November 1950

November 1, 1950 (Wednesday)

• Two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate the U.S. President, Harry S. Truman. At 2:15 p.m., Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, aware that President Truman was staying at the Blair House while the White House was undergoing repairs, attacked the residence at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. in Washington, DC. Collazo tried to break in through the front door, and shot U.S. Capitol police officer Donald Birdzell in the knee, but was wounded by three other Secret Service agents. Torresola fired multiple shots at White House police officer Leslie Coffelt and mortally wounded him, but Coffelt returned fire and killed Torresola instantly. Coffelt died several hours later. Collazo would be sentenced to death, but Truman would commute his sentence to life imprisonment. On September 6, 1979, Collazo would be released after his sentence was altered to time served by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and died on February 21, 1994.
• After having witnessed the "Miracle of the Sun" Pope Pius XII defined a new dogma of Roman Catholicism, the Munificentissimus Deus, which says that God took Mary's body into Heaven after her death.
• An American flight of P-51 Mustang fighters and T-6 Mosquito trainer aircraft, all propeller-driven aircraft, was patrolling the skies over North Korea when they encountered six Chinese MiG-15 jet fighters. The U.S. planes managed to evade the jets and return to base, but the event marked a change in the air war in Korea.
• Born: Robert B. Laughlin, American physicist, 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics laureate, in Visalia, California

  November 2, 1950 (Thursday)

• Japan's Hokuriku, or "Blue Train", came into service between Ueno and Osaka via Kanazawa. The journey from Ueno to Osaka took 18 hours 45 minutes.
• King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia issued a royal decree, putting a tax of 20% of net profits on all corporations from their operations within the Kingdom. This would be followed by an additional tax decreed on December 27.
• U.S. Army Corporal Henry D. Connell, a 17 year old from Springfield, Massachusetts, disappeared along with 380 soldiers from the 3rd Battalion of the 8th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, during a battle with Chinese troops at Unsan in North Korea. Connell, who had been returned to the front after being injured in September, would become one of the few American MIAs whose remains would be returned to the United States. On July 12, 1993, North Koreans returned his dog tags to the United States, in a box containing the bones of four different individuals. It would take another 13 years for the government to positively identify his bones, using DNA from a relative. On May 13, 2006, more than 55 years after he had gone missing in action, Corporal Connell would finally be laid to rest, at the Gate of Heaven cemetery in Springfield.
• Died: George Bernard Shaw, 94, Irish writer, 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate

  November 3, 1950 (Friday)

• Air India Flight 245 crashed into Mont Blanc, France, at an elevation of 15,000 feet, with the loss of all 40 lascar sailors and 8 crew. The Constellation airplane, dubbed the Malabar Princess, had been flying from Mumbai to London and ran into a snowstorm while flying over the Alps between Cairo and Geneva. At 3:43 pm, the pilot made his last contact with the Geneva airport and reported being over Grenoble, France. The wreckage would be spotted two days later, and an avalanche would kill a member of an eight-member rescue party on November 6 One engine from the plane would be found in 1989 at the Glacier des Bossons, and a second engine would go undiscovered until 2008. On January 24, 1966, Air India Flight 101, a Boeing 707 which was also on its way from Mumbai to London, would impact with Mont Blanc at 15,584 feet, killing all 117 on board.
• By a vote of 52 to 5 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the "Uniting for Peace" resolution, also known as the "Acheson Plan".
• A one-inch long earwig was the indirect cause of sinking three commercial motorships. The tiny insect had blocked the natural gas supply in a lighthouse at Denmark's Grønsund strait between the island of Falster and the islands of Møn and Bogø. During the 75 minutes before the light could be restored, four ships ran aground, and three of them sank after their crews escaped.
• Died:
• *Koiso Kuniaki, 70, Prime Minister of Japan from 1944 to 1945 and convicted war criminal, of cancer while serving a life sentence at the Sugamo Prison.
• *John Wallace, 54, US murderer and one of the most wealthy men to be executed on a capital murder charge, executed by electric chair at Tattnall Prison, Georgia. The 1948 murder case would be dramatized in a book and a television movie, Murder in Coweta County.

  November 4, 1950 (Saturday)

• The United Nations General Assembly voted 38 to 10 to approve General Assembly Resolution 386, repealing a 1946 vote that had barred all member nations from having diplomatic relations with Spain. The ban had been in place since December 12, 1946, when the members voted, 34–6, to not recognize the government of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
• East Germany executed 24 of the 31 prisoners who had been convicted in April of subversion against the state.
• The European Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, drafted by the Council of Europe, was signed. It would come into effect on September 3, 1953, after being ratified by the United Kingdom, West Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Ireland and Luxembourg, and create the European Court of Human Rights.
• Paul Nitze, the Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department, met secretly with the U.S. Army Logistics Staff to discuss the feasibility of using nuclear weapons in the Korean War. General Herbert Loper, in charge of the Army's atomic weapons, advised him that the atomic bomb would not be useful except in rare cases where there was a large concentration of Chinese troops, and that the risks outweighed the benefits.
• The Battle of Unsan ended in Chinese victory.
• An F3 tornado touched down near Adamstown, Pennsylvania causing major damage.
• Born: Wolfgang Heichel, German rock musician in the Eurodisco band Dschinghis Khan; in Munich, West Germany
• Died: Grover Cleveland Alexander, 63, American major league baseball pitcher from 1911 to 1930, enshrinee of the Baseball Hall of Fame, known for leading the National League in games won and strikeouts in six seasons, for the lowest earned runs average in four seasons, and three time Triple Crown winner in all three categories in 1915, 1916 and 1920.

  November 5, 1950 (Sunday)

• The Battle of Pakchon, between Australian and Chinese forces in the Korea War, began as the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment captured a well-defended hill with limited offensive support, and held it in the face of heavy counter-attacks before making a disorganised night withdrawal.
• Eight North Korean fighters under the command of Kim Tal-hyon attacked 20 American aircraft in an air battle over North Korea. According to American accounts, Korean Yak-9 planes damaged two B-26 bombers, while Soviet accounts record that the North Koreans shot down five B-26 and one B-29 bomber. Both accounts agree that the North Koreans lost no planes in the battle.
• Shortly before midnight, the Chinese offensive abruptly halted across Korea, and the PLA forces temporarily withdrew, an action that one South Korean observer would later describe "as incomprehensible as it was welcome",
• Hour of Decision, a weekly radio broadcast by evangelist Billy Graham, was heard for the first time. Graham's sermons, both live and pre-recorded, have been heard every Sunday since then on the ABC Radio Network, then in syndicated form, and online.
• Automobile racer Phil Hill had a difficult beginning at the Pebble Beach Cup, when his Jaguar XK120 stalled at the start of the race. Despite starting in last place, 100 yards behind the rest of the group, he passed two cars on the first lap, then gradually increased his position over the remaining 48 miles and won the event in an unusual last-to-first comeback.

  November 6, 1950 (Monday)

• King Tribhuvan of Nepal fled to the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu after his Prime Minister, Field Marshal Mohan Shumsher, was preparing to have him arrested and replaced as the reigning monarch.
• The United Nations was advised in a cable from General Douglas MacArthur of proof that the People's Republic of China had entered the Korean War, based on the capture of prisoners of war from seven separate divisions of the Chinese army. The United States immediately scheduled a meeting of the UN Security Council for that Wednesday in order to consider MacArthur's recommendation that a large hydroelectric dam across the Yalu River should be destroyed if the Chinese armies were not withdrawn, along with all bridges that connected China to Korea.
• Composer Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto was performed for the first time, with Benny Goodman appearing with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on a national radio broadcast.
• British philosopher Bertrand Russell first delivered his essay, "Mind and Matter" in a lecture at Yale University.

  November 7, 1950 (Tuesday)

• In midterm congressional elections in the United States, the Democratic Party retained its majority, but lost 28 seats in the House of Representatives, and five in the Senate, averting a 48–48 tie. Notably, U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon became one of California's U.S. Senators by defeating Helen Gahagan Douglas; James Roosevelt, the son of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt, failed in a challenge against the incumbent Republican Governor of California Earl Warren.
• At the age of three years and four months old, Prince Gyanendra of Nepal was declared by Prime Minister Shumsher to be the new King, replacing his grandfather, King Tribhuvan. Following negotiations with India, Tribhuvan would return to the throne in January. Gyanendra would become last King of Nepal by succession in 2001 after the assassination of nine members of the royal family, including his father, King Birendra, by his brother, Prince Dipendra. The monarchy would be abolished in 2008 and Nepal would become a republic.
• Thailand entered the Korean War, when 2,100 men of the 21st Royal Thailand Regimental Combat Team arrived in Korea.