January 1950

January 1, 1950 (Sunday)

• The International Police Association, largest police organization in the world, was formed. One of the few organizations with a slogan in Esperanto, the IPA's motto is Servo per Amikeco. It claims 380,000 members in 63 nations.
• The U.S. social security payroll tax was increased by half, as the amount deducted was given an automatic increase from 1% to 1.5%, the first increase since the payroll deductions had started in 1935.
• The 1950 Soccer Bowl, an American postseason college soccer championship, ended in a 2–2 draw between Penn State and the University of San Francisco.
• In 1954, it was decided that starting January 1, 1950, radiocarbon dating could not be relied upon due to atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons resulting in a change of the carbon level from carbon-14 to carbon-12. Calibration curves were first established in this year, and so any time before January 1, 1950, is referred to as BP, or Before Present. Any radiocarbon dating after this may not be accurately reliable.

  January 2, 1950 (Monday)

• The 1949 college football season was completed as the post-season bowl games were played on the day after New Year's Day. In the Rose Bowl, previously unbeaten #3 California was upset by #6 Ohio State before a crowd of 100,963. Unbeaten #2 Oklahoma won 35–0 over #9 LSU in the Sugar Bowl. The other two unbeaten college teams of 1949, #1 Notre Dame and #4 Army, did not play in a bowl game. The final AP and UPI polls had already been taken prior to the bowl games, with Notre Dame being the unofficial national champion.
• The government of Argentina immediately shut down the Communist newspaper La Hora the same day that the paper appeared without the slogan "the year of the Liberator, General San Martín" on its masthead or at the top of every page, as all the other Argentine dailies were doing in compliance with a declaration by President Juan Perón that 1950 was San Martín Year. The paper would resume publication in 1958.
• Born: David Shifrin, American clarinet artist
• Died: Emil Jannings, 65, Swiss-born film star, winner of the first Academy Award for Best Actor, and later the star of German propaganda films

  January 3, 1950 (Tuesday)

• Egypt held elections for its Chamber of Deputies, with the Wafdist Party winning a majority, taking 161 of 319 seats. The Saadist Party, led by former Prime Minister Ibrahim Abdel Hadi Pasha, lost in a landslide, going from control to winning only 24 seats. Mustafa el-Nahhas became the new Premier on January 12, and would remain in power until January 27, 1952.
• In Venezuela, the third largest oil refinery in the world, the Amuay Refinery, was inaugurated by the Creole Petroleum Corporation on the west coast of the Paraguaná Peninsula.
• Sun Studio, where Elvis Presley would make his first recordings, was opened at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee.
• Born: Victoria Principal, American TV actress and entrepreneur; at the USAF base in Fukuoka, Japan

  January 4, 1950 (Wednesday)

• U.S. President Harry S. Truman delivered his State of the Union address to Congress and asked for a tax increase, with "changes in our tax system which will reduce present inequities, stimulate business activity, and yield a moderate amount of additional revenue".
• The New York Sun, which had published every afternoon since 1833, had its final issue. The operation was bought by the rival evening paper, the New York World-Telegram.
• The city of Town and Country, Missouri, with 162 wealthy residents, was incorporated as a village at the site of a defunct farming town Altheim, near St. Louis. Incorporation was granted by the St. Louis County Court after 102 people had signed a petition two months earlier. The move came following concerns that either of two neighboring towns south of the area and east would attempt an annexation. In 1974, voters would approve the village's transformation into a fourth-class city. Town and Country would have over 11,000 residents by 2018.
• Died: George P. Putnam, 62, American publisher who had been the husband of Amelia Earhart when she disappeared in 1937. After she was declared dead in 1939, Putnam, who had been the high bidder for Charles Lindbergh's autobiography, remarried twice.

  January 5, 1950 (Thursday)

• President Truman said in a press conference that "The United States government will not pursue a course which will lead to involvement in the civil conflict in China", and that American policy would be to not intervene to save the island of Taiwan from conquest by the Communist government of mainland China.
• U.S. Army Lt. Col. Charles A. Willoughby, who was Chief of Intelligence for General Douglas MacArthur, provided the first reports that North Korea was planning an invasion of South Korea, possibly as early as March.
• All 19 people aboard a Soviet Air Force airplane, including 11 members of the Soviet Air Force's ice hockey team V V S Moskva, were killed when the Lisunov Li-2 transport aircraft they were on crashed at Sverdlovsk. The plane was carrying the team from Kazan to Chelyabinsk, where it was scheduled to face Traktor Chelyabinsk, and crashed into a hillside while attempting to land at Sverdlovsk in bad weather.
• Born: John Manley, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada during 2002 and 2003; in Ottawa. Manley had previously been the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2000 to 2002, and Minister of Industry from 1995 to 2000

  January 6, 1950 (Friday)

• The United Kingdom gave diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China and the Communist regime of Mao Zedong as the legitimate government of the nation of 460,000,000 people. Norway, Denmark and Ceylon followed suit.
• Workmen renovating the White House found a small marble box that had been buried underneath a floor slab commemorating the last renovation. The box, which contained three Washington, D.C. newspapers, 27 cents and the label from a bottle of Maryland rye whiskey, had apparently been placed there on December 2, 1902. President Truman ordered that the contents, along with current newspapers, be sealed up again and that the box be reburied "somewhere in the reconstruction now going on."
• Born:
• *Louis Freeh, American judge who was the FBI Director from 1993 to 2001; in Jersey City, New Jersey; and his immediate successor,
• *Thomas J. Pickard, Acting FBI Director June 25 to September 4, 2001, following Freeh's resignation; in Woodside, New York
• Died: Isaiah Bowman, 71, Canadian-American geographer

  January 7, 1950 (Saturday)

• A fire at the women's psychiatric ward at Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa, killed 40 patients. All had been trapped inside the locked building. Another 25 were able to escape their locked rooms with the assistance of fire and police, who pulled the iron bars off their windows.
• "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Gene Autry topped the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart.
• Born:
• *Juan Gabriel, Mexican singer, as Alberto Aguilera Valdez in Parácuaro
• *Erin Gray, American TV actress, in Honolulu
• *Shantha Sinha, Indian activist against child labor, in Nellore
• Died:
• *Monty Banks, 52, Italian comedian
• *Nathaniel Reed, 87, American outlaw nicknamed "Texas Jack"

  January 8, 1950 (Sunday)

• Kwame Nkrumah began the "Positive Action" campaign in the British African colony of the Gold Coast, calling for labor strikes against the colonial government. Governor Charles Arden-Clarke would declare a state of emergency three days later.
• Died:
• *Joseph Schumpeter, 66, Austrian-American economist
• *Helene Hathaway Britton, 70, former owner of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals

  January 9, 1950 (Monday)

• Nationalist Chinese warships shelled an American freighter, the Flying Arrow, in international waters after the ship had run a blockade of Shanghai.
• President Truman submitted the annual federal budget, calling for the spending of $42,439,000,000 in the 1952 Fiscal Year. The budget had a deficit of more than five billion dollars, and the accompanying budget message was, at 27,000 words, the "longest presidential message in history".

  January 10, 1950 (Tuesday)

• Yakov Malik, the Soviet Ambassador to the U. N., angrily walked out of a session of the United Nations Security Council, after the ten members voted 8–2 against replacing the Nationalist Chinese delegation with one from the Communist Chinese leaders who had taken control of nearly all of China in October. Although the Nationalist government was confined to the island of Taiwan, it continued to be allowed to speak for, and to exercise the veto power for, the 460 million people in China.
• Born: Ernie Wasson, American horticulturalist and author of gardening books, in Berkeley, California

  January 11, 1950 (Wednesday)

• British Prime Minister Clement Attlee set new parliamentary elections to take place nationwide on February 23.

  January 12, 1950 (Thursday)

• The death penalty was partially restored in the Soviet Union, after having been abolished on May 26, 1947. It was retroactively applied to "traitors, spies, subversives, and saboteurs" regardless of when the alleged offense occurred.
• The British submarine Truculent collided with the Swedish oil tanker Divina in the Thames Estuary and sank, killing 64 people. Only 15 crewmen were able to escape. All of them had been in the conning tower of the sub, which had been cruising on the surface of the Thames.
• U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered his 'Perimeter Speech', outlining the boundary of U.S. security guarantees. South Korea was not included within the area subject to American protection, and would be invaded from North Korea less than six months later.
• Italy's Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi resigned along with his entire cabinet.
• Born:
• *Sheila Jackson Lee, U.S. Representative for Texas since 1995, in New York City
• *Dorrit Moussaieff, Israeli-born businesswoman and wife of the President of Iceland; in Jerusalem