UN Charter in San Francisco. She had insisted that the document include the phrase "to ensure respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without discrimination against race, sex, condition or creed."
(SFC, 9/5/98, p.A23)
1950 A French law forbidding pretenders to the throne was rescinded. Royalists wanted to see Henri, count of Paris, crowned as King Henry VI of France.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, p.C5)(SFC, 7/15/03, p.A19)
1950 The first German Book Trade Peace Prize was awarded to Max Tau (Adolf Grimme).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Prize_of_the_German_Book_Trade)
1950 German writer Ernst Juenger (1895-1998) went into a self-imposed exile in Wilflingen where he wrote over 50 books.
(SFC, 2/18/98, p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_J%C3%BCnger)
1950 Volkswagen debuted its iconic microbus. It became a favorite of hippies for its unique styling and copious space for travelers. The Bulli was the brainchild of a Dutch Volkswagen importer, Ben Pon, who in 1947 sketched out a simple public bus built on the wheels of the Volkswagen Beetle. The original Bulli was made from 1950 to 1967. A new version was unveiled in 2011.
(AP, 3/1/11)
1950 Ernst Grafenberg, a German gynecologist, identified a small area behind the pubic bone of women, the G-spot, that he said became an erogenous zone when stimulated. In 2005 Dr. David Matlock of Los Angeles invented and trademarked the G-shot, a collagen injection to the G-spot, promoted to amplify sexual arousal.
(SSFC, 6/3/07, p.F1)
1950 Some 20,000 Jews remained in Germany. 8,000 of these were native German Jews and some 12,000 came from eastern Europe, mostly from Poland.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.41)
1950 The Indian film "Barsaat" was a blockbuster written by Ramanand Sagar.
(WSJ, 4/22/98, p.A1)
1950 The Muslim Tablighi Ijtimah (Congregation of Preaching) movement was founded in India. They believed Islam should be spread by setting a good example, one of modesty and non-violence.
(SFC, 11/3/01, p.A7)
1950 The Indian Institutes of Technology was established. The first IIT was built on the site of a former British prison camp in Kharagpur. By 2007 the institute had 7 campuses taking in 4,500 new students each year.
(SSFC, 2/25/07, p.B1)
1950 Mysore became an Indian state. The former Maharaja became its rajpramukh, or governor, until 1975.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka)
1950 India’s lowest castes and tribes were allowed claim to just over 20% of government and other public-sector jobs. A presidential order excluded any “person who professes a religion different from Hinduism" from entitlement to affirmative action programs. The rule was amended in 1956 to include Dalit Sikhs. The system was extended in 1990 to include another 27% for other backward castes.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.46)(WSJ, 9/19/07, p.A18)
1950 A great earthquake ravaged half of northern India’s Assam state. Thousands of dead rats were caught in fisherman’s nets just before the quake.
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.A4)
1950 Aurobindo Ghose, Bengalese-born and Western educated guru and yogi, died. "Man lives mostly in his surface mind, life and body, but there is an inner being within him with greater possibilities to which he has to awake to greater beauty, harmony, power and knowledge."
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.A17)
1950 The Italian film "Mamma Mia, Che Impressione!" starred Alberto Sordi in his first role.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.E3)
1950 Giaur was formed in Italy by the great Berardo Taraschi (previously of Urania) and the Giannini brothers, the name coming from Giannini and Urania. The engines were mainly Giannini units, although Fiat and Crosley items were also used.
(http://ferrariexperts.com/giaur.htm)(SSFC, 7/20/08, p.J3)
1950 Israel enacted an Absentee Property Law which allowed the state to confiscate land within Israel if its owners spent any time at all away in Arab countries.
(Econ, 2/5/05, p.46)
1950 Japan enacted the tax proposals of Carl S. Shoup (d.2000 at 97). Shoup, an economist from Colombia Univ., had been invited to Japan by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1949 to overhaul the tax system. The value-added tax system (VAT) eliminated the need for some 80% of the population to file tax individual tax returns.
(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A26)(Econ, 8/3/13, p.63)
1950 Hiroshi Yamauchi took over control and refocused Nintendo along modern business lines. He first consolidated automated manufacturing and then began to mass produce plastic playing cards. The traditional names of the kings are David, Alexander, Caesar and Charles. The traditional names of the queens are Argine, Esther, Judith and Pallas.
(Hem, 4/96, p.29)(SFEC, 1/10/99, Z1 p.8)
1950 Korea suffered its worst winter of the century.
(HN, 8/2/98)
1950 The Mina El Eden in Zacateca, Mexico was closed.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T3)
1950 The Polish Catholic church and government signed an accord over relations. The Catholic Church was dispossessed of its principal charitable organization, Caritas, including numerous residential facilities and community resources such as soup kitchens and missions in rail stations.
(http://tinyurl.com/fw8yd)(http://tinyurl.com/fpsdk)
c1950 In Romania Brother Cleopa under pressure from the Communist party to stop receiving visitors, who sought his guidance, left the Sihastra Monastery and became a hermit in the mountain forests for 3 years. He ate 1 potato a day.
(SFC, 12/7/98, p.A25)
1950 The South Africa Nationalist government banned Communists and forced them to go underground to struggle against apartheid.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A19)
1950 In South Africa Nelson Mandela (1918-1913) became president of the ANC Youth League and was elected to the ANC national executive committee.
(SFC, 12/6/13, p.A18)
1950 South Africa set up Sasol as a state-owned company and authorized funds for the development of a coal-to-liquids facility called Sasolburg.
(WSJ, 8/16/06, p.A12)
1950 The Club Mediterranean resort opened catering to singles. Gilbert Trigano (d.2000 at 80) of France and Gerard Blitz, a Belgium water polo champion, founded the 1st Club Med with 200 tents on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)(SFC, 2/5/01, p.A21)(Econ, 5/31/14, p.60)
1950 In Turkey PM Adnan Menderes was warned of an impending coup and sacked 15 generals and 150 colonels.
(Econ, 8/6/11, p.43)
1950 Between Uzbekistan and Kazakstan the surface area of the Aral Sea was 67,000 sq. km. and shrinking.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A18)
1950-1951 The Texaco Star Theater was the top ranking network show on television with a ranking of 61.6%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1950-1951 In late 1950 and early 1951, in Namyangju, 16 miles northeast of Seoul, South Korea, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated in 2008 that police and a local militia slaughtered more than 460 people, including at least 23 children under the age of 10.
(AP, 12/7/08)
1950-1953 The Korean War. It started on Jun 25, 1950 and 2.5 million people were killed with over 2 million of them civilians. No peace treaty was ever signed. About 1.7 million Americans were involved and there was an estimated 3 mil casualties including 150,000 (54,246) Americans and over 1 mil Chinese. In 1999 W.D. Ehrhart and Philip K. Jason edited "Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War."
(NG, Aug., 1974, H. E. Kim, p.255)(SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-9)(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A15) (SFEM, 11/10/96, p.12)(SFC, 2/17/96, p.A26)(SFEC, 8/29/99, BR p.3)(WSJ, 10/6/99, p.A22)
1950-1953 The United Nations employed 39,000 ground forces that joined with the United States in the Korean War.
(HNQ, 4/14/00)
1950-1953 Soviet pilots ran the air war over North Korea and accounted for 70% of the casualties in that part of the conflict.
(WSJ, 6/13/00, p.A1)
c1950-1953 Baseball player Ted Williams and future astronaut John Glenn flew combat missions together as part of Marine jet fighter squadron VMF-311 during the Korean War.
(HNQ, 8/23/01)
1950-1953 Wayne Johnson, Korean War POW, managed to record the names of over 500 fellow soldiers killed in captivity. In 1996 he was awarded a Silver Star by the US Army.
(SFC, 8/17/96, p.A8)
1950-1959 Alfred Russell (b.1920), artist, announced "Now is the time to paint the wrong picture in the wrong century and the wrong place." Russell was considered the father of post-modernism.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, DB p.25)
1950-1959 Scripts from the popular 1950s television show, Your Show of Shows , were found in a closet in New York City in September 2000. Workers in a New York City office building discovered a closet containing 137 scripts, some of them with hand-written notations, from one of the country’s most beloved shows from the `50s. The closet had served as storage for the show’s producer, Max Liebman, who died in 1981.
(HNQ, 3/4/01)
1950-1959 This was the last decade of the century in which the traditional elements in society held the cultural upper hand.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.3)
1950-1959 Fred Coe (1914-1979) was considered the greatest producer in television’s Golden Age in the 1950s. John Krampner wrote "The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television" in 1996. Coe produced the Philco-Goodyear Playhouse, Studio One, Kraft Television Theater and Robert Montgomery Presents.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.18)
1950-1959 Lawrence Payton (d.1997 at 59) began singing with a group called the Four Aims (Payton, Levi Stubbs, Abdul "Duke" Fakir, and Renaldo "Obie" Benson). They sang backup for Billy Eckstine and signed with Motown Records, run by Berry Gordy, in 1963. Their songs included: "Baby I Need Your Loving," "Reach Out," and I Can’t Help Myself." In 2002 Geral Posner authored "Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power."
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A18)(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.M1)
1950-1959 Charles Samuel Johnson, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois and Aaron Douglas were all members of the Harlem Renaissance and taught at Fisk University.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.14)
1950-1959 The US CIA led secret missions in Indonesia.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)
1950-1959 The Lockheed WV-2, a modified Super Constellation airliner, provided early airborne warning to the East Coast in the late 1950s during the Cold War. It operated with VW-11 the first of three squadrons to comprise the Atlantic Early Warning Wing, known as "Barrier Force Atlantic." The planes, based at wintry Argentina, Newfoundland, operated in some of the worst weather imaginable over the Atlantic. They would fly to the Azores and back on 15-to 17-hour missions constantly scanning radar scopes for Russian intruders who, though they never came, would have been spotted in time for defensive measures to be called upon.
(HNQ, 7/11/02)
1950-1959 The US Army Corps of Engineers diverted Florida’s Kissimmee River allowing Miami and Fort Lauderdale to grow on the old river bed.
(Econ, 10/8/05, p.31)
1950-1959 Alexander Guterma manipulated stocks and eventually faced a prison sentence in a major scandal of the decade.
(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.A8)
1950-1959 Howard Hughes bought 25,000 acres around Las Vegas.
(WSJ, 1/16/98, p.A1)
1950-1959 Denham Harmon, Univ. of Neb. med. prof., provided a theoretical framework of how Vitamin E worked against free radicals. In the late 1940s Canadian doctors, Evan and Wilfred Shute treated heart patients with vitamin E and were denounced by the med. profession which then focused on diet as the best source of all nutrients.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.B9)
1950-1959 Seymour Cray began working on the Univac 1103 in the mid 50s.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, C12)
1950-1959 Fred Lip (Frederic Lipmann 1901-1996) with a team of engineers and technicians introduced the first electronic wristwatch.
(SFC, 11/12/96, p.B2)
1950-1959 Richard W. Porter (1913-1996), A General Electric electrical engineer, was put in charge of the US space program in the mid 50s.
(SFC, 10/11/96, p.A24)
1950-1959 Joe Thompson built up 7-Eleven (Southland Corp.) to some 400 stores during this time. He founded the company following WW II service in the Navy.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A16)
1950-1959 The pebble-bed nuclear reactor was developed. It used fuel pebbles of coated uranium and helium gas to drive turbines. A research reactor in Germany ran for 22 years.
(SSFC, 2/11/01, p.B5)
1950-1959 In Nebraska Charles Starkweather went on a slaying spree. This inspired the 1973 film "Badlands" starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.
(SFEM, 2/8/98, p.8)
1950-1959 In 2006 Peter Hennessey authored “Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties."
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.86)
1950-1959 Mennonites from Canada emigrated to Belize in search of religious freedom. Some still speak Low German. Mennonites from Canada and Pennsylvania had fled persecution in 1922 and settled near Chihuahua, Mexico.
(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.T3)(SFEC, 11/5/00, p.T4)
1950-1959 During the 1950s bicycles took over the flat streets of Beijing from rickshaws.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D4)
1950-1959 The Chinese government updated the system for spelling Chinese words with Roman letters. It also introduced simplified written Chinese characters in a system called pinyin.
(SFC, 5/8/06, p.A1)
1950-1959 In France Guy Debord and the Situationists staged disruptive events and practiced "detournement," or cut-up art.
(SFC, 8/8/98, p.E1)
1950-1959 Emma Berger, a German Christian, founded a sect of fervent believers in Stuttgart and led a portion of them to Israel in 1963, where they founded a commune called Bethel-El.
(WSJ, 2/6/98, p.A1)
1950-1959 In Indonesia Lt. Col. Suharto was a supply officer to an army division in central Java. He dealt with Liem Sioe Liong, later head of the conglomerate, the Salim Group. When Suharto took power in 1965 Liem’s business flourished. The relationship is documented by Adam Schwarz in his book "A Nation in Waiting."
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.A23)
1950-1959 In Japan Shinichi Suzuki (d.1998 at 99) pioneered the Suzuki method for teaching music to young children.
(SFC, 1/27/98, p.A20)
1950-1959 Nigeria passed legislation that became known as the "Four Obnoxious Bills." The laws ensured that revenues from natural resources were collected at the center and doled out to the rest of the 36 states without proportion to their role in generating the wealth.
(WSJ, 4/15/03, p.A14)
1950-1959 Panama disease in the 1950s obliterated the Gros Michel variety of bananas. By the 1960s it was close to extinction. It was replaced by the Cavendish variety. Most edible bananas do not have seeds and are sprouted from shoots of original trees that date back 10,000 years.
(SFC, 4/5/04, p.D5)(Econ, 3/1/14, p.62)
1950-1959 Cannibalism was banned in Papua New Guinea.
(SFC, 4/11/03, p.A6)
1950-1959 The first outsiders to regularly contact the Bahinemo people of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s were traders looking for crocodile skins and carvings.
(SFC, 5/29/96, p.A8)
1950-1959 In Venezuela Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez was a popular dictator for 10 years. He prided himself on colossal public works that included the Central University.
(WSJ, 4/27/98, p.A16)(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.T6)
1950-1959 From Yugoslavia Tito’s security chief, Alexander Rankovic, a Serb, repressed Kosovo separatism.
(SFC, 3/3/98, p.A8)
1950-1959 Zambia’s chibuku beer was developed in the 1950s by Max Heinrich, a German brewer. He ramped the indigenous home-brew to a commercial scale. In 1999, after passing through many hands, it was acquired by SAB.
(Econ, 5/31/14, p.56)
1950-1960 A chemical firm in Japan dumped mercury waste into the Minimata Bay and caused mercury poisoning during the 1950s. Victims reached a settlement in 1996.
(WSJ, 5/23/96, p.A-1)
1950-1960 In North Korea the Songbun caste system began to take shape. The word translates as "ingredient" but effectively means "background." Thus was a time when founder Kim Il Sung was forging one of the world's most repressive states and seeking ways to reward supporters and isolate potential enemies. The system pushed peasants to the top of the caste ladder; aristocrats and landlords toward the bottom.
(AP, 12/29/12)
1950-1960s Harry Harlow (1905-1981) conducted psychology experiments on baby rhesus monkeys at the Univ. of Wisconsin. In 2003 Deborah Blum authored “Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection."
(NYTBR, 2/2/03, p.19)
1950-1960s In Britain the Butskellite consensus of the 1950s was based on strong bipartisan support for Keynesian economic management and the welfare state. It was named for Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Butler and Labor's shadow Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell. it entailed an agreement by Tories not to attack the new Welfare State; in exchange, Labor helped to maintain industrial peace. This enabled a quiet time of economic stagnation in 1950s, which continued into the 1960s.
(http://faculty.smu.edu/jhollifi/Britain.htm)
1950-1967 The US Congress for Cultural Freedom was a CIA front organization headed by Michael Josselson. It sponsored art exhibition, high profile conferences and rewarded artists and musicians with prizes and commissions to counter Communist cultural propaganda during the Cold War. In 2000 Frances Stonor Saunders authored "The Cultural Cold War."
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A46)
1950-1970 Japan staged an economic miracle with a growth rate of 9.2% in the 50s and 10.7% in the 60s.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1950-1973 During this period the world GDP per head increased an average of 2.9% a year.
(Econ, 9/16/06, Survey p.4)
1950-1975 John Peter (d.1998 at 81) in 1994 published "The Oral History of Modern Architecture." It was accompanied by a CD based on interviews with some of the leading architects of this period: i.e. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
(SFC, 5/12/98, p.A21)
1950s-1970s Operation SOLO, a covert US mission, lasted nearly 20 years. John Barron later authored "Operation SOLO: The FBI’s Man Inside the Kremlin."
(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A19)
1950-1980 About 3.5 million blacks were forcibly trucked off to ethnic territories, often abandoning land, houses and cattle.
(WSJ, 5/17/96,p.A-10)
1950-1985 Property taxes in Baltimore, Maryland, were increased 21 times over this period. By 2008 some 30,000 housing units were abandoned and waited for demolition.
(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.A9)
1950-1996 It has been reported that 1.2 million Tibetans have been slain under Chinese rule.
(SFC, 6/16/96, p.B5)
1950-2000 Two books on the abortion issue over period were published in 1988: "Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars" by Cynthia Gorney," and "Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle" a series of articles by 22 pro-choice authors ed. by Rickie Solinger.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, BR p.5)
