Timeline 1947
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1947
Jan 1, Canada’s Citizenship Act of this year
became effective. It said that citizens living outside Canada on
their 24th birthday would automatically lose their citizenship
unless they filled out a form saying they wished to keep it. The law
was amended in 1977 and raised the age factor to 28.
(Econ, 2/3/07,
p.39)(www.theshipslist.com/Forms/citizenship.htm)
1947 Jan 2, Mahatma Gandhi
began a march for peace in East-Bengali.
(http://tinyurl.com/6sn3vf6)
1947 Jan 3, At the top of the
record charts:
Ole Buttermilk Sky by The Kay Kyser Orchestra
(vocal: Mike Douglas & The Campus Kids).
The Old
Lamplighter by The Sammy Kaye Orchestra (vocal: Billy Williams).
For Sentimental
Reasons by Nat King Cole.
Divorce Me C.O.D.
by Merle Travis.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1947 Jan 3, Congressional
proceedings were televised for the first time as viewers in
Washington, Philadelphia and New York City saw some of the opening
ceremonies of the 80th Congress.
(AP, 1/3/98)
1947 Jan 3, In Trenton, New
Jersey, Al Herrin, the handyman who claimed he had no bed to sleep
in because he had never slept a wink in his life, passed away at age
92. He was famed for catnapping in chairs but never sleeping in a
bed. No bed was found in his living quarters after he died. Doctors
said there was evidence that he had gone several months without
sleep and they confirmed that if he went that long, it could well be
that he was awake his entire life.
(SFC, 12/4/94, p. S-8)(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1947 Jan 4, J. Danforth Quayle
(Sen-R-Ind, 44th VP 1989-93) was born. [see Feb 4]
(MC, 1/4/02)
1947 Jan 5, Great Britain
nationalized its coal mines.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1947 Jan 7, In the US James F.
Byrnes resigned as secretary of state and was succeeded by Gen’l.
George C. Marshall.
(EWH, 1968, p.1207)
1947 Jan 8, Gen. George
Marshall became US Sec. of State.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1947 Jan 9, French General
Leclerc broke off all talks with Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh.
(HN, 1/9/98)
1947 Jan 10, The musical
fantasy "Finian's Rainbow," with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by
E.Y. Harburg, opened on Broadway and ran for 725 performances. It is
the tale of an Irishman who stole a pot of gold and came to the US
to plant it and became rich. Burton Lane (1912-1996) also did "On a
Clear Day You Can See Forever."
(MT, 10/94, p.15)(AP, 1/10/98)(MC, 1/10/02)
1947 Jan 12, In Haifa,
Palestine, the Stern Gang drove a truckload of explosives into a
British police station. 4 people were killed and 140 injured.
(SSFC, 4/16/06, p.E4)
1947 Jan 13, British troops
replaced striking truck drivers.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1947 Jan 15, A grisly,
still-unsolved murder case came to light in Los Angeles as the
mutilated remains of 22-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short,
known as the "Black Dahlia" for the dark outfits she wore, were
found dumped in a vacant lot. Her body was severed at the waist,
drained of blood and fully posed in a vacant lot. The Black Dahlia
murder case remained unsolved even though 500 hundred men confessed
to the murder. In 1977 John Gregory Dunne authored "True
Confessions," a novel based on the case. In 1987 James Ellroy
authored "The Black Dahlia." In 2003 Steve Hodel authored "Black
Dahlia Avenger," in which he held that the killer was Dr. George
Hodel, his own father.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, BR p.3)(SFEC, 4/5/98, p.C16)(AP,
1/15/01)(NW, 4/21/03, p.59)(SFC, 1/2/04, p.D1)(SFC, 4/16/04, p.B7)
1947 Jan 19, The French opened
a drive on Hue, Indochina (Vietnam).
(HN, 1/19/99)
1947 Jan 20, Josh Gibson (35),
Negro League slugger, died of a brain tumor.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1947 Jan 25, American gangster
Al Capone died of syphilis in Miami Beach, Fla., at age 48. While he
was in prison at Alcatraz Capone composed a song titled “Madonna
Mia,” and gave to Vincent Casey, a Jesuit priest, who visited him
regularly. In 2009 the song was produced and made available on CD.
(AP, 1/25/98)(SFC, 4/17/09, p.A6)
1947 Jan 27, Britain agreed to
give Burma independence following negotiations with nationalist
leader Aung San.
(SFC, 5/7/02,
p.A9)(www.myanmar.gov.mm/Perspective/persp2001/2-2001/uni.htm)
1947 Jan, The first official
meeting of the Los Angeles Friars Club was held at the Savoy Hotel
in Beverly Hills. Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, George Burns,
George Raft, George Jessel, Jonie Taps, Harry Cohn, and Abbot and
Costello.
(SFEC, 9/29/96, DB p.59)
1947 Jan, Arthur Anderson,
founder of the Anderson accounting firm (1913), died of a heart
attack. Leonard Spacek stepped in as managing partner and prevented
the firm from dissolving
(WSJ, 5/1/02, p.B1)(WSJ, 6/7/02, p.A6)
1947 Jan, Chester Carlson,
patent attorney and kitchen inventor, signed a licensing agreement
with Haloid Corp. of Rochester, NY, to develop a copy machine. This
marked the beginning of Xerox’s copy business. 12 years later, the
company launched a practical dry copier. Entrepreneur Joe Wilson
propelled Xerox to success. In 2006 Charles D. Ellis authored Joe
Wilson and the Creation of Xerox.”
(WSJ, 8/17/95, p.C-1)(ON, 11/04, p.8)(Econ,
11/18/06, p.86)
1947 Feb 1, Algis Ratnikas,
timeliner, was born in a refugee camp in Munich, Germany, to Jonas
and Stase Ratnikas from Lithuania.
(AR, 6/29/02)
1947 Feb 2, The US and Canada
announced the continuation of their defense-cooperation under the
Permanent Defense Board of 1940.
(EWH, 1968, p.1207)
1947 Feb 3, Percival Prattis
became the 1st black reporter in Congressional press gallery.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1947 Feb 4, Dan Quayle was born
in Indianapolis. He later became vice-president under George Bush
(1988-1992). [see Jan 4]
(DFP, 7/28/96, p.J5)(HN, 2/4/99)
1947 Feb 5, The Soviet Union
and Great Britain rejected terms for an American trusteeship over
Japanese Pacific Isles.
(HN, 2/5/99)
1947 Feb 7, Arabs and Jews
rejected a British proposal to split Palestine.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1947 Feb 9, Bank robber Willie
Sutton escaped jail in Philadelphia.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1947 Feb 12, A daytime fireball
& meteorite fell and was seen in eastern Siberia.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1947 Feb 12, General Aung San
and 21 delegates of the national races of the mountain regions, the
Shan, Kachin and Chin, finally signed the historic Pinlon Accord.
They unanimously agreed to independence, not for a fragmented
country, but for what has now become known as the Union of Myanmar.
(AP, 2/12/06)
1947 Feb 12, A record 100.5-kg
sailfish was caught by C.W. Stewart off the Galapagos Islands.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1947 Feb 14, Donna Halper,
Boston-based historian, author, educator and radio consultant, was
born. Since 1984, Halper has been the advocate for an adult with
autism. She continues to do presentations on such topics as media
history, women’s history, and popular culture at museums, schools,
and historical societies.
(www.donnahalper.com/dlh.htm)
1947 Feb 15, John Adams,
composer (Nixon in China), was born in Worcester Mass.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1947 Feb 17, The Voice of
America began broadcasting to the Soviet Union.
(AP, 2/17/98)
1947 Feb 18, Gian Carlo
Menotti's opera "Telephone," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1947 Feb 19, CBS radio premiere
of Villa-Lobos' "Bachianas Brasilieras No 3."
(MC, 2/19/02)
1947 Feb 20, A chemical mixing
error caused an explosion that destroyed 42 blocks in LA.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1947 Feb 20, Lord Louis
Mountbatten was appointed the last viceroy of India.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1947 Feb 20, The British
pledged to leave India by June 1948.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1947 Feb 21, Edwin H. Land
publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera in NYC. It could
produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds. Polaroid Corp.
was co-founded by Land and George W. Wheelwright III (d.2001 at 97).
(AP, 2/21/98)(SFC, 3/3/01, p.A22)(MC, 2/21/02)
1947 Feb 23, Shakira Caine,
actress (Man Who be King), Miss Guyana (1967), was born in Guyana.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1947 Feb 23, Gen. Eisenhower
opened a drive to raise $170M in aid for European Jews.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1947 Feb 23, Several hundred
Nazi organizers were arrested in Frankfurt by U.S. and British
forces.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1947 Feb 24, Franz von Papen
was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp for war crimes. Pompous
scion of an old aristocratic family, he had become chancellor of
Germany in 1932.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1947 Feb 26, President Truman
named Lewis W. Douglas as ambassador to Britain.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1947 Feb 27, Gidon Kremer,
violinist (Tchaikovsky Prize 1970), was born in Riga, Latvia.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1947 Feb 28, Britain and France
signed a 50-year pact to curb Germany.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1947 Feb 28, There was an
anti-Kuomintang demonstration on Taiwan. As many as 20,000 civilians
were massacred by the Kuomintang (KMT). A riot was sparked by the
arrest of a woman selling contraband cigarettes in Taipei. Crowds
attacked the Nationalist Party institutions as Nationalist troops
and secret police struck back over the ensuing months. In 1996 a 69
cent postage stamp was planned in commemoration of the “228
Incident.” In 2006 a team from UC Berkeley won a design competition
for a 15-acre “228 National Memorial Park.”
(SFC, 4/6/06, p.B3)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B1)(SFC,
6/10/97, p.A8)(SFC, 4/6/06, p.B3)
1947 Feb, In Germany Rudolf
Augstein (23) took over a weekly news magazine from British
occupiers and began publishing Der Spiegel (The Mirror). Augstein
died in 2002. In 1974 Augstein gave Spiegel’s staff half of the
company’s shares.
(SFC, 11/11/02, p.A20)(Econ, 1/12/08, p.45)
1947 Mar 1, International
Monetary Fund began operations.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1947 Mar 4, France and Britain
signed an alliance treaty.
(HN, 3/4/98)
1947 Mar 5, Communist leader
Maurice Thorez declared support for the French sovereignty over
Vietnam.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1947 Mar 6, Winston Churchill
opposed the withdrawal of troops from India.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1947 Mar 6, Ludwig Weber (55),
composer, died.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1947 Mar 9, Keri Hulme, New
Zealand novelist (The Bone People), was born.
(HN, 3/9/01)
1947 Mar 10, The Big Four met
in Moscow to discuss Germany.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1947 Mar 10, One of the largest
sunspots ever recorded occurred.
(Wired, 2/99, p.104)
1947 Mar 10, Piers Corbyn,
meteorologist and founder of Weather Action, was born.
(Wired, 2/99, p.103)
1947 Mar 12, Pres. Truman
outlined the Truman Doctrine of economic and military aid to nations
threatened by Communism. The doctrine was intended to speed recovery
of Mediterranean countries He specifically requested aid for Greece
and Turkey to resist Communism.
(EWH, 1968, p.1207)(AP, 3/12/98)(MC, 3/12/02)
1947 Mar 13, The film
"The Best Years of Our Lives" won the Academy Award for best
picture; Oscars also went to its director, William Wyler, lead actor
Fredric March and supporting actor Harold Russell; Olivia De
Havilland won best actress for "To Each His Own"; Anne Baxter won
best supporting actress for "The Razor’s Edge."
(AP, 3/13/97)
1947 Mar 13, The Lerner and
Loewe musical "Brigadoon" opened on Broadway for 581 performances.
(AP, 3/13/97)(MC, 3/13/02)
1947 Mar 14, Billy Crystal,
comedian (Soap, SNL, City Slickers), was born in Long Beach, NY.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1947 Mar 14, The U.S. signed a
99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.
(HN, 3/14/98)
1947 Mar 19, Glenn Close,
actress (The Big Chill, Fatal Attraction), was born in Greenwich,
Ct.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1947 Mar 19, Chiang Kai-shek’s
government forces took control of Yenan, the former headquarters of
the Chinese Communist Party.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1947 Mar 21, Pres. Truman
signed Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to swear
allegiance to the United States.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1947 Mar 24, Congress proposed
the limitation of the presidency to two terms.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1947 Mar 24, John D.
Rockefeller Jr. donated a NYC East River site to the UN.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1947 Mar 25, Elton John,
[Reginald Kenneth Dwight], English singer (Rocketman), was born.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1947 Mar 25, a coal mine
explosion in Centralia, Ill., claimed 111 lives. Harper’s Magazine
commissioned Ben Shawn to create drawings to accompany an article on
the disaster.
(AP, 3/25/97)(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)
1947 Mar 26, FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover warned HUAC that communists had launched "a furtive
attack on Hollywood" 12 years earlier.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1947 Mar, US Sec. of State
George Marshall attended a Big Four meeting in Moscow and concluded
that the soviets were seeking a European collapse that would bring
in Communist governments. He thus decided on what came to be known
as the "Marshall Plan."
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.A10)
1947 Apr 1, David Eisenhower,
grandson of Pres. Dwight Eisenhower, was born. He later married
Julie Nixon.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1947 Apr 1, The 1st Jewish
immigrants to Israel disembarked at Port of Eilat.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1947 Apr 1, Greece’s King
George II died.
(AP, 4/1/98)
1947 Apr 4, Scientists noted
the largest group of sunspots on record.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1947 Apr 6, The first Tony
awards were presented at a dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the
Waldorf-Astoria on Easter Sunday. They were named in honor of
Antoinette Perry (1888-1946), chairman of the board and secretary of
the American Theatre Wing throughout World War II.
(http://americantheatrewing.org/tony/history_of_the_tony_awards.php)
1947 Apr 7, Auto pioneer Henry
Ford (b.1863) died in Dearborn, Mich. Most of his personal estate,
valued at $205 million, was left to the Ford Foundation. In 2001
Neil Baldwin authored "Henry Ford and the Jews - The Mass Production
of Hate." In 2003 Douglas Brinkley authored "Wheels for the World -
Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress." In 2005 Steven
Watts authored “The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American
Century.”
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 2/20/98)(SFC, 6/13/03,
p.B4)(SSFC, 8/28/05, p.C2)
1947 Apr 7, Arab students,
influenced by national socialist movements in Europe, founded the
Baath Party. Satia al-Husri, father of Ba’athism, was a disciple of
German philosopher Johann Fichte. This became a holiday in Iraq
until abolished in 2003.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.D4)(AP,
7/13/03)
1947 Apr 7, At Mont Pelerin,
Switzerland, Friedrich A. von Hayek invited a group of classical
liberals to discuss the threat of freedom posed by the expansionist
governments of the day. The group founded the Mont Pelerin Society
to continue meetings and discussions in the future. They viewed
central planning as the single most important threat to liberty.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A22)
1947 Apr 9, The US Atomic
Energy Commission was confirmed. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer was
appointed chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic
Energy Commission.
(MC, 4/9/02)(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.B2)
1947 Apr 9, A series of
tornadoes struck Kansas, West Texas and Oklahoma. 181 were killed
and some 1,300 injured. The Woodward tornado ranked as the deadliest
ever to hit Oklahoma.
(AP, 4/9/08)(AH, 4/07, p.55)
1947 Apr 10, Brooklyn Dodgers
president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of
Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals. John Sengstacke, black
publisher of the Chicago Defender, was instrumental in persuading
Mr. Rickey in his decision. In spite of intense pressure and
hostility, Robinson's athletic abilities earned him the Rookie of
the Year Award in 1947.
(AP, 4/10/97)(SFC, 1/12/98, p.A1)(HN, 4/10/01)
1947 Apr 10, Ronald Reagan and
his wife Jane Wyman provided names to the FBI of Screen Actors Guild
members believed to be communist sympathizers.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1947 Apr 11, Jackie Robinson
played in an exhibition between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New
York Yankees, the first Negro to play in Major league baseball.
Jackie Robinson became the first black to play major league baseball
as he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie Robinson
officially broke baseball's color barrier when he put on Dodgers
uniform No. 42 in April 1947. When Jackie Robinson joined the
Brooklyn Dodgers, talented black athletes toiled in relative
obscurity in the Negro leagues despite the exciting caliber of their
play. Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager Branch Rickey first
approached Jackie Robinson in August 1945 to participate in the
"great experiment" of integrating the major leagues.
(TMC, 1994, p.1947)(AP, 4/11/97)(HN,
4/10/98)(HNPD, 4/10/99)
1947 Apr 12, David Letterman,
comedian (Late Night), was born in Indianapolis, Ind.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1947 Apr 15, Jackie Robinson,
modern baseball’s first black major-league player, broke the color
barrier and made his official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on
opening day. The Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves, 5-3.
(AP, 4/15/97)(HN, 4/15/98)
1947 Apr 16, Lew Alcinder
(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), professional basketball player, was born. He
made his career with the Los Angeles Lakers
(HN, 4/16/99)
1947 Apr 16, Carol Mosely
Braun, later US Senator for Illinois (1992-1998), was born in
Chicago.
(SFC, 1/14/04, p.A2)
1947 Apr 16, Financier and
presidential confidant Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the
unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of
Representatives, coined the term "Cold War" to describe relations
between the United States and the Soviet Union: "Let us not be
deceived -- we are today in the midst of a cold war."
(AP,
4/16/97)(www.history.com/this-day-in-history/4/16?catId=3)
1947 Apr 16, A lens that
provided zoom effects was demonstrated in New York City.
(HN, 4/16/98)
1947 Apr 16, The French ship
Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and
blew up, devastating Texas City, Texas. It was America's worst
harbor explosion. Another ship, the Highflyer, exploded the
following day. The final death toll was 576, and more than 3,000
Texas City residents were left homeless. Property damage ran
into the millions.
(SFC, 5/4/96, p.E-4)(AP, 4/16/97)(HNPD, 4/17/00)
1947 Apr 17, Jackie Robinson
bunted for his first major league hit.
(HN, 4/17/98)
1947 Apr 18, James Woods, actor
(Salvador, Against All Odds), was born in Warwick, RI.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1947 Apr 19, Murray Perahia,
pianist (Avery Fischer Prize-1975, Grammy 1988), was born in NYC.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1947 Apr 26, Evalyn Walsh
McLean, the mining heiress, died at 60. She was the owner of the
Hope Diamond and had hocked the 44.52 carat gemstone at a Virginia
pawnshop in 1932 to raise cash for the retrieval of the Lindbergh
baby. The stone was transferred to a bank by Frank Murphy, an
associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The bank sold it to Harry
Winston, a noted New York Jeweler, who donated it to the Smithsonian
Institute in 1958.
(Smith., 5/95, p.18-20)(THC, 12/3/97)
1947 Apr 27, It was "Babe Ruth
Day" at Yankee Stadium as baseball fans across the country honored
the ailing star.
(AP, 4/27/97)
1947 Apr 28, Norwegian
anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl (d.2002) and five others sailed from
Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day, 4,300
nautical mile journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia. They
wanted to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in
Polynesia. Heyerdahl published "Kon-Tiki" in 1950.
(AP, 4/28/97)(WSJ, 5/22/97, p.A13)(HN,
4/28/99)(SFC, 4/19/02, p.A2)
1947 Apr 29, Irving Fisher
(b.1867), American economist, died. His Fisher hypothesis is the
proposition that the real interest rate is independent of monetary
measures, especially the nominal interest rate.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Fisher)
1947 Apr 30, President Truman
signed a measure officially changing the name of Boulder Dam to
Hoover Dam.
(AP, 4/30/97)
1947 May 1, Radar for
commercial and private planes was 1st demonstrated.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1947 May 3, Japan formed a
constitutional democracy.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1947 May 5, Pulitzer prize was
awarded to Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men).
(MC, 5/5/02)
1947 May 7, The opera "The
Mother of Us All," by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson, premiered
at the Brander Matthews Theater of Columbia Univ. They wrote it as a
meditation on the life of Susan B. Anthony.
(WSJ, 8/6/98, p.A13)(WSJ, 2/5/04, p.A13)
1947 May 7, "Kraft Television
Theater" premiered on NBC.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1947 May 7, General MacArthur
approved the Japanese constitution.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1947 May 7, Nick DeJohn, former
capodecina in the Chicago Family, was strangled and his body stuffed
into the trunk of a car parked on a San Francisco street. DeJohn had
reportedly fled Chicago after murdering several other gang members
and was living in Santa Rosa, California, under an alias at the time
of his death.
(SFC, 2/8/06, p.B5)(http://tinyurl.com/8fjm7)
1947 May 8, The House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convened in Hollywood to
hunt for Communists in the film industry. The committed was chaired
by J. Parnell Thomas, R-N.J., and the first witnesses called were
MGM executive James McGuiness, screenwriter Jack C. Moffitt and
composer Hanns Eisler. Robert Vaughn in 1972 authored "Only
Victims," an account of the 1947 HUAC hearings on the Hollywood 10.
In 1998 Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley authored "Hollywood Party," an
account of the activities of the Hollywood 10, who included Alvah
Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner
Jr., John Howard Lawson, Alvert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Robert Adrian
Scott, and Dalton Trumbo.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.64)(WSJ, 12/16/98,
p.A21)(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A23)
1947 May 11, The B.F. Goodrich
Company of Akron, Ohio, announced the development of a tubeless
tire.
(AP, 5/11/97)
1947 May 13, The US Senate
approved the Taft-Hartley Act limiting the power of unions. [see Jun
4]
(MC, 5/13/02)
1947 May 18, John Bruton, Prime
Minister (Republic of Ireland), was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1947 May 22, The Truman
Doctrine brought aid to Turkey and Greece. President Harry S. Truman
relied heavily on Dean Acheson for his most significant foreign
policy achievements.
(EWH, 1968, p.1207)(AP, 5/22/97)(HN, 5/22/98)
1947 May 22, The 1st US
ballistic missile was fired.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1947 May 23, Jane Kenyon, poet
(Let Evening Come, Otherwise), was born.
(HN, 5/23/01)
1947 May 25, Jessi Colter
[Miriam Johnson], country singer (I'm Not Lisa), was born in
Phoenix.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1947 May 25, Mitch Margo,
rocker (Tokens-Lion Sleeps Tonight), was born in Brooklyn, NY.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1947 May 25, Karen Valentine,
actress (Love American Style, Room 222), was born in Santa
Rosa, CA.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1947 May 28, Faith Brown,
impressionist, was born.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1947 May 28, Sondra Locke,
actress (Heart Is a Lonely Hunter), was born in Shelbyville, Tenn.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1947 May 30, In Hungary
Soviet-backed communists forced PM Ferenc Nagy (1903-1979) into
exile. Dinnyés Lajos (1901-1961) was appointed as successor
and served as the last non-communist Prime Minister of Hungary until
December, 1948.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajos_Dinny%C3%A9s)
1947 May, Thomas D’Alesandro
Jr. began the 1st of three 4-year terms as mayor of Baltimore.
Congressman Tommy D'Alesandro Jr., elected as mayor of Baltimore,
was the city's 1st Italian-American and Catholic mayor and served
for 12 years. In 2002 his daughter Nancy Pelosi became the 1st woman
to lead a party in the US Congress after Democrats voted 177-29 in
support of the liberal from SF. In 2006 Nancy Pelosi was named
speaker for the 110th Congress.
(http://tinyurl.com/u6bdk)(SFC, 11/15/02,
p.A1)(SFC, 1/2/07, p.A6)
1947 May, In Georgia Sam Turner
shot and killed Charlie Lipford and was sentenced to 5 years for
voluntary manslaughter. He was paroled after a year and soon jailed
again for burglary. In 1951 he walked off a work camp and never
looked back until a routine check rounded him up in 1997.
(SFC,12/10/97, p.A3)
1947 Jun 1, The OPA, which
issued WW II rationing coupons, disbanded.
(DT, 6/1/97)
1947 Jun 1, The development of
photosensitive glass was announced in Corning, N.Y.
(DT, 6/1/97)
1947 Jun 3, In Britain an
announcement was made in the House of Commons that India was to be
partitioned and that independence would follow. In 2007 Yasmin Khan
authored “The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan.”
(Econ, 7/21/07, p.81)
1947 Jun 4, The House of
Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Labor Management
Relations Act also known as the Taft-Hartley Act. It provided for an
80-day injunction against strikes that endangered public health and
safety. Pres. [see Jun 20]
(WUD, 1994 p.1447)(AP, 6/4/97)(SFC, 11/27/99,
p.C4)
1947 Jun 5, David Hare, British
playwright and director (A Map of the World, Slag), was born.
(HN, 6/5/01)
1947 Jun 5, Secretary of State
George C. Marshall in a speech at Harvard Univ. called for a
European Recovery Program to be initiated by the European powers and
supported by American aid (Marshall Plan). The program was intended
to assist European nations, including former enemies, to rebuild
their economies. From 1947 to 1952 it helped Western Europe recover
by providing some $13 billion worth of technical and economic aid.
In 2007 Greg Behrman authored “The Most Noble Adventure: The
Marshall Plan and the Time When America Helped Save Europe.”
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.A10)(AP, 6/5/97)(HN,
6/5/98)(Econ, 9/29/07, p.89)
1947 Jun 8, Sara Paretsky,
detective novelist, was born.
(HN, 6/8/01)
1947 Jun 8, Selden Gile
(b.1877), SF Bay Area plein-air painter, died. He was one of the
Society of Six, who took their cue from the post-Impressionist
painters they saw at the 1915 Panama Pacific Int’l. Exposition.
(SFC, 5/4/09,
p.E3)(http://lawrencebeebe.com/seldengilebiography.html)
1947 Jun 10, California Gov.
Earl Warren signed a measure that gave each county the authority to
regulate its own air pollution.
(SFEC,11/10/97, p.A10)
1947 Jun 11, The government
announced the end of household and institutional sugar rationing, to
take effect the next day. It began May 28, 1942.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1947 Jun 15, The All-Indian
Congress accepted a British plan for the partition of India. Britain
partitioned the subcontinent and Pakistan was founded as an
independent country.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(HN, 6/15/98)
1947 Jun 16, Pravda denounced
the Marshall Plan.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1947 Jun 17, Pan Am Airways was
chartered as the 1st worldwide passenger airline.
(Hem., 2/96, p.44)(MC, 6/17/02)
1947 Jun 19, Salman Rushdie,
author of "Satanic Verses," was born. His life was later threatened
in the Muslim world for what was considered a sacrilegious book.
(HN, 6/19/99)
1947 Jun 19, The Tucker
automobile premiered in Chicago.
(DT, 6/19/97)
1947 Jun 19, The first plane
(F-80) to exceed 600 mph (1004 kph) was flown by Albert Boyd in
Muroc, California.
(DT, 6/19/97)
1947 Jun 20, President Truman
vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, but had his veto overridden by
Congress. The act declared the closed shop illegal and permitted the
union shop only following a majority employee vote. [see Jun 4]
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(SFC, 9/26/96, p.C2)(AP,
6/20/97)(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A17)
1947 Jun 20, Benjamin "Bugsy"
Siegel was shot dead at the Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion of his
girlfriend, Virginia Hill, at the order of mob associates angered
over the soaring costs of Siegel’s pet project, the Flamingo resort
in Las Vegas, Nev.
(AP, 6/20/97)
1947 Jun 23, As a result of the
worker strikes in 1946, the US government passed the Taft-Hartley
Act that put the brakes on union activities. The Senate joined the
House and passed the Taft-Hartley Act over the veto of the
president. It prohibited the use of union funds for political
purposes and introduced a 60-day notice before a strike or lockout,
outlawed the closed shop, and empowered the government to serve
injunctions against strikes likely to cripple the nation’s economy.
The act prohibited employer payments to a union of its officials
except in certain cases, such as payment to an employee benefit
fund.
(EWH, 1968, p.1207)(AP, 6/23/97)(WSJ, 9/2/97,
p.A19)(SFEC, 10/5/97, p.D9)
1947 Jun 22, Holt, Missouri,
experienced a world-record rainstorm when 304.8 mm (1 ft) of rain
fell in 42 minutes. June 1947 had been the wettest month of record
since record-keeping began in 1888 in northern Missouri. Holt is
located in both Clay and Clinton Counties, Missouri and had a
population of 405 in 2000.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holt,_Missouri)
1947 Jun 24, Flying saucers
were "sighted" over Mount Rainier by pilot Ken Arnold.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1947 Jun 26, Congress approved
the unification of the armed services under a secretary of defense
(James V. Forrestal).
(EWH, 1968, p.1207)
1947 Jun 28, Mark Helprin,
novelist (Winter's Tale), was born.
(HN, 6/28/01)
1947 Jun, In Japan Mount Asama
erupted and left 11 people dead.
(SFEC, 4/2/00, p.A17)
1947 Jul 1, The Willem Ruys,
later Achille Lauro, a 192m long passenger ship, was launched.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1947 Jul 2, An object crashed
near Roswell, N.M. The Army Air Force later insisted it was a
weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it
might have been an alien spacecraft.
(AP, 7/2/97)
1947 Jul 3, Soviet Union didn't
partake in the Marshall Plan.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1947 Jul 4, "Wino Willie"
Forkner (d.1997) led his South Central LA Boozefighters
motorcyclists to Hollister for a weekend of beer-drenched fun. They
were all veterans of WW II. He was said to have been the model for
Marlon Brando in the film "The Wild One." 3,000 motorcyclists
spilled over into Hollister from a nearby racetrack. [see Jul 7]
(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A17)(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.A1)
1947 Jul 5, Larry Doby
signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first
black player in the American League.
(AP, 7/5/97)
1947 Jul 5, Rancher Mac Brazel
found unusual debris 75 miles northwest of Roswell, NM, scattered
over an area 300 years wide and ¾ of a mile long. This led to
rumors of an alien crash. The military said it was a crashed weather
balloon.
(SSFC, 8/1/04, p.D8)
1947 Jul 7, A made-up photo in
Life magazine featured a biker in Hollister, Ca. In 1997 bikers
returned to Hollister for a 50-year anniversary and began an annual
tradition. [see Jul 4]
(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A18)
(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A18)
1947 Jul 8, The American League
defeated the National League, 2-1, in the All-Star game played at
Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
(AP, 7/8/97)
1947 Jul 8, Demolition work
began in New York City to make way for the new permanent
headquarters of the United Nations.
(AP, 7/8/97)
1947 Jul 8, In New Mexico the
Roswell Daily Record reported the military’s capture of a flying
saucer. It became know as the Roswell Incident. Officials later
called the debris a "harmless, high-altitude weather balloon. In
1994 the Air Force released a report saying the wreckage was part of
a device used to spy on the Soviets.
(SFC, 6/23/96, p.T4)(USAT, 6/28/96, p.7D)
1947 Jul 9, The engagement of
Britain’s Princess Elizabeth to Lt. Philip Mountbatten was
announced.
(AP, 7/9/97)
1947 Jul 9, Spain voted for
Franco.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1947 Jul 10, Camilla Parker
Bowles, lover of Prince Charles, was born.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1947 Jul 10, Arlo Guthrie,
singer (Alice's Restaurant, City of New Orleans), was born in
Brooklyn.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1947 Jul 10, Orenthal James
Simpson (OJ Simpson), football star, acquitted in trial for the
murder of his ex-wife, was born.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1947 Jul 15, Convertibility of
British sterling into US dollars, negotiated as part of a $5 billion
US loan to Britain in 1946, came into effect. It caused an immediate
run on the pound and was abandoned on August 20.
(WSJ, 6/20/08, p.A11)
1947 Jul 16, Raoul Wallenberg,
Swedish diplomat jailed by the Soviets who believed that he was an
American spy, reportedly died at the Lubyanka prison in Moscow of an
alleged heart attack. He had saved more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews
from Nazi death camps. A 2001 Swedish report failed to confirm his
death. In 2010 Russian Security Services archives said a man
identified as Prisoner No. 7, who was interrogated 6 days after the
diplomat’s reported execution on July 17, was likely Wallenberg.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.A-7)(SFC, 12/23/00, p.A12)(SFC,
1/13/01, p.A14)(WSJ, 2/28/09, p.A7)(SFC, 4/2/10, p.A4)
1947 Jul 17, Sheik Saqr bin
Mohammed Al Qasimi (1918-2010) became the Ruler of Ras al-Khaimah
(UAR) when he overthrew his uncle and father-in-law Shaykh Sultan
Bin Salem (or Salim) al-Qassimi in a bloodless coup d'etat. Shaykh
Saqr exiled the Sultan to Sharjah. Ras al-Khaimah joined the United
Arab Emirates in 1972.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqr_bin_Mohammad_al-Qassimi)
1947 Jul 18, President Truman
signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of
the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of
succession after the vice president.
(HFA, ‘96, p.34)(AP, 7/18/97)
1947 Jul 18, An African
American patient, code-named CAL-3, was unwittingly injected with
plutonium in a SF hospital as part of a treatment for apparent bone
cancer.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, BR p.3)
1947 Jul 18, King George VI
signed the Indian Independence Bill. In 2008 Peter Clarke authored
“The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire.
(http://indiainteracts.com/columnist/2007/08/15/The-60-days-to-Aug-15-1947India-at-60/)(WSJ,
6/20/08, p.A11)
1947 Jul 18, British seized the
"Exodus 1947" ship of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. The British
Royal Navy intercepted the ship President Warfield, which had been
renamed Exodus by its passengers, forcing the 4,000 Jewish would-be
immigrants aboard back to Displaced Person camps in Germany. Britain
was still the ruling power in Palestine, which was being wracked by
conflict resulting from Jewish national aspirations. The return of
the Jewish immigrants, many of them survivors of Nazi persecution,
heightened anti-British sentiment among Jews in Palestine and
elsewhere. Yossi Harel, commander of the Exodus, died in 2008 at age
90.
(MC, 7/18/02)(HNQ, 12/4/98)(AP, 4/26/08)
1947 Jul 19, Bernie Leadon (The
Eagles: Take It Easy, Best of My Love, One of these nights), was
born.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1947 Jul 19, Brian Harold May
(Queen: Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Another One Bites the
Dust), was born.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1947 Jul 19, Gerard Schwarz,
trumpeter, conductor (LA Chamber Orch), was born in Weehawken, NJ.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1947 Jul 20, Carlos Santana,
legendary guitar player, was born in Autlan, Mexico.
(SSFC, 10/14/07, Par p.18)
1947 Jul 21, Cat Stevens, rock
vocalist (Peace Train, Father & Son), was born as Yusaf
Islam.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1947 Jul 21, Life Magazine
featured the photo of a drunk on a motorcycle from the Jul 4
gathering in Hollister, Ca. The photo was later revealed to have
been set up for effect.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.A12)
1947 Jul 23, U.S. President
Harry S Truman made the first Presidential surprise visit to Capitol
Hill since 1789. "Give Em Hell Harry."
(MC, 7/23/02)
1947 Jul 26, President Truman
signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of
Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence
Agency, CIA, FBI, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The act forbade the
CIA from operating within the US. The CIA was transformed from the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), founded by Gen. William Donovan
(1941), and was led by Adm. Walter Chilcott Ford (d.1999 at 96)
until 1949.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A2)(AP, 7/26/97)(SFC, 11/25/99,
p.D9)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1947 Jul 28, Sally Struther,
actress (Gloria-All in the Family), was born in Portland, Oregon.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1947 Jul 30, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, 5x Mr. Universe and film star, was born in Thal bei
Graz, Austria. In 2003 he was elected governor of California.
(SSFC, 6/22/03, Par p.4)(Internet)
1947 Jul 31, The Jewish
underground Irgun Zvai Leumi said it hanged 2 British sergeants in
Palestine.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A2)
1947 Jul, George Kennan in his
article "The Sources of Soviet Conflict" in the quarterly Foreign
Affairs, which he signed "X," set out the U.S. policy of containment
of the Soviet Union. Kennan, born in Milwaukee on February 16, 1904,
stated in the article: "It is clear the main element of any U.S.
policy towards the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient
but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies…"
(HNQ, 6/17/98)(WSJ, 2/3/04, p.A1)
1947 Jul, Senator John Bricker,
a republican from Ohio, was shot at twice as he entered the Senate
subway. William L. Kaiser, a former Capital police officer, missed 2
times. He had lost money when an Ohio building and loan firm was
liquidated.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A6)
1947 Jul, Grand jury records
from 2 separate investigations of Alger Hiss between this time and
May, 1949, were made public in 1999.
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.A3)
1947 Jul, Aung San, an
independence hero, was assassinated on the eve of becoming Burma’s
first prime minister. 6 other members of his interim government were
also killed. His daughter was Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991
Nobel Peace Prize. In 1998 Barbara Victor published "The Lady, Aung
San Suu Kyi, Nobel Laureate and Burma’s Prisoner."
(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.4)(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A9)
1947 Jul, A prisoner camp in
Bad Nenndorf, a spa town in northwest Germany occupied by the
British after the war, was closed. In 2005 a Guardian report cited
documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act
that described the suffering of some of 372 men and 44 women
detained at the camp.
(AP, 12/17/05)
1947 Aug 7, The balsa
wood raft Kon-Tiki, which had carried a six-man crew 4,300 miles
across the Pacific Ocean, crashed into a reef in a Polynesian
archipelago. [see Apr 28]
(AP, 8/7/97)
1947 Aug 10, Ian Anderson,
rocker (Jethro Tull-Bungle in the Jungle), was born in Scotland.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1947 Aug 10, William Odom set a
solo record by completing a round-the-world flight in 73 hours and 5
minutes, landing at Chicago’s Douglas Airport.
(AP, 8/10/97)
1947 Aug 14, Daniele Steel,
author (Remembrance, Zoya, Star, Daddy), was born in NYC.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1947 Aug 14, Britain
partitioned the subcontinent and Pakistan was founded as an
independent country. The Muslim areas in the east and west became
independent Pakistan with Mohammed Ali Jinnah as president.
(WSJ, 1/9/95, A-8)(TMC, 1994, p.1947)(WSJ,
12/21/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-10)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(SFEC,
8/3/97, p.A15)
1947 Aug 15, India gained
independence after some 200 years of British rule. Britain
partitioned the subcontinent. Prior to independence, 565 princes
ruled a third of India. After independence the government let the
royals retain their titles and assets in return for incorporating
their principalities into the new nation. The 664 princely states of
India were given the choice of which country they wanted to join.
Although most of the people of Kashmir were Muslim, the maharaja was
Hindu and he appealed to India for help. Independence in Pakistan
and India led to bloody conflicts and thousands died. In 1999 Fareed
Zakaria published "Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India."
In 2006 David Gilmour authored “The Ruling Caste,” an account of
Britain’s Indian Civil Service (ICS).
(WSJ, 1/9/95, A-8)(WSJ, 12/21/95, p.A-12)(WSJ,
5/16/96, p.A-10)(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)(AP, 8/15/97)(SFC, 6/4/98,
p.C2)(WSJ, 1/29/99, p.W7)(WSJ, 2/23/06, p.D8)
1947 Aug 18, The
Hewlett-Packard Company was incorporated and reported revenues of
$1.5 million. The 111 employees recorded sales of $679,000. In 2007
Michael S. Malone authored “Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard
Built the World’s Greatest Company.”
(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)(SFC, 1/13/01, p.A15)(SSFC,
4/22/07, p.M3)
1947 Aug 18, Naval torpedo and
mine factory exploded at Cadiz, Spain, killing 300.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1947 Aug 19, J. Arens and D.
van Dorpen synthesized vitamin A.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1947 Aug 23, An audience at the
Hollywood Bowl heard President Truman’s daughter, Margaret, give her
first public concert as a singer.
(AP, 8/23/97)
1947 Aug 24, In Scotland the
first annual Edinburgh Festival was held at the Usher Hall.
(WSJ, 8/22/96, p.A12)
1947 Aug 25, Marion Carl, US
Navy test pilot, set a world speed record of 651 mph in a D-558-I at
Muroc Field (later Edwards AFB), Ca. He was shot to death in Oregon
by a house robber in 1998 at age 82.
(SFC, 6/30/98, p.A3)(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1947 Aug 28, Legendary
bullfighter Manolete was mortally wounded by a bull during a fight
in Linares, Spain; he died the following day at age 30.
(AP, 8/28/97)
1947 Sep 6, Jane Curtin, was
born. She became a successful improvisational comedy performer
gained celebrity with her performances on the original cast of TV's
'Saturday Night Live' show in 1975.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1947 Sep 7, Battles took place
between Hindus and Moslems in New Delhi.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1947 Sep 8, Ann Beattie,
writer, was born. Her work included "Chilly Scenes of Winter" and
"Picturing Will."
(HN, 9/8/00)
1947 Sep 8, British government
sailed the "Exodus" with fugitives from Nazis.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1947 Sep 13, WPVI TV channel 6
in Philadelphia, PA., (ABC) began broadcasting.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1947 Sep 14, Sam Neill, actor
(Jurassic Park, Dead Calm, Piano), was born in Omagh, Northern
Ireland.
(http://entertainment.msn.com)
1947 Sep 17, Jeff MacNelly,
political cartoonist, was born. He created the comic strip "Shoe."
(HN, 9/17/00)
1947 Sep 17, Jackie Robinson
was named Rookie of Year by Sporting News. [see Sep 19]
(MC, 9/17/01)
1947 Sep 17, James Forestall
(d.1949) was sworn in as first the U.S. Secretary of Defense as a
new National Military Establishment unified America’s armed forces.
(AP, 9/17/97)(HN, 9/17/98)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.A4)
1947 Sep 18, The National
Security Act went into effect. It created a Cabinet secretary of
defense and unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force into a
National Military Establishment. The US Air Force was carved out of
the old Army Air Corps. The act established the National Security
Council and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
(HFA, ‘96, p.38)(AP, 9/18/97)(SFC, 9/17/97,
p.A3)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.A4)
1947 Sep 19, Jackie Robinson
was named 1947 "Rookie of Year." [see Sep 17]
(MC, 9/19/01)
1947 Sep 20, Former Republican
New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1933-45) died. "The devil
is easy to identify. He appears when you're terribly tired and makes
a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn't grant." He
amassed huge debts in the course of infrastructure improvements that
lasted to the end of the century. In 2002 H. Paul Jeffers authored
“The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiorello_La_Guardia)(AP, 1/8/98)(AP,
9/20/97)(AH, 2/03, p.60)
1947 Sep 21, Stephen King,
author, was born in Portland, Maine. He is best known for
supernatural and horror tales including Carrie (1974), Shining
(1977) and Kujo (1981).
(HN, 9/21/00)(SSFC, 7/2/06, Par p.16)
1947 Sep 21, Marsha Norman,
playwright, was born. Her work included "Getting Out" and "'Night
Mother."
(HN, 9/21/00)
1947 Sep 22, A Douglas C-54
Skymaster made the first automatic-pilot flight over the Atlantic.
(HN, 9/22/98)
1947 Sep 23, Nikola Petkov,
leader of Bulgaria party, was hanged.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1947 Sep 24, The World Women’s
Party met for the first time since World War II.
(HN, 9/24/98)
1947 Sep, Ahmet Ertegun
(1923-2006) and Herb Abramson formed Atlantic Records in New York
City. The new independent record label concentrated on gospel, jazz
and R&B music. The first recording sessions took place in
November. In 2001 Ertegun authored his memoir "What’d I Say."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmet_Erteg%C3%BCn)(WSJ, 7/6/01,
p.W10)
1947 Oct 3, The 1st telescope
lens 200" (508 cm) in diameter completed.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1947 Oct 4, Max Karl Ernst
Planck (b.1858), German physicist ( Nobel 1918), died.
(WUD, 1994 p.1101)(MC, 10/4/01)
1947 Oct 5, In the first
televised White House address, President Truman asked Americans to
refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to
help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.
(AP, 10/5/97)
1947 Oct 7, French troops in
Indochina launched Operation Lea, to capture Viet Minh positions
near the Chinese border.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1947 Oct 10, The Rodgers' and
Hammerstein's musical "Allegro," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1947 Oct 11, The vision of a
Friendship Train appeared in American thought and history in the
columns and broadcasts of Drew Pearson. The train traveled across
America to collect food that would be shipped overseas to help
European countries recover from World War II.
(SFC, 11/24/11,
p.A20)(www.thefriendshiptrain1947.org/)
1947 Oct 13, The popular
children's television show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, premiered as a
local Chicago show. In its first year, the show's name varied
between "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" and ":Junior Jamboree," but it was
essentially the same show.
(http://www.kukla.tv/)
1947 Oct 14, Air Force test
pilot Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager (24) flew the experimental Bell X-1
[Bell XS-1] rocket plane aircraft and broke the sound barrier to
Mach 1.07 for the first time over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.,
which was then called Muroc Army Air Field. The area has the largest
dry lake bed in the world, a 44-square mile area known as Rogers
Lake. Suspended from the belly of a Boeing B-29, Glamorous Glennis
was dropped at 10:26 a.m. from a height of 20,000 feet. Yeager (who
had broken two ribs in a riding accident the night before) fired the
four rocket motor chambers in pairs, breaking through the sound
barrier as he increased airspeed to almost 700 mph and climbed to an
altitude of 43,000 feet. The XS-1 remained at supersonic speeds for
20.5 seconds, with none of the buffeting that characterized
high-speed subsonic flight. The 14-minute flight was Yeager’s ninth
since being named primary pilot in June 1947. The Air Force and the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the forerunner of NASA)
did not make the event public until Jun 10, 1948.
(SFC, 8/5/96, p.A3)(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A7)(AP,
10/14/97)(HNPD, 10/14/98)
1947 Oct 19, Yehudi Menuhin
(d.1999), violin maestro, married ballerina Diana Gould (d.2003 at
90), his 2nd wife, in London. Lady Diana later authored "Fiddler’s
Moll."
(SFC, 2/1/03, p.A19)
1947 Oct 20, Hollywood came
under scrutiny as the House Un-American Activities Committee
re-convened in Washington and opened hearings into alleged Communist
influence and infiltration within the motion picture industry.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.64)(AP, 10/20/97)
1947 Oct 20, The House
Un-American Activities Committee re-convened in Washington and
opened public hearings on alleged communist infiltration within the
motion picture industry in Hollywood. Among those denounced as
having un-American tendencies were: Katherine Hepburn, Charles
Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson. Among those called to testify was
Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan, who denied that
leftists ever controlled the Guild and refused to label anyone a
communist. An oral history of 36 of those called before Congress was
published in 1998: "Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood
Blacklist" by Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.64)(AP, 10/20/97)(WSJ,
1/14/98, p.A17)(HN, 10/20/98)
1947 Oct 24, Kevin Kline, actor
(Sophie's Choice, Big Chill), was born in St. Louis.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1947 Oct 24, Series of forest
fires burned $30 million of timber in the New England States.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1947 Oct 26, Hillary Rodham
Clinton, First lady (1993-2001), was born.
(HN, 10/26/98)(MC, 10/26/01)
1947 Oct 27, "You Bet Your
Life," starring Groucho Marx, premiered on ABC Radio. The show was
transferred to TV on NBC in 1950 and lasted until 1961.
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.A26)(AP, 10/27/97)
1947 Oct 27, The Hindu
maharajah of Muslim-majority Kashmir joined India. The accession,
not recognized by Pakistan, led to a war.
(SSFC, 12/30/01, p.A22)(SFC, 6/8/02, p.A20)
1947 Oct 29, Richard Dreyfuss,
actor (Jaws, Nuts, Mr. Holland's Opus), was born in Brooklyn, NY.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1947 Oct 29, Former first lady
Frances Cleveland Preston died in Baltimore at age 83.
(AP, 10/29/97)
1947 Oct, Forest fires burned
one-third of Mount Desert Island in Bar Harbor, Maine.
(HT, 3/97, p.12)
1947 Nov 1, Man O' War (Big
Red), racehorse and triple crown winner, died.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1947 Nov 2, Howard Hughes
piloted his huge wooden airplane, known as the Spruce Goose, on its
only flight, which lasted 70 sec. over Long Beach Harbor in
California. The plane had an 8-story tail and a 320-foot wingspan.
It was designed to take seven hundred soldiers into battle. The
plane had a wing span longer than a football field, and was powered
by 8 engines and was crafted out of 200 tons of plywood. The war
ended before the plane was deployed, but Hughes proved the Spruce
Goose's was air-worthy.
(AP, 11/2/97)(SFC, 7/29/98, p.A20)(HN,
11/2/98)(MC, 11/2/01)
1947 Nov 2, Jawaharlal Nehru
said: "We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be
decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the Maharaja
has supported it not only to the people of Kashmir but the world. We
will not, and cannot back out of it. We are prepared when peace and
law and order have been established to have a referendum held under
international auspices like the United Nations. We want it to be a
fair and just reference to the people, and we shall accept their
verdict. I can imagine no fairer and juster offer."
(http://tinyurl.com/8sovl)
1947 Nov 12, Hans van Meegeren
(1889-12947), Dutch painter and forger, was tried for forgery and
convicted of “obtaining money by deception” and “appending false
names and signatures with the intent to deceive.” He was given the
minimum sentence of one year and then the court petitioned Queen
Wilhelmina that he be pardoned, but he died 6 weeks later.
(ON, 12/07, p.12)
1947
Nov 12, Baroness Emmuska Orczy (b.1865), Hungarian-born British
author (“Scarlet Pimpernel” 1905), died in London, England.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/orczy.htm)
1947 Nov 16, 15,000
demonstrated in Brussels against mild sentences of Nazis.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1947 Nov 19, A 200" mirror
arrived at Mt. Palomar observatory.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1947 Nov 20, "Meet the Press"
made network TV debut on NBC.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1947 Nov 20, Princess Elizabeth
(future Queen Elizabeth II) married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of
Edinburgh, in a ceremony broadcast worldwide from Westminster Abbey.
(HN, 11/20/98)(SFEM, 1/26/97, p.44)(AP, 11/20/97)
1947 Nov 24, John Steinbeck’s
novel "The Pearl" was first published.
(AP, 11/24/97)
1947 Nov 24, Congress voted to
cite the Hollywood Ten, who opposed the HUAC hearings, as
"unfriendly witnesses" for contempt of Congress for refusing to
answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie
industry. At the same time 50 top Hollywood executives convened and
decided to discharge or suspend the Hollywood Ten until acquittal or
declaration that they were not Communists. Among the ten were
director Edward Dmytrak, who later recanted and gave names of
suspected Communists, Lester Cole, and writer Ring Lardner Jr.
Lester Cole later wrote "Hollywood Red."
(SFEC, 5/18/97, DB p.65)(AP, 11/24/97)
1947 Nov 25, movie studio
executives meeting in New York agreed to blacklist the "Hollywood
Ten" who were cited a day earlier and jailed for contempt of
Congress for failing to cooperate with the House Un-American
Activities Committee.
(AP, 11/25/99)
1947 Nov 25, The Big Four met
to discuss Germany and the European economy.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1947 Nov 26, France expelled 19
Soviet citizens, charging intervention in internal affairs.
(HN, 11/26/98)
1947 Nov 28, Jacques-Philippe
Leclerc (44), WW II hero (liberator of Paris), died.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1947 Nov 29, The U.N. General
Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of
Palestine [Jerusalem] between Arabs and Jews. It was to be the heart
of an Arab Palestinian state.
(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(AP, 11/29/97)(SFC, 1/22/98,
p.B12)
1947 Nov 30, David Mamet,
playwright and director (Speed the Plow, House of Games), was born
in Chicago.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1947 Nov 30, A day after the UN
decree for Israel, Jewish settlements were attacked.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1947 Nov, For the first time in
the history of leukemia, a complete remission of an acute leukemia
was achieved using exchange transfusion developed by Dr. Marcel
Bessis. Dr. Irving Wexler (d.1997 at 86) and Dr. Alexander Wiener
later described the successful use of exchange transfusion, complete
blood replacement, as a treatment for infants who suffered from
anemia and jaundice due to the Rh factor co-discovered by Dr.
Wiener.
(http://tinyurl.com/2gmou6)(http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/8/1/117)
1947 Dec 1, Aleister Edward S.
Crowley (72), British occultist, died. In 2000 Lawrence Sutin
authored "Do What Thou Wilt, A Life of Aleister Crowley."
(SSFC, 1/14/01, BR p.12)(MC, 12/1/01)
1947 Dec 1, Godfrey Harold
Hardy (b.1877), English mathematician, died. Non-mathematicians
usually know G.H. Hardy for “A Mathematician's Apology,” his essay
from 1940 on the aesthetics of mathematics.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy)
1947 Dec 2, 13th Heisman Trophy
Award was awarded to John Lujack, Notre Dame (QB).
(MC, 12/2/01)
1947 Dec 2, Syrian mob burned a
synagogue where the Aleppo Codex was hidden. Nearly two-thirds of
the pages were retrieved by congregant, Mourad Faham. But 196 pages
vanished, including books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, as
well as pages from other books.
(AP, 9/27/08)
1947 Dec 3, The Tennessee
Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway with
Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski and Jessica Tandy as Blanche
DuBois and Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski. Brando’s first film was
"The Men" directed by Fred Zinnemann.
(TMC, 1994, p.1947)(SFC, 3/15/97,
p.A19)(SFEM,10/19/97, DB p.11)(AP, 12/3/97)
1947 Dec 4, Tennessee William's
play "A Streetcar Named Desire" premiered on Broadway starring
Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy. [see Dec 3]
(HN, 12/4/00)
1947 Dec 6, Everglades
National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Truman.
(AP, 12/6/97)
1947 Dec 7, Johnny Bench,
baseball catcher (Reds), was born.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1947 Dec 7, Nicholas Murray
Butler (b.1862), former presidential advisor and president of
Columbia Univ. (1902-1945) and won the Nobel Peace Prize winner
(1931) died. In 1940, Butler completed his autobiography with the
publication of the second volume of “Across the Busy Years.” In 2006
Michael Rosenthal authored “Nicholas Miraculous,” a biography
Butler.
(WSJ, 1/25/06,
p.D10)(http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1931/butler-bio.html)
1947 Dec 9, In western Java up
to 430 men were rounded up and shot by Dutch troops in the village
of Rawagedeh. The Dutch called the incident a "police action" to
quell an uprising. The Dutch government conceded in 1995 that
summary executions had taken place in Rawagedeh, now known as
Balongsari, but said prosecutions were no longer possible. In
September, 2011, a Dutch court ordered the government to compensate
the widows of Indonesian villagers, to apologize for the killings
and to give each of the 10 plaintiffs $27,000. Old friends and
neighbors cajoled, bullied and intimidated the plaintiffs and their
families until local officials jumped in, forcing them to part with
half their cash.
(AP, 9/14/11)(http://tinyurl.com/5sp5psn)(AP,
11/23/11)(AP, 1/16/12)
1947 Dec 12, The United Mine
Workers union withdrew from the American Federation of Labor.
(AP, 12/12/97)
1947 Dec 15, Arthur Machen
(b.1863), Welsh author of classic horror stories, died.
(WSJ, 10/30/07,
p.D6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Machen)
1947 Dec 16, The point-contact
transistor was invented at Bell Labs.
(SFEC,12/14/97, p.A1)
1947 Dec 18, Steven Spielberg,
director (ET, Close Encounters, Jaws), was born in Cincinnati.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1947 Dec 23, Truman granted a
pardon to 1,523 who had evaded the World War II draft.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1947 Dec 23, John Bardeen and
Walter Brattain of AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey,
unveiled what was soon to be called the transistor, short for the
electrical property known as trans-resistance, which paved the way
to a new era of miniaturized electronics. The device was improved by
William Schockley as a junction transistor. All 3 received a Nobel
Prize in 1956. The events are described in the 1997 book by Michael
Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson: "Crystal Fire: The Birth of the
Information Age."
(WSJ, 9/22/95, p.A-7)(SFEC, 8/17/97, BR p.4)(AP,
12/23/97)
1947 Dec 24, An estimated
20,000 communists, led by guerrilla General Markos Vafthiades
proclaimed the Free Greek Government in northern Greece. They issue
a call to arms to establish the regime throughout the nation.
(HN, 12/24/98)
1947 Dec 26, Heavy snow
blanketed the Northeast, burying New York City under 25.8 inches of
snow in 16 hours. A record 26.4 inches fell and led to 77 deaths.
(AP, 12/26/97)(Econ, 2/18/06, p.28)
1947 Dec 27, Buffalo Bob Smith
(1917-1998) and puppet Howdy Doody starred on the first nationally
broadcast children’s TV show. It ran to Sep. 30, 1960. The show was
produced by Martin Stone and was shot in NBC studio 3-K at 30
Rockefeller Plaza. The characters Clarabell the Clown (Bob Keeshan
later Captain Kangaroo), Dilly Dally, Chief Thunderthud, Princess
Summerfall, Phineas T. Bluster and Flub-a-Dub were featured. The
theme song was based on the French ditty: "Ta-ra-ra-Boom-der-e." The
show ran for 2,543 episodes. Rufus Rose was the puppeteer for most
of the shows. The Rose family later fought with the Detroit
Institute of Arts for possession of the original show puppet.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A18)(AP, 12/27/97)(SFC, 6/19/98,
p.B6)(SFC, 7/31/98, p.D7)(SFEC, 2/27/00, p.A3)
1961 Dec 27, Tony Bennett,
starring in the Venetian Room of the SF Fairmont Hotel, made his 1st
solo public performance of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
(SSFC, 2/4/07, p.F1)
1947 Dec 27, The new Italian
constitution was promulgated in Rome.
(HN, 12/27/98)
1947 Dec 28, Victor Emmanuel
(b.1869-1947), also known as Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy
(1900-1946), Emperor of Ethiopia (1939-1943) and King of Albania
(1939-1943), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Emmanuel_III_of_Italy)
1947 Dec 29, Ship carrying
Jewish immigrants were forced back from Palestine.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1947 Dec 29, Hans van Meegeren
(b.1889), Dutch painter and forger, died. In 2006 Frank Wynne
authored “I Was Vermeer.”
(WSJ, 10/14/06,
p.P10)(http://denisdutton.com/van_meegeren.htm)
1947 Dec 30, Rumania's King
Michael was exiled when the Soviet backed Communists took over. King
Michael of Romania agreed to abdicate, but charged he was being
forced off the throne by Communists.
(SFC, 6/27/97, p.A16)(AP, 12/30/97)(HN, 12/30/98)
1947 Dec 31, Roy Rogers, cowboy
singing star, married Dale Evans, cowgirl singing star. Their
horses, Trigger and Buttermilk, also got along.
(SFEM, 1/25/98, p.69)
1947 Dec, Harold Dobbs
co-founded Mel's Drive-In, at Mission Street and South Van Ness
Avenue, in San Francisco. It would become an icon of mid-century
American popular culture, memorialized in George Lucas' film
American Graffiti about the early 1960s.
(www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/articles/d/dobbsHarold.html)
1947 Max Beckmann, German
artist, made his oil painting "Self-Portrait with Cigarette."
(SFEC, 2/1/98, BR p.6)
1947 Rene Magritte painted "The
Liberator."
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.B5)
1947 Jackson Pollock became
notorious for his adoption of the process of "drip painting." Laying
the canvas on the floor, he would alternate between pouring or
dripping paint on it and contemplating it, often for weeks at a
time. His works "Galaxy" and "Lucifer" dated to this year.
(V.D.-H.K.p.362)(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)(SFEC,
10/1/00, DB p.41)
1947 Scrooge McDuck, created by
Disney artist Carl Barks (d.2000 at 99), first appeared in a story
called "Christmas on Bear Mountain."
(SFC, 8/26/00, p.A19)
1947 B. Gerald Cantor
(1917-1996), financier, began to buy sculptors by Rodin after seeing
"Hand of God" at the NY Metropolitan. He eventually acquired
hundreds of Rodin works.
(SFC, 7/6/96, p.A20)
1947 Ruth and Augustus Goetz
wrote the play "The Heiress" based on the William James work
Washington Square.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, DB p.61)
1947 Arthur Miller wrote his
play "All My Sons."
(WSJ, 5/20/98, p.A12)
1947 Anna Balakian (d.1997 at
82) wrote "The Literary Origins of Surrealism."
(SFC, 8/16/97, p.A18)
1947 Quentin Bell published "On
Human Finery," a study of fashion. In the Veblen tradition he
suggested a 4th category of conspicuous waste: "conspicuous
outrage," the style flaunted by fops and dandies. He published a
study of John Ruskin in 1963, "Victorian Artists" (1967) and "A New
and Noble School" (1982), a study of the pre-Raphaelites. He also
wrote a 2 volume biography of Virginia Woolf (1972), and a personal
memoir of Bloomsbury, "Elders And Betters," titled "Bloomsbury
Recalled" in American editions.
(SFC, 12/19/96, p.C10)
1947 Vance Bourjaily (d.2010 at
87), Ohio-born author of Lebanese immigrants, published his first
novel “The End of Life.”
(SFC, 9/17/10, p.C5)
1947 The book "Goodnight Moon"
by Margaret Wise Brown (d.1952) was published by Harper & Bros.
(WSJ, 9/8/00, p.A6)
1947 Truman Capote’s first
novel "Other Voices, Other Rooms" was published. It was about his
unfulfilled yearning for a close relationship with his father. It
was made into a film in 1997.
(SFEC,11/23/97, DB p.43)(SFC, 1/16/98, p.D9)
1947 Marjory Stoneman Douglas
(d.1998 at 108) published "The Everglades: River of Grass," a
natural and political history of the Florida Everglades. she also
led the campaign to establish Everglades National Park.
(SFC, 5/15/98, p.D7)
1947 "The 21 Balloons" by
William Pene duBois was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1947 James Marston Fitch
(d.2000 at 90) authored "American Building: The Environmental Forces
That Shape It."
(SFC, 4/13/00, p.C2)
1947 “The Diary of Anne Frank”
was first published. In her diary Anne Frank (1929-1945) chronicled
the details of her teenage life hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam
from 1942 to 1944, when the Nazi secret police discovered her and
her family's hiding place. Miep Gies (1909-2010), had guarded Anne's
memoirs and presented it to the girl's father, Otto, when he
returned from the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of World
War II, the only one of his family to survive.
(AFP, 1/12/10)
1947 Ed Flynn (1891-1953),
depression-era Bronx County machine boss, authored his autobiography
“You’re the Boss.”
(WSJ, 10/14/06, p.P10)
1947 C.S. Forester wrote "Mr.
Midshipman Hornblower," in which he described his character Horatio
Hornblower as a 17-year-old midshipman in the English Navy.
Hornblower was loosely based on the life of Adm. Lord Nelson.
Forester wrote 11 Hornblower books and also wrote "The African
Queen." Hornblower was made into a 4-part A&E TV miniseries in
1999. Earlier Hornblower novels dated back to 1937.
(WSJ, 7/10/98, p.W10)(WSJ, 4/5/99, p.A20)
1947 John Hope Franklin
(b.1915) authored “From Slavery to Freedom.”
(SSFC, 11/13/05, p.M6)
1947 Friedrich A. von Hayek
wrote "The Road to Freedom."
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A22)
1947 Marguerite Henry (d.1997
at 95) wrote her children’s novel "Misty of Chincoteague." The book
was made into a movie in 1961. It focused on the annual swim of wild
ponies between the islands of Assateague and Chincoteague off the
coast of Virginia. In all she wrote 59 books.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B8)
1947 "Kon-Tiki" by Thor
Heyerdahl of Norway was published by Rand McNally.
(SSFC, 11/18/01, p.A28)
1947 Hammond Innes (d.1998 at
83) published his thriller "The Lonely Skier." It was made into the
1948 film "Snowbound."
(SFC, 6/12/98, p.A26)
1947 Gertrude Legendre
(1902-2000) wrote her autobiography "The Sands Ceased to Run." She
wrote a 2nd autobiography in 1987: "The Time of My Life."
(SFC, 3/13/00, p.B2)
1947 Primo Levi (d.1987)
authored the memoir "If This Is a Man." It recounted some of his war
time experiences in Nazi death camps and was translated into English
as "Survival in Auschwitz."
(WSJ, 6/14/02, p.W10)
1947 Janet Lewis published her
historical novel "The Trial of Soren Qvist."
(SFC, 12/5/98, p.C2)
1947 Thomas Mann (1875-1955),
German writer, wrote "Doctor Faustus." A new English translation was
made in 1998 by John E. Woods.
(V.D.-H.K.p.367-368)(WSJ, 12/26/95, p. A-5)(SFEC,
4/5/98, BR p.6)
1947 William Ormond Mitchell
(d.1998 at 83), Canadian writer, published his first novel "Who Has
Seen the Wind." It was about a boy on the prairies who comes to
grips with birth, death, justice and faith.
(SFC, 2/28/98, p.A19)
1947 James Michener wrote
"Tales of the South Pacific" for which he won the 1948 Pulitzer
Prize. It was the basis for the Broadway musical "South Pacific."
(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A7)
1947 A.A. Milne, author of
"Winnie the Pooh," gave publisher E.P. Dutton the original stuffed
animals of the stories he began writing in 1926 for his son,
Christopher Robbin. The animals were turned over to the New York
Public Library in 1987. In 1998 the British requested that they be
returned to England.
(SFC, 2/5/98, p.A12)
1947 Willard Motley wrote his
novel "Knock on Any Door." It was about a sensitive hoodlum named
Nick Romano whose motto was "Live fast, die young and have a
good-looking corpse." It was made into a 1949 film with John Derek
and Humphrey Bogart.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, Par p.2)
1947 Mary Ovington wrote "The
Walls Came Tumbling Down," a history of the NAACP.
(SFEC,12/797, BR p.6)
1947 J.F. Powers (d.1999 at 81)
published his first collection of short stories: "Prince of
Darkness.'
(SFC, 6/17/99, p.C4)
1947 Raymond Queneau (d.1976),
Parisian surrealist, published "Exercises in Style."
(SFEC, 8/2/98, BR p.4)
1947 Paul A. Samuelson,
economist, published "Foundations of Economic Analysis." This work
put economics on a firmer mathematical base.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1947 Jose Saramago, a
metalworker of Portugal, authored his first novel "Terra do Pecado"
(Country of Sin). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.16A)(SFC, 10/9/98, p.A2)
1947 Jean-Paul Sartre published
his existentialist work: "Being and Nothingness."
(WSJ, 1/18/98, p.A16)
1947 Z.V. Togan (1890-1970)
published “The Origins of the Kazaks and ôzbeks.
(http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/paksoy-5/)
1947 "Headache and Other Head
Pain" by US neurologist Harold G. Wolff was published.
(WSJ, 6/17/96, p.A1)
1947 The radio show "The
Adventures of Philip Marlowe" was created by Gene Levitt and Robert
Mitchell with Gerald Mohr as the Raymond Chandler detective.
(SFC, 11/27/99, p.C4)
1947 John Cage composed "Music
for Marcel Duchamp."
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A16)
1947 Erich Wolfgang Korngold
composed his Symphony in F sharp.
(WSJ, 3/5/99, p.W10)
1947 The Loewe & Lerner
song "Almost Like Being in Love" was a hit song from a Broadway
musical.
(WSJ, 5/18/99, p.A24)
1947 Kurt Weill wrote an opera
based on the Elmer Rice play "Street Scene."
(WSJ, 11/4/96, p.A21)
1947 The Lerner and Loewe
musical "Brigadoon" opened on Broadway. It was directed by Robert
Lewis (d.1997 at 88). The show starred Marion Bell (d.1997 at 78) as
the innocent young woman in the mysterious Scottish town that comes
back to life for one day every 100 years.
(AP, 3/13/97)(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)(SFC,12/25/97,
p.A25)
1947 The Broadway show "High
Button Shoes" played with burlesque star Joey Faye (d.1997).
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A18)
1947 Red Buttons (1919-2006)
appeared on Broadway in George Abbott’s musical “Barefoot Boy With
Cheek.”
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.B9)
1947 Eugene O’Neill’s play “A
Moon for the Misbegotten” failed. It did not gain recognition as
being among his best works until decades later.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_O'Neill)
1947 Joan Sutherland made her
operatic debut in Sidney.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A20)
1947 Composer Paul Bowles
settled in Tangiers after leaving New York. He began writing stories
and novels that included "The Sheltering Sky."
(SFEC, 4/5/98, p.C13)
1947 Robert Lewis founded the
Actors Studio with Elia Kazan and Cheryl Crawford as a training
ground for professional actors.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)
1947 Photographers Robert Capa,
David Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger founded the
Magnum photography agency. Eve Arnold became their first female
member as a stringer in 1952. In 1997 Russell Miller published
"Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History."
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.W4)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.100)
1947 Jose Limon founded the
Limon Dance Company [NYC].
(WSJ, 10/21/97, p.A20)
1947 The first Cannes Film
Festival was held.
(SFC, 5/13/96, p.D-2)
1947 A grainy, black and white
porn film that allegedly featured Marilyn Monroe was discovered in
1997. A Spanish film Festival in Madrid planned to show the film
despite claims that it was a fake. Marilyn was 21 at this time and
known as Norma Jean Baker.
(SFC, 1/18/97, p.D3)
1947 The ABC Radio show "Candid
Microphone," developed by Allen Funt, premiered. A year later it
became a TV program and later "Candid Camera."
(SFC, 9/7/99, p.C2)
1947 NBC featured Jinx
Falkenburg (d.2003) and husband Tex McCrary on the television show
"At Home."
(SFC, 8/29/03, p.A28)
1947 The radio show "Sergeant
Preston of the Yukon" was created. In 1955 it became a TV series
with Richard Simmons.
(SFC, 1/15/03, p.A19)
1947 The "Mary Kay and Johnny"
TV show began on the DuMont network with Johnny and Mary Kay
Stearns. It later moved to NBC and CBS.
(SFC, 12/11/01, p.A28)
1947 Eddie Anderson, publicist
and jazz buff, claimed to have waved a check for $1000 in front of
Joe Glaser, the manager of Louis Armstrong, and got Armstrong to
play an "All-Star" session without the big band. The group performed
at Town Hall and played old-time tunes like "Muskrat Ramble," and
"Butter and Egg Man."
(WSJ, 6/26/97, p.A16)
1947 Aaron Copland composed "In
the Beginning," a setting of the first part of Genesis.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.C16)
1947 Composer Lou Harrison
wrote his "Suite No. 1."
(SFEC, 7/27/97, DB p.38)
1947 Astor Piazzolla
(1921-1992), bandoneon player, recorded his album "El Desbande" with
Orquesta Tipica in Buenos Aires.
(BAAC, 1/96, p.4,5)(Esq., 5/91, p.60,61)(WSJ,
2/18/97, p.A18)
1947 Marion Sumner (d.1997 at
77), mountain fiddler, recorded "My Eyes Are Still Dry."
(SFC, 8/21/97, p.C4)
1947 Samuel Barber composed
"The Serpent Heart." It was revised and became "Medea’s Meditation
and Dance of Vengeance."
(SFC, 10/5/96, p.E1)
1947 Charles Brown wrote his
song "Merry Christmas Baby." He was playing piano and singing for
Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, DB p.52)
1947 Sonny Rollins (17) started
playing bebop on tenor sax with Thelonius Monk while still in high
school.
(SFEM, 10/6/96, p.9)
1947 Louis Marshall Jones
(d.1998 at 84), aka Grandpa, joined the Grand Ole Opry. He used the
"drop-thumb technique" for playing the banjo. He joined "Hee Haw" in
1969 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1978.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A19)
1947 Country singer Ernest
Tubbs led the first country music concert at Carnegie Hall. He
convinced Billboard Magazine to drop the term "hillbilly." The new
musical designation "country and western" was introduced.
(Hem., 4/97, p.69)
1947 Joseph Henry Jackson
published his popular collection of true crime stories: "San
Francisco Murders: From Barbary Coast to Knob Hill." Anthony Bucher
was a key contributor.
(SFEC,10/26/97, BR p.2)
1947 In San Francisco Dorothy
Kirsten sang her first "Louise."
(SFEC, 8/17/97, DB p.37)
1947 The film "Dark Passage"
with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall was released. It was directed
by Delmer Davis and had been shot in the SF Bay Area.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.39)
1947 In San Francisco the
Marine’s Memorial Club opened as the Roof Garden on the 12th floor
at 608 Sutter.
(SFC, 3/28/01, Food p.5)
1947 The Venetian Room opened
at the SF Fairmont Hotel. It closed in 1989.
(SSFC, 2/4/07, p.F1)
1947 Rev. F.D. Haynes of the SF
Third Baptist Church became the first black person in the city’s
history to run for the Board of Supervisors. He amassed 60,000 votes
but lost the election.
(SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-25)
1947 Richard Finis became the
first full-time black police officer in SF.
(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A23)
1947 In San Francisco Alice
Leigh Coldwell (d.1999 at 104) and Carter Dowling founded the animal
shelter Pets Unlimited.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A26)
1947 In San Francisco Gladys
Sargent (1900-1996) formed Pets and Pals, a non-profit animal
protective society that went nationwide.
(SFC, 10/1/96, p.A24)
1947 V.M. Hanks (d.1997 at 76),
press and commercial photographer and descendant of Abraham Lincoln,
moved to SF and for the next 4 decades served as a visual diarist
for the city.
(SFC, 7/12/97, p.A21)
1947 Hal Lipset (d.1997 at 78)
opened his own detective office in SF and became a premiere man in
the field. He founded the World Association of Detectives.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A21)
1947 Friedel Klussmann a
Telegraph Hill matron, founded San Francisco Beautiful, a group of
volunteers devoted to the city’s betterment.
(SFC, 10/8/97, p.A18)
1947 Under SF Mayor Roger
Lapham the cable car system was slated to be junked until Friedel
Klussmann (d.1986 at 80), led a group of women to preserve the
system and won a battle to preserve half the system. She formed the
Citizens Committee to Save Cable Cars and stopped the city from
junking the whole system.
(SFC, 12/2/97, p.A16)(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A16)
1947 In SF Albert Pollack
became a partner in the Almond Blossom coffee shop on Van Ness. In
1951 it was transformed to a hofbraus called Tommy's Joynt.
(SFC, 3/10/99, p.A24)(SSFC, 8/28/11, p.A2)
1947 San Francisco’s farmer’s
produce market at Duboce and Market, set up by John Brucato in 1943
for small farmers in the local area, was moved to Alemany and
Crescent at the junction of Highway 101 and 280.
(SFC, 1/14/98, Z1 p.8)
1947 Joseph Lloyd "Wally"
Walcott (d.1998 at 101) opened Wally’s Paradise in Boston’s South
End neighborhood. He attracted jazz stars from New York to play
there.
(SFC, 3/24/98, p.B2)
1947 The Islander Hotel was
opened by Roy Kelley (d.1997 at 91) in Hawaii. This began his
Outrigger Chain that grew to 29 by 1997. His 2nd hotel, The
Outrigger, was the first building in Hawaii with an automatic
elevator.
(SFC, 3/8/96, p.A21)
1947 In Nevada the Las Vegas
Vic was unveiled. It was replaced by a newer version in 1951 and its
sidekick, Vegas Vicky (aka Sassy Sally), was built in 1980.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, DB p.64)
1947 Stuyvesant Town and Peter
Cooper Village were built in NYC with the help of tax breaks to
provide homes for public sector workers and soldiers returning from
WW II. Only whites were allowed until some nasty scenes in the
1950s. In 2006 the MetLife Insurance Co. sold the 80-acre complex to
an investment group, Tishman Speyer and BlackRock, for $5.4 billion.
In 2010 the investment group defaulted and relinquished the
property, estimated at $1.8 billion in value, to creditors.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.43)(Econ, 10/2/10, p.82)
1947 Robert Hutchins
(1899-1977), president of the Univ. of Chicago, and Mortimer J.
Adler (1902-2001), American philosopher, launched the Great Books
Foundation.
(WSJ, 11/10/08,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_Foundation)
1947 Billy Graham decided to
become a full-time traveling evangelist after having organized
groups in 48 states for the new Youth for Christ movement.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, Par, p.4)
1947 James Brunot took over the
Criss-Cross Words business from architect Alfred Mosher Butts
(1899-1993), the inventor of the word game, and renamed it Scrabble.
(WSJ, 6/28/01, p.B1)
1947 Virginia Graham (d.1998 at
86) co-founded the Cerebral Palsy foundation.
(SFC, 12/25/98, p.B6)
1947 The first Annual Festival
of Houses and Gardens was organized by Historic Charleston.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 70)
1947 The Coro Foundation held
its first 9-month internship program to train participants for
careers in public service.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.C4)
1947 John C. Lincoln, a
Cleveland industrialist, endowed the Lincoln Foundation to teach and
expound on the ideas of Henry George, a 19th century economist who
argued for a single tax based on property values.
(WSJ, 5/28/99, p.B4)
1947 The first national
convention of the Tip Toppers, a club for tall people, was held in
Los Angeles.
(SFC, 10/16/96, p.C2)
1947 Christian Dior premiered
his 1st post was collection. It was dubbed "The New Look" and "Bar"
suit for women.
(WSJ, 1/20/03, p.B1)
1947 Johnny Mize, baseball
first baseman, hit 51 home runs and struck out only 42 times. He
later was put into the Hall of Fame.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, Z1, p.8)
1947 The Nobel Prize for
Literature was won by Andre Gide of France.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, BR p.4)
1947 Gerty Cori (1896-1957),
Prague-born American biochemist, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
(AP,
10/5/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerty_Cori)
1947 The Nobel Peace Prize was
won by the Quakers (The American Friends Service Committee).
(SFC, 2/5/97, p.A11)
1947 Pres. Truman raised $17
billion to fund the Marshall Plan in Western Europe.
(TMC, 1994, p.1947)
1947 Pres. Truman raised margin
requirements of futures to 33% as wartime controls ended and food
prices soared.
(Econ, 10/11/08, SR p.16)
1947 $400 million in military
aid to Greece was approved by the US Congress in the first
substantial action under the Truman Doctrine, which was intended to
curb Soviet expansion. By 1947, two years of escalating violence
between Communist and anti-Communist forces in Greece had erupted in
all-out civil war.
(HNQ, 3/10/99)
1947 The US began holding a
seat on the Human Rights Commission based in Geneva. It lost its
elected seat in 2001.
(WSJ, 5/4/01, p.A1)
1947 Frank Wisner was recruited
by Dean Acheson to join the US State Department's Office of Occupied
Territories. In 1948, the CIA created a covert action wing,
innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). Frank
Wisner was put in charge of the operation and recruited many of his
old friends from the NYC Carter Ledyard law firm. Wisner later
coined the term “mighty Wurlitzer” to describe the orchestration of
the agency’s activities.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner)
1947 California’s racial laws
were abolished.
(SFEC,10/19/97, p.C3)
1947 The Pet’s Rest Cemetery
was established in Colma, Ca.
(www.colmahistory.org/History.htm)
1947 Eight white and 8 black
activists of the newly formed Congress of Racial Equality set off on
a 2-week "Journey of Reconciliation" through 4 southern states to
explain and test the 1946 Morgan decision against segregation on
interstate buses.
(SFC, 8/4/00, p.D2)
1947 Prisoners at the Folsom
Prison, Ca., began producing license plates.
(SFC, 9/21/98, p.A24)
1947 John L. Lewis, head of the
United Mine Workers, went before Congress to testify on the Mar 25,
Centralia, Ill., mine disaster.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A10)(AP, 3/25/97)
1947 Massachusetts executed its
last inmate and functionally abolished capital punishment.
(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.P8)
1947 Herbert Magidson (d.1977)
and his wife Shirley Magidson (1925-2008), industrial designers from
Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology, moved to Los Angeles
and set up shop as Metric products Inc. They made wire axles for
Mattel toys and later underwires for bras. From this they expanded
to manufacturing molded cups for bras and swimsuits. Both were
active in social affairs and supported numerous social causes.
(WSJ, 7/19/08, p.A5)
1947 John Trumpey moved to
Annapolis, Md., and purchased the Annapolis Yacht Yard in Eastport
with his sons. They manufactured the custom Trumpey houseboats and
cruisers.
(BS, 5/3/98, p.4B)
1947 Bert J. Brock of Ohio
bought a pottery manufacturing plant in Lawndale, LA County, and
incorporated it as B.J. Brock and Co. The firm, which produced high
quality tableware and ovenware care Brock Ware, closed doors around
1955.
(SFC, 5/4/05, p.G5)
1947 Robert M. Luby (d.1998 at
88) co-founded Luby’s Cafeterias.
(WSJ, 8/17/98, p.B7)
1947 The new Florida Foods Co.
changed its name to Minute Maid. Their initial powder orange juice
proved more drinkable as a juice concentrate. Founder John Fox hired
Bing Crosby as his 1st spokesman.
(SFC, 1/20/03, p.B4)
1947 Dr. Edwin H. Land
announced the "instant" camera. It was the first camera to use a
paper roll to produce pictures right after they were taken.
(SFC, 6/12/96, Z1 p.5)
1947 Parker Brothers launched
the board game Clue.
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.81)
1947 Walter S. Mack, president
of Pepsi-Cola, hired an all-black sales force led by Edward F. Boyd
to sell Pepsi directly to blacks.
(WSJ, 1/9/07, p.B1)
1947 Tonka toys were introduced
by Mound Metalcraft, located in Mound, Minnesota, near Lake
Minnetonka.
(SFC, 8/23/06, p.G7)
1947 Raytheon introduced its
1st microwave oven, the Radarange.
(AH, 10/01, p.36)
1947 Topps Co. of Brooklyn
began wrapping bubble gum in comics and calling it Bazooka. In 2006
the company relaunched Bazooka.
(SFC, 1/13/98, p.A19)(WSJ, 7/8/06, p.A5)
1947 Joseph Lowenbach Steiner
(d.2002 at 95) and his 2 brothers founded Kenner Products Co. The
firm launched the Bubble Rocket in 1949, the Easy-Bake Oven in 1963,
and the Spirograph in 1966. General Mills acquired the company in
1967.
(SFC, 5/16/02, p.A20)
1947 Many high schools began to
offer driver education courses.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1947 The first offshore oil rig
out of sight of land was set up by Kerr-McGee, Phillips Petroleum
and Stanolind Oil & Gas 10 miles off the Louisiana coast.
(WSJ, 9/13/99, p.R4)
1947 Bell Labs invented
cellular phone technology.
(WSJ, 8/21/06, p.A2)
1947 Gerard Kuiper of Holland
and Texas discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.A17)
1947 Willard Libby, American
chemist, discovered Carbon-14 dating.
(NG, March 1990, p. 126)
c1947 Lawrence MacKenzie
(d.2002), doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley, was one of 3 men who
discovered astatine, element 85, the 1st element to be synthetically
manufactured. It was formed by bombarding bismuth with alpha
particles. He also helped build the 1st cyclotron.
(SFC, 7/22/02, p.B5)
1947 The Washington Dept. of
Fisheries sent biologists John Glude and Cedric Lindsay to Japan to
find a replacement for their declining West Coast Olympia oyster.
They found the Kumamoto oyster (Crassostrea sikamea) and shipped
seedlings that were planted throughout Puget Sound. [see 1968
Gigomoto]
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-12)
1947 Ed Lowe, a sand hauler in
Cassopolis, Mich., recommended some baked clay for a customer's cats
instead of sand. Lowe's father manufactured the clay absorbents for
factory oil messes. The customer's cats took a liking to it and Mr.
Lowe put it on the market as Kitty Litter and became very rich.
(SFC, 12/29/99, Z1 p. 1)(WSJ, 2/23/00, p.A1)
1947 Earl Tupper applied for a
patent for an “Open Mouth Container and Nonsnap Type of Closure
Therefore.”
(WSJ, 7/30/08, p.A13)
1947 The antibiotic penicillin
became available. It was a wonder drug that killed Staph germs but
after a decade some strains grew resistant.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)
1947 Psychologist Theodore
Sarbin suggested to a medical conference that medicine would benefit
if the doctor could be replaced by a machine programmed to make
judgments about the best treatment for a patient. He suggested using
a Hollerith machine, an IBM computer of this time.
(Econ, 3/17/07,
p.85)(www.eatg.org/news/newsitem.php?id=1308)
1947 Ruth Hall, amateur
paleontologist, discovered dinosaur fossils at Ghost Ranch near
Abiquiu, New Mexico.
(SFC, 12/11/09, p.A15)
1947 Cassiopeia A, the gaseous
remains of a supernova, was first detected as a radio source. It
would have visible from Earth in 1667, but no record from that time
indicates that it was noticed.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.72)
1947 The College Board helped
to create the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which developed and
administered SAT exams (scholastic aptitude testing for college
entry). ETS was founded in New Jersey by Henry Chauncey (d.2002 at
97). In 1999 Nicholas Lemann authored "The Big Test," an analysis of
the SAT and its history.
(WSJ, 8/27/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 9/29/99, p.A20)(SFC,
12/5/02, p.A29)
1947 The Dead Sea Scrolls were
discovered by Bedouin at the caves of Qumran in Jordan. The scrolls
predated the Christian gospels, but contained many similarities.
They also contained some differences from the traditional
(Masoretic) text of the Hebrew Bible. In 1955 Edmund Wilson
published "The Scrolls from the Dead Sea." In 1998 Hershel Shank
published "The Mystery and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls." From
1978-1998 over 6,000 books were written about the scrolls. The
discovery date was later contested as were many of the historic
circumstances surrounding the scrolls. In 2010 Geza Vermes authored
“The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous Discovery and the True
significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
(WSJ, 5/15/98, p.W11)(WSJ, 6/22/98, p.A20)(Econ,
2/20/10, p.82)
1947 Eureka weather station was
built on Ellesmere Island, the largest and northernmost of Canada’s
Queen Elizabeth Islands. Ellesmere is nearly as big as England and
Scotland combined.
(NG, 6/1988, 752-753)
1947 Drillers in Canada reached
the ancient buried reefs (100 to 400 meters thick) of the Devonian
epoch and marked the beginning of the Canadian oil boom.
(DD-EVTT, p.176)
1947 Pierre Bonnard (b.1867),
French painter, died. In a 1935 notebook he wrote: "Draw your
pleasure, paint your pleasure, express your pleasure strongly."
(WUD, 1994 p.169)(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.D8)
1947 Willa Cather, American
writer, died. She grew up in Nebraska and spent time in NYC as an
editor. She wrote over 15 books including: "O, Pioneers!" "My
Antonia" (1918) and "The Song of the Lark." In 2000 Joan Acocella
authored "Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism.’
(WUD, 1994, p.233)(RBI, 1989)(SFEC, 4/2/00, BR
p.4)
1947 Vivienne Eliot, 1st wife
of T.S. Eliot, died in an asylum. In 2002 Carole Symour-Jones
authored "Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, First Wife of
T.S. Eliot, and the Long-Suppressed Truth About Her Influence on His
Genius."
(SSFC, 4/28/02, p.M5)
1947 Henry Ford (1863-1947)
died. He had founded Ford Motor in 1903 and introduced the moving
assembly line at his Highland Park, Mich., plant in 1913. In 1914 he
introduced his $5 a day pay that made it possible for the average
worker to buy a car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1947 William Crapo Durant
(1861-1947) died. He was a salesman who founded GM in 1908 with 25
companies. He was not a good manager and was kicked out from GM in
1920. He then started Durant Motors, but with no success.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1947 Ernst Lubitsch, film
director, died.
(SSFC, 12/17/00, DB p.60)
1947 Nicholas Roerich (b.1874),
Russian-born set designer, died. A Nicholas Roerich Museum was later
established in NYC. www.roerich.org
(WSJ, 4/2/02, p.A20)
1947 Alfred North Whitehead
(b.1861), English philosopher and mathematician, died. He
philosophized that God was neither prophetic nor unchanging.
(AP, 4/11/97)(SFC, 10/14/00, p.A24)
1947 Arab students, influenced
by national socialist movements in Europe, founded the Baath Party.
Satia al-Husri, father of Ba’athism, was a disciple of German
philosopher Johann Fichte.
(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/8/03, p.D4)
1947 Paula von Preradovic,
Austrian poet, wrote a new Austrian anthem after the old one was
pinched by the Germans.
(Econ, 11/24/07, SR p.3)
1947 Bangladesh as part of
Pakistan gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1947 Britain amid post-war
rationing and food shortages introduced the snoek, a relative of the
barracuda, to a hungry nation.
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.66)
1947 Britain withdrew from
India. Pakistan was carved out of Indian and Afghan lands.
(www.afghan-web.com/history/)
1947 An Egyptian and Ugandan
water agreement led to the construction of Uganda’s Owen Falls Dam
and authorized Egyptian engineers to monitor Nile water releases.
(WSJ, 8/22/97, p.A1)
1947 In Germany Helmut Kohl
joined the Christian Democratic Union.
(WSJ, 1/19/00, p.A18)
1947 Albert Speer (d.1981),
German architect, was tried at Nuremberg as a major war criminal. He
had served as Hitler’s rearmament minister. Speer served 20 years in
Spandau prison and was released in 1969. 6 others were also
sentenced to long prison terms, including Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s
former deputy, who committed suicide in Spandau in 1987. In 2007
Norman J.W. Goda authored “Seven Prisoners, Four Powers: Tales From
Spandau.”
(SSFC, 10/6/02, p.M3)(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P13)
1947 Klaas Carel Faber was
convicted of murder and aiding the enemy in time of war for helping
the Netherlands' Nazi occupiers during World War II. He had worked
for the death squad code named "Silbertanne," or "Silver Fir," which
carried out killings of resistance members, Nazi opponents, and
people who hid Jews. He was given a death sentence that was later
commuted to life in prison, but he escaped and fled to Germany in
1952, where he was granted citizenship. In 2010 the Dutch government
issued a European arrest warrant for Faber (88). In 2011 a German
court ruled that the Dutch request cannot be granted as Faber’s
consent was mandatory due to his German citizenship.
(AP, 11/25/10)(AP, 5/11/11)
1947 The Organization Gehlen
was founded by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen. Many of his recruits were
ex-Nazis. It later became known as the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence service.
(Econ, 9/2/06, p.50)
1947 A German neurologist
coined the term prosopagnosia (face blindness), to describe the
condition of a young man who, due to a bullet wound to the head, had
lost his ability to recognize people.
(WSJ, 1/5/07, p.A1)
1947 Haiti completed loan
payments incurred in 1825 to pay reparations to France following its
1804 revolution.
(Econ, 3/19/11, p.47)
1947 India passed an Industrial
Disputes Act. Chapter 5B barred establishments with over 100 workers
from laying off employees without the permission of the state
government.
(Econ, 6/3/06, Survey p.12)
1947 In India the “Bombay
Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act” was adopted to
provide relief to the city’s migrants following partition with
Pakistan. Rents were set to 1940 levels to prevent gouging. By 2006
the measure had been extended over 20 times and property development
was severely impeded as tenants fought to hold on to rent-controlled
apartments.
(WSJ, 6/5/06, p.A6)
1947 In India Rajshri, an
entertainment conglomerate, was founded.
(WWW, 1947)
1947 At the time of India’s
partition and the creation of Pakistan, many Muslim Biharis moved to
what was then East Bengal. In 1971, when war broke out between West
Pakistan and East Pakistan (or Bangladesh), the Biharis, who mostly
considered themselves Pakistani, sided with West Pakistan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biharis)
1947 Vittal Mallya (d.1983),
formed UB Group in India when he bought a controlling interest in
Kingfisher Beer.
(SSFC, 10/26/03, p.I3)
1947 India’s population was
about 340 million.
(SSFC, 6/24/01, p.A27)
1947 The first airport
duty-free store opened at Shannon Airport, Ireland.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
1947 In Italy the Ferrari
automobile began to be manufactured.
(WSJ, 6/9/97, p.A1)
1947 A Pushtun force of Wazirs
and Mehsuds poured into Kashmir for the newly formed Islamic
republic of Pakistan, sparking the first Indo-Pakistan war.
(Econ, 1/2/10, p.17)(Econ, 5/21/11, p.48)
1947 In Pakistan Mohajirs are
Muslims who migrated from India after the subcontinent was
partitioned. They were politically dominant in the southern province
of Sindh.
(SFC, 2/12/98, p.C3)(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A13)
1947 The Colorado Party began
its rule over Paraguay.
(Econ, 1/10/04, p.31)
1947 In Paraguay a failed
military insurrection left some 8,000 people dead.
(AP, 8/2/04)
1947 Jerzy Giedroyc (d.2000 at
94), Polish émigré, founded the Kultura literary
magazine outside of Paris. Co-founder Zofia Hertz (d.2003 at 92)
continued the magazine.
(SFC, 9/19/00, p.B2)(SSFC, 6/22/03, p.A27)
1947 Poland decreed that
Auschwitz be preserved as a museum and testimony to Nazi atrocities.
(WSJ, 8/14/02, p.A8)
1947 Chief Rabbi Alexander
Safran was dismissed from his post and forced to leave Romania,
making his home in Geneva. He had refused to cooperate with the new
Jewish Democratic Committee, saying it was a Communist body intent
on breaking up traditional Jewish organizations and bringing Jewish
life in Romania to a standstill.
(AP, 7/28/06)
1947 In Romania Ion Diaconescu
(1917-2011), an anti-communist activist, was arrested after
Communists came to power. He was released in 1964 under an amnesty
for political prisoners, and helped re-establish the center-right
Peasants' Party after communism ended in Romania in 1989.
(AP, 10/12/11)
1947 In Russia Sgt. Mikhail
Kalashnikov (b.1919) created the AK-47 (Avtomat Kalashnikova)
automatic rifle. In 2008 Michael Hodges authored “AK 47: The Story
of a Gun.”
(SFC,11/3/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 6/3/08, p.A19)(Econ,
9/12/09, p.54)
1947 Isaiah Oggins,
American-born graduate of Columbia Univ. and Soviet spy, was
executed under the direction of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union.
In 2008 Andrew Meier authored “The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s
Secret Service.”
(WSJ, 9/25/08, p.A19)
1947 The family-owned Olayan
Group was founded in Saudi Arabia and grew to became one of the
country’s largest private conglomerates.
(WSJ, 1/16/08, p.A10)
1947 In Scotland the Edinburgh
International Festival (EIF) was started as an antidote to war-time
austerity. Accompanying the EIF when it first opened was the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Fringe started life as a more
accessible and less highbrow accompaniment to the "main" festival,
literally on the fringe of it.
(Econ, 5/5/07, SR
p.15)(www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/edinburgh/festival/index.html)
1947 Father Jozef Tiso ruled
Slovakia while it was a Nazi state and in this year he was captured
by the Americans and executed for war crimes. During his rule over
50,000 Slovakian Jews were sent to Nazi death camps.
(WSJ, 4/26/96, p.A-11)(Econ, 3/13/10, p.57)
1947 Apparel retailer H&M
was established in Sweden. The company expanded into Europe and
opened its 1st US stores in 2000. Its 1st SF store opened in 2005.
(SFC, 11/19/05, p.C1)
1947 In Sweden the first Saab
automobile, a prototype, was produced.
(Sky, 9/97, p.97)
1947 In Thailand Phibun
Songkhram, a wartime pro-Japanese leader, led a Military coup. The
military retain power until 1973.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1243059.stm)
1947-1948 Dmitri Shostakovich composed his A-Minor
Concerto for violin and orchestra. The piece was written for
violinist David Oistrakh.
(WSJ, 1/24/96, p.A-12)
1947-1948 Farley Mowat, author, lived with the
Inuit people in the Arctic. He later wrote "Never Cry Wolf."
(SFC, 5/7/96, p.A-8)
1947-1963 The Louvin Brothers of Alabama, born Ira
and Charlie Loudermilk, recorded their country music, a mix of
bluegrass, gospel, blues and antique fold ballads. A boxed set of
their recordings called "Close Harmony" was put together by Richard
Weize of Bear Family Records, Hamburg, Germ.
(WSJ, 9/11/98, p.W3)
1947-1971 In southern California Montrose Chemical
Co. manufactured DDT during this period and released about 2,000
tons of the pesticide into sewers that flowed to the ocean. In 2007
fish caught off Los Angeles County's coast still contained high
levels of DDT, banned since 1972, decades after a manufacturer
dumped tons of the pesticide into sewers, creating a toxic plume on
the ocean bottom.
(AP, 1/28/07)
1947-1978 The US governed the Northern Marianas
Islands as a UN Trust Territory. The natives largely abandoned
fishing and Spam and Budweiser became staples.
(SFEC, 3/7/99,Z1 p.4)
1947-1990 The Rick Brant Science Adventure Series
was published during this time. Rick and his pal Scotty have the
kinds of adventures all boys would like to have.
(WWW, 1947)
1947-1990 This period in India came to be known as
the “License Raj,” as the country operated a planned economy with
extensive red tape.
(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.9)
1947-1991 The was a socialist period in India.
Firms faced claustrophobic restrictions from the state and tended to
expand in any direction they could.
(Econ, 10/22/11, SR p.8)
Go to 1948