The transitional interim government of the Dominion of India was inaugurated.
Grim cover of the Rocky Mountain News:
"Ishi", believed to be the last surviving member of the Yahi Tribe and the Yana group was found hiding in a corral near Oroville, California. He was about 50 years old and would die, after being hired as a janitor at the Museum of Anthropology, in 1916.
A California tribe, the Yahi were completely eliminated in a series of genocidal massacres by soldiers and settlers during the 19th century.
Ishi merely means "man". His real name is unknown.
Mahbub Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VI, richest prince of the Indian Empire, died at age 45.
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Direct Action Day in British India, intended to be a peaceful demonstration in favor of carving out Muslim Pakistan, turned violent resulting in more than 10,000 people being killed around Calcutta.
The Muslim minority of India was adamantly opposed to being if a federation with India's Hindu majority, something that's understandable if we consider that Indian itself is a country, but not a nation. The hope of the Muslims, at the time, was to carve out what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh into one country.
Bangladesh became independent of Pakistan, from which it differs ethnically, in 1971. I can recall it very dimly occuring.
On the same day, in the same country, the All Hyderabad Trade Union Congress (AHTUC) was formed. It was a trade union center in the Hyderabad State which was affiliated to the All India Trade Union Congress and which was aligned with the Communist Party of India.
It's easy for us to forget how strong Communism was in unions, even in some in the United States. The real kind, I might add, not the Mike Johnson, "oh my, . . .they'd rather have national health care than die in the gutter so I'm pissing my pants" sort of stuff the GOP comes up with.
Anyhow, it was very strong in Australian trade unions, where it was opposed by the Catholic Church, which is one of the reasons the Australian political left still hates the Church to this day.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party was founded in Iraq by Mustafa Barzani.
Today the party is the ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan and the senior partner in the Kurdistan Regional Government. The ideology of the party is based on conservatism, secularism, and Kurdish nationalism.
Kurdistan really should be an independent country.
The deposed former and last emperor of China, Puyi, later emperor of Manchukuo, testifies at the Tokyo Military Tribunal
Truman went on vacation:
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Howard C. Petersen, Assistant Secretary of War, announced that 131,028 American and Filipino citizens, mostly civilians, had died "as a result of war crimes" from December 7, 1941 until the end of World War II. All but 595 of that figure were Filipino.
St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception, an Indian native, died at age 35. She is the first woman of Indian origin to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church, and the first canonized saint of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.
Orson Welles read the affidavit of Sergeant Isaac Woodard on his radio show. Woodard had been blinded in a race based assault.
The Muslim League rejected British plans for a united independent India.
Lynchings in Georgia hit the nationwide press.
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The US recognized the independence of the Republic of the Philippines.
An armed uprising sparked by rent issues occured in Kadavendi, India.
The Kielce pogrom took place in Poland in which 40 Jews were murdered by a mob in Kielce, Poland. The police did not intervene. The event, in which soldiers and police participated, was sparked by a false accusation of kidnapping.
Female Stutthof Concentration Camp Guards Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff was hung for war crimes.
Stutthhof is unusual in that the majority of the inmates there were Catholic Poles, many of whom were ethnic Germans.
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The Royal Titles Act conveyed an imperial title on the King of the United Kingdom, with Queen Victoria being the first to receive the title as Empress of India.
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President Truman signed the American Employment Act of 1946.
Prime Minister Attlee announced a plan to transfer power to Indians in Indian no later than June, 1948.
The Allied occupation authorities ended kōshō, licensed prostitution, in Japan.
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The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny began at the port of Colaba. It was the first mutiny in British India since 1857.
The mutiny started over inadequate food. It would rapidly spread.
Pope Pius XII announced the appointment of 32 new cardinals. The Rocky Mountain News had an article about it.
A California Federal Court held that segregation of schools in California was unconstitutional.
President Truman signed the Rescission Act of 1946 reducing (rescinding) the amounts of certain funds already designated for specific government programs, much of it for the U.S. military.
$200 million previously appropriated to the U.S. Army for ordnance service and supplies was transferred to the Army of the Philippines by way of the act.
Eisenhower was in Denver.
Italy brought to an end a rebellion in Italian Somaliland.
Turkey passed a law bringing in the Gregorian calendar as of January 1.
Richard "Pegleg" Lonergan, of New York City's White Hand Gang, was killed along with Aaron Hyams and Neal J. Perry, after arriving drunk at the Adonis Social Club in what was basically an armed bar fight. Al Capone was the hitman.
The Communist Party of India was organized.
The East-West Shrine Game, collegiate footballs first all start game, was played at Ewing Field in San Francisco.
It was a Saturday.
Leyendecker offered a Christmas theme for his Saturday Evening Post illustration.
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Kim Il Sung arrived at Port Wonsan and began to organize the Communist Party of Korea.
Kim was born into a Presbyterian family. He fled to Manchuria in 1920 after being involved in anti Japanese activities. He was in his mid teens at the time and then attended military schools. It was while he was in China that he became interested in Communism. He was a figure in the Chinese Communist Army during the pre World War Two Chinese Civil War and then again during World War Two, crossing into the Soviet Union in 1940. He then joined the Red Army. The Soviets chose Kim in order to have a Communist figure to introduce into Korea even though he was poorly educated and by 1940 his Korean was very poor. His early life is not very well known.
British and French troops complete the suppression of the Việt Minh in Saigon.
New Zealand ratified the UN Charter.
William Joyce was sentenced to death.
The British announced that Indian would shortly be granted home rule.
Shirley temple married Sgt. John Agar, a fellow actor. She was 17 years old. Agar was 25.
The marriage wouldn't last.
Agar had a real drinking problem, although he amazingly lived to age 81. Apparently he's associated with B science fiction movies, but I always associate him with John Ford westerns. He also appeared in The Sands of Iwo Jima. He met Shirley Temple in 1943 when he escorted her to a Hollywood party. She would only have been 15 years old at the time.
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Sukarno became the first President of Indonesia.
B-32 crewman Anthony J. Marchione became the last American to die in WWII when the B-32 he was flying in over Tokyo in a photography mission was attacked by Japanese fighter aircraft in spite of the Japanese surrender. The attack on the two B-32s followed an attack the prior day on B-32s in the same locality, which the bombers were investigating. Staff Sergeant Joseph Lacharite was severely wounded and would take years to recover from his injuries.
The plane he was on was named "Hobo Queen"
The Consolidated B-32 Dominator is an almost forgotten World War Two aircraft. A competitor with the B-29, it was produced as a fallback to the B-29, and plans to replace B-17s and B-24s with the Dominator were cancelled due to production delays. 118 were built.
Indian nationalist, who sided with the Japanese during the war, died at age 48 in an airplane crash in Formosa.
The Soviets invaded the Kuril Islands, which was certainly a questionable act given the Japanese having announced their surrender. The resulting Battle of Shumshu was the last battle of the Second World War.
On the other hand, Japanese forces on the Asian mainland continued to resist Soviet advances there, albeit ineffectively.
The Japanese government was clearly having trouble getting some forces to stand down.
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The Helsinki Accords were signed by the leaders of 35 nations in Finland, including the 15 member states of NATO and the 7 Warsaw Pact nations.
The text: The Helsinki Accords.
The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment commenced in India. It brought television for the first time to 2,500 villages in six Indian states and territories.
"KNM ER 3733", a woman of the species Homo ergaster, assuming that's a distinct from homo erectus, which it probably is not, was discovered by Bernard Ngeneo. She'd passed away 1,750,000 prior.
The Republic of Cabinda declared independence, ineffectively.
The last naturally occurring case of the smallpox virus variola major was found on a woman named Saiban Bibi in the Assam state of India.
The last case of variola minor was found in Somalia, at Merca, in October 1977.
The elimination of the disease is a scientific triumph that occured in an era in which the lethality of diseases was still widely appreciated.
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