Friday, August 16, 1946. Direct Action Day and the founding of the KDP (ارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان).

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:

"A Journey into Nowhere"

Last edition:

Thursday, August 15, 1946. The Truman Doctrine.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1946 at the movies, Dardanelles, Harry S. Truman, Truman Doctrine, Turkey, USSR

Sunday, July 28, 1946. Wells exposes the assault of Sgt. Isaac Woodard, War Crimes in the Philippines, the passing of St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception.

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.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 27, 1946. No to a united India.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Bangladesh, British Empire, Ethnicities, Georgia, India, Pakistan, Racism

Saturday, July 27, 1946. No to a united India.

The Muslim League rejected British plans for a united independent India.

Lynchings in Georgia hit the nationwide press.

Last edition:

Friday, July 26, 1946. OPA back in business.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Aircraft, Hawaii, inflation, law, Nuremberg Trials, Office of Price Administration, Transportation, War Crimes

Thursday, July 4, 1946. Philippine Independence.

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.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 3, 1946. Breaking the meat famine in Denver.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Canadian Army, Food, Immigration, Office of Price Administration, Post War United States (and Canada), Rationing

Monday, May 1, 1876. The Royal Titles Act.

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.

Last edition:

Thursday, April 27, 1876. Shrinking White Mountain.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Apache People, Arizona, Ft. Apache Arizona, Native Americans, U.S. Grant, White Mountain Indian Reservation

Wednesday, February 20, 1946. Plans to transfer power in India.

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.

Last edition:

Monday, February 18, 1946 The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny breaks out.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Catholic, Christianity, Colorado (Denver), Court, Dwight Eisenhower, India, law, Philippine Army, Pope Pius XII, religion, Royal Indian Navy, Royal Indian Navy Mutiny

Monday, February 18, 1946 The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny breaks out.

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.

Last edition:

Saturday, February 16, 1946. Potato consumption. Frozen food. Helicopters.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, 1960s, 1962, Aircraft, Boy Scouts, Food, Hypocrisy, It was because of World War Two, Lebanon, Russo Ukrainian War, Sakhalin Island, Strike Wave of 1945-1946, Syria, United Nations, USSR

Saturday, December 26, 1925.

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.

And Liberty also went with a Christmas theme.

The New Yorker, however, went with a New Years theme which featured alcohol in spite of Prohibition.

Last edition:

Thursday, December 24, 1925. Non è possibile scavalcare il Capo del Governo.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 2020s, 2025, Calvin Coolidge, Donald Trump, Fascism, Italy, Mussolini, The Second Trump Administration, The written word, Women

Wednesday, September 19, 1945. Kim Il Sung returns to Korea.

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.

Navy aircraft over Inchon, September 1945.

The US banned reporting on the atomic bombs in Japan.

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.

His second marriage lasted 49 years.

He had a remarkably long film career, although many of his roles were very minor.  In World War Two he served first in the Navy, joining in 1941 and then in the Army Air Force as a physical instructor.  He was discharged from the Navy due to an ear infection.

Shirley Temple in 1943.

Temple is a film legend, of course, but had trouble transitioning from being a child actress to adult film roles, even though the ones she appeared in showed her to be a very talented adult actress.  This would lead to an early retirement from film, something that was hastened by a negative reaction to being propositioned by MGM figure Arthur Freed and Louis B. Mayer on the same day, when she was only 12, leading to her returning to Fox from MGM without much success.  She later became the US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the Reagan Administration.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 18, 1945. The first desegregation student protest.

Labels: 1910s, 1940s, 1945, 1945 at the movies, actors and actresses, Chinese Civil War, Education, Henry L. Stimson, Indiana, Movies, Nationalist Chinese Army, People's Liberation Army, Racism, Roosevelt, Rust Belt, Taft

Saturday, August 18, 1945. The last American KIA of World War Two. Anthony J. Marchione.

Sukarno became the first President of Indonesia.

A B-32, an obscure bomber that was a competitor of the B-29.

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.

Last edition:

Friday, August 17, 1945. The long trip of the U-977.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Dutch East Indies, Dutch Empire, German Kriegsmarine, Hirohito, Indonesia, Indonesian National Revolution, It was because of World War Two, Nationalist Chinese Army, The written word, World War Two

Friday, August 1, 1975. The Helsinki Accords.

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.

Flag of Cabinda.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 30, 1975. Hoffa goes missing.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Crime, Mafia, Unions

Monday, June 24, 1945. Brandenburg Ballerina.

Junior Sergeant Lydia Spivak (Лидия Спивак), Red Army Traffic Regulator, June 1945.  She became locally famous in this role and was tagged the Brandenburg Ballerina or The Mistress of Brandenburg Gate.  She would have been 19 or 20 years old at the time and had been in the Red Army since she was 17.  She was a Ukrainian, and served in a transportation unit.  Like most Red Army soldiers, not that much is known about her in the West and indeed she's often confused with another female Soviet soldier who served in the same role.  Having said that, this role did make her into a type of celebrity and she did resurface from time to time, including once in the 1950s when she toured the area in which this video was shot.*  She passed away at age 59.  This is a truncated interview, and there is more to it.  It was impromptu, which is impressive.

US forces took Tuguegarao and Gattaran on Luzon.

Australian forces completed the occupation of the Miro oilfield on Borneo.

The Simla Conference to discuss the future Indian government of India began in Simla, India.

Seán T. O'Kelly became 2nd President of Ireland and Einar Gerhardsen became Prime Minister of Norway.

Footnotes:

*Ms. Spivak by that time was aging rapidly. By the 50s she'd gained a lot of weight and by the time of her sad early death she had aged rapidly  by western standards and looked much older than her 59 years.  She was undeniably cute and lively in 1945, and in later photographs the liveliness seems undiminished in spite of her aging.  She achieved her original goal of becoming a teacher, and in fact became a university professor and married another professor

Spivak is often confused with Maria Limanskaya (Мария Лиманскаяwho) served in the same role in Berlin.  She was a Russian and lived to age 100, dying last year, although oddly enough in some ways had a harder post war life, marrying than divorcing her first husband, and raising two children for a time on her own.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 24, 1945. A parade in Moscow.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, USSR, World War Two

Saturday, May 24, 1975. Virus variola major.

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.  

Last edition:

Friday, May 23, 1975. Leaving Laos.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, 1990s, 1992, Cambodia, Crime, Diplomacy, Gerald Ford, Laos, Laotian Civil War, Lebanon, Refugees, Unions, United States, Vietnam

Monday, April 14, 1975. Collapse In Viet Nam

Operation Babylift concluded.

Congressional staff members, Richard Moose and Charles Miessner, back from South Vietnam released a report stating that "no one including the Vietnamese military believes that more aid could reverse the flow of events." 

Their report further stated that evacuation of Americans from Saigon was being resisted by Ambassador Graham Martin and other senior officials.

The cover of Time featured a crying Vietnamese child and the words "Collapse in Viet Nam".

Soviet power lifter Vasily Ivanovich Alekseyev appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Widely admired all over the globe, he died at age 69 of heart problems, something not all that uncommon for the very bulky.

The Federal Election Commission commenced operating.

Sikkim voted to merge into India.

Actor Fredric March passed away at age 77.  He acted for many years, but is best recalled by me for his role in The Best Years Of Our Lives.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 13, 1975. Start of the Lebanese Civil War.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Apostolic Christianity, Canada, Chad, Christianity, Islam, Lebanese Civil War, Levant, Levantines, Maronite Catholic, Music, Operation Babylift, Operation Eagle Pull, Palestinians, religion