The great B. B. King was born in Mississippi.
I saw him play in 1986. He was amazing.
U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg announced that British MP, Communist Shapurji Saklatvala would not be allowed into the United States to attend the congress of the Inter-Parliamentary Union as a British delegate.
Primaries were being held.
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America and British troops landed in the Tokyo region. The US 11th Airborne Division flew into Atsugi airfield. The 4th and 6th Marine Regiments landed in the naval base at Yokosuka. General MacArthur flew from Manila to organize the US occupation and set up his temporary headquarters at Yokohama.
The USS San Juan started to evacuate Allied prisoners of war detained in the Japanese home islands.
The Royal Navy reoccupied Hong Kong.
Japanese surrenders in Burma continued..
The Allied Control Council took formal control of Germany.
A B-29 Superfortress on a supply flight crashed in bad weather in the neighbourhood of Mount Oyaji (親父岳, Oyaji-take) on Mount Sobo (祖母山). All twelve crewmen were killed.
Hồ Chí Minh invited several people to contribute their ideas toward his Declaration of Independence, including a number of American OSS officers. While there were notable exceptions, like John Burch, the OSS was heavily left leaning and indeed included a number of Communists within its ranks, something that was not really very much frowned on at the time.
Mexico recognized the Spanish Republican government in exile as the government of Spain. The Spanish Republican government in exile was located in Mexico City, having relocated there after the fall of France in World War Two. It'd return to Paris in 1946. The body would recognize the restored Spanish constitutional monarch as the legitimate government in 1977.
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Zhou Enlai (周恩来) was re-elected as Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China. Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) was elected as a Vice-Premier and Vice-Chairman of the party, ending an eight year period of political exile.
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France legalized infanticide during the first ten weeks of pregnancy.
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France rounded up over 300 communists in raids on their headquarters, including some 70 foreign ones.
Prime Minister Herriot stated: "There are too many foreign communists in France who forget their duty to the country that has given them asylum. They are indulging in political demonstrations, and we will not tolerate it, we will not let them meddle in our political life. If we meet with resistance we will break it, and we will deport as many as necessary."
Mikhail Glazman, one of Leon Trotsky’s closest advisers during the Russian Civil War, killed himself after being expelled from the Communist Party by Stalin.
Often not put in real context, something that's commonly missed about the Communists coming into power was the unending sea of blood associated with it. The rise of the Communists was bloody, the Russian Civil War was bloody, the Communist in power, even before they fully seized power was bloody, and before that quit flowing the Reds turned on other Reds, and on members of their own party. Included in the bloody pool was the blood of people like Glazman, who killed themselves for any number of reasons, some just to avoid being killed by others.
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Communists in the Reichstag filibustered Chancellor Wilhelm Marx by causing a loud disturbance of hoots and jeers when he tried to speak on the London conference ahead of a vote on the matter, thereby making it an unusual example of Marxist harassing Marx.
Democratic Presidential candidate John W. Davis condemned the Ku Klux Klan and called upon President Coolidge to do the same, thereby reviving an issue that had split the Democratic Convention.
Radio stations on Earth picked up radio transmissions that some attributed to Mars, although radio engineers dismissed this.
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Germany observed its first memorial day.
German communists disrupted a noontime two minutes of silence, with German police moving in to restore order.
Jewish Berliners held a separate service in the memory of Jewish German soldiers who were killed during the war, as a Jewish cleric was not allowed to deliver a prayer at the Reichstag ceremony held that day.
Soviet agents raided Stolpce Poland in a mission to free two members of the Communist Party of Western Belarus. Seven Polish policemen were killed but the Soviet mission failed and would cause a reassessment of such attacks.
An American plane had made the leap to Iceland in the around the world flight:
Ja'far al-Askari resigned as Prime Minister of Iraq in protest of the Constituent Assembly voting to ratify the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty approving the terms of the Mandate for Mesopotamia and making Iraq a British protectorate.
British novelist Joseph Conrad died.
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The Uman–Botoșani Offensive concluded in a wide-ranging Soviet victory. The Soviets had advanced 190 miles in one month, cleared southwestern Ukraine and entered Romania and Moldova. The offensive had been, moreover, carried out during spring mud season, the rasputitsa. It was one of the most successful Soviet advances of the war.
The Take-Ichi sendan (竹一船団, "Bamboo No. One" convoy) left Shanghai with two infantry divisions to reinforce the Philippines and western New Guinea. Its story was to be fateful and strategically important.
Fr. Max Josef Metzger, German Catholic Priest and founder of the German Catholic Peace Association, was executed by the Nazi German state. He is regarded as a Catholic martyr.
The U-342 was sunk in the North Atlantic by a RCAF PBY.
Civilian airliner Deutsche Lufthansa D-AOCA, a Junkers Ju-52/3m was shot down on scheduled service E.17 from Vienna to Athens with stops in Belgrade, Sofia, and Thessaloniki. An Allied fighter sweep of Belgrade mistook it for a military aircraft. Five of its seven occupants were killed.
A Royal Air Force Warwick passenger plane went down over the UK, creating a mystery. As the recovery of its doomed passengers occured, large amounts of cash were found with them.
United Features Syndicate began to run Bill Mauldin's Up Front in U.S. newspapers.
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The Nixon Nitration Works disaster occured in which an explosion of ammonium nitrate killed at least 18 people, destroyed several miles of New Jersey factories, and demolished Nixon, New Jersey.
While a very famous industrial disaster, the Nixon Nitration Works and Nixon New Jersey are remembered now principally for being mentioned in Band of Brothers as Cpt. Lewis Nixon III, a major character Ambrose's depiction of the 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, mentions it. Lewis Nixon was in fact a member of the family that owned the plant, and it was the case that Richard Winters, his close friend and for most of his service in Europe his superior, worked there for a time after the war.
The Nixon's were troubled in general, and Lewis Nixon III was no exception. His marriage contracted just after the start of the war failed during it, as did a subsequent one. A third marriage to Grace Umezawa, formerly a Japanese internee, was successful. She helped him overcome the alcoholism depicted during the series.
The KDP, the Communist Part of Germany, was reinstated. The KDP, together with the NADSP, the Nazi Party, would figure enormously in the destruction of German democracy as the extremes grew increasingly powerful in the remaining years of the Weimar Republic.
Alice's Day at Sea, the first of 57 Alice comedies produced by Walt Disney, appeared. They were short films meant to be shown before the feature, something at one time common.
White rats paraded in San Pedro, California.
Not a hack, but on this day, an Irish Traveler feeding his pony on this day in 1924.
A 20-year-old marrying a 15-year-old?
And she was in 6th Grade?
Today in World War II History—January 4, 1944: 80 Years Ago—Jan. 4, 1944: Church authorities at the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy give the Luftwaffe permission to remove artwork to Germany.
Sarah Sundin.
The move was taken to attempt to protect it from destruction.
Sundin also notes that the Italian Social Republic seized Jewish assets and restricted the Jewish ownership of property.
The Red Army took Bila Tserkva and further pushed the German Army Group South beyeond the pre war Polish border at Sarny. It also took Kaluga, southwest of Moscow.
German radio announced a decree to mobilize school children for war purposes.
At that point, the German people really should have realized the war was irrevocably lost and have risen up against their government.
The Polish Home Army commenced Operation Tempest, a series of local uprising that would go on for a year.
Carrier born U.S. aircraft struck Kavieng on New Ireland, damaging the destroyer Fumitsuki.
Argentina recognized Bolivia's military government.
The Roosevelt's deeded their Hyde Park house to the U.S. Government.
Jean Tatlock, American psychiatrist, and a Communist who wrote for the Western Worker, was found dead of suicide. He burned her correspondence prior to calling the authorities.
She is best remembered for having been a romantic interest of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Saxon Premier Erich Zeigner rejected Weimar's demand that Communists be dismissed from his cabinet.
Reza Khan became prime minister of Iran. The existing Shah, whom he would ultimately replace, went into voluntary exile and Khan would become the first of two Shah's of Iran. An ally of the British, he was well on his rise to power at this time.
The Submarine USS O-5 struck a United Fruit Company steamship in the Panama Canal Zone and sank.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov left Russian for Germany and self imposed exile.
It was the last day of the 1900 Summer Olympics.
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