December 1946

[December 1], 1946 (Sunday)

• Miguel Alemán Valdés was sworn into office as the 46th President of Mexico and as the nation's first civilian president since Venustiano Carranza's death in 1920.

  [December 2], 1946 (Monday)

• The International Whaling Commission was created by the signing, in Washington, D.C., of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling to "provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry". The 15 parties signing represented Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, South Africa, the USSR, the UK, and the U.S.
• U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin jointly announced the "economic fusion" of the American and British occupation zones of Germany, to take place effective January 1, 1947, declaring that "The two zones shall be treated as a single area for all economic purposes." Nicknamed "Bizonia", the Anglo-American occupation zone contained the German states of Schleswig-Holstein, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Niedersachsen, Bavaria, Hesse, and Württemberg-Baden. The French zone would join the merger on April 8, 1949, and the three zones would then become West Germany on May 24 of the same year.
• Born: Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer; in Reggio Calabria

  [December 3], 1946 (Tuesday)

• Notre Dame won the unofficial championship of the 1946 college football season, as the final AP Poll ranked the Fighting Irish #1, with points overall. In second place was Army, with points and 48 first-place votes. Georgia and UCLA were third and fourth. All four teams were unbeaten in 1946; Notre Dame and Army were unbeaten, but not untied, having played a 0–0 game on November 9.
• The John Ford-directed Western film My Darling Clementine starring Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell and Victor Mature was released.
• Born:
• *Marjana Lipovšek, Yugoslavian/Slovenian opera mezzo-soprano; in Ljubljana
• *Joop Zoetemelk, Dutch cyclist, Tour de France winner 1980; in The Hague

  [December 4], 1946 (Wednesday)

• U.S. District Judge T. Alan Goldsborough found the United Mine Workers and its president, John L. Lewis, in contempt of court and fined both for continuing the nationwide coal miners strike. Lewis was fined $10,000 personally, and the union was fined $3,500,000. Judge Goldsborough commented that the defiance of an injunction against continuing the strike "is an evil, demoniac, monstrous thing that means hunger and cold and unemployment and destitution and disorganization of the social fabric... if actions of this kind can be successfully persisted in, the government will be overthrown, and the government that would take its place would be a dictatorship, and the first thing the dictatorship would do would be to destroy the labor unions."
• Born:
• *Sherry Alberoni, American voice actress; in Cleveland
• *Yō Inoue, Japanese voice actress; in Tokyo

  [December 5], 1946 (Thursday)

• U.S. President Truman issued Executive Order 9808, creating the 16-member Presidential Committee on Civil Rights, chaired by General Electric President Charles E. Wilson. Ten months later, the committee would deliver its report, To Secure These Rights.
• A crowd of 200 residents of an all-white Airport Homes neighborhood rioted when the Chicago Housing Authority attempted to bring in the families of two distinguished African-American veterans in an attempt at integration of Chicago's West Lawn community. On the first day, the crowd attacked the movers who were bringing in the family furniture. Order was restored after 400 city police moved in, but the next day, demonstrators attacked the police. The project would remain all-white.
• U.S. Secretary of State Byrnes announced that, at the request of the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had agreed to repatriate German war prisoners as soon as possible, and that he was awaiting an answer from France, where most of the 674,000 POWs had been held since World War II.
• The French submarine 2326, converted to use by the French Navy after its capture from Germany as Unterseeboot U-2326, disappeared in the Mediterranean with 18 men on board, after performing test dives near Toulon. It was believed that the sub had struck a sea mine set adrift following a storm.
• The Korean Central News Agency, state news organ for North Korea, was established. Its stated mission was "to turn all members of society into juche communist revolutionaries unconditionally loyal to the Great Leader".
• Born: José Carreras, Spanish Catalan opera singer, and one of The Three Tenors; in Barcelona
• Died: Louis Dewis, 74, Belgian Post-Impressionist painter

  [December 6], 1946 (Friday)

• The final attempt at resolving the question of the independence of British India, as a single nation, failed. A four-day conference had been held at 10 Downing Street in London with Jawaharlal Nehru of the Congress Party, Muslim League president Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Sikh leader Sardar Baldev Singh being hosted by Britain's Prime Minister Attlee. "The conversations held by His Majesty's Government... came to an end this evening as Pandit Nehru and Sardar Baldev Singh are returning to India tomorrow morning", the Prime Minister's office began in a press release, closing, "Should the constitution come to be framed by a Constituent Assembly in which a large section of the Indian population had not been represented, His Majesty's Government could not, of course, contemplate— as the Congress have stated they would not contemplate— forcing such a constitution upon any unwilling parts of the country." British India became independent as the separate nations of India and Pakistan.
• The first known reference to the sport of wheelchair basketball was published in the Framingham, Massachusetts News, in a story entitled "Cushing Wins Over Celtics In Wheel-Chair Basketball". The demonstration took place at the Boston Garden, with players from the Cushing Veterans Hospital going up against the Boston Celtics, who were sitting in wheelchairs as well. The Celtics lost, 18–2. In the regular game, before 2,509 fans, the Celtics lost to the Detroit Falcons, 65–61.
• Born: Nancy Brinker, American diplomat and activist; in Peoria, Illinois

  [December 7], 1946 (Saturday)

• An early-morning fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta killed 119 people. The fire broke out on the third floor of the 15-story building, in front of Room 326, before spreading to the floors above. The Atlanta Fire Department received the first call at 3:42 a.m. Built before strict fire codes were put in place, the luxurious Winecoff Hotel had no alarms, no sprinklers, and no fire escape. Final records concluded that 46 people died of their burns, 40 died of smoke inhalation, and 31 others jumped from the building to their deaths.
• The United Nations emblem was approved by the General Assembly's Resolution 92. The flag, which has the emblem in white against a light blue background, was adopted on October 20, 1947.
• Facing a huge fine for contempt of court, United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis called an end to a walkout of 400,000 coal miners that he had called on November 20.
• Died:
• *Laurette Taylor, 62, American actress
• *Sada Yacco, 75, Japanese stage actress

  [December 8], 1946 (Sunday)

• The French liner SS Liberté, formerly the German liner SS Europa, was accidentally sunk, not long after it had been captured from Germany as part of the spoils of World War II. The 49,746-ton ship, third largest ocean liner in the world, broke loose from its moorings, collided with the wreckage of the sunken liner Paris, and went down in the harbor at Le Havre. It was finally put back into service on August 2, 1950.
• Isma'il Sidqi resigned as Prime Minister of Egypt following a failure to guarantee that the Sudan would remain part of the territory administered from Cairo upon full independence of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He was succeeded by Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha.
• Born:
• *John Rubinstein, American TV actor; in Los Angeles
• *Jacques Bourboulon, French photographer

  [December 9], 1946 (Monday)

• At 11:00 am, in New Delhi, the first Constituent Assembly of India convened, with 323 of the 389 members present. Boycotting the session were the 76 Muslim League members.
• The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial opened with 23 defendants, 16 of whom would be convicted.
• The first powered flight of the Bell X-1 experimental plane was made, by Slick Goodlin, who took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California.
• Born: Sonia Gandhi, Italian-born President of the Indian National Congress Party; as Edvige Antonia Albina Maino in Lusiana, Italy

  [December 10], 1946 (Tuesday)

• Alger Hiss resigned from the U.S. Department of State, less than two years before he was accused of espionage for the Soviet Union.
• The Italian neorealist war drama film Paisan premiered in Italy.
• Born:
• *Douglas Kenney, co-founder of the National Lampoon; in West Palm Beach, Florida
• *Thomas Lux, American poet; in Northampton, Massachusetts
• *Gloria Loring, American singer; in New York City
• Died:
• *Walter Johnson, 59, American baseball pitcher and Hall of Fame inductee, American League most valuable player, 1913 and 1924, twelve-time AL strikeouts leader between 1910 and 1924, holder of the MLB record for most shutouts pitched in a career, died of a brain tumor.
• *Damon Runyon, 66, American short-story writer

  [December 11], 1946 (Wednesday)

• UNICEF, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, was founded as the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 57.
• With December 11 as the deadline for the United Nations to have a permanent site, real estate developer William Zeckendorf agreed to sell 17 acres of land in Manhattan to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who, in turn would donate the land to the UN. Zeckendorf made the deal, through architect Wallace Harrison, at 2:00 in the morning while he and his wife were celebrating their wedding anniversary at the Club Monte Carlo.
• Rajendra Prasad was elected as the first President of the Constituent Assembly in India. In 1950, he would become the first President of India.