March 1946

March 1, 1946 (Friday)

• North Korea's Communist Party leader and future president, Kim Il Sung, was saved from assassination by an alert Soviet officer. Y.T. Novichenko caught a hand grenade that had been thrown at Kim during a rally.
• Operation Coronet, the greatest amphibious invasion ever planned, had been tentatively scheduled for "Y-Day", March 1, 1946. The invasion by 25 divisions of Allied forces of Honshū, the main island of Japan, would have been resisted by the Japanese in Operation Ketsu-Go, and would have followed the November 1, 1945, invasion of Kyūshū. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, Olympic, Coronet and Ketsu-Go became unnecessary.
• Born: Jan Kodeš, Czech tennis player who won the French Open in 1970 and 1971 and Wimbledon in 1973); in Prague

  March 2, 1946 (Saturday)

• The United Nations would not be welcome to locate permanently in Greenwich, Connecticut, the UNO's first choice for a site. In a special referendum, the vote was 4,540 to 2,019 against letting the UNO build in Greenwich and its surrounding area. The U.N. headquarters was built instead in New York City.
• The British began to withdraw from Iran following Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in August 1941.

  March 3, 1946 (Sunday)

• An American Airlines DC-3 crashed into a mountain at PST as it approached San Diego on a flight from Tucson, killing all 27 persons on board. Flight 6-103 had originated in New York, with multiple stops on the way to San Diego.

  March 4, 1946 (Monday)

• Iran crisis: fifteen Soviet armored brigades invaded Iran's Azerbaijan region, while additional brigades deployed along the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Bulgaria. The U.S. Consul at Tabriz would later opine that "Though not a shot was fired, the Battle of Azerbaijan was as significant in its outcome as Bunker Hill, Bull Run, or the First Battle of the Marne."
• Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim resigned as President of Finland because of illness, and was succeeded by Prime Minister Juho Passikivi.
• The U.S., Britain and France joined in asking the Spanish people to depose dictator Francisco Franco, based on the Generalissimo's August 15, 1940, letter to Benito Mussolini. Franco had offered support of the Axis Powers, and signed a secret protocol with Germany on February 10, 1943. Franco remained until his death in 1975.
• The comic strip Rip Kirby, by Alex Raymond, began a 53-year run in the newspapers as a King Features Syndicate feature. The fictional detective's last strip ran on June 26, 1999.
• The city of Riverdale, Utah, was incorporated.
• Born:
• *Michael Ashcroft, British billionaire; in Chichester, West Sussex
• *Harvey Goldsmith, British concert promoter; in Edgware, Middlesex
• *Haile Gerima, Ethiopian filmmaker; in Gondar
• Died: Bror von Blixen-Finecke, 79, Danish big-game hunter

  March 5, 1946 (Tuesday)

• Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The former British prime minister was accompanied by U.S. president Harry S. Truman, and the speech – which was entitled "The Sinews of Peace" was part of a program that began at CST, after an invocation and introductory remarks by Westminster's president McCluer and by President Truman. Churchill surprised the world with his attack on the spread of Soviet Communism, as he said "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." Using the metaphor of an iron curtain, to refer to the sealing off of a conquered area, was not invented by Churchill, nor did he first use it at Westminster College.
• Died: Gertrude Pinsky, David Guzik and eight other persons on a mission for the Jewish relief organization JDC were killed in a plane crash near Prague. One of the few women assigned overseas by JDC, Ms. Pinsky had overseen the aid to thousands of Jewish displaced persons during the Second World War.

  March 6, 1946 (Wednesday)

• North Vietnam agreed to allow troops from France to return to its cities in return for recognition as "a free country within the framework of the French Union". General Võ Nguyên Giáp later wrote that the intent was for the peaceful withdrawal of Nationalist Chinese occupation, but that a new war began when French forces continued their occupation.
• Jackie Robinson became the first African-American in the 20th Century to play in the Major League Baseball system, appearing in a Florida spring training game at Daytona Beach against the Brooklyn Dodgers as a shortstop for the Dodgers' farm club, the Montreal Royals.
• The drama film Sentimental Journey starring John Payne and Maureen O'Hara premiered in New York City.
• Born: David Gilmour, English rock musician ; in Cambridge

  March 7, 1946 (Thursday)

• The 167 residents of the Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, were evacuated from their South Pacific island in order for atomic testing to begin. A report to the U.S. Congress calculated loss-of-use damages fifty years later at $278,000,000.
• Five days after the March 2 deadline had passed for Soviet troops to leave Iran, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow served a diplomatic note on the Soviet Foreign Ministry, calling on the Soviets to honor their agreement.
• Born:
• *John Heard, American actor; in Washington, D.C.
• *Peter Wolf, American rock musician for The J. Geils Band; in the Bronx, New York

  March 8, 1946 (Friday)

• Helicopters were first approved for civilian use in the United States, when the Civil Aeronautics Board granted a certificate to Bell Helicopter for its Bell 47, a modified version of its H-13 Sioux military chopper.
• Died: Frederick W. Lanchester, 77, British automotive inventor and engineer

  March 9, 1946 (Saturday)

• Thirty-three British football fans were killed, and hundreds injured, when retaining fences at the Burnden Park stadium in Bolton collapsed. A reported 70,000 fans had filled the stadium to watch a FA Cup playoff match between Bolton Wanderers and Stoke City. The game, which ended 0–0, halted for 28 minutes and then resumed.
• "Oh! What It Seemed to Be" by Frankie Carle hit #1 on the Billboard Honor Roll of Hits.
• Died: John J. Glennon, 81, an Irish native who became the Roman Catholic Archbishop of St. Louis, died ten days after he had been elevated by Pope Pius XII to the College of Cardinals. Glennon was in Dublin, where he had stopped on his way home from Rome. The Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital was named in his memory.

  March 10, 1946 (Sunday)

• In a ceremony witnessed by 100,000 followers at the Brabourne Stadium in Bombay, the Aga Khan, leader of British India's Shia Ismaili Muslim population, received his weight—248 pounds—in diamonds, in honor of his 60 years on the throne. For his golden anniversary in 1936, he had received his weight in gold.
• All 25 persons on an Australian National Airways flight were killed when their plane crashed at, shortly after takeoff from Hobart, Tasmania.
• At a synod, convened in Lviv under pressure from the Soviet government, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church severed its historic ties with the Church in Rome, and its union with the Russian Orthodox Church was proclaimed.
• Born: Jim Valvano, American college basketball coach who led North Carolina State to the 1983 NCAA championship;, in New York City
• Died: Karl Haushofer, 76, German political scientist and proponent of Geopolitik, died by suicide along with his wife.

  March 11, 1946 (Monday)

• Rudolf Höss, the Nazi Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, was located and arrested by British military police near the northern German town of Flensburg, where he had been working on a farm under the alias "Franz Lang". Höss, who confessed to overseeing the murder of millions of prisoners, mostly Jewish, was himself executed at Auschwitz on April 16, 1947.
• In New York, Sylvia Lawry and 20 neurologists founded the Association for Advancement of Research in Multiple Sclerosis, now the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

  March 12, 1946 (Tuesday)

• General Draža Mihailović, Chetnik leader who oversaw the massacre of Bosnians and Croatians during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, was captured in a mountain cave near Višegrad after two years in hiding. His capture was announced in Belgrade on March 24, and Mihailović was executed on July 17.
• Born:
• *Liza Minnelli, American singer, stage and film actress, winner of a Best Actress Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and two Tony Awards; in Los Angeles as the daughter of film actress Judy Garland and theatrical director Vincente Minelli
• *Dean Cundey, American cinematographer known for the Back to the Future series of films; in Alhambra, California
• *Frank Welker, American voice actor known for voicing the character of Fred in the Scooby-Doo cartoon franchise; in Denver.
• Died: Ferenc Szálasi, 49, strongman of the "Hungarian State" during the Nazi occupation of Hungary, was executed by hanging for war crimes.

  March 13, 1946 (Wednesday)

• The United Auto Workers strike against General Motors ended after 113 days, as the UAW accepted an cent per hour wage increase for its members.
• The Congress of Industrial Organizations ended its strike against General Electric.
• The world waited to see if the United States and the Soviet Union would go to war, as the Soviets defied the ultimatum of March 7, and reportedly were continuing their advance in Iran.

  March 14, 1946 (Thursday)

• Fred Rose, the first and only Communist Party of Canada member of the House of Commons of Canada, was arrested in Ottawa, on suspicion of espionage, after attending the opening of the new session of Parliament.
• In Paris, Gaston Monnerville, the black delegate from French Guiana, was elected President of the French National Assembly.