Timeline 1952
Return to home
1952 Jan 2, "Pal
Joey" opened at Broadhurst Theater, NYC, for 542 performances.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1952 Jan 3, "Dragnet" with Jack
Webb premiered on NBC TV.
(MC, 1/3/02)
1952 Jan 4, The French Army in
Indochina launched Operation Nenuphar in hopes of ejecting a Viet Minh
division from the Ba Tai forest.
(HN, 1/4/00)
1952 Jan 5, PM Churchill arrived
in Washington to confer with Pres. Truman.
(HN, 1/5/01)
1952 Jan 7, French forces in
Indochina launch Operation Violette in an effort to push Viet Minh
forces away from the town of Ba Vi.
(HN, 1/7/00)
1952 Jan 8, Antonia Maury,
discoverer of supergiant, giant & dwarf stars, died.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1952 Jan 9, Jackie Robinson became
the highest paid player in Brooklyn Dodger history.
(HN, 1/9/98)
1952 Jan 12, The Viet Minh cut the
supply lines to the French forces in Hoa Bihn, Vietnam.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1952 Jan 13, Cornelius Bumpus,
keyboardist (Doobie Bros-Minute by Minute), was born.
(MC, 1/13/02)
1952 Jan 14, NBC’s TV show "Today"
with Dave Garroway (d.1982) and Jack Lescoulie had its debut. Garroway
left the show in 1961. The news announcer was James Fleming
(1915-1996). The theme music was "Sentimental Journey." Hugh Downs
hosted from 1962-1971. Barbara Walters hosted from 1974-1976. Tom
Brokaw hosted from 1976-1981. Jane Pauley hosted from 1976-1989. Bryant
Gumbel hosted from 1982-1997.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p.A5)(SFC, 8/19/96, p.C2)(AP,
4/8/97)(AP, 1/14/98)(SFC, 1/11/02, p.D19)(MC, 1/14/02)
1952 Jan 20, British troops
occupied Ismalia, Egypt. [see Nov 18, 1951]
(HN, 1/20/99)
1952 Feb 5, New York adopted the
three-colored traffic lights.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1952 Feb 6, The SF Chronicle
reported that Tom Keen, manufacturer of racetrack tote boards, was
blown to bits gangland style at his San Mateo home when he pushed the
starter on his Cadillac Fleetwood sedan.
(SFC, 2/1/02, p.G6)
1952 Feb 6, Britain's King
George VI died of lung cancer. His daughter, Elizabeth II, suc-ceeded
him.
(AP, 2/6/97)(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)(SSFC, 3/31/02,
p.A3)
1952 Feb 8, Elizabeth was formally
proclaimed Queen of England following the Feb 6 death of her father,
King George VI. Elizabeth was crowned Jun 2, 1953.
(HN, 2/8/98)(WSJ, 2/13/02, p.A21)
1952 Feb 13, Alfred Einstein (71),
German-US musicologist, died.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1952 Feb 16, The FBI arrested 10
members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
(HN, 2/16/98)
1952 Feb 18, Two tanker ships
broke apart off Cape Cod. 14 men died in the wrecks, 9 of 41 on the
Pendleton and 5 of 43 on the Fort Mercer.
(SSFC, 2/1/09, p.B7)
1952 Feb 19, Amy Tan, novelist
(The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife), was born.
(HN, 2/19/01)
1952 Feb 19, There was a French
offensive at Hanoi.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1952 Feb 20, "African Queen"
opened at Capitol Theater in NYC.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1952 Feb 21, Dick Button performed
1st figure skating triple jump in competition.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1952 Feb 21, Bangladesh Martyrs
Day (martyrs of Bengali Language Movement).
(MC, 2/21/02)
1952 Feb 22, The U.S. signed a
military aid pact with Peru.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1952 Feb 22, French forces
evacuated Hoa Binh in Indochina.
(HN, 2/22/99)
1952 Feb 24, The French evacuated
Hoa Binh in Vietnam in order to mass for the Tonkin Delta drive.
(HN, 2/24/99)
1952 Feb 25, French colonial
forces evacuated Hoa Binh in Indochina.
(HN, 2/25/99)
1952 Feb 26, The U.S. signed a
military aid pact with Ecuador.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1952 Feb 26, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed its own atomic
bomb.
(AP, 2/26/98)
1952 Feb 26, A
Netherlands-Indonesian Unity conference took place.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1952 Feb 29, The first pedestrian
"Walk/Don't Walk" signs were installed at 44th Street and Broadway at
Times Square.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1952 Feb, The US Federal Reserve
obtained gold buttons, coins and pipe ornaments from the US high
commissioner for Germany. The Federal Reserve acted as a custodian of
gold for the Tripartite Commission. The gold was turned into negotiable
gold for distribution to European countries.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A10)
1952 Mar 1, In SF Municipal
Railway workers received a wage increase of 9.4 cents effective July 1.
This raised their hourly rate to $1.73.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.G8)
1952 Mar 1, Egyptian
government-Ali Maher Pasja resigned.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1952 Mar 1, Helgoland, in North
Sea, was returned to West Germany by Britain.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1952 Mar 3, "Whispering Streets"
debuted on ABC Radio, remaining on the air until Thanks-giving week,
1960. The end of that show brought down the curtain on what is called
"the last day of the radio soap opera" (November 25, 1960).
(HC, Internet, 3/3/98)
1952 Mar 3, The U.S. Supreme Court
upheld New York's Feinberg Law banning Communist teachers in the U.S.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1952 Mar 3, Puerto Rico approved
their 1st self written constitution.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1952 Mar 4, Ronald Reagan and
Nancy Davis were married in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los
Angeles.
(AP, 3/4/98)
1952 Mar 4, North Korea accused
the U.N. of using germ warfare.
(HN, 3/4/98)
1952 Mar 5, Terence Rattigan's
"Deep Blue Sea," premiered in London.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1952 Mar 7, The U.S. signed a
military aid pact with Cuba.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1952 Mar 10, General Fulgencio
Batista staged a coup in Cuba and overthrew the Socarras government.
(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.D8)(MC, 3/10/02)
1952 Mar 11, Douglas Adams,
British writer, (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), was born.
(HN, 3/11/01)
1952 Mar 14, J. Fred Muggs, chimp
on the Today show, was born.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1952 Mar 17, A US ban on the word
“tornado” was lifted. The ban had started in 1886 when the US Army,
which handled weather forecasting, determined that the harm done by
predicting a tornado would be greater than that done by the tornado
itself.
(SFC, 3/17/09, p.D6)
1952 Mar 18, The 1st plastic lens
for cataract patients was fitted in Phila.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1952 Mar 18, There was a Communist
offensive in Korea.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1952 Mar 20, At the Academy Awards
"An American in Paris" was named best picture; Hum-phrey Bogart best
actor for "The African Queen"; Vivien Leigh best actress, Kim Hunter
best supporting actress and Karl Malden best supporting actor for "A
Streetcar Named Desire"; and George Stevens best director for "A Place
in the Sun."
(AP, 3/20/02)
1952 Mar 21, The Moondog
Coronation Ball was held at the Cleveland Arena. It was pro-moted by
Alan Freed and was later cited as the 1st rock concert. The only band
to perform was one led by Paul Williams, before fire marshals
closed the show.
(SFC, 10/7/02, p.A19)
1952 Mar 21, Some 31 storms
crossed 6 states killing 340 in South Central US.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1952 Mar 21, A.J. Pieters,
SS-Untersturmfuhrer, was executed.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1952 Mar 21, Wilhelm Albrecht,
German SD-chief, was executed.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1952 Mar 22, Bob Costas,
sportscaster, talk show host (Later), was born in Queens, NY.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1952 Mar 24, Great demonstrations
took place against apartheid in South Africa.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1952 Mar 25, The U.S., Britain,
and France rejected the Soviet proposal for an armed, reuni-fied,
neutral Germany.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1952 Mar 26, F. Dürrenmatt's
"Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi" premiered in Munich.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1952 Mar 27, Elements of the U.S.
Eighth Army reached the 38th parallel in Korea, the origi-nal dividing
line between the two Koreas.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1952 Mar 27, There was a failed
assassination attempt of German Chancellor Adenauer.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1952 Mar 29, Pres. Harry Truman
removed himself from the presidential race.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1952 Mar 29, SF Archbishop John J.
Mitty announced that Pope Pius XII had elevated Mis-sion Dolores to the
status of a Minor Basilica, the 1st west of the Mississippi and the 4th
in the US.
(SFC, 3/29/02, p.AG4)
1952
Apr 1, The Big Bang theory was proposed in Physical Review by
Alpher, Bethe & Ga-mow.
(OTD)
1952 Apr 3, Dutch Queen Juliana
spoke to the US Congress.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1952 Apr 8, President Truman, to
avert a strike, ordered the Army to seize the nation’s steel mills
after companies rejected Wage Stabilization Board recommendations.
Truman’s attempt to take over the US steel industry was later denied by
the Supreme Court and the mills were shut down by strikers for 8 weeks
[see Jun 2].
(TMC, 1994, p.1952)(AP, 4/8/97)(HN, 4/8/98)(SFEC,
11/14/99, p.B10)(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A17)
1952 Apr 9, A popular uprising in
Bolivia broke the grip by three families on the rich silver and tin
lodes of Oruto and Potosi in the altiplano. This led to the state owned
Minera de Bolivia known as Camibol. Hernan Siles Zuazo led the
revolution that brought far-reaching social and economic reforms.
Feudalism was replaced with universal suffrage. Every business of note
was passed into the hands of the state.
(WSJ, 5/23/96, p.A-9)(SFC, 8/8/96, p.A22)(WSJ,
8/15/95, p. A-6)(MC, 4/9/02)
1952 Apr 10, The MGM movie musical
"Singin' in the Rain," starring Gene Kelly, was first released.
(AP, 4/10/02)
1952 Apr 12, A telephone strike
was settled in Michigan but continued in Northern California for a 5th
day.
(SFC, 4/12/02, p.G6)
1952 Apr 15, President Harry
Truman signed the official Japanese peace treaty.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1952 Apr 15, The 1st B-52
prototype test flight was made.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1952 Apr 15, Franklin National
Bank issued the 1st bank credit card.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1952 Apr 17, The California
Supreme Court ruled that Sei Fujii, a non-citizen issei, could purchase
and own property in his own name. Chief Justice Phil S. Gibson, aided
by Justices Edmonds, Carter, and Traynor, wrote the majority opinion.
Justice Schauer, along with Justices Shend and Spence, wrote the
dissenting opinion.
(www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/5views/5views4h81.htm)
1952 Apr 21, BOAC began 1st
passenger service with jets from London to Rome.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1952 Apr 22, An atomic test
conducted at Yucca Flat, Nevada, became the first nuclear ex-plosion
shown on live network television.
(AP, 4/22/99)(SFC, 4/19/02, p.G3)
1952 Apr 23, Hoyt Wilhelm hit a
home run in his 1st major league at bat, then went on to pitch more
than 1,000 games in the next 21 baseball seasons. He never hit another
homer.
(AARP, 1/05, p.69)
1952 Apr 23, Oil pipeline from
Kirkuk, Iraq, to Banias was completed.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1952 Apr 23, Elisabeth Schumann,
singer, died.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1952 Apr 25, American Bowling
Congress approved use of an automatic pinsetter.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1952 Apr 25, President Juan Peron
of Argentina won re-election.
(HN, 4/25/98)
1952 Apr 26, US minesweeper
"Hobson" rammed the aircraft carrier "Wasp," and 176 were killed.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1952 Apr 28, War with Japan
officially ended as a treaty that had been signed by the United States
and 47 other countries took effect. Japan regained independence. The
government im-mediately revoked Japanese nationality from ethnic
Koreans, called zainichi. Those loyal to north Korea were called Soren
and those loyal to South Korea were called Mindan.
(AP, 4/28/00)(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)(Econ, 6/3/06,
p.40)
1952 Apr 28, Gen. Dwight D.
Eisenhower stepped down to run for President.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1952 May 1, Marines took part in
an atomic explosion training in Nevada.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1952 May 1, Mr. Potato Head was
introduced.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1952 May 1, TWA introduced tourist
class.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1952 May 2, Christine Baranski,
actress (Maryann-Cybill, Birdcage, Sweeney Todd), was born in Buffalo,
NY.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1952 May 2,The British Overseas
Aircraft Corporation (BOAC), the national British carrier, introduced
the world’s 1st commercial jet airliner service. Initial flights took
passengers from London to Johannesburg in South Africa, with stops.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
1952 May 3, The first airplane
landed at geographic North Pole. It was a ski-modified U.S. Air Force
C-47, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel William P. Benedict (d.1974) of
California and Lieu-tenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma. In
2002 Charles B. Compton authored "Born to Fly: Some Life Sketches of
Lieutenant Colonel William P. Benedict."
(Polar Times, Fall, 97)(CBC)
1952 May 5, A Pulitzer prize
awarded to Herman Wouk (Caine Mutiny).
(MC, 5/5/02)
1952 May 6, Maria Montessori
(b.1870), Italian physician, educationist, died In Holland. She opened
her 1st school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori)(SFC,
1/6/07, p.B1)
1952 May 7, In Korea, Communist
POW’s at Koje-do rioted against their American captors.
(HN, 5/7/98)
1952 May 8, Beth Henley, Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright (Crimes of the Heart), was born.
(HN, 5/7/02)
1952 May 8, Allied fighter-bombers
staged the largest raid of the war on North Korea.
(HN, 5/8/98)
1952 May 13, Minor-league pitcher
Ron Necciai struck out 27 in 9-innings.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1952 May 13, Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru became premier of India.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1952 May 15, California’s Central
Valley Regional Water Pollution Control Board issued reso-lution No.
127 barring entry of perchlorate and 8 other chemicals into local
groundwater and the American River. Medical researchers soon published
that perchlorate blocks the uptake of es-sential iodide into the
thyroid. Aerojet Corp., a rocket fuel manufacturer, objected and
continued untreated discharges.
(WSJ, 12/16/02, p.A9)
1952 May 15, Italo Montemezzi
(76), composer, died.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1952 May 16, Pierce Brosnan, actor
(Remington Steele, Golden Eye), was born in County Meath, Ireland.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1952 May 18, Professor WF Libby
said Stonehenge dated back to 1848 BC.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1952 May 18, Rossetter Gleason
Cole (86), composer, died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1952 May 19, John Garfield (39),
blacklisted film actor, died. His films included "The Postman Always
Rings Twice" (1946).
(SFC, 1/27/04, p.A16)
1952 May 24, The AFL Sailor’s
Union ordered a 3-day walkout to tie up the Pacific Coast shipping to
help in wage demands.
(SFC, 5/24/02, p.G8)
1952 May 29, Louise Cooper, sci-fi
author (Nemesis, Inferno, Infanta, Nocturne), was born in UK.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1952 May 29, A 2nd Round
Conference between Dutch Antilles and Suriname ended.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1952 May 31, Walter Schellenberg,
German lawyer, headed spy plot (Venlo), died of cancer.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1952 May, Monsignor Eugene Fahy
(1912-1996), missionary, was released by the Chinese Communists from
jail in Shanghai. He recovered in a Hong Kong hospital and went on to
found the Fujen University in Taipei.
(SFC, 8/28/96, p.C2)
1952 Jun 2, The US Supreme Court
ruled in favor of steelworkers, who then began a 53-day walkout
demanding wage and benefit increases.
(SFC, 4/9/09, p.B2)
1952 Jun 2, Philosopher John Dewey
died at age 92.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1952 Jun 3, A rebellion by North
Korean prisoners in the Koje POW camp in South Korea was put down by
American troops.
(HN, 6/3/98)
1952 Jun 4, Parker Stevenson,
actor (The Hardy Boys Mysteries, Baywatch, Melrose Place, Falcon
Crest), was born.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1952 Jun 7, Orhan Pamuk, Turkish
novelist, was born in Istanbul. In 2003 he won the IM-PACV Dublin
Literary Award for his book "My Name Is Red." In 2004 he authored the
highly ac-claimed “Snow.”
(WSJ, 8/13/03, p.D4)(SFC, 10/20/04, p.E1)
1952 Jun 10, Pres. Truman tried to
nationalize the steel industry. [see Apr 8]
(MC, 6/10/02)
1952 Jun 14, The USS Nautilus, the
first atomic submarine, was dedicated in Groton, Con-necticut.
(HN, 6/14/98)
1952 Jun 16, "Anne Frank: Diary of
a Young Girl" was published in the United States.
(HN, 6/16/98)
1952 Jun 16, Soviet Fighters shot
down a Swedish Catalina reconnaissance flight.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1952 Jun 17, John Whiteside
Parsons (b.1914), rocket scientist, died following an explosion at his
home in southern California. In 2005 George Pendle authored “Strange
Angel: the Oth-erworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside
Parsons.”
(www.forteantimes.com/articles/132_parsons.shtml)(SSFC, 2/20/05, p.B2)
1952 Jun 19, The celebrity-panel
game show "I've Got A Secret" made its debut on CBS-TV with Garry Moore
as host.
(AP, 6/19/07)
1952 Jun 20, John Goodman (actor:
Roseanne, The Flintstones, The Babe), was born.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1952 Jun 23, The US Air Force
bombed power plants on Yalu River, Korea.
(HN, 6/23/98)
1952 Jun 24, Eddie Arcaro set a
thoroughbred racing record for American jockeys by winning his 3,000th
horse race.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1952 Jun 30, "The Guiding Light,"
a popular radio program, made its debut as a television soap opera on
CBS.
(AP, 6/30/97)
1952 Jun, The Goon Show began on
the BBC Home Service. It had started as the show "Crazy People."
(SFC, 11/28/96, p.B6)
1952 Jul 1, Dan Aykroyd (comedian,
actor: Driving Miss Daisy, Grosse Point Blank, Cone-heads, Saturday
Night Live, Dragnet, Ghostbusters, The Blues Brothers), was born.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1952 Jul 2, Linda M. Godwin, PhD,
astronaut (STS 37), was born in Cape Girardeau, Mis-souri.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1952 Jul 3, Dr. Forest Dewey
Dodrill (1902-1997) of Wayne State Univ. used a mechanical heart pump
to operate on a patient at Detroit’s Harper Hospital. This was regarded
as the world’s first successful use of a mechanical pump in open-heart
surgery.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodrill-GMR)
1952 Jul 7, The American ocean
liner SS United States, known as "the Big U," crossed the Atlantic in
record 82:40, while on her maiden voyage.
(USAT, 1/20/04, p.14A)
1952 Jul 11, The Republican
National Convention, meeting in Chicago, nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower
for president and Richard M. Nixon for vice president.
(AP, 7/11/97)
1952 Jul 14, SS United States
crossed the Atlantic in 84:12, a record westward.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1952 Jul 15, Jesse Ventura, [James
Janos], wrestler, actor, politician (MN Governor), was born.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1952 Jul 16, Stewart Copeland,
drummer (Police: Fall Out, Every Breath You Take, LP: The Equalizer
& Other Cliffhangers), was born.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1952 Jul 21, Robin Williams,
American comedian and actor, was born in Chicago, Ill.
(HN, 7/21/98)
1952 Jul 21, A 7.7 earthquake
destroyed the Kern County town of Tehachapi near Bakers-field, Ca. and
killed 14 people.
(SFEC, 11/14/99, p.B10)(SFC,12/9/97, p.A9)
1952 Jul 23, General Mohammed
Neguib seized power in Egypt. There was a revolution in Egypt, King
Farouk I abdicated. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the monarchy and
estab-lished Egyptian sovereignty after 2,300 years of foreign
domination. The revolution was led by the group of Free Officers headed
by Gamal Abdel Nasser and included Kamal Eddin Hussein.
(AP, 7/23/97)(NG, May 1985, p.584)(HFA, '96,
p.34)(TMC, 1994, p.1952)(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A24)
1952 Jul 24, President Truman
announced a settlement in a 53-day steel strike.
(AP, 7/24/02)
1952 Jul 24, Pres. Truman commuted
Oscar Collazo’s death sentence to life imprisonment. On the same day he
signed an act enlarging the self-government of Puerto Rico. [See Nov 1,
1950]
(AP, 11/1/97)(HN, 11/1/98)(HNQ, 1/24/02)
1952 Jul 24, In Iraq-Jordan a
disgusted military overthrew the corrupt government of King Fa-rouk.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1952 Jul 25, Goethe Link
Observatory discovered asteroid #1788 Kiess.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1952 Jul 25, Puerto Rico became a
self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
(AP, 7/25/97)
1952 Jul 26, Adlai E. Stevenson
was nominated for president by the Democratic National Convention in
Chicago; John J. Sparkman was nominated for vice president.
(AP, 7/26/97)
1952 Jul 26, Argentina’s first
lady, Eva Peron, died of cancer in Buenos Aires at age 33.
(AP, 7/26/97)
1952 Jul 26, King Farouk I of
Egypt abdicated in the wake of a coup led by Gamal Abdel Nas-ser.
(AP, 7/26/97)
1952 Aug 1, Jo Stafford
(1917-2008), pop star singer during the 1940s and 1950s, entered the
Billboard charts with the song “You Belong To Me.” It was her
greatest hit, topping the charts in both the United States and the
United Kingdom (the first song by a female singer to top the UK chart)
and remained on the chart for 24 weeks.
(SFC, 7/19/08,
p.B5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Belong_to_Me_(1952_song))
1952 Aug 1, Kemmons Wilson
(d.2003) opened the first Holiday Inn just outside Memphis, Tenn.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1952 Aug 2, Paul David Crews,
murderer (featured in the FBI Most Wanted List), was born in SC.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1952 Aug 3, Jay North, actor
(Dennis the Menace, Maya), was born in North Hollywood, Calif.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1952 Aug 3, The 15th Olympic Games
concluded in Helsinki. US competitors won 40 gold medals.
(SFC, 8/2/02, p.E4)(SC, 8/3/02)
1952 Aug 4, Helicopters from the
U.S. Air Force Air Rescue Service landed in Germany, completing the
first transatlantic flight by helicopter in 51 hours and 55 minutes of
flight time.
(HN, 8/4/00)
1952 Aug 5, In LA, Ca., 14
Communist leaders were convicted of conspiring to overthrow the US
government. 6 of the defendants were from SF, one was from Oakland.
(SFC, 8/2/02, p.E4)
1952 Aug 11, In Jordan King Talal
abdicated the throne to Prince Hussein due to mental ill-ness.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A13)
1952 Aug 17, Kathryn C. Thornton,
PhD, astronaut, was born in Montgomery, Alabama.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1952 Aug 20, Russia's Stalin met
China's Chou Enlai.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1952 Aug 23, Arab League security
pact went into effect.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1952 Aug 27, Paul Reubens (Pee-wee
Herman), actor (Pee-wee's Big Adventure), was born in Peekskill, NY.
(MC, 8/27/02)
1952 Aug 28, Rita Dove, Pulitzer
Prize-winning poet, was born.
(HN, 8/28/00)
1952 Aug 29, In the largest
bombing raid of the Korean War, 1,403 planes of the Far East Air Force
bombed Pyongyang, North Korea.
(HN, 8/29/98)
1952 Sep 1, Sutro Baths in SF was
purchased by developer George Whitney. He sold it to the National Parks
Service in 1977.
(SFC, 4/14/99, Z1 p.4)(SC, 9/1/02)
1952 Sep 2, Jimmy Connors tennis
champion, was born. His wins included: Australian Open [1974],
Wimbledon [1974, 1982], U.S. Open [1974, 1976, 1978, 1982, 1983].
(MC, 9/2/01)
1952 Sep 2, Dr. Floyd J. Lewis 1st
used a deep freeze technique in heart surgery.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1952 Sep 6, Canadian television
broadcasting began in Montreal.
(AP, 9/6/97)
1952 Sep 6, The 9th US Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld a conviction against Harry Bridges as a
Communist who lied to obtain US citizenship.
(SFC, 9/6/02, p.E3)
1952 Sep 6, An engine on a de
Havilland 110 plane falls into a crowd at Farnborough Air Show in
England. Thirty people on the ground and the pilot are killed.
(AP, 7/27/02)
1952 Sep 7, General Mohammad
Naguib (1901-1984) formed an Egyptian government and became premier.
Naguib served as Egypt’s 1st president. He was dismissed in Nov, 1954.
(MC, 9/7/01)(www.presidency.gov.eg)
1952 Sep 8, The Ernest Hemingway
novel "The Old Man and the Sea" was published. He-mingway won the
Pulitzer Prize for the work in 1953.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(SFEC, 7/18/99, p.D5) (AP, 9/8/99)
1952 Sep 10, Germany and Israel
signed the Luxembourg Agreement, an accord about re-covery payments.
West Germany agreed to pay Israel a sum of 3 billion marks over the
next fourteen years. It was signed by West German Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett and World Jewish
Congress President Nahum Goldmann.
(http://tinyurl.com/etznn)(http://tinyurl.com/h6n7m)
1952 Sep 11, Eritrean-Ethiopian
federation act was signed and Eritrea became an independ-ent
(federated) nation. Washington, worried an emergent Eritrea would come
under Soviet in-fluence, had arranged for it to be yoked in a
federation to U.S. client Ethiopia.
(AP, 1/3/05)(http://nazret.com/history/)
1952 Sep 12, Soviet Lt.
Dobrovichin shot down an American B-29 bomber piloted by Capt. Ted G.
Royer.
(WSJ, 6/13/00, p.A1)
1952 Sep 12, Noel Coward's
"Quadrille," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1952 Sep 13, John Melville,
federal housing administrator, announced that all adults living in San
Francisco Bay Area federally aided public housing will be asked to sign
a loyalty affidavit under the Levering Act. Refusal would be grounds
for eviction.
(SFC, 9/13/02, p.E2)
1952 Sep 25, Christopher Reeve,
NYC, actor (Superman, Somewhere in Time), was born.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1952 Sep 20, Scientists confirmed
that DNA holds hereditary data.
(HN, 9/20/98)
1952 Sep 23, Rocky Marciano became
the world heavyweight boxing champion by knocking out Jersey Joe
Walcott in the 13th round, in Philadelphia PA. It was Rocky’s 43rd
consecutive victory. This was the 1st closed circuit pay-TV telecast of
a sports event.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1952 Sep 23, Republican
vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon went on television to
deliver what came to be known as the "Checkers" speech as he refuted
allegations of improper campaign financing. Nixon denied that he
maintained a private slush fund and all financial alle-gations except
for the gift of a cocker spaniel dog named Checkers from a Texan who
heard that his daughters wanted a puppy. Some 30 million television
viewers watched as Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower‘s running mate in the
upcoming presidential elections, made a plea for sympathy and
vindication in light of charges he was living a lifestyle beyond the
means of his $12,500 Senate salary. In 1997 plans were underway to
exhume the dog and rebury it near the former president.
(TMC, 1994, p.1952)(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A5)(AP,
9/23/97)(HNQ, 10/12/99)
1952 Sep 25, Christopher Reeve,
actor (Superman, Somewhere in Time), was born in NYC.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1952 Sep 25, The American
Federation of Labor broke a 71-year precedent and endorsed Democratic
candidate Adlai Stevenson.
(SFC, 9/20/02, p.E6)
1952 Sep 26, George Santayana
(88), US philosopher and poet (Last Puritan), died in Italy. He was a
student and professor at Harvard but left the US in 1912. His work
includes: "The Life of Reason" and "Realms of Being;" a novel "The Last
Puritan;" and autobiography "Persons and Places." In 2000 Irving Singer
authored "George Santayana: Literary Philosopher."
(WSJ, 11/7/00, p.A24)(AP, 9/26/06)
1952 Sep 30, The motion picture
process Cinerama—which employed three cameras, three projectors and a
deeply curved viewing screen—made its debut with the premiere of "This
Is Cinerama" at the Broadway Theater in New York City.
(AP, 9/30/97)
1952 Sep, In Lebanon alleged
corruption and growing opposition to the Khuri government led to a
general strike that forced his resignation. Khuri was succeeded by
Camille Chamoun.
(HNQ, 12/24/00)
1952 Oct 2, Clive Barker, writer
(Hellraiser, Lord of Illusions), was born.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1952 Oct 3, The situation comedy
"Our Miss Brooks," formerly a radio show, premiered on CBS with Eve
Arden again in the title role. Robert Rockwell played her love
interest, the biology teacher
(AP, 10/3/02)(SFC, 1/28/03, p.A15)
1952 Oct 3, The 1st video
recording on magnetic tape was made in LA, Ca.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1952 Oct 3, The British detonated
their 1st atomic bomb, a 25-kiloton device, in the Monte Bello Islands
off Australia. In 1998 a visit to the islands was limited to one hour
due to lingering radiation.
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.A14)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)(AP,
10/3/08)
1952 Oct 4, Pres. Truman arrived
in SF to campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson.
(SFC, 10/4/02, p.E4)
1952 Oct 7, Vladimir Putin,
president of Russia (2000-), was born in Leningrad. He became aide to
reformist Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, then deputy mayor in 1994.
Became President Boris Yeltsin's deputy chief of staff in 1996; in 1998
became head of Federal Security Service, KGB's main successor.
Appointed prime minister in August 1999.
(AP, 3/14/04)
1952 Oct 7, The 1st "Bandstand"
broadcast in Philadelphia on WFIL-TV. Dick Clark joined in 1955 as a
substitute-host. [see 1956]
(SFC, 11/10/99, p.E3)(SFC, 4/15/00, p.D3)(MC,
10/7/01)
1952 Oct 8, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Republican presidential candidate, arrived in SF and drew a crowd of
100,000 for a downtown ticker tape parade.
(SFC, 10/4/02, p.E4)
1952 Oct 11, Researchers at UC
Berkeley announced the discovery of a new polio vaccine that could be
manufactured in large quantities. It had not yet been tested on humans.
(SFC, 10/11/02, p.E7)
1952 Oct 18, The California state
Supreme Court outlawed the UC special loyalty oath, but upheld the
Levering Act, which imposed a loyalty pledge on all state, county and
city employ-ees.
(SFC, 10/18/02, p.E2)
1952 Oct 23, The Nobel Prize for
Medicine was awarded to Ukrainian-born microbiologist Selmart A.
Waksman for his discovery streptomycin, the 1st antibiotic to
successfully treat tu-berculosis.
(HN, 10/23/00)(SFC, 1/11/01, p.C16)
1952 Oct 24, Republican
presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower declared in Detroit, "I
shall go to Korea" as he promised to end the conflict if elected. He
made the visit over a month later.
(AP, 10/24/07)
1952 Oct
26, Hattie McDaniel (b.1895) actress (Gone With the Wind), died in
Woodland Hills, Ca., of breast cancer. She was the first black
actor/actress to receive an Academy Award. In 2005 Jill Watts authored
“Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood.”
{Black History, Filmstar}
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0567408/)(SSFC, 10/30/05, p.M3)
1952 Oct 29, A syndicate headed by
SF oil man Ralph K. Davies bought control of American President Lines
with an $18.4 million cash bid.
(SFC, 10/25/02, p.E8)
1952 Oct 29, French forces
launched Operation Lorraine against Viet Minh supply bases in Indochina.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lorraine)
1952 Oct 30, Dr. Albert Schweitzer
(1875-1965) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but only received it in
1953. Schweitzer and his wife Hélène had moved to Gabon
(French Equatorial Af-rica) in 1913 and opened a hospital in
Lambaréné, which he later expanded with money from the
Nobel Peace Prize.
(AP, 10/30/97)(HNPD, 9/4/98)
1952 Oct 30, Clarence Birdseye
sold the 1st frozen pea package.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1952 Oct 31, The Stratford
Shakespearean Festival of Canada was incorporated as a legal entity. It
was organized by Tom Patterson. The 1st performance opened Jul 13, 1953.
(WSJ, 7/18/02, p.D10)
1952 Oct 31, A CIA report,
declassified in 2005, said ex-Colonel Hattori Takushiro had led plans
since the beginning of July for a coup d'etat against Japan’s PM
Shigeru Yoshida. Hat-tori’s colleague Masanobu Tsuji talked the group
out of the coup.
(SFC, 3/1/07, p.A11)
1952 Aug, Mad Magazine, cover
dated for October, came out with its first issue. It was co-founded by
Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder.
(SFEC, 12/20/98, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 3/3/99, Z1
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_(magazine))
1952 Oct 6, The play "Mousetrap"
by Agatha Christie (1890-1976) premiered in Nottingham.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mousetrap)
1952 Nov 1, The United
States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Ivy Mike," in a
test at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. The element einsteinium was
discovered in the de-bris of the 1st hydrogen bomb test. In 2002 Greg
Herken authored "Brotherhood of the Bomb: the Tangled Lives and
Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller."
(AP, 11/1/07)(NH, 7/02, p.35)(SSFC, 10/12/02, p.M1)
1952 Nov 2, Dixie Lee Crosby (40),
wife of Bing Crosby, died in Hollywood from cancer.
(SFC, 11/1/02, p.E7)
1952 Nov 2, In
Britain Derek Bentley (19) and Christopher Craig (16) tried to break
into a warehouse in South London. Craig shot and killed Police
Constable Sidney Miles. Bentley, who had the mental age of 11, was
hanged in Jan., 1953, for his role in the murder of the police offi-cer
and Craig went to prison for 10 years. The 1991 film "Let Him Have It"
was based on the story of Bentley as was the Elvis Costello song "Let
Him Dangle." Bentley’s conviction was overturned in 1998.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A16,18)
1952 Nov 3, David Ho, virologist,
AIDS researcher, was born.
(HN, 11/3/00)
1952 Nov 3, Egypt protested German
retribution payments to Israel.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1952 Nov 4, Dwight D. Eisenhower
(Ike) was elected president the 34th president, defeating Democrat
Adlai Stevenson in presidential elections. The Republicans took over
for the first time in 20 years. A Univac computer in Philadelphia
predicted the results based on early returns. Richard Nixon was vice
president.
(TMC, 1994, p.1952)(AP, 11/4/97)(HN, 11/4/98)(SJM,
5/1/01, p.1C)
1952 Nov 6, Dmitri Shostakovitch's
cantata "About our Fatherland," premiered.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1952 Nov 7, Felix Bloch (47) of
Stanford Univ. and E.M. Purcell (40) of Harvard won the Nobel Prize in
Physics for their work on measuring the magnetic properties of atomic
particles.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A17)
1952 Nov
9, Chaim Weizmann (b.1874), Russian-born bio-chemist and 1st president
of Israel (1949-1952), died.
(www.jafi.org.il/education/100/people/bios/weiz.html)
1952 Nov 10, U.S. Supreme Court
upheld the decision barring segregation on interstate rail-ways.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1952 Nov 10, San Francisco
columnist Stanton Delaplane introduced Irish coffee to America at the
Buena Vista Cafe at the end of the Hyde St. cable line. He discovered
the drink at Shan-non Airport in Ireland, served by Joe Sheridan and
perfected it with the help of Buena Vista owners Jack Koeppler and
George Freeberg.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W30)(SFC, 11/16/02, p.A1)(SSFC,
11/9/08, p.B6)
1952 Nov 10, Trygve Halvdan Lie
resigned as 1st secretary-general of UN.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1952 Nov 13, False fingernails
were 1st sold.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1952 Nov 13, Harvard’s Paul Zoll
was the first to use electric shock to treat cardiac arrest.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1952 Nov 13, Margaret Wise Brown
(d.1952), author of "Goodnight Moon," a children’s bed-time story, died
suddenly in France from an embolism following surgery for an ovarian
cyst. In 1992 Leonard Marcus authored her biography "Awakened by the
Moon."
(WSJ, 9/8/00, p.A6)
1952 Nov 15, Newark Airport
reopened after closing earlier in the year because of an in-crease in
accidents.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1952 Nov 19, Scandinavian Airlines
opened a commercial route from Canada to Europe.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1952 Nov 20, George Axelrod's "7
Year Itch," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1952 Nov 25, The Mousetrap,
mystery writer Agatha Christie's first play—opened in London, and is
still running. Originally written as a radio play for Queen Mary, The
Mousetrap premiered at the Ambassadors Theatre. The play was relocated
to St. Martin's Theatre in 1974 where it continues its record-breaking
run in the West End to this day. As may be surmised, the cast has
changed several times.
(HNQ, 5/13/01)
1952 Nov 25, George Meany was
appointed chairman of AFL.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1952 Nov 26, Helen Frankenthaler
(b.1928), New York artist, created her painting “Mountains and Sea.” It
was later recognized as her arrival as a major artist and a work that
changed the course of abstract art.
(WSJ, 11/8/08, p.W11)
1952 Nov 26, The 1st modern 3-D
film "Bwana Devil" starred Robert Stack and premiered. It was made in
3-D by cameraman Lothrop Worth (d.2000 at 96) and inspired a series of
1950s 3-D movies.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.A21)(MC, 11/26/01)
1952 Nov 29, President-elect
Dwight D. Eisenhower kept his campaign promise to visit Korea to assess
the ongoing conflict.
(AP, 11/29/97)
1952 Nov 29, In San Francisco a
Pacific Heights mansion at 2030 Broadway opened as the American Academy
of Asian Studies, the 1st accredited US graduate school devoted
exclusively to Asian lands and people.
(SFC, 11/29/02, p.E9)
1952 Nov 29, John T. Downey (22)
and Richard G. Fecteau (25), CIA spies, were shot down over Jilin
province and captured by the Chinese. The 2 men spent 20 years in a
Chinese prison. 2 pilots, Robert Snoddy and Norman Schwartz, died and
in 2002 plans were made to find their remains.
(SFC, 7/3/98, p.A11)(SFC, 7/10/02, p.A12)
1952 Nov 30, Mandy Patinkin, actor
and singer (Yentl, Alien Nation, Chicago Hope), was born in Chicago.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1952 Nov, Kermit Roosevelt, a CIA
operative, was approached by the British Foreign Office about
organizing the overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mossadegh, who had
presided over the nationalization of British-owned oil operations.
(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.D6)
1952 Dec 2, 1st human birth
televised to public was on KOA-TV Denver, Colo.
(MC, 12/2/01)
1952 Dec 4, The Grumman XS2F-1
made its first flight.
(HN, 12/4/98)
1952 Dec 4, Killer fogs began in
London, England. "Smog" became a word. [see Dec 5]
(MC, 12/4/01)
1952 Dec 5-8, A 4-day London
smog killed 4,703 people. Oxides of sulfur and other irritants from
coal smoke were blamed. [see Dec 4]
(PCh, 1992, p.937)(MC, 12/5/01)
1952 Dec 8, French troops shot on
demonstrators at Casablanca, Morocco, and 50 people were killed.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1952 Dec 11, Stanford scientist
demonstrated the new $1,750,000 linear electron accelerator. Its
200-foot barrel fired electrons at 99.99% the speed of light.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1952 Dec 11, The outbound
Norwegian ship Fernstream was sliced open by the inbound SS Hawaiian
Rancher under heavy fog inside the Golden Gate. The Fernstream sank in
30 min-utes but all passengers escaped.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1952 Dec 14, Eighty-four Korean
Communist prisoners interned on Pongam Island were killed during a riot
after attempting to escape.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1952 Dec 15, The Sands Hotel
casino opened in Las Vegas with 200 rooms. A 500 room tower was added
in 1965. It lasted to 11/26/1996 when it was torn down for a new $1.5
bil 6,000 room mega-resort by Sheldon Adelson.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.F3)(SFC, 11/27/96, p.D2)
1952 Dec 17, Yugoslavia broke
relations with the Vatican.
(HN, 12/17/98)
1952 Dec 24, The Public Health
Service reported that US births approached 4 million for the year,
setting a new record.
(SFC, 12/20/02, p.E5)
1952 Dec 29, The 1st
transistorized hearing aid was offered for sale at Elmsford, NY.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1952 Dec 30, Tuskegee Institute
reported 1952 as the 1st yr in the last 71 with no US lynch-ings.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1952 Dec 31, Hank Williams died at
age 29 in the back seat of a Cadillac full of pills and booz on his way
to a gig.
(SSFC, 6/3/01, Par p.8)
1952 Dec, In San Francisco Paul C.
Smith resigned from The Chronicle and Charles de Young Thieriot, the
grandson of co-founder M.H. de Young, picked Scott Newhall as executive
editor of the paper.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A8)(SSFC, 6/7/09, p.W3)
1952 Francis Bacon made his
painting "Study for the Head of a Screaming Pope."
(SFC, 6/11/99, p.C8)
1952 John Biggers made his
lithograph "Harriet Tubman and Her Underground Railroad." It was an
example of Mexican muralists influence on Black American artists.
(SFC, 2/28/98, p.B1)
1952 Richard Diebenkorn made his
"Untitled (Urbana)," an ink and gauche on paper. It re-flected the
influence of cartoonist George Herriman.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.D1)
1952 Leonor Fini (1908-1996),
Argentine-born artist, painted her portrait: "Comtesse de Noaille."
(SFC, 12/22/01, p.D12)
1952 Franz Kline painted his
"Untitled II," a tiny ink drawing in which Kline inscribed some chunky
lines on a page from a Brooklyn telephone book, crossing Chinese
calligraphy with let-terpress flotsam.
(WSJ, 12/16/94, A-12)
1952 Willem de Kooning, leading
light of the New York School, painted "Seated Woman."
(WSJ, 12/5/96, p.A16)(SFC, 3/20/97, p.A6)(SFC,
6/28/02, p.D1)
1952 Rene Magritte painted his
work "Personal Values." It was sold to the SF MOMA in 1998 for $6.5
million. The title was recommended by his friend, Paul Nouge,
surrealist, biochemist and founder of the Belgian Communist Party.
Magritte also did "La chambre d’ ecote" (The Lis-tening Room).
(SFC, 11/20/98, p.C1)(SFEM, 4/23/00, p.4)
1952 Matisse made his great cutout
"Blue Nude."
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A20)
1952 Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005),
sculptor and printmaker, helped form an association of British artists
called The Independent Group. They included Richard Hamilton, William
Turnbull and Peter Blake. Paolozzi, born in Scotland of Italian
parents, became known as a key contribu-tor to British pop art.
(SSFC, 5/1/05, p.A23)
1952 Jackson Pollock painted his
"Number 1." In 1995 it was in the collection of former CBS chief Frank
Statton and was estimated at $4-6 mil. in value but did not sell. [see
1949 No. 1] He painted "Blue Poles Number 11," which later went to the
National Gallery of Australia.
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)(SFC,
11/16/98, p.E1)
1952 Samuel Beckett published his
play "Waiting for Godot." It was 1st produced in Paris in 1953.
(SFEM, 9/10/00, p.7)
1952 Arthur Laurent wrote his play
"The Time of the Cuckoo."
(WSJ, 2/23/00, p.A20)
1952 Paul Bowles (b.1910)
published his novel: "Let It Come Down."
(SFC, 7/12/99, p.E3)
1952 Whitaker Chambers authored
"Witness," a chronicle of his role in the Alger Hiss case. In it he
declared that the essence of communism lay in its vision of mankind
emancipated from God.
(WSJ, 7/20/01, p.W15)
1952 Barnaby Conrad (30) authored
the bestseller "Matador," about the life of Manolete, Spain's greatest
bullfighter.
(SSFC, 11/16/03, p.E3)
1952 Jacques Cousteau wrote "The
Silent World." It was made into a film that gave Cousteau the first of
3 Academy Awards.
(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A7)
1952 Philip K. Dick (d.1982) wrote
his short story "Paycheck." It was optioned for a movie in 1999.
(WSJ, 4/27/99, p.A20)
1952 Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)
wrote his classic novel "Invisible Man." It chronicled the har-rowing
travels of a nameless black man in the South and New York’s Harlem.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, BR p.2)(SFC, 12/6/05, p.B5)
1952 Maria Flores wrote "The Woman
With the Whip," a biography of Eva Peron.
(WSJ, 11/14/96, p.A20)
1952 Che Guevara chronicled his
motorcycle trip around South America on a Norton 500. His memoir was
published as "The Motorcycle Diaries."
(SFC, 5/12/96, Z1p.4)
1952 Charles Einstein (1926-2007),
sportswriter and author, wrote “Bloody Spur,” based on the crimes of
William Heirens, the “Lipstick Killer,” who terrorized Chicago in the
mid-1940s. In 1956 Fritz Lang made the book into a film noir set in NYC
called “While the City Sleeps.”
(SSFC, 3/11/07, p.B6)
1952 Prof. Charles M. Hardin
(1908-1997) wrote "The Politics of Agriculture."
(SFC, 7/4/97, p.E2)
1952 Black author Chester Himes
(d.1984) published his book "Cast the First Stone," a som-ber tale of
prison life. He had written it in 1937 under the title "Yesterday Will
Make You Cry."
(SFEC, 3/1/98, BR p.7)(SSFC, 2/25/01, BR p.1)
1952 Eugene Ionesco wrote "The
Chairs." It was a dadaist parable of two fantasists preparing to
deliver an important message.
(WSJ, 5/16/97, p.A16)
1952 George Racey Jordan, USAF
(Ret.) with Richard L. Stokes authored "Major Jordan’s Diaries." It was
an account of Jordan’s experiences in the US-Russia Lend-Lease program
from 1942. The 2nd reference is a list of the lend-lease items provided
to the Soviet Union beginning in Oct 1941.
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/mjd1.html
www.topedge.com/panels/aircraft/sites/gustin/lendlse.html
1952 Frederick Knott, English
writer, wrote his thriller "Dial ‘M’ for Murder. It was made into a
film with Grace Kelly by Alfred Hitchcock.
(WSJ, 4/8/98, p.A20)
1952 C.S. Lewis, Irish-born
Anglican writer, authored “Mere Christianity.”
(WSJ, 8/15/08, p.W9)
1952 Norman Vincent Peale wrote
"The Power of Positive Thinking."
(SFEC, 12/8/96, Par p.21)
1952 Egor P. Popov (d.2001 at 88),
Ukrainian born Prof. of Civil Engineering, published his classic
"Mechanics of Materials" at UC Berkeley.
(SFC, 4/27/01, p.D8)
1952 The first "Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) was published. It defined
nervous breakdowns as "psychophysiologic nervous system reactions."
(WSJ, 12/3/96, p.A1)
1952 Samuel Eilenberg (d.1998 at
84), mathematician and art collector, co-authored "Founda-tions of
Algebraic Topology" with Norman Steenrod of Princeton Univ. The
graduate text "Gen-eral Topology" was written by John Kelley (d.1999 at
82) of UC Berkeley.
(SFC, 2/3/98, p.A15)(SFC, 12/6/99, p.B2)
1952 The French work "Le Pretre
Jean" (Prester John) was written.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.C5)
1952 British writer Mary Norton
wrote "The Borrowers," illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush. It was
published in 1953 and made into a movie in 1998.
(SFC, 2/13/98, p.C3)(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1952 Wolf Mankowitz published his
first novel "Make me an Offer." It was based on his ex-periences in the
porcelain trade.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.D7)
1952 Terence Rattigan published
his play "The Deep Blue Sea."
(WSJ, 3/30/98, p.A16)
1952 Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005)
authored “Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos,” a popular study of parasitism.
(Econ, 2/5/05, p.80)
1952 In Germany Mrs. Aicher-Scholl
(e.1998 at 81) published "White Rose," a description of the White Rose
nonviolent student resistance to the Third Reich.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1952 John Steinbeck wrote his
novel "East of Eden."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, DB p.35)
1952 Telford Taylor published
"Sword and Swastika." He helped write the rules for Nuremberg Trials.
(SFC, 5/26/98, p.B2)
1952 Edmund Wilson authored “The
Shores of Light.” It became recognized as a classic in-troduction to
the 1920s literature of America.
(WSJ, 6/16/07, p.P10)
1952 Herman Wouk wrote his novel
"Cain Mutiny." It became a film in 1954.
(SFC, 10/15/96, p.B1)
1952 Gunsmoke, the "adult
western," began as a radio drama. It spawned a television series (1955)
that lasted 20 years. Starring William Conrad as Marshal Matt Dillon (a
role played by James Arness on TV), the show broke with established
radio traditions (such as extended use of sound effects) and character
stereotypes (in great part to many cliché-busting scripts by
John Mestin). It garnered a huge audience for its network, CBS (sources
disagree, but some estimate as much as 30% of the radio-listening
public tuned into the show, a rating impossible to reach in today’s
multimedia world). The popular radio drama launched the 20-year TV
series, a record as yet unrivalled by any other primetime drama.
(HNQ, 3/30/01)
1952 The market introduced 3-D
movies.
(TMC, 1994, p.1952)
1952 Sheri Lewis (19) was a winner
on the Arthur Godfrey television talent scout show. Within 5 years she
introduced her puppet Lamb Chop on the Captain Kangaroo Show and began
her own show in 1957.
(SFC, 8/4/98, p.A7)
1952 The TV show American
Bandstand premiered as a local show in Philadelphia.
(SFC, 11/10/99, p.E3)(SFC, 4/15/00, p.D3)
1952 Death Valley Days moved from
radio to TV and ran to 1975 as a syndicated television show.
British-born manager James Gerstley (1907-2007), president of the
Pacific Coast Borax Company (later US Borax), sponsored the show.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_Days)(SFC, 6/6/07, p.B7)
1952 "The Ernie Kovacs Show" began
under CBS and ran to 1953.
(SFEC, 5/24/98, DB p.37)
1952 The TV show Ding Dong School
was developed by George Heinemann (1918-1996)
1952 TV advertised its first toy,
Mr. Potato Head.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, z1 p.4)
1952 The TV show "My Little
Margie" starred Gale Storm and Hillary Brooke, It ran until 1955.
(SFC, 6/2/99, p.C7)
1952 "The Adventures of Ozzie and
Harriet" began its TV run. It had started as a radio series in 1944.
The TV show ran to 1966.
(AP, 10/8/98)(SSFC, 5/20/01, p.C5)
1952 The radio show “This Is Your
Life,” hosted by Ralph Edwards, migrated to television. It ran to 1961.
(SFC, 11/17/05, p.B5)
1952 Molly Bee (1939-2009),
country singer, made her first hit with “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa
Claus.” The song, written by Tommy Connors, was also recorded by child
actor Jimmy Boyd (1939-2009).
(SFC, 2/12/09, p.B4)(SFC, 3/11/09, p.B8)
1952 John Cage wrote his score
"Water Music," written instructions with no fixed order. His piece
4'33" was one in which the performer created none of the sound.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.E4)(SFC, 12/29/99, p.E1)
1952 Joni James (21), born as Joan
Babbo, made a hit with her song “Why Don’t You Believe Me.” It sold
over 2 million records. James recorded 42 albums in her career.
(SSFC, 9/11/05, Par p.2)
1952 Singer Al Martino has his
first hit with "Here in My Heart."
(SFEC, 10/5/97, DB p.74)
1952 Hank Williams (d.1952) had a
hit with "Your Cheatin’ Heart."
(SFC, 4/15/00, p.D3)(SSFC, 6/3/01, Par p.8)
1952 Gerry Mulligan began playing
a new type of jazz on the west coast. He used just two horns, a bass
and drum for a quartet with no piano player. Chet Baker played a wispy
trumpet against Mulligan's spry baritone sax. Bob Brookmeyer on valve
trombone soon replaced Baker and then Art Farmer came in on trumpet.
They opened at the Haig club in LA and sparked the "West Coast jazz"
style of cool jazz.
(G&M, 1/31/96, p.A-11)(WSJ, 6/19/02, p.A1)
1952 Jazz greats Charlie Parker
and Dizzie Gillespie were captured on a rare film clip.
(DFP, 7/28/96, p.F8)
1952 B.B. King (b.1925) made No. 1
on Billboard’s R&B charts with his song "Three O’Clock Blues." His
autobiography, co-written with David Ritz, came out in 1996: "Blues All
Around Me."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR p.8)
1952 Martinu composed his
"Rhapsody-Concerto for Viola and Orchestra."
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.b1)
1952 Orrin Keepnews and Record
Changer publisher Bill Grauer founded the Riverside jazz label in New
York City to re-issue jazz albums from the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s.
(SFEM, 10/5/97, p.29)
1952 Le Corbusier’s first great
urban construction was completed in Marseilles, France. Eight-een
hundred inhabitants were housed in a "vertical community" of eighteen
floors.
(V.D.-H.K.p.364)
1952 The double-span highway
bridge, nearly a mile long, linked Yorktown to Gloucester Point,
Virginia.
(NG, 6/1988, p.7809)
1952 George Jorgensen flew to
Stockholm to undergo a male-to-female sex change and re-turned to the
US as Christina Jorgensen. A biopic film was made in 1970 titled "The
Christina Jorgensen Story."
(SFEC, 9/7/97, DB p.43)
1952 Kraft Foods introduced Cheese
Whiz.
(WSJ, 6/9/07, p.A6)
1952 Ore-Ida Potatoes Inc.
introduced "Tater Tots." The company was in-part founded by Wil-liam E.
Berelson (d.1997 at 90) in 1951. It was sold to H.J. Heinz Co. in 1965.
(SFC, 5/15/97, p.A26)
1952 Pez candy was introduced to
the US. It originated in Austria in 1927 as a breath mint for cigarette
smokers.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, p.C11)
1952 Alvin Edlin (1912-2008)
bought Bud’s Ice Cream store in Noe Valley from his cousin Bud
Scheideman for $8,000. Revenue at the time was about $30,000. He
increased the quality and by 1976 revenues rose to about $1 million. In
1980 Edlin sold the operation to a group of Bay Area businessmen. In
the 1990s the operation was sold to Berkeley Farms.
(SFC, 6/10/08, p.B5)
1952 Topps Chewing Gum Company
issued its first large set of baseball cards. They included team logos
and facsimile signatures and were later considered as the first true
set of the mod-ern era. Topps had issued a smaller card in 1951, but it
flopped.
(AH, 6/03, p.52,54)
1952 The organization Promoting
Enduring Peace was founded in Woodmont, Conn. It spon-sored friendship
tours to the Soviet Union, China, Nicaragua, Cuba and Costa Rica.
(SFC, 6/14/97, p.C2)
1952 Generoso Pope (1927-1988)
founded the National Enquirer newspaper. He relaunched the Enquirer, a
NYC scandal broadsheet, as a national tabloid.
(WSJ, 8/12/08,
p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generoso_Pope_Jr.)
1952 Britannica launched its Great
Books project. It featured 54 volumes by 76 authors along with
contributions from Robert Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler, founders of
the Great Books Foundation (1947). In 2008 Alex Beam authored “A Great
Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall. and Curious Afterlife of the Great
Books.”
(WSJ, 11/10/08, p.A17)
1952 John D. Rockefeller III, a
birth control advocate, created the Population Council, a popu-lation
control advocacy group.
(WSJ, 4/1/08, p.D10)
1952 A scandal arose when the
Pacific Coast Conference of Universities was found to be paying
athletes to play on college teams. In 2000 Glenn Seaborg and Ray Colvig
authored "Roses From Ashes," an account of the scandal.
(SFC, 4/19/01, p.D2)
1952 Future revolutionary Che
Guevara took a 4,000-mile moped trip alone through northern Argentina
and in the next two years traveled throughout South America on a 500cc
motorcycle nicknamed "La Poderosa" (The Powerful One). On these trips
he directly observed the lives of workers and peasants and ultimately
changed the direction of his life. Che Guevara was born on June 14,
1928 to an aristocratic family in Argentina. He was captured and
executed by the Bolivian army on October 8, 1967.
(HNQ, 12/2/98)
1952 Paul Robeson was awarded the
Stalin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union. He had to wait 6 years for
permission to leave the US to accept the honor.
(WSJ, 4/9/98, p.A21)
1952 Francois Mauriac (b.1885),
French novelist, won the Nobel Prize in literature.
(WUD, 1994, p.886)(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)
1952 Pres. Truman extended the
award of the Purple Heart retroactively to include veterans of WW I.
F.D. Roosevelt had opened the Army award to all branches of the US
Military at the onset of WW II.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, Z1 p.8)
1952 The US National Security
Agency (NSA) was created in a secret executive order to in-tercept
electronic communications through eavesdropping. 16 years later its
power to eaves-drop on foreigners was established in public law. In
2008 an edited history of the NSA by Tho-mas R. Johnson, begun in 1992
and completed in 1998, was made public.
(WSJ, 11/14/08, p.A14)
1952 Republican Dwight Eisenhower
won the New Hampshire primary over Robert Taft 50.2 to 38.6%. Democrat
Estes Kefauver won over Harry Truman 54.6 to 43.9%.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A19)
1952 Gen. Omar Bradley told
outgoing Pres. Truman that a criminal investigation of the
inter-national oil cartels threatens national security. Truman dropped
his attack on Standard Oil of New Jersey, Gulf, The Texas Company,
Socony-Mobil, Standard Oil of Calif., and their foreign colleges,
Anglo-Iranian Oil, and Royal Dutch-Shell. The justice department
dropped it's grand jury probe in April and filed a civil complaint
accusing the companies of conspiracy to monopo-lize the industry.
(PCh, 1992, p.939)
1952 The official book on World
War II honors was closed.
(SFC, 7/13/00, p.A15)
1952 Eisenhower defeated Robert
Taft, U.S. Senator from Ohio, for the GOP presidential nomination.
(WSJ, 11/10/95, p.A-14)(HN, 9/8/98)
1952 Eleanor Lansing Dulles
(1895-1996) was appointed to run the State Department’s Berlin desk.
Her brother John Foster Dulles was named Secretary of State and her
other brother, Al-len Welsh Dulles, got the top job in the CIA. Eleanor
published her memoirs in 1980.
(SFC, 11/4/96, p.A22)
1952 Federal regulations
established that personal details from the national census be kept
confidential for 72 years.
(SFC, 4/1/02, p.A3)
1952 The McCarran-Walter Act
erected a wall of suspicion around America’s borders.
(SSFC, 10/3/04, p.M3)
1952 In Monterey, Ca., the US
Naval Postgraduate School, formerly in Annapolis, Md., moved onto the
site of the former Hotel Del Monte.
(SSFC, 5/18/08, p.A15)
1952 The American Bar Association
began to be involved in the evaluation of screening pro-spective
federal judges.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.A5)
1952 Colorado’s Rocky Flats
nuclear weapons plant, 16 miles northwest of Denver, began producing
plutonium bombs and bomb parts. It was shut down in 1989.
(SFC, 8/27/99, p.A3)(Econ, 2/26/05, p.32)
1952 Connecticut Representative
Abraham Ribicoff lost his bid for the US Senate to Prescott S. Bush,
the father of later Pres. George Bush.
(SFC, 2/23/98, p.A5)
1952 John F. Kennedy upset veteran
Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., whose father, Henry Cabot
Lodge, Sr., had served as a senator from 1893-1924.
(HNQ, 2/20/99)
1952 Elia Kazan gave HUAC the
names of actors in his communist cell block at the Group Theater in the
1930s.
(WSJ, 3/21/97, p.A17)
1952 The FBI gave Sen. Styles
Bridges a confidential hearing that revealed that Armand Hammer,
businessman, helped recruit spies for the Soviets and helped place them
in US gov-ernment positions.
(WSJ, 10/3/96, p.A12)
1952 Capt. John Robertson Dunham,
an Air Force spy pilot, was shot down over Russia.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.A26)
1952 Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a CIA
translator, began spying for China. He was convicted while retired in
1986 and within days killed himself.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)
1952 Discrimination on the basis
of race was stricken from federal statutes.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.6)
1952 The Immigration and
Nationality Act defined a qualified H-1 recipient as "an alien having
residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning…
and who is coming temporarily to the US…"
(SFC, 9/21/00, p.A11)
1952 Maj. Gen'l. Robert Grow, the
military attaché in Moscow, was tried on charges of derelic-tion
of duty and was suspended for 6 months. He was the 1st Army General to
face court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
(SFC, 9/3/99, p.A2)
1952 US gangster Mickey Cohen was
arrested for tax evasion.
(USAT, 10/8/97, p.4D)
1952 Albert Einstein was offered
the presidency of Israel, but he declined.
(BHT, Hawking, p.178)
1952 The US Internal Revenue
Service was reorganized.
(WSJ, 12/15/95, p.A-8)
1952 Penny postcards went up in
price.
(SFEC, 12/20/98, Z1 p.8)
1952 In Kentucky the 750-acre
Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant began operation. For 23 years the
government attempted to recycle used nuclear reactor fuel. The K-25
sister plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, also showed high death rates. In
1983 an autopsy of worker Joseph Harding revealed high concentrations
of radiation, but the results were not made public until 1999. In 1999
plant employees charged that radiation exposure was a long running
problem and that plutonium contamination had occurred from the mid 50s
to the mid 70s. Union Carbide ran the plant for 32 years for the Dept
of Energy, followed by Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin. Estimated
cleanup costs in 1999 were $240 billion over 75 years.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.A6)(SFEC, 8/22/99, p.A4)
1952 The Virgin Islands National
Park was established on 5,000 acres turned over to the US government by
Laurance Rockefeller.
(SFEC, 2/15/98, p.T8)
1952 Barry Goldwater upset Arizona
Democratic Senator Ernest McFarland by a 6,000 vote margin and won his
first term in the Senate.
(SFC, 5/30/98, p.A3)
1952 Becton Dickinson introduced
the Multifit, its first glass syringe with interchangeable nee-dles.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.A4)
1952 In Mattoon, Ill., Gene Hoots
bought the Frigid Queen ice cream shop from his uncle. He expanded the
business with hamburgers in 1954 and coined the named Burger King with
a reg-istered state trademark. He later lost a suit against the Florida
Burger King chain whose federal trademark was ruled to hold priority.
However the courts ruled that the franchise could not open within 20
miles of the Mattoon restaurant.
(SFC, 8/19/98, p.B2)
1952 Ford overtook Chrysler as the
No. 2 automaker.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1952 Kellogg’s "Tony the Tiger"
was created by advertising executive Don Tennant (d.2001 at 79).
(SFC, 12/14/01, p.A33)
1952 Charles M. Schulz copyrighted
his Lucy character in the Peanuts cartoon strip.
(SFC, 10/22/08, p.G3)
1952 "Colonel Sanders" started
Kentucky Fried Chicken with a 7-day-a-week Sunday dinner concept.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Par p.5)
1952 The first Weber grill was
made in by George Stephen (d.1993) of suburban Chicago and was called
George's Barbecue. It was manufactured by Weber Brothers Metal Works in
Chi-cago. Stephen started selling his Weber kettle in 1954 and the rest
is grilling history.
(www.hgtv.com/hgtv/ah_entertaining_outdoor/article/0,1801,HGTV_3117_1398364,00.html)
1952 Tappan introduced home
microwave ovens for $1295.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.8)
1952 The Tobacco Blending Company
of Louisville, Ky., made cigarette packs with the faces of Eisenhower
and Stevenson. The company changed its name to World Tabac in 1963 and
went out of business in 1993.
(SFC, 3/5/97, z-1 p.2)
1952 Dyas Power Bothe Jr.
(1911-1996), founded US Leasing Company. The company sup-plied pallets
to agricultural companies. He is hailed as the father of the modern
leasing busi-ness.
(SFC, 9/12/96, p.A26)
1952 The California constitution
was scrubbed of anti-Chinese discrimination.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.28)
1952 In California Ernest O.
Lawrence (1901-1958) founded what would later be known as the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.
(SFC, 1/11/03, p.A18)
1952 Hugh Morton (1921-2006)
inherited Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina and turned it into a
top tourist attraction. In 2008 the mountain and some 2,600 surrounding
acres of wil-derness were purchased by the state for $12 million. The
area will eventually be added to the North Carolina State Park system.
(WSJ, 9/29/08,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_Mountain)
1952 Sam Phillips (d.2003) founded
Sun Records in Memphis, Ten. Phillips produced Elvis Presley's 1st
record in 1954.
(SFC, 8/1/03, p.A19)
1952 John J. Rigas founded
Adelphia Communications in Coudersport, Pa., with a dream and a $300
check for a local cable franchise.
(WSJ, 5/28/02, p.A1)(USAT, 7/9/04, p.3B)
1952 Les Schwab (1917-2007)
purchased a run-down tire shop in Prineville, Ore. He soon expanded,
renamed the operation after himself and developed it into a major tire
chain. In 2006 sales reached $1.6 billion.
(WSJ, 6/9/07, p.A6)
1952 The US Leather Co. was
dissolved. It had been the nation’s largest shoemaker in the first
decades.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p.R45)
1952 Cuthbert C. Hurd (d. 5/22/96
at 85), computer scientist for IBM, led the development of the IBM 701
at a cost of $3 million. With his partner James Birkenstock, Cuthbert
recom-mended that the company design and build a general purpose
computer.
(SFC, 6/2/96, B6)
1952 David Bohm devised a quantum
physics model in which each electron is guided by an invisible "pilot
wave." His work is described in the 1997 book "Infinite Potential: The
Life and Times of David Bohm" by F. David Peat. Evidence for Bohm’s
theory is described by David Wick in the 1977 book "The Infamous
Boundary: Seven Decades of Heresy in Quantum Phys-ics."
(WSJ, 1/23/97, p.A12)
1952 Harry Markowitz won the Nobel
Prize in 1990 for his 1952 theory on risk reduction that was later
applied to portfolio management.
(WSJ, 10/21/96, p.A18)
1952 Researchers at Bell labs
developed the 1st system to recognize numbers spoken over a telephone.
(SFC, 7/26/00, p.D3)(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.30)
1952 David and Alice Schwartz
started Bio-Rad in West Berkeley. They created custom methods of
separating proteins and other contents of living cells from each other.
They took the company public in 1966. In 2005 revenue reached $1.2
billion.
(SFC, 2/18/02, p.E1)(SFC, 8/22/06, p.E4)
1952 Hugh Bradner (1916-2008), UC
physicist and diver, invented the neoprene wetsuit.
(SSFC, 5/11/08, p.B6)(WSJ, 5/17/08, p.A8)
1952 Dr. Marshall D. Gates
prepared a totally synthetic morphine.
(NG, May 1985, members forum)
1952 Chlorophyll was introduced.
(TMC, 1994, p.1952)
1952 A rare type of genetic
pancreatitis was diagnosed for the first time. In 1996 it was later
found to be caused by a specific gene.
(WSJ, 10/2/96, p.B5)
1952 Crigler-Najjar syndrome was
named for two doctors who identified it this year. Patients began
living longer in the 1970s when doctors realized that the wavelength
and energy of blue light changes the nature of the bilirubin, allowing
it to be excreted from the body. In 2007 there were about 110 known
cases of Crigler's worldwide, including about 35 in the US. About 20
are among the Amish and Mennonite in Pennsylvania.
(AP, 5/19/07)
1952 Lorenzo Ponza (1918-2004)
developed the “power pitcher,” later considered the proto-type of the
modern baseball pitching machine.
(SFC, 12/20/04, p.B4)
1952 The cave of Cougnac in
south-central France was discovered. It had three paintings of the
ancient Megaloceros giganteus (Irish elk).
(NH, 8/96, p.19)
1952 Harold Le Clair Ickes
(b.1874), US lawyer, statesman and writer, died. T.H. Watkins later
authored: "Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes."
(SFC, 2/26/00, p.A19)
1952 Evita Peron (b.1919), the
first lady of Argentina, died of cancer at age 33. Her biogra-phy: "Eva
Peron" was written by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz. "Santa Evita" was a (1996)
novel by Tomas Eloy Martinez based on the fate of her corpse. Eva wrote
a little book "Mi Mensaje" (My Message, or In My Own Words) that was
unfinished and lost until 1987 and published in Eng-lish under the
title "In My Own Words." "My Mission In Life" was ghostwritten under
Eva’s name by Manuel Penella de Silva.
(SFEC, 8/18/96, PM p. 8)(SFEC, 11/3/96, BR p.1)
1952 Renato Simoni, Italian drama
critic, died and left his entire library of 40,000 volumes to the La
Scala museum.
(Civil., Jul-Aug., ‘95, p.90)
1952 In Albania the Alba Films
complex was built to produce Communist propaganda.
(WSJ, 7/22/98, p.A6)
1952 In Australia Rupert Murdoch
(21) inherited 2 fledgling newspapers in Adelaide. By 2003 his empire
generated $17 billion a year in revenues.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(Econ, 8/30/03, p.61)
1952 In Bolivia many of the
largest haciendas were broken up as part of agrarian reforms, thousands
of indigenous worked on the plantations in near slavery.
(AP, 7/5/03)
1952 The MNR Party was the driving
force behind a revolution that launched agrarian re-forms, the
universal right to vote, and the nationalization of Bolivia’s mines.
The MNR was also accused of assassinations and torture.
(SFC, 6/8/01, p.D5)
1952 Brazil’s National Bank for
Economic and Social Development (BNDES) was founded to provide
long-term financing for endeavors that contribute to the country's
development.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNDES)
1952 The British government
abolished ID cards.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.15)
1952 Margaret Mee (1909-1988),
botanical artist, left Britain for Brazil and for 3 decades documented
Amazonian rain forest plant life in large watercolors.
(WSJ, 1/26/99, p.A16)(http://tinyurl.com/yafb9m)
1952 In Bulgaria Vincentius
Bossilkov, the Bishop of Nikopolis, was convicted at a Stalinist-era
show trial for refusing to accept a law aimed at removing the local
Catholic Church from Vatican jurisdiction. He was tried, tortured, shot
and buried in a common grave. He was beati-fied in 1998.
(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A9)
1952 Rudolf Slansky, a
Czechoslovak Communist leader, was sentenced to death after a show
trial with 13 other officials, including government ministers. The
trial was deemed anti-Semitic because Slansky and most of the officials
were Jewish.
(AP, 4/17/06)
1952 In Egypt some 2,000 vast
estates occupied half the country’s fertile land and millions of
illiterate peasants toiled as sharecroppers.
(Econ, 9/13/08, p.32)
1952 In Egypt Mohammed Zakaria
Ghoneim found the burial mask of noblewoman Ka Nefer Nefer at the
Saqqara pyramids. It dated back to 1307BC-1196BC. In 1998 St. Louis
bought the mask for half a million dollars from Phoenix ancient Art
gallery in Geneva, which was owned by Lebanese brothers Hicham and Ali
Aboutaam. In 2004 an Egyptian court sentenced Ali Abou-taam in absentia
to 15 years in prison for smuggling artifacts from Egypt to Switzerland.
(SFC, 11/28/08, p.A24)
1952 French Dr. Alain Bombard
(1924-2005) crossed the Atlantic in 65 days in a dinghy to prove that
shipwrecked sailors could survive off the sea's bounty.
(AP, 7/20/05)
1952 In France the viral disease
myxomatosis killed off about half the rabbits in the country.
(SFC, 4/15/00, p.D3)
1952 Germany banned the neo-Nazi
Socialist Reich Party, a successor to the Nazi Party.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A14)(SFC, 4/8/02, p.A3)
1952 An Italian law made the
praise of fascism a crime.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A15)
1952 Osamu Tezuka, Japanese
cartoonist, dreamed up Astro Boy and put his b-day at April 7, 2003.
His features soon defined the Japanese style called anime. In 1963
Astro Boy was im-ported to the US and 10-min. episodes ran until 1967.
(SSFC, 4/13/03, p.C4)(WSJ, 1/15/04, p.B1)
1952 In Japan cross-shareholdings
originated after someone tried to take over Mitsubishi Es-tate, a huge
property concern tied to the Mitsubishi trading house. 11 companies
linked to Mit-subishi bought shares to block the outsider. Zin the
1960s cross-shareholdings were adopted as a general defensive measure
as foreigners began buying shares as Japan liberalized its fi-nancial
markets.
(Econ, 11/8/08, p.80)
1952 The Mau Mau start chopping
away in Kenya. The Mau Mau movement was in part due to the white
domination of the rich plateau region. The Mau Mau separatist group
used a toxic plant to poison 33 steers in an act of rebellion.
(TMC, 1994, p.1952)(SFC, 9/4/97, p.A10)(WSJ,
9/18/01, p.B1)
1952 In Mexico Amalia Hernandez
founded the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB p.47)
1952 In Mexico City Rev. Marcial
Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, built the order’s 1st school,
Instituto Cumbres (The Heights), with funds donated by Flora Baragan de
Garza, the Monterey widow of one of the wealthiest men in Mexico.
(WSJ, 1/21/06, p.A1)
1952 The sarcophagus of Lord Pakal
was found in the ruins at Palenque, Mexico, by Alberto Ruz L’Huiller.
(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.C5)
1952 Petroleum engineers drilled
in Mexico’s Yucatan and found unexpected igneous rock. It was later
thought to have come from a comet that hit about 65 million years ago.
Sinkholes scattered around the edge of the resulting 112 mile diameter
crater were later believed to result from rocks sinking in the center
and causing fractures along the perimeter.
(SFC, 2/4/97, p.A9)
1952 Khorlooglin Choibalsan
(b.1895), head of Mongolia, died. His body was displayed in Ulan Bator
until 2005, when it was cremated.
(SFC, 9/10/08, p.A5)
1952 Wole Soyinka (b.1934), later
Nobel Prize winner, helped found the Pyrates Confraternity at Nigeria’s
elite University of Ibadan. Splinter groups soon emerged in a variety
of cults and were later used by military leaders to confront
pro-democracy movement. In 2004 Rivers State outlawed cultism, but with
little effect.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.50)
1952 In Poland a new constitution
was adopted.
(SFC, 5/26/97, p.A10)
1952 Poland began to allow foreign
cultures to organize their own schools.
(Voruta #27-28, Jul 1996, p.1)
1952 Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa al Thani was born. The population of Qatar at this time was
under 40,000. In 1995 he ousted his father in a bloodless coup.
(Econ, 6/7/08, p.61)
1952 In Russia a trail was held
for 15 leading Jewish writers, intellectuals and scientists, who were
associated with the Anti-Fascist Committee. In 2001 Joshua Rubenstein
and Vladimir P. Naumov edited the transcripts and published "Stalin’s
Secret Pogrom."
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A24)
1952 Rafael del Pino founded Grupo
Ferrovial S.A., a multinational Spanish company in-volved in
construction, infrastructure, real estate, and related services.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrovial)(Econ,
7/7/07, p.67)
1952 In Yemen American explorer
Wendell Phillips began excavating Marib’s Moon Temple of Sheba. He was
forced away after 4 months when locals suspected that he was after gold.
(WSJ, 5/2/97, p.A1)
1952-1955 I Love Lucy is the top ranking network show
on television with a ranking of 67.3, 58.8, and 49.3% over three
seasons.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1952-1960 Some 32 white settlers were killed by Mau
Mau rebels in Kenya.
(Econ, 1/1/05, p.66)
1952-1965 The Actor’s workshop of San Francisco
performed plays during this period. In 1960 and 1961 the company staged
the US premiers of Harold Pinter’s “The Room” and “The Birthday Party.”
(SFC, 1/8/09, p.E3)
1952-1972 Avery Brundage (1887-1975), American
athlete and sports officials, served as president of the International
Olympic Committee.
(Econ, 8/2/08,
p.85)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_Brundage)
1952-1987 William Shawn edited the New Yorker
Magazine. He had a 40-year affair with writer Lillian Ross, who in 1998
published "Here But Not Here," an account of their relationship. In
1998 Ved Mehta published: "Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker."
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.W10)
1952-1996 Jan Kerouac, novelist daughter of Jack
Kerouac. Her books included "Baby Driver" (1981) and "Trainsong" (1988).
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A22)
Go to 1953