July 1946

July 1, 1946 (Monday)

• At 8:59 am and 45 seconds local time, Operation Crossroads was carried out as a fleet of 73 retired and unmanned ships were destroyed, sunk or damaged by an atomic bomb. The test took place at the Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean to observe what a nuclear weapon could do to American warships. It was only the fourth time in human history that a nuclear explosion had taken place. For the first time, news reporters and representatives of the rest of the world's nations had been invited. The explosion took place at 2159:45 UTC on June 30. The transport, closest to the blast, and sank immediately, while the destroyer was capsized. The heavily armored Japanese ship sank the next day. Animals on the died of radiation poisoning over the weeks after initially showing normal bloodcounts.
• The Communicable Disease Center, a federal agency now known as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began operations in Atlanta as a branch of the United States Public Health Service, initially as a domestic program to eradicate malaria.

  July 2, 1946 (Tuesday)

• The Luce–Celler Act of 1946 was signed into law, giving all Philippines citizens living in the United States the right to become naturalized U.S. citizens.
• In the American Zone of Germany, Lt. Gen. Lucius D. Clay, the Deputy Military Governor, pardoned all Nazis under 27 years old, except for those accused of war crimes, and restored one million men to German citizenship. One commentator noted, "Clay acted on the assumption that many of these Germans became Nazis before they were old enough to realize what they were doing."
• The town of Kerman was incorporated in Fresno County, California.
• The film noir The Stranger starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Orson Welles was released.
• Born: Richard Axel, American neuroscientist, 2004 Nobel Prize laureate, in New York City
• Died:
• *Howard Hyde Russell, 89, founder, Anti-Saloon League
• *Mary Alden, 63, American stage & screen actress

  July 3, 1946 (Wednesday)

• U.S. President Truman signed the National Mental Health Act into law, establishing National Institute of Mental Health and funding research into mental illness.
• For the first time, Czechoslovakia had a Communist leader, as party First Secretary Klement Gottwald, was named as the new prime minister by President Edvard Beneš.
• Born: Johnny Lee, American singer and songwriter, as John Lee Ham in Texas City, Texas

  July 4, 1946 (Thursday)

• The Republic of the Philippines was born, and Manuel Roxas was inaugurated as its first president. Forty-eight years after the United States had first claimed the islands as an American territory, U.S. President Harry S. Truman issued a formal proclamation that "On behalf of the United States of America, I do hereby recognize the independence of the Philippines as a separate and self-governing nation and acknowledge the authority and control over the same of the government instituted by the people thereof, under the constitution now in force." Present at the raising of the Philippine flag were General Douglas MacArthur and U.S. Senator Millard Tydings, and Emilio Aguinaldo, who had begun the fight for independence in 1898.
• The Kielce pogrom took place in Poland, where more than 40 residents of Kielce's Jewish neighborhood were murdered by a mob, without intervention by the police. Walenty Blaszczyk guided police to the Jewish section of the town after saying that his 8-year-old son had escaped after being held hostage by a group of Jews, Forty years later, the boy, now a retired 59-year old pensioner who was still living in Kielce, told a Polish government inquest that his father had told him to lie to the police in order to justify the murders.
• Born:
• *Michael Milken, American "junk bond" financier, in Encino, California
• *Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July, in Ladysmith, Wisconsin

  July 5, 1946 (Friday)

• At the Piscine Molitor in Paris, model Micheline Bernardini became the first woman to wear a two-piece swimsuit created by designer Louis Réard. In an homage to the site of the atomic bomb test earlier in the week, Reard named the garment the bikini.

• As inflation in Hungary spiraled out of control, the national bank in Budapest put into circulation an unprecedented note of currency, a bill for one hundred quintillion pengős.
• Leo Durocher, the manager of baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers, first uttered what would become a famous phrase, after the New York Giants beat them 7–6 to rise from last place to 7th in the National League. Frank Graham, a reporter for the Journal-American, wrote in his Sunday column that Durocher had pointed to the Giants' dugout and said, "The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place." Durocher recalled the remark nearly 30 years later as "Take a look at them. All nice guys. They'll finish last." The remark continued to be paraphrased, and in April 1948, Cosmopolitan magazine published an article about Durocher with the title "Nice Guys Finish Last".
• Born: Gwyneth Powell, British TV actress known for Grange Hill; in Levenshulme, Lancashire

  July 6, 1946 (Saturday)

• A mob of hundreds of youths in Trieste threw rocks and stones at Allied military police in protest of the four-power decision to internationalize the city.
• Born:
• *George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States, in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Yale University student George Bush and Barbara Bush.
• *Sylvester Enzio Stallone, American film actor, in New York City to Frank Stallone Sr. and Jackie Stallone; he was injured during the delivery, leaving him with a drooping lower lip and what would become a slight, but distinctive, speech impediment.
• *John Frederick Dryer, American pro football player and television actor, in Hawthorne, California to Charles and Genevieve Dryer.

  July 7, 1946 (Sunday)

• Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini became the first American citizen to be elevated to sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church, canonized under the authority of Pope Pius XII. Mother Cabrini, a native of Italy, came to the United States in 1889 and began a career of founding schools and hospitals. She became a U.S. citizen on October 9, 1909, and had been beatified on November 13, 1938.
• Miguel Alemán Valdés was elected President of Mexico, defeating opposition candidate Ezequiel Padilla.
• In Philadelphia, a joint announcement was released by the Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church for a merger that, ultimately, did not take place.
• U.S. Navy Ensign Jimmy Carter, who would become the 39th President of the United States, married Rosalynn Smith in Plains, Georgia. In 2021, they would become the first former U.S. President and First Lady to celebrate a 75th wedding anniversary.

  July 8, 1946 (Monday)

• The Soviet military government in Austria began deporting 54,000 persons who had moved there from Germany following the 1938 Anschluss, after setting a deadline of 6:00 am the day before.
• Died: Orrick Johns, 59, American writer, by suicide

  July 9, 1946 (Tuesday)

• In the 1946 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Boston, Ted Williams helped the American League win 12-0 over the Nationals, getting a hit in all four times at-bat, getting two home runs and five RBIs.
• Born:
• *Bon Scott, Scottish-born Australian rock musician, lead singer for AC/DC, as Ronald B. Scott in Forfar, Angus.
• *Mitch Mitchell, English drummer for and last surviving member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, in Ealing, Middlesex

  July 10, 1946 (Wednesday)

• In Hungary, the hyperinflation peaked at a rate of 348.46% per day.
• Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress President, held a press conference in Bombay declaring that while the Congress had agreed to partake in the Constituent Assembly, it reserved the right to modify the Cabinet Mission Plan as it saw fit.
• Died: Sidney Hillman, 59, American labor leader and President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

  July 11, 1946 (Thursday)

• At the meeting in Paris of the foreign ministers of the four Allied powers who were carrying out the post-war Occupation of Germany, U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes proposed an economic merger of the occupation zones. The United Kingdom agreed on July 29, and the American and British zones would become the "United Economic Area", informally referred to as "Bizonia", on January 1, 1947. The French zone would join in 1949, and the three areas would become West Germany later that year.
• Born: Ed Markey, American politician, U.S. Senator for Massachusetts since 2013; in Malden, Massachusetts

  July 12, 1946 (Friday)

• Hungary initiated a monetary reform that retired its worthless currency, the pengő, and replaced it with the forint, effective August 1.
• The Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946 became law in the United Kingdom.
• Died: Ray Stannard Baker, 76, American journalist who also wrote children's books under the name "David Grayson"

  July 13, 1946 (Saturday)

• Seven United States Marines were taken prisoner in China's Hebei Province by Communist forces, at the village of Hsinanchuang, near Qinhuangdao. A truce team secured the men's release after eleven days.
• Born: Cheech Marin, American actor and comedian as Richard Anthony Marin in Los Angeles
• Died:
• *Alfred Stieglitz, 82, American photographer
• *Riley Puckett, 52, country music singer and comedian

  July 14, 1946 (Sunday)

• The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, by pediatrician Benjamin Spock, was published for the first time and would become an immediate bestseller as a guide to bought by millions of parents for the raising of their children. A contemporary review, published in The New York Times on the day of the book's release by the Duell, Sloan and Pearce publishing company, began with the sentence, "You know more than you think you do", and advised parents not to adhere to strict rules that had been given in previous child care guides.
• The "Boudreau shift" was first employed by Lou Boudreau, manager and shortstop for the Cleveland Indians, in the second game of doubleheader against the Boston Red Sox. After Boston's Ted Williams hit three home runs to beat Cleveland 11–10, Boudreau moved all four infielders and two outfielders to the right side of the field when the left-handed Williams came to bat again. The Indians still lost, 6–4.
• Born: John Wood, Australian TV actor