September 1946

September 1, 1946 (Sunday)

• By a margin of 1,136,289 in favor and 524,771 against, voters in Greece approved the keeping of the monarchy. King George II returned from exile on September 27.
• Cambodia held its first elections in history. The Democrat party won a majority of seats in the legislature.
• Hawaiian sugar workers went on strike, with 21,000 workers walking off of the job on 33 plantations. The strike, which was aided by an unseasonable lack of rain, ended after 79 days, and put an end to the perquisite system that had paid the laborers with company vouchers rather than cash.
• Julia McWilliams married Paul Child, and later became famous as Julia Child.
• Born:
• * Roh Moo-hyun, 16th President of South Korea 2003 to 2008; in Gimhae
• * Barry Gibb, British vocalist and guitarist for The Bee Gees; in Douglas, Isle of Man

  September 2, 1946 (Monday)

• An interim government for the Dominion of India was inaugurated to make the transition from British colonial rule to independence. Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell, the Viceroy of India, presided on behalf of the United Kingdom. At 11:00 am at the Viceroy's House in Delhi, Wavell administered the oath of office to Jawaharlal Nehru as vice president, and to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Asaf Ali, Sarat Chandra Bose, and Syed Ali Zaheer. Other members of the Executive Council included Liaquat Ali Khan, Finance Minister, who would become the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, were Sir John Mathai, Sardar Baldev Singh, Shri Jagjivan Ram, and Chakravarti Rajagopalachari
• Born: Billy Preston, American soul musician; in Houston

  September 3, 1946 (Tuesday)

• U.S. President Harry S. Truman approved the go-ahead for "Project Paperclip", ostensibly a campaign to bring German scientists to the U.S., and to keep them from being taken to the U.S.S.R. Many of the scientists had been former Nazis, and assisted in experimentation on human subjects with radiation, oxygen deprivation and flash blindness.

  September 4, 1946 (Wednesday)

• An Air France plane bound for London crashed moments after takeoff, when it failed to clear the roof of a factory at Le Bourget, killing 20 persons. The evening before, another Air France plane crashed as it approached Copenhagen from Paris, killing all 22 persons on board.
• The Ben Hecht-written play A Flag is Born, advocating the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people in Israel, opened on Broadway.
• The comedy film Monsieur Beaucaire starring Bob Hope was released.
• Died: Nobu Shirase, 85, leader of the Japanese Antarctic Expedition of 1911–1912

  September 5, 1946 (Thursday)

• Trans-Luxury Airlines Flight 850, on its way from New York to San Francisco, crashed into a hillside as it attempted to land in Elko, Nevada, killing 21 of the 22 people on board. A 2-year-old boy survived the accident with only minor injuries.
• The Tuskegee Airmen unit was disbanded and the base at Tuskegee, Alabama, was closed.
• Born: Freddie Mercury, singer and songwriter for the rock group, as Farrokh Bulsara; in Stone Town, Zanzibar.

  September 6, 1946 (Friday)

• U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes delivered the speech "Restatement of Policy on Germany" in Stuttgart. The address, described as "an important reversal of the American position on Germany", signaled a plan to build the conquered German nation into a "self-sustaining" state that would be able to resist the spread of Communism.
• The All-America Football Conference held its first game, kicking off at 8:30 pm as the Cleveland Browns hosted the Miami Seahawks. The Browns won 44-0 before a record crowd of 60,135 fans.

  September 7, 1946 (Saturday)

• Royal Air Force Captain Teddy Donaldson set a new official speed record, flying a Gloster Meteor at 615.78 miles per hour in level flight, or Mach 0.81 at 1,100 feet.
• In the fourth major airline accident in five days, a British South American Airways airliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Bathurst. Only one of the 24 persons on board survived.

  September 8, 1946 (Sunday)

• Voters in Bulgaria approved the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a republic, by a reported margin of 3,801,160 to 171,000. Nine-year-old Tsar Simeon II and his mother, Queen Ioanna, went into exile in Italy. The boy king, last Bulgarian monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, would return to power 55 years later as Simeon Sakskoburggotski, Prime Minister of Bulgaria.
• Born:
• *Beriz Belkić, President of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2001–02; in Sarajevo
• *Wong Kan Seng, Singaporean business executive, Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore 2005–2011; in Singapore
• Died: Dorothy Harrison Eustis, 60, philanthropist who founded The Seeing Eye, the first school in the U.S. to train guide dogs, an idea pioneered in Germany. The canines trained to aid blind persons are often referred to as seeing-eye dogs.

  September 9, 1946 (Monday)

• Trans Australia Airlines made its inaugural flight, a trip from Melbourne to Sydney. The government-owned carrier, which operated domestically, changed its name to Australian Airlines in 1986, and then was merged with Qantas in 1993.
• Born: Anna Lee Walters, American author; in Pawnee, Oklahoma

  September 10, 1946 (Tuesday)

• In what is now celebrated among the Missionaries of Charity as "Inspiration Day", 36-year-old Sister Agnes Teresa Bojaxhiu of the Loreto Sisters' Convent experienced what she would describe as the "call within a call". She was traveling on a train from Siliguri to Darjeeling when she heard the call of God: "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.". As one author later noted, "Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become Mother Teresa".
• Fred Morrison, an American fighter pilot during World War II, first sketched his idea for a toy plastic disc could fly through the air after it was thrown. He called his invention the "Whirlo-Way". By 1955, he sold a lighter version, the "Pluto Platter", to the Wham-O toy company, which manufactured millions of the discs under the brand name Frisbee.
• With workers at Pittsburgh's electric utility threatening a walkout, and management standing firm against their demands, citizens of the 10th largest city in the U.S. braced for a 12:01 a.m. shutdown of all electric power. To their surprise, the blackout never came, as a judge issued an injunction at midnight.
• Born:
• * Jim Hines, American track athlete and 100 meter dash record holder 1968–83; in Dumas, Arkansas
• * Don Powell, English rock drummer for Slade; in Bilston, Staffordshire

  September 11, 1946 (Wednesday)

• The Brooklyn Dodgers and the visiting Cincinnati Reds played the longest scoreless tie in Major League Baseball history, going for 19 innings in 4 hours, 40 minutes, before the game was called because of darkness.
• The United States turned over $1,121,400,000 worth of surplus U.S. Army property to the Philippines, including vehicles, construction equipment, prefab structures, clothing, medicine, food and other items. The material had been stockpiled in the Philippines after its recapture by the Allies, for the planned invasion of Japan.
• Died: Ida Stover Eisenhower, 84, mother of General Dwight D. Eisenhower

  September 12, 1946 (Thursday)

• U.S. Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace delivered a speech at a rally at Madison Square Garden, contradicting the statement of foreign policy that had been made six days earlier by Secretary of State Byrnes, embarrassing President Harry S. Truman, and bringing an end to Wallace's career in government. Truman, who had glanced at the speech two days earlier, was asked at a press conference about the speech and whether it "represented the policy of his administration", and replied that it was. That evening, Wallace declared that "We have no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, Western Europe and the United States... and just two days ago, when President Truman read these words, he said they represented the policy of his Administration.". Truman compounded the error by making the excuse that "It was my intention to express the thought that I approved the right of the Secretary of Commerce to deliver that speech. I did not intend to indicate that I approved the speech" which TIME magazine described as a "clumsy lie".
• Born: Neil Lyndon, British journalist and writer, known for his book ''No More Sex War: The Failures of Feminism''

  September 13, 1946 (Friday)

• Captain Amon Göth, 37, Nazi SS officer who had carried out the mass executions of more than 13,000 Jews in Kraków and Tarnów, and the Szebnia concentration camp, was hanged, along with Dr. Leon Gross, a Jew who had collaborated with him at the Plaszow concentration camp. Captain Göth was portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in the film Schindler's List.
• Ten days after the United States launched Project Paperclip, the Soviet Union issued decree No. 2163-880s, launching Operation Osoaviakhim, to transfer German rocket production potential to the USSR.
• The Boston Red Sox clinched the American League pennant, after Ted Williams hit an inside-the-park home run for a 1–0 win over the Cleveland Indians.
• Dr. Willis J. Potts performed the first aorta-to-pulmonary artery anastomosis to correct a congenital heart defect, a surgery later called the Potts shunt. The first patient was a 21-month-old girl at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. The surgery was performed on 658 more patients until being discontinued in 1967 because of complications that often arose.
• Died: George Washington Hill, 61, President of American Tobacco Company, who increased cigarette sales worldwide over a 21-year period.