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70 Years Ago Last Year (Part 4)
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Timeline entries are quoted from Wiki pages for the month or year. Sections separated from timeline entries are mine.
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October 2, 1950
- The comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz, was published for the first time, in seven U.S. newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Seattle Times....Schulz's final installment would appear on February 13, 2000, the day after his death.
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1950/10/02
- Tom Corbett, Space Cadet began a three-season run on CBS television, as a competitor to the DuMont network science fiction program Captain Video and His Video Rangers. With a larger budget than Captain Video, the 15-minute segments appeared on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6:45 in the evening. The show was inspired by the Robert A. Heinlein science fiction novel, Space Cadet, and starred Frankie Thomas in the title role.
- Lux Video Theatre, a television adaptation of the popular anthology, Lux Radio Theatre, began a seven-season run. Telecast live for its first three years, the show premiered on CBS with a 30-minute adaptation of the Maxwell Anderson play Saturday's Children.
October 3 –
Beulah, the first television series to star an African-American, premiered on the ABC television network, with actress and comedienne Ethel Waters as the title character, the Negro maid for a white family, the Hendersons.
Beulah [is] now considered an example of the stereotype of African Americans that was popular prior to the 1960s, although Beulah herself was portrayed as smarter than her employers. The show had been adapted from a radio comedy series of the same name, and would run for three seasons.
October 4 – Snoopy, the most famous dog in comic strip history, made his first appearance in the comic strip
Peanuts. He would not be identified by name until May 22, 1951. His thoughts would become a regular part of the story starting on May 27, 1952, and he would begin walking upright starting on January 9, 1956.
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1950/10/04
October 12 –
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show premiered on the CBS television network after the husband and wife comedy team became the latest to make a transition from radio. The radio program had run for 13 years as
The Burns and Allen Show. Gracie Allen reportedly was "petrified" during the initial live broadcast because she had never had to memorize her lines before; on the radio, she was always able to read from her script without being seen by the home audience.
October 13 – The drama film
All About Eve, starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, and Celeste Holm, was released.
October 16 – C. S. Lewis's novel
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of
The Chronicles of Narnia series, was first published, released by British publisher Geoffrey Bles, followed by Macmillan Publishers in the United States on November 7. Lewis had completed the book at the end of March, 1949.
October 19
- United Nations troops won the Battle of Pyongyang, as American troops from the United States Army's 1st Cavalry became the first U.S. forces to march into Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. After fighting a final battle with North Korean forces at Chunghwa, the cavalry drove the remaining ten miles to find that the city was nearly deserted.
- Hours later, General Peng Dehuai, accompanied by an assistant and two bodyguards, traveled across the Yalu River between Dandong, China, and Sinuiju, North Korea, then ordered the bulk of the People's Volunteer Army. As dusk fell at 5:30 p.m., the mass invasion of North Korea from China got underway, with 255,000 Chinese troops crossing the Yalu River over three different bridges.
October 22 – On the day that the Internal Security Act of 1950 (popularly known as the McCarran Act) went into effect, the United States Department of Justice began a series of "midnight raids" across the nation, arresting resident aliens who were suspected of subversive activities.
October 23 – Died: Al Jolson, 64, American musician once known as "The World's Greatest Actor", best known for starring in the first sound film,
The Jazz Singer. A month earlier, Jolson had become the first major entertainer to travel to Korea to boost the morale of U.S. soldiers there. Reportedly, Jolson was playing the card game gin rummy with friends at his suite at the Hotel St. Francis when he suffered his fatal heart attack.
October 28 – Radio and film comedian Jack Benny brought his show to television with the premiere of a live broadcast from New York of
The Jack Benny Program, opening with the one-liner "I'd give a million dollars to know what I look like on television." He and his supporting cast would continue the radio show for five more years, and his TV program, sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes, would run until 1964, winning eight Emmy awards along the way.
[Brought to you by Lucky Strike, with that rich, cool, carcinogenic taste!]
October 31 – Earl Lloyd became the first African-American to play in a National Basketball Association game. One of four black players in the newly integrated NBA, Lloyd played for the Washington Capitols in the opener for the league's fifth season, at Rochester, New York, in the only game scheduled that night. Lloyd scored two field goals and two free throws in the Caps' 78–70 loss to the Rochester Royals.
November 1 – Two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate the U.S. President, Harry S. Truman. At 2:15 p.m., Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, aware that President Truman was staying at the Blair House while the White House was undergoing repairs, attacked the residence at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. in Washington, DC. Collazo tried to break in through the front door, and shot U.S. Capitol police officer Donald Birdzell in the knee, but was wounded by three other Secret Service agents. Torresola fired multiple shots at White House police officer Leslie Coffelt and mortally wounded him, but Coffelt returned fire and killed Torresola instantly. Coffelt died several hours later. Collazo would be sentenced to death, but Truman would commute his sentence to life imprisonment. On September 6, 1979, Collazo would be released after his sentence was altered to time served by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and pass away on February 21, 1994.
November 2 – Died: George Bernard Shaw, 94, Irish writer, 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate
November 5 –
Hour of Decision, a weekly radio broadcast by evangelist Billy Graham, was heard for the first time. Graham's sermons, both live and pre-recorded, have been heard every Sunday since then on the ABC Radio Network, then in syndicated form, and online.
November 8 – Flying an
F-80C jet fighter, United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown intercepted a North Korean
MiG-15 near the Yalu River and reported that he shot it down, in the first jet-to-jet dogfight in history.
November 9 – The adventure film
King Solomon's Mines, starring Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, and Richard Carlson, premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
November 10
- A U.S. Air Force B-50 Superfortress bomber, experiencing an in-flight emergency, jettisoned and detonated a Mark IV nuclear bomb at 2,500 feet above the Saint Lawrence River, near Saint-André, Quebec. Slightly before 4:00 p.m., the explosion rocked the town and caused a thick cloud of yellow smoke. The plutonium core had been removed before transport, so the blast was limited to a conventional chemical explosion used to destroy the weapon, but 100 pounds of uranium were scattered in the river, and the weapon was never recovered.
- U.S. Navy Lt. Commander William T. Amen, flying an F9F Panther jet fighter, struck a Russian piloted MiG-15 jet fighter in Korea. Although Russian historians dispute whether Russell Brown had downed a MiG-15 two days earlier, it is agreed that the Amen scored a kill, with the Russian MiG crashing into a small hill.
- The Interstate Commerce Commission ordered the end of racial segregation in the dining cars of trains that traveled interstate routes, effective December 15. In response, the Southern Railway said that it ceased the practice four months earlier, on July 1, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad had discontinued the practice of barring black passengers from sitting in dining cars previously reserved for white travelers. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, however, said that it would wait until the order was received and studied by its legal department.
November 14 – Jack Mullin, working on an investment by Ampex and Bing Crosby Enterprises, filed the first patent for a videotape recorder. U.S. Patent 2,794,066 would be issued on May 28, 1957.
November 18 – "Harbor Lights" by Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra topped the
Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart.
November 19 – At its annual meeting, the American Red Cross board of governors voted to discontinue the endorsement of putting racial designations on blood donations. "It has long been known that human blood is all alike, from whatever race it comes", the press release noted.
November 21 – A rocket launched from Los Alamos, New Mexico, snapped a picture of the earth below it after it reached its peak altitude of 107 miles. At the time, it set a record for the highest altitude from which a photograph had been taken.
November 24
- An unusually strong winter storm, that would eventually kill 383 Americans, began east of the Appalachian Mountains. With hurricane-force winds, the storm affected 22 of the 48 United States, primarily in the northeastern U.S. The storm had first been noted at 7:30 pm Eastern time, with temperatures plummeting during the afternoon, and the collision of cold and warm air masses produced winds of more than 50 miles per hour. Within two days, there were 211 deaths in 21 states, the majority of them heart attacks that had been brought about by shoveling snow.
- The Frank Loesser musical Guys and Dolls premiered on Broadway, at the 46th Street Theatre, and would go on for 1,200 performances, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. Among the songs written for the play were "Luck Be a Lady" and "A Bushel and a Peck".
November 28 – The 723 residents of Ellenton, South Carolina, were notified on a noon radio broadcast that their town was going to be relocated so that construction could begin for the Savannah River Site, a plant for the making of plutonium and tritium for hydrogen bomb construction. The E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company had concluded that cooling pipes for the Savannah River nuclear reactors would need to run through the land occupied by Ellenton. The Atomic Energy Commission would agree on December 28 to the measure. Subsequently, the homes and buildings in Ellenton, and of another 5300 people in Aiken County and Barnwell County, were moved to a site 14 miles away, and the city of New Ellenton, South Carolina was created.
November 30 – At a press conference, U.S. President Truman frightened many when he answered reporters following up on his statement that the United States would "take whatever steps are necessary to meet the military situation in Korea". When Jack Dougherty of the
Daily News of New York asked, "Will that include the atomic bomb?", Truman replied, "That includes every weapon that we have." Paul R. Leach of the
Chicago Daily News then asked, "Does that mean that there is active consideration of the use of the atomic bomb?", and Truman said, "There has always been active consideration of its use." A third reporter, Merriman Smith of United Press, asked Truman "Did we understand you clearly" about active consideration of atomic weapons in Korea, and the President reaffirmed that it "always has been. It is one of our weapons." Concern was so strong that Prime Minister Attlee of the United Kingdom flew to Washington for an emergency meeting with the President.
December 1 – The Federal Civil Defense Administration was created by Executive Order 10186 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman. In 1958, its functions would be assumed by the Office of Defense Mobilization.
December 2
- The Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River ends with the Chinese People's Volunteer Army expelling United Nations forces from North Korea.
- The science fiction short story collection I, Robot by Isaac Asimov was published.
- The novelty song "The Thing" by Phil Harris hit #1 on the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart.
December 4 – A Pan American World Airways Boeing 307 Strato-Clipper set a new record time for a commercial flight from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Los Angeles California, making the trip in 7 hours 20 minutes.
December 8 – The Mersey ferry, MV
Royal Iris, was launched at Dumbarton. Originally painted in a green and cream livery, the ship was distinctive in having a forward dummy funnel near her bridge and two exhaust stacks amidships, on both sides. Onboard amenities would include a dancefloor and stage, tea room, buffet, cocktail bar, and a fish and chip saloon, later earning the ship the nickname "the fish and chip boat".
December 9 – The catalytic converter for gasoline combustion engine automobiles was announced by French-born American mechanical engineer Eugene Houdry. At a press conference in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, Houdry explained that "we have found a way to change deadly carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, and said that "the streets and highways will smell a lot better, and accidental deaths of motorists from carbon monoxide in vehicles should be eliminated."
December 11
- The Hungnam evacuation started and continued for fifteen days, allowing 105,000 troops (mostly from the U.S. X Army Corps and the South Korean 1st Army Corps) to be evacuated from North Korea, along with 91,000 civilians. All serviceable equipment was taken out, including 17,500 vehicles and 350,000 tons of cargo. The evacuees from Hungnam harbor were protected by U.S. Navy air support from seven aircraft carriers, and by shelling from 13 ships. Fortunately, China and North Korea did not seriously interfere with the process, which would end on December 26.
- For the first time, the United States Atomic Energy Commission established rules for the maximum measurable level of exposure to radiation.
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On December 11, 1950,
All-Star Comics #57 (cover date Feb.-Mar. 1951) hits the stands, featuring the last Golden Age appearances of the Justice Society of America and all of its remaining members except Wonder Woman--including the Golden Age Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Atom. With
issue #58 (cover date Apr.-May 1951), the series will be rebranded as
All-Star Western. This, more than any other milestone, marks the end of the Golden Age of Comics. (Note that when
All-Star Comics is revived in the 1970s, it ignores
All-Star Western's ten-year run and picks up at #58.)
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December 12 – Announcing an early version of sending printed materials to subscribers electronically, RCA Laboratories unveiled what it called "the first atomic facsimile library". The press release noted that it would give scientists "quick access to any scientific information anywhere that telephone lines can reach". The collection of nuclear science information was located at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. RCA reported that the first test of what is now referred to as "faxing" a document was when a scientist at the Y-12 electromagnetic separation plant needed a two-page report from the library and that "He had it complete in four and a half minutes."
December 17 – Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Hinton shot down a Soviet MiG-15 fighter while flying one of four
F-86 Sabre jets that the United States Air Force was using in combat for the first time, going up against four MiGs in a battle involving eight jet fighters. The downed MiG-15 was piloted by Major Yakov Efromeenko, who ejected safely before his plane crashed. F-86 pilots would shoot down another 791 Soviet-built fighters during the war.
December 18 – President Truman ordered the establishment of the Nevada Proving Ground so that nuclear weapons testing could be performed within the continental United States, and the American stockpile of atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs could be rapidly increased during the national emergency. There were five proposed locations, all of them federally owned, and the other four choices were at White Sands in New Mexico; Dugway Proving Ground in Utah; a fifty-mile strip of land between Fallon and Eureka, Nevada; or Pamlico Sound near Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Three days later, the Atomic Energy Commission would lease a 350 square mile portion of the U.S. Air Force's Tonopah Bombing and Gunnery Range in Nye County, Nevada, 65 miles away from Las Vegas. The ground, renamed the Nevada Test Site, would be added to over the years. The desert site itself was relatively unpopulated, 25 miles away from the towns of Indian Springs and Cactus Springs. Six weeks after the selection, an atomic bomb would be detonated at Frenchman Flat on January 27, 1951.
December 20 – By a vote of 247-1, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, providing three billion dollars of funding for fallout shelters nationwide and for other preparations for a nuclear war.
December 21
- One of the most well-known articles of clothing in comic strips was introduced, when Charlie Brown was first seen in his "zig-zag T-shirt". Cartoonist Charles M. Schulz had added the distinction in order to set Charlie Brown apart from the rest of the strip's characters.
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1950/12/21
- The comedy-drama film Harvey, starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull, was released in the United States.
December 22 – Napalm was used for the first time in war in Vietnam, when High Commissioner de Lattre ordered the French Air Force to bomb a concentrated group of Viet Minh guerillas in the Tiên Yên District. Over the next several decades, the highly flammable petroleum compound of napalm would burn thousands of Vietnamese people to death in carpet bombing campaigns.
December 23 – The United States made its first commitment to aiding a war in Southeast Asia when it joined France, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in signing what is referred to as the pentaleral agreement. The U.S. would support France's war against the Viet Minh guerillas by loaning 1.2 billion dollars worth of tanks, aircraft, and small arms and ammunition for four years. Under the agreement, the title to the equipment was to revert to the United States "at the conclusion of hostilities". After France departed from Vietnam in 1954, the United States would use the goal of recovery of the materials as "a convenient pretext to place more American personnel in Vietnam".
December 30
- After a successful run on Los Angeles station KECA-TV, Space Patrol made its national television debut, on the ABC television network. The setting of the half-hour-long science fiction adventure series was 1,000 years in the future, in the year 2950 of the 30th Century, with Commander Buzz Corry and his sidekick, Cadet Happy, flying for the United Planets Space Patrol. The maiden episode was "Treachery on Mars". Live telecasts were made in Los Angeles at 6:00 pm Pacific time, and kinescope recordings were sent to other ABC affiliates.
- The comedy film At War with the Army starring the team of Martin and Lewis (in their first starring feature) premiered in San Francisco.
- "The Tennessee Waltz" by Patti Page topped the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart.
December 31 – Seoul was invaded for the third time in seven months as the Chinese 13th Army attacked the Republic of Korea Army's 1st, 2nd, 5th and 6th Infantry Divisions along the 38th parallel, breaching United Nations Forces' defenses at the Imjin River, Hantan River, Gapyeong and Chuncheon in the process. China's "Third Phase Offensive" began at dusk on New Year's Eve, and would reach Seoul by January 4. The First Phase had been halting the advance of UN Troops toward China, and the Second Phase had been the retaking of North Korea.
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That's what I figured, but I thought they might be specific about nudity or drug references or vocabulary words or something.
They left that much to the imagination. There was a bit about how the cast's costumes hadn't arrived yet, and the Chief not being able to tell the difference.
Ah, interesting. The guy in Godspell wears a Superman tee shirt.
Sally's was more of an athletic shirt.
Aw, man, I thought this one was epic.
The gunplay was a bit expedient, yes, to keep it short, but also you've got to play it a little different with the Undead.
The IMF would trick them into losing their sense of day and night and expose them to sunlight.
True. I'd like to see what these old-style department stores were like. All I can picture is the old layaway window at Orbit's.
I'm taking their word for it, but what they're basically saying is that this was the start of the Wal-Mart/K-Mart/Target-type discount store.
