December 1946


The following events occurred in December 1946:

[December 1], 1946 (Sunday)

[December 2], 1946 (Monday)

[December 3], 1946 (Tuesday)

[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 BarcelonaDied: 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)

[December 10], 1946 (Tuesday)

[December 11], 1946 (Wednesday)

[December 12], 1946 (Thursday)

  • The collapse of an adjacent building killed 37 people at a six-story apartment building, on 2545 Amsterdam Avenue in New York City's Washington Heights section. The afternoon before, two boys, aged 13 and 10, had started a fire on the roof of an abandoned ice house on West 184th Street, and bragged about it to their friends. Firefighters put out the flames on the roof and then left, not realizing that a fire continued to smolder in the wooden beams beneath the roof.
  • Iranian troops marched into Tabriz, retaking control of the Azerbaijan People's Government that had been created in November 1945, with the backing of occupying Soviet troops.
  • Socialist and anti-colonialist Léon Blum took office as the new Prime Minister of France. Historian Stein Tønnesson would later theorize that in the seven days between Blum's entry into office and the Việt Minh's date for launching an attack against the French, war in Vietnam might have been averted.
  • The United Nations General Assembly voted, 34–6 to bar Spain from membership so long as Francisco Franco was in power, and to urge member nations to withdraw their ambassadors from Madrid. The ban would be lifted on November 4, 1950.
  • The first meeting of South Korea's Interim Legislative Assembly was held, with 45 appointed members and 45 elected ones, most of whom were right-wing.Born:
  • *Emerson Fittipaldi, Brazilian Formula One and Indy car racer ; in São Paulo
  • *Diana Palmer, American romance novelist; in Cuthbert, GeorgiaDied: Renee Falconetti, 54, French stage and film actress who played the title role in the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, died of self-imposed restrictive diet while living in Argentina.

[December 13], 1946 (Friday)

  • The United Nations General Assembly approved creation of eight trust territories, to be administered by member nations, with the ten-member UN Trusteeship Council to "safeguard the interests of non-self-governing peoples and to try to see that they eventually achieve full independence." The eight territories, which had been League of Nations mandates, were New Guinea ; Western Samoa ; Ruanda-Urundi, which later split as the nations of Rwanda and Burundi ; Tanganyika, later merged with Zanzibar as Tanzania ; and the Cameroons and Togoland, under a British and French mandate. The full trusteeship committee had approved the eight mandates 35–8 the day before.
  • Employees at the Gigant cinema in the Soviet city of Omsk discovered the corpses of 13 young boys. Horrified police investigators found the bodies of an additional seven children at a factory on the outskirts of town, and determined that the murders had been carried out by a gang of juvenile delinquents, whose motive was to steal shoes and jackets.

[December 14], 1946 (Saturday)

[December 15], 1946 (Sunday)

[December 16], 1946 (Monday)

  • Dior, a marketer of luxury fashion outfits for women and founded by French designer Christian Dior and textile magnate Marcel Boussac, began operations with the opening of a store at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris.
  • Siam joined the United Nations as its 55th member nation. It would change its name to Thailand in 1949.
  • The Third String Quartet of Dmitri Shostakovich was first performed, in Moscow. The piece proved to be controversial and was withdrawn from public performance as part of Andrei Zhdanov's campaign against artistic works deemed to be "anti-Soviet", with questions even about whether the musical notes had a subversive message.
  • The 1947 NFL draft was held in New York. This was the first year that a lottery system was used to determine which team would get to pick first. The Chicago Bears won the lottery and selected Bob Fenimore of Oklahoma A&M as the #1 overall pick.Born:
  • *Benny Andersson, Swedish musician and one of four founders of ABBA; in Stockholm
  • *Trevor Pinnock, English orchestra conductor; in CanterburyDied:
  • *Lewis J. Valentine, 64, reform-minded NYPD Commissioner from 1934 to 1945, who fired 300 officers and reprimanded or fined 11,000 others.
  • *Sulayman al-Murshed, Syrian religious leader who claimed divinity and had 50,000 followers in and around Latakia, was hanged.

[December 17], 1946 (Tuesday)

  • A new American altitude record was set as a captured German V-2 rocket, No. 17, was launched to an altitude of. The mark was unbroken until February 24, 1949, when a two-stage rocket more than doubled the height, to.Born: Eugene Levy, Canadian film and TV comedian; in Hamilton, Ontario

[December 18], 1946 (Wednesday)

[December 19], 1946 (Thursday)

  • The Battle of Hanoi began at 8:03 pm local time, when electric power to the city of Hanoi was cut off as a force of 30,000 Việt Minh soldiers launched an attack against French army units in the city. The attack followed a directive made by General Louis Morlière for the Viet soldiers to disarm. Co-ordinated by General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the attackers used mortars, artillery and machine guns in a battle that failed, but began the First Indochina War. Over seven and a half years, the French and their allies lost 172,708 people, more than 500,000 Việt Minh soldiers died, and 150,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed.Born:
  • *Robert Urich, American television actor; in Toronto, Ohio
  • *Miguel Piñero, Puerto Rican playwright; in Guarbo Died: Paul Langevin, 74, French theoretical physicist who invented a method for generating ultrasonic waves.

[December 20], 1946 (Friday)

  • Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart returning to film after completing his World War II service, was released in New York. Despite its Christmas setting, it was not released generally until January 7, and was a money loser in its theatrical release. A failure to renew the copyright in 1974 led to the film being run frequently on television afterward, turning it into one of the most popular Christmas films ever.
  • A team of American cryptanalysts, led by Meredith Gardner, decoded a secret cable that had been sent in 1944 to Moscow, and found it contained a list of scientists working on the Manhattan Project, the first of many disclosures that there had been a Soviet espionage operating along atomic bomb researchers at Los Alamos.
  • British Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced to the House of Commons that the United Kingdom was prepared to offer Burma its independence. Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Winston Churchill denounced the move by the Labour Party government as hastening "the process of the decline and fall of the British Empire".
  • Sugar Ray Robinson won the first of six boxing titles, becoming the world welterweight champion with a decision over Tommy Bell. In 1951, he won the world middleweight title, retired, then won and lost the title several more times between 1955 and 1961.Born:
  • *Uri Geller, Israeli psychic and magician; in Tel Aviv
  • *Lesley Judd, British TV host known for Blue Peter; in London
  • *John Spencer, American TV actor known for The West Wing; in Paterson, New Jersey
  • *Dick Wolf, American TV producer known for Law and Order; in New York City.

[December 21], 1946 (Saturday)

[December 22], 1946 (Sunday)

  • The Havana Conference, a summit of American organized crime bosses, was held at the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Cuba, owned by Meyer Lansky. The occasion was the return of Lucky Luciano from Italy, where he had been deported in February. Luciano, most powerful American mobster, accepted expensive tributes from the visitors, brokered a truce between Albert Anastasia and Vito Genovese, discussed establishing a new route for the trafficking of heroin, and planned the fate of rival boss Bugsy Siegel. Siegel would be murdered on June 20, 1947.
  • The Cleveland Browns won the very first All-America Football Conference championship, defeating the New York Yankees (AAFC), 14–9, before a home crowd of 40,469. The Browns trailed, 9–7, with less than five minutes left in the game.
  • The, the only German warship to survive World War II, capsized and sank in the Kwajalein Lagoon after being towed and set adrift. The cruiser withstood the Able and Baker atomic bomb tests of Operation Crossroads in July 1946, but was heavily irradiated and no longer useful. It went down at 12:43 pm.

[December 23], 1946 (Monday)

[December 24], 1946 (Tuesday)

  • The French Fourth Republic came into existence at 3:11 pm in Paris as the new Council of the Republic, replacing the former French Senate under the new constitution, convened. Jules Gasser, who had been senior member of the Senate that had existed until the Nazi occupation in 1940, presided over the opening session, which lasted 25 minutes. The Fourth Republic, which followed the First, Second, Third, lasted until 1958, when it was supplanted by the current Fifth Republic.Born:
  • *Brenda Howard, American lesbian rights activist; in the Bronx
  • *Daniel Beretta, French voice actor known for dubbing the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[December 25], 1946 (Wednesday)

[December 26], 1946 (Thursday)

  • The Pink Flamingo Hotel and Casino opened on the Las Vegas Strip, the first of a new type of luxurious gambling resort that would transform Las Vegas. Mobster Bugsy Siegel, who went millions of dollars over budget on money borrowed from other organized criminals in building the Flamingo, scheduled the opening for the day after Christmas, but most of the hotel rooms were not ready to be occupied, and most of the celebrities, scheduled to fly in for the inaugural event, were kept away by rainstorms in Los Angeles. During the first few weeks, the casino lost $300,000 more money than it took in. Siegel, who had already offended many of his fellow mobsters, was murdered less than six months later.
  • Ernie Adamson, lead counsel for the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee, released a report that he had made to the committee, charging that 17 of the labor unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations were dominated by Russian agents and that plans were being made for Communist revolution in the United States. Adamson charged further that the Library of Congress was "a haven for aliens and foreign-minded Americans". The HUAC had not yet read, let alone approved the report, which did not have specific information, and fired Adamson.
  • Giorgio Almirante founded the Movimento Sociale Italiano, a political party advocating the goals of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party.

[December 27], 1946 (Friday)

[December 28], 1946 (Saturday)

[December 29], 1946 (Sunday)

[December 30], 1946 (Monday)

  • The day after a British prison in Palestine gave 18 lashes to punish 17-year-old bank robbery suspect Benjamin Kimchin of the Zionist group Irgun, the group retaliated by kidnapping British Army Major Paddy Brett and three non-commissioned officers from the Metropole Hotel at Nathanya. The three non-coms were whipped 18 times, and Major Brett 20, before being released. The perpetrators were captured and punished, but the British forces never used corporal punishment against the Irgun again.Born:
  • *Patti Smith, American singer and songwriter known for "Because the Night"; in Chicago
  • *Berti Vogts, West German footballer with 96 caps for the West Germany national team; in Büttgen

[December 31], 1946 (Tuesday)