May 1950

May 1, 1950 (Monday)

• At a May Day rally in South Africa to protest apartheid, police fired into a crowd of black demonstrators at Johannesburg, killing 19 people and injuring 38.
• The town of Mosinee, Wisconsin, was the site of a mock Communist takeover, staged by the local American Legion outpost to illustrate what life under Soviet conquest might be like. Benjamin Gitlow, who had twice been the vice-presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA, before renouncing Communism, played the role of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the "United Soviet States of America", while another former Communist, Joseph Zack Kornfeder, assisted as the new Commissar of the town, renamed "Moskva" in the exercise. A Soviet flag flew in front of the American Legion outpost. Mayor Ralph E. Kronenwetter, who had participated in the mock coup by allowing himself to be "arrested", suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that evening, and died six days later at the age of 49, while another participant, Reverend William L. Bennett, died the day after Kronenwetter.
• Operations began for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
• Springbok Radio was launched as the first commercial radio station in South Africa, broadcasting programming in both English and Afrikaans.
• The Charlemagne Prize was first awarded for work done in the service of European unification. The first recipient was Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-European Movement.
• Died: Lothrop Stoddard, 66, American eugenicist

  May 2, 1950 (Tuesday)

• The Central University for Nationalities was established in Beijing to offer programs for China's minorities.

  May 3, 1950 (Wednesday)

• Alpha Beta Alpha, the first fraternity for undergraduate students of library science was established.
• Died: Theodor Duesterberg, 74, German politician who ran for president in 1932

  May 4, 1950 (Thursday)

• The Soviet Union announced that it had completed repatriation of all German prisoners of war who had been captured during World War II, and that the last group of 17,538 Germans concluded the return of 1,939,063 German POWs. West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, pointing out that the TASS news agency had reported in 1945 that there were 3.5 million German POWs held in the USSR, demanded to know what had happened to more than 1.5 million still missing. and the U.S. State Department described the Soviet claim as "fantastic and absurd", and that an estimated 200,000 German POWs were still prisoners in Soviet labor camps.
• In Centerville, Texas, seven schoolchildren, all African-American, were killed when their school bus collided with a truck.
• The science fiction short story fixup The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury was published.

  May 5, 1950 (Friday)

• The coronation of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej took place in Bangkok, continuing the reign of the Chakri Dynasty that had started in 1782. Bhumibol had been King since the death of his brother, Ananda Mahidol, on June 9, 1946
• The Uniform Code of Military Justice was signed into law by U.S. President Truman, to become effective on May 31, 1951.
• Born: Googoosh, Iranian singer and actress, as Faegheh Atashin in Tehran

  May 6, 1950 (Saturday)

• The well-preserved body of the Tollund Man, who had died in the 4th Century BC was discovered by Viggo Højgaard, his wife Grethe, and his brother Emil, in a bog near the city of Silkeborg in Denmark. Radiocarbon dating concluded that the average calculated date of the man's death was 2,260 to 2,220 years before present.
• Elizabeth Taylor, 18-year-old movie starlet, went through the first of eight weddings, with a ceremony at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, California. The groom was 23-year-old Conrad Hilton Jr., heir to the $125,000,000 hotel empire.
• Collier's magazine published Ray Bradbury's classic science fiction story, "There Will Come Soft Rains", describing the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust with the setting of a computer-controlled house that continued to operate after the death of its occupants. In the story, the setting was the fictional city of Allendale, California, on the then-future date of April 28, 1985. When the story was reprinted as a chapter in Bradbury's book The Martian Chronicles, the future date would be revised to August 4, 2026.
• Serbian Muslim peasants in the Yugoslavian town of Cazin, led by Milan Bozic and Mile Devrnja, revolted against the Communist government in frustration over the collective farm system, required delivery of harvests to the government, and excessive taxes. The rebellion was suppressed with the arrest of 714 people, of whom 17 were sentenced to death, including Bozic and Devrnja.
• Middleground won the Kentucky Derby.
• Warrington defeated Widnes 19–0 in rugby's Challenge Cup Final in front of 94,249 at Wembley Stadium.
• Died: Agnes Smedley, 58, American journalist

  May 7, 1950 (Sunday)

• Saint Anthony Claret, founder of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was canonized by Pope Pius XII.
• Born:
• *Tim Russert, American journalist and moderator of Meet the Press, in Buffalo, New York
• *Alexander Zemlianichenko, Russian journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, in Saratov

  May 8, 1950 (Monday)

• U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson announced an agreement with France and the State of Vietnam to provide ten million dollars of military assistance, the first of what would become three billion dollars of American money spent to fight Communism in Indochina over the next 25 years.

  May 9, 1950 (Tuesday)

• France's Foreign Minister Robert Schuman presented his proposal for France and West Germany to work together on the production of coal and steel, "under a common High Authority in an organization open to the other countries of Europe". Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg would join France and West Germany in creating the European Coal and Steel Community on April 18, 1951. The "Schuman Declaration", is considered to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union and May 9 is celebrated annually as "Europe Day".
• L. Ron Hubbard first published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.
• In Bentonville, Arkansas, businessman Sam Walton signed a 99-year lease on a run-down department store, after having been forced to close his successful Ben Franklin franchise in Newport when the building owner would not renew a lease there. Walton would build his business into a chain of stores that became Wal-Mart.
• Died: Esteban Terradas i Illa, 66, Spanish mathematician

  May 10, 1950 (Wednesday)

• The National Science Foundation was founded as a U.S. government agency with a stated mission "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense."
• The Pilot ACE, a digital computer designed by Alan Turing, successfully ran its first program, a routine called "successive digits" or "suck digs" that would turn on console lights one by one.
• Dumarsais Estimé was overthrown as President of Haiti in a military coup organized by Paul Magloire. Franck Lavaud served for seven months as Chairman of the Military Executive Committee until December 6, when Magloire became president.
• Ir. J. Poetoehena was sworn in as the last Prime Minister of the State of East Indonesia, serving until August, when the state was incorporated into the Republic of Indonesia with Suharto being the first President.
• Died: John Gould Fletcher, 64, American poet, 1939 Pulitzer Prize winner

  May 11, 1950 (Thursday)

• The McMinnville UFO photographs, among the most famous photos purported of an unidentified flying object were taken by Paul Trent, a farmer near McMinnville, Oregon, after his wife spotted a flying disc. Trent developed the pictures, showed them to a local banker who placed them on display, and a reporter for the McMinnville Telephone Register ran the story after inquiring, and the photos would appear later in LIFE Magazine. "Skeptics found nothing to disparage the Trents' integrity," it would be written 48 years later, "and no financial motive for having faked UFO pictures."
• Dongshan Island was captured by 10,000 Communist Chinese troops from the Nationalist Chinese.
• A coal mine gas explosion in a deep mine, near Mons in Belgium, killed at least 41 miners, all of whom had been working 1,650 feet underground.

  May 12, 1950 (Friday)

• Eugene Dennis, the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, began a one-year jail sentence for contempt of Congress.
• The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR restored the death penalty for crimes committed during peacetime, after having abolished it nearly three years earlier on May 26, 1947.
• Born:
• *Ching Hai, Vietnamese-born spiritual leader, in Quảng Ngãi Province
• *Billy Squier, American rock musician, in Wellesley, Massachusetts

  May 13, 1950 (Saturday)

• North Korea's Communist leader Kim Il Sung arrived in Beijing and informed China's Chairman Mao Zedong that Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union had given Kim the go-ahead to reunify the Korean peninsula by force, and received Mao's approval as well. Not believing Kim, Mao made an urgent visit to the Soviet Embassy that night and asked Ambassador N. V. Roshchin to get confirmation from Stalin, which was relayed the next day with the words, "If Chinese comrades do not agree, then we have to resolve this question."
• The first race in the inaugural FIA Formula One World Championship, providing for "a schedule of races around the world", was held at Silverstone in England, and won by Nino Farina of Italy.
• The Communist Party of Venezuela was outlawed by decree of Venezuela's President Carlos Delgado Chalbuld, after the South American nation's oil production had been disrupted by a labor strike. On May 7, General Delgado of the ruling military junta had dissolved 45 labor unions which represented oil industry workers.
• Born:
• *Stevie Wonder, blind American soul musician, as Steveland Hardaway Judkins, in Saginaw, Michigan. A premature infant, Stevie developed retrolental fibroplasia while being exposed to pure oxygen in an incubator.
• *Danny Kirwan, British guitarist with Fleetwood Mac, in London
• *Gabriel Byrne, Irish actor, in Dublin
• *Bobby Valentine, American baseball manager, in Stamford, Connecticut