October 1946

October 1, 1946 (Tuesday)

• The day after the verdicts were rendered in the Nuremberg Trials, sentences were pronounced. Twelve of Nazi Germany's most murderous leaders were given two weeks more to live, with hangings scheduled for October 15.
• Mensa, the high IQ society, was founded in Oxford, the United Kingdom, by Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware. According to the website for the American organization, "the date is now the recognized founding date for the organization", based on Berrill when the first piece of Mensa literature was printed.
• Kim Il Sung University was founded near Pyongyang.
• Communist China's first motion picture company, the Northeast Film Studio was established at Xingshan.
• The Alaskan Air Command, formerly the Eleventh U.S. Air Force was permanently headquartered at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

  October 2, 1946 (Wednesday)

• Faraway Hill, the first soap opera ever shown on a TV network, debuted at 9:00 pm on the DuMont Television Network, and ran for 12 weeks.
• Born:
• *Ron Griffiths, Welsh singer for Badfinger; in Swansea
• *Ping Chong, Canadian-born American playwright; in Toronto

  October 3, 1946 (Thursday)

• In the worst civilian airplane crash up to that time, all 39 people on board a Douglas DC-4 airliner were killed when the plane crashed into a hillside in Canada. The American Overseas Airlines flight from New York City to Berlin, with stops in between, took off from Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador at 3:23 p.m., and crashed ten minutes later.
• The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 8–4 to win the second game of a best-of-3 series in the first National League playoffs ever played, and advanced to the 1946 World Series to face the Boston Red Sox. Both teams had finished with 96-58 records at the end of the regular season.

  October 4, 1946 (Friday)

• On the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday, and a month before midterm elections, U.S. President Harry S. Truman announced that he had cabled British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to say that he endorsed immediate immigration of over 100,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine. Truman's rationale was that the British-mediated conference between Arabs and Jews had been adjourned until December, and that "In view of the fact that winter will come before the conference can be resumed, I believe and urge that substantial immigration into Palestine cannot await a solution." Attlee was furious at Truman's sudden public statement, and forecast that it would only increase violence in the region, while leaders of Arab nations felt that they had been betrayed, and Truman's opponents criticized the decision as a clumsy bid for Jewish voters. "It may well have been Truman's desperate political straits that led him to such a blatantly political gambit," observed one later historian.
• The Nag Hammadi library was saved for posterity, as the Coptic Museum in Cairo accepted the ancient scrolls into its permanent collection. Twelve complete manuscripts and eight pages of a 13th had been buried in a sealed jar in the 4th century AD and not unearthed again until December 1945. The text "begins at the approximate time that the Dead Sea Scrolls leave off", notes one author.
• Born:
• *Susan Sarandon, American film actress; as Susan Tomalin in New York City
• *Chuck Hagel, U.S. Senator for Nebraska 1997-2009, U.S. Secretary of Defense 2013 to 2015; in North Platte, Nebraska
• Died:
• *Barney Oldfield, 68, American race car driver
• *Gifford Pinchot, 81, American conservationist and the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service

  October 5, 1946 (Saturday)

• Sweden's Prime Minister since 1932, Per Albin Hansson, died from a cerebral hemorrhage as he was walking home after a meeting of his cabinet in Stockholm, where Sweden's trade agreement with the Soviet Union was approved.
• Republican Senator Robert A. Taft called the Nuremberg Trials "an outrage against justice", controversially arguing that they were carried out under ex post facto laws and that the making of war "should not be made a personal crime."

  October 6, 1946 (Sunday)

• The "11 points in the Negev" program saw the simultaneous construction of 11 Jewish settlements in separate parts of British Palestine, going up overnight in the Negev Desert.
• Died: István Bethlen, 71, Prime Minister of Hungary from 1921 to 1931, died in a Soviet prison

  October 7, 1946 (Monday)

• A Fairey Firefly airplane struck a school in Apeldoorn, in the Netherlands, killing 23 people, most of whome were teenage schoolboys. The 21-year-old pilot, on his first solo flight, was flying low over his parents' house in a misguided stunt, and the left wing clipped the roof of the school gymnasium, dropping burning fuel inside. The dead included the pilot and his mother, who suffered a fatal heart attack.
• By a vote of 342 to 5, the Constitution of Japan, as revised by the House of Councillors, was approved by the House of Representatives of Japan. The instrument, which provided equal rights and renounced war, went into effect on May 3, 1947, six months after it was promulgated.
• Born: Catharine MacKinnon, American feminist activist; in Minneapolis

  October 8, 1946 (Tuesday)

• Voters in the U.S. territory of Alaska participated in the first referendum on the question of statehood. At the time, the total population was less than 85,000 people, and it took two months to tally all of the ballots. The final result of the advisory resolution was 9,630 to 6,822 in favor of Alaska someday becoming the 49th state of the United States, a goal which would finally be attained on January 3, 1959.
• Born:
• *Dennis Kucinich, American politician who became the "Boy Mayor of Cleveland" at age 31, later U.S. Representative for Ohio 1997 to 2013; in Cleveland
• *Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian activist; in Nablus, Mandatory Palestine

  October 9, 1946 (Wednesday)

• Tage Erlander began a 23-year service as Prime Minister of Sweden, which would last until 1969. The Education Minister was elected as the new leader of Sweden's ruling Social Democratic party, succeeding the late Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson.
• One of the most spectacular meteor showers visible from Earth was seen after the planet passed through the debris left by Comet Giacobini-Zinner. A greater number of meteors burned up in the atmosphere than usual because of a closer approach. The comet and the Earth came within 131,000 miles of each other.
• Eugene O'Neill's last play, The Iceman Cometh, premiered on Broadway.
• George Adamski saw a UFO for the first time, hovering near Mount Palomar toward San Diego, and began a career in ufology. He claimed trips in UFOs beginning in 1952.
• The brochure Communist Infiltration of the United States was released by U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Eventually, 400,000 copies were distributed.
• Born:
• *Naoto Kan, Prime Minister of Japan from 2010 to 2011; in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture
• *Chris Tarrant, English game show host for the British show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?; in Reading, Berkshire

  October 10, 1946 (Thursday)

• A V-2 rocket launched by the United States from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico reached an altitude of 100 miles and sent back unprecedented information about the Sun, providing the first photograph of the solar ultraviolet spectrum.
• Tsinghua University reopened in China with an enrollment of 3,000 students, more than nine years after the Army of Japan had looted the campus.
• The Missouri city of Centerville, located in Phelps County, was renamed Doolittle in honor of aviation pioneer and Medal of Honor winner Jimmy Doolittle.
• The musical biography film The Jolson Story starring Larry Parks as Al Jolson was released.
• Born:
• *Ben Vereen, African-American actor; as Benjamin Middleton in Miami
• *Gene Tenace, American MLB catcher; in Russellton, Pennsylvania

  October 11, 1946 (Friday)

• Major General Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service, announced the end of the draft. Persons scheduled to report to their local draft board on or after October 16 had their inductions cancelled. The Selective Service Act expired on March 31, 1947, with no further inductions. A new draft act was signed into law on June 24, 1948.
• Tage Erlander became Prime Minister of Sweden.
• Born: Daryl Hall, American pop singer ; as Daryl Hohl in Pottstown, PA

  October 12, 1946 (Saturday)

• Article 3 of the Allied Control Council Directive 38 was put into effect in the Soviet Zone of Germany, and remained in effect when the zone became the German Democratic Republic. With vague language making it a criminal offense for anyone to have, after May 8, 1945, "endangered or possibly endangered the peace of the German people or the peace of the world through propaganda for National Socialism or militarism or by the invention or diffusion of tendentious rumors", the law was applied to fire 520,000 former Nazi party members from jobs, and to convict more than 11,000 people between 1948 and 1964.
• Born: Jack Fuller, American journalist and publisher; in Chicago
• Died: General Joseph Stilwell, 63, American military leader who commanded U.S. Army operations in China and Burma during World War II

  October 13, 1946 (Sunday)

• By a vote of 9,297,351 oui to 8,165,744 non, voters approved a new constitution for France, creating that nation's "Fourth Republic", which provided for a weak, and indirectly elected president. The upper house of parliament, the French Senate, was replaced by a weaker "Council of the Republic"; promulgated on October 27, the new constitution would last less than 12 years, until the establishment of the "Fifth Republic" in 1958.
• The Muslim League agreed to join the Interim Government of India, accepting five of the 12 seats on the Executive Council, reversing an earlier decision not to participate. Participation lasted less than a year, with the League creating the nation of Pakistan from the Muslim sections of British India. Jawaharlal Nehru, future Prime Minister of India, continued as the Minister for External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, while the future Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan, became the interim government's new Finance Minister.
• Born:
• *Demond Wilson, American TV actor famous as Lamont Sanford on Sanford and Son; in Valdosta, Georgia
• *Lacy J. Dalton, American country music singer; in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania