August 1946

August 1, 1946 (Thursday)

• The five-member Atomic Energy Commission was established, transferring control of nuclear weapons from military to civilian control.
• The Fulbright Scholarship program was created.
• Scandinavian Airlines was founded as a consortium of the flag carriers of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
• Born:
• *Mike Emrick, American sportscaster on The NHL on NBC); in La Fontaine, Indiana
• *Sandi Griffiths, American singer on The Lawrence Welk Show; in Los Angeles

  August 2, 1946 (Friday)

• The first sale of radioactive isotopes was completed, when a container of carbon-14 was delivered from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital in St. Louis.
• What would become known as the "Battle of Athens" took place in Athens, Tennessee, a group of World War II veterans took up arms to keep the McMinn County sheriff and his deputies from counting the ballots in the primary election.
• Born: Nakagami Kenji, Japanese novelist; in Shingū, Wakayama prefecture
• Died: Red Army General Andrey Vlasov, 45, was executed in the Soviet Union after being convicted of treason for fighting on the side of Nazi Germany since 1942.

  August 3, 1946 (Saturday)

• Santa Claus Land, credited as the first "theme park" for coordinating amusement park rides with a Christmas time theme, was opened by Louis Koch at Santa Claus, Indiana. Now operating as Holiday World, the park preceded Disneyland by nine years.
• Born: Jack Straw, British Home Secretary 1997–2001, Foreign Secretary 2001–06; in Buckhurst Hill, Essex

  August 4, 1946 (Sunday)

• An 8.0 magnitude earthquake killed more than 100 people in the Dominican Republic. Almost of the victims were killed by a tsunami that washed over the coastal village of Matanza after the shock registered at 1:51 pm local time.

  August 5, 1946 (Monday)

• Neil Armstrong of Wapakoneta, Ohio, who on July 20, 1969, would be the first man to walk on the Moon, earned his student pilot's certificate on his 16th birthday, learning on an Aeronca Champion airplane.
• Born: Shirley Ann Jackson, Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics; in Washington, D.C.

  August 6, 1946 (Tuesday)

• Hungary's gold reserve of $32,000,000 was returned to Budapest, from Frankfurt, where it had been stored by the government of Nazi Germany. The return of the gold stabilized the Hungarian economy following the hyperinflation of the prior two months.
• Martin Luther King Jr., a 17-year-old junior at Morehouse College, began a lifelong crusade against racial prejudice, with the publication of a letter in the Atlanta Constitution, in response to an editorial. His father later remarked that the letter was the first "indication that Martin was headed for greatness".
• A pair of unmanned B-17 bombers landed in California after having been flown a distance of 2,174 miles from Hawaii, piloted entirely by radio control, as the United States Army carried out "Operation Remote". Press releases declared that the experiment proved "that guided missiles of the air forces can be launched by radio control and successfully hit a target more than 2,000 miles distant".
• Died: Tony Lazzeri, 42, American MLB 2nd baseman enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame

  August 7, 1946 (Wednesday)

• The Dardanelles crisis began when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sent a demand to Turkey to permit "joint defense" of the Dardanelles Strait, with the implication that Soviet troops would enter Turkish territory. At the same time, editorials appeared in the Soviet press supporting the retrocession of the Kars Province, Ardahan and Artvin, which had been ceded from Russia to Turkey after World War One. Concluding that a takeover of Turkey would allow the Soviets to control the Middle East, U.S. President Truman sent the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt and two destroyers to the area.
• Mariano Ospina Pérez was inaugurated as the 23rd President of Colombia.

  August 8, 1946 (Thursday)

• The B-36 Peacemaker bomber was flown by the United States Air Force for the first time. Designed to carry the atomic bomb, and having a range of 6,000 miles, the B-36 was the first intercontinental carrier of nuclear weapons.
• More than twenty years after his court-martial and resignation from the United States Army, and ten years after his death, Billy Mitchell was awarded the Medal of Honor by the U.S. Congress "for outstanding pioneer service in the field of American military aviation", and posthumously promoted to the rank of Major General.

  August 9, 1946 (Friday)

• The body of African-American veteran John Cecil Jones, victim of a lynching, was found in a bayou near Minden, Louisiana. As a result of an investigation by the NAACP, the crime was reported nationwide and led to the first FBI investigation of a lynching in Louisiana, followed by the creation of a Committee on Civil Rights by President Truman. One author described the response to the Jones murder as "the first time since Reconstruction that the federal government had evinced any real concern over the discriminatiory treatment of black people".
• Born: :
• * Alain Dorval, French voice actor known for dubbing the voice of Sylvester Stallone in French language presentations of English language films; in Algiers, French Algeria
• * Jim Kiick, American NFL running back, in Lincoln Park, New Jersey

  August 10, 1946 (Saturday)

• In Athens, Alabama, a mob of white men and teenagers, estimated at 2,000 people, rioted after two white men had been jailed for an unprovoked attack on a black man the day before. Breaking into smaller groups, the mob went into town and began beating any African-American seen in the street. State troops, sent by the Governor, arrived at 4:00 pm and restored order by midnight. Nobody was killed, but more than 50 black persons were injured. Sixteen white suspects were later indicted by a county grand jury for the violence.

  August 11, 1946 (Sunday)

• Schoolteacher Dumarsais Estimé was elected President of Haiti

  August 12, 1946 (Monday)

• In the largest labor strike in South Africa since 1922, more than 60,000 black members of the African Mineworkers Union walked away from their jobs in the nation's gold mines, including 13,000 at Witwatersrand. A group of 4,000 striking miners marched at Johannesburg to protest working conditions.

  August 13, 1946 (Tuesday)

• Tenth Circuit Judge Joseph McCarthy defeated longtime U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr. in the Wisconsin Republican primary.
• In the United States, the Indian Claims Commission was established to fix a fair market value for land taken from the American Indians "at the time the land was taken". An example of the low awards of compensation was $29.1 million for the entire state of California, at 47 cents an acre. Between 1946 and the 1951 deadline, 370 petitions were filed.
• Died:
• *H. G. Wells, 79, British science fiction author who wrote The Time Machine in 1895
• *William J. Gallagher, 71, retired Minneapolis street sweeper who was elected to Congress in 1944.

  August 14, 1946 (Wednesday)

• Soviet politician Andrei Zhdanov began a campaign against writers and artists whose work showed "anti-Soviet sentiment" or complacency toward Communist party goals. At Zhdanov's direction, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party passed the resolution "About the journals Zvezda and Leningrad" on proper Soviet literature, condemning the two literary magazines for publishing the works of author Mikhail Zoshchenko and poet Anna Akhmatova. The editors of the magazines were replaced, and the two writers were barred from publishing further works. Similar condemnations followed against bourgeois influence in theater and film productions.
• An American B-29 reconnaissance plane discovered a large ice floe 300 miles north of Alaska. Nine miles in width, 17 miles long, and ideal for the basing of aircraft, "Target X" was the first of three "floating bases" used by the United States.
• Born: Larry Graham, Bassist for the band Sly and the Family Stone; in Beaumont, Texas

  August 15, 1946 (Thursday)

• The "Truman Doctrine" was announced by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, who told Turkey's President İsmet İnönü that the United States would provide its assistance to help Turkey resist Soviet demands for control of the Dardanelles straits. Over the next year, Truman lobbied Congress to provide more than $400,000,000 in aid to both Turkey and Greece as part of American strategy in the Middle East.
• The Alfred Hitchcock-directed thriller film Notorious starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains premiered in New York City.
• Died: Edward R. Bradley, 86, horse breeding magnate

  August 16, 1946 (Friday)

• "Direct Action Day", which was intended as a peaceful protest in favor of creating a separate Muslim nation of "Pakistan", rather than having a Hindu-majority government in an independent British India, turned into rioting that killed more than 10,000 people in and around Calcutta. Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah had set a day "for the Muslim Nation to resort to direct action to achieve Pakistan and assert their just rights to vindicate their honor" after the League decided not to participate in a government with the Hindu Indian National Congress led by Mahatma Gandhi. Historians disagree as to which side began the killing, but before the violence was put down, 3,000 Hindus and 7,000 Muslims had been murdered in religious violence.
• The founding conference of the All Hyderabad Trade Union Congress is convened in Secunderabad, Hyderabad State.
• The Kurdistan Democratic Party was founded in Iraq by Mustafa Barzani.
• Born: Jim Brochu, American stage actor and playwright; in Brooklyn