Events 1 - 200 of 363
Paul Harvey
Jan 1 Chicago broadcaster Paul Harvey begins his national radio program "Paul Harvey News and Comment" from WENR-AM for the ABC network
- Jan 1 Massive Chinese/North Korean assault on UN-lines
- Jan 2 Philip Barry's play "Second Threshold," premieres in NYC
- Jan 3 9 Jewish Kremlin physicians "exposed" as British/US agents
- Jan 4 Korean War: Chinese forces recapture Seoul
- Jan 6 Ganghwa massacre: Hundreds of South Korean communist sympathisers are slaughtered
- Jan 6 Indianapolis Olympians beat Rochester Royals, 75-73 in NBA-record 6 overtimes; also the longest game in NBA history
- Jan 9 "Life After Tomorrow", 1st film to receive an "X" rating, premieres
- Jan 9 Washington Capitals NBA team folds
- Jan 10 1st jet passenger trip made
Richards #2 Goal Scorer
Jan 10 Maurice Richard scores his 16th career hat trick in the Montreal Canadiens' 3-0 win over NY Rangers to bring his career total to 274 goals; passes Howie Morenz as NHL's #2 all-time leading goal scorer
- Jan 10 UN headquarters opens in Manhattan NY
Charles vs. Oma
Jan 12 Ezzard Charles TKOs Lee Oma in 10 for heavyweight boxing title
- Jan 13 German general Christian Hansen freed early from Dutch prison
- Jan 15 "Cloud of Death" rolls down Mount Lamington, New Guinea kills 3-5,000
- Jan 15 Ilse Koch, also known as "The Bitch of Buchenwald", is sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court
- Jan 15 Supreme Court rule "clear & present danger" of incitement to riot is not protected speech & can be a cause for arrest
- Jan 16 Viet Minh offensive against Hanoi
- Jan 16 World's largest gas pipeline opens (Brownsville Texas, to 134th St, New York City)
- Jan 17 China refuses ceases-fire in Korea
- Jan 18 1951 NFL Draft: Kyle Rote from SMU first pick by New York Giants
- Jan 18 1st use of lie detector in the Netherlands
- Jan 18 Hermann Flake sentenced to death due to "hate campaign against GDR"
- Jan 18 Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea erupts, killing 2,942 people
- Jan 18 NFL rules tackles, guards & centers ineligible for forward pass
- Jan 18 NFL takes control of failing Baltimore Colts
- Jan 22 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Johncrowe Ransom
Event of Interest
Jan 22 Fidel Castro is ejected from a Winter League baseball game after hitting a batter
Baseball Hall of Fame
Jan 26 Mel Ott and Jimmie Foxx are elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame
- Jan 27 US begins 126 nuclear tests at Nevada Test Site
- Jan 28 "La Vie Commence Demain" the 1st X-rated movie, depicting artificial insemination, opens in London
- Jan 28 American and Bermudan naturalist discover nesting site of Bermuda petrel, a sea bird also known as cahow; the species was thought extinct since 1615, but sporadic sightings spawned an expedition to some remote rocky crags off of Bermuda
- Jan 28 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- Jan 29 Baseball signs 6 year All-Star pact for TV-radio rights for $6 million
- Jan 30 Belgium refuses to allow communists to make speeches on radio
- Feb 1 -50°F (-46°C), Gavilan, New Mexico (state record)
- Feb 1 1st X-ray moving picture process demonstrated
- Feb 1 Arms manufacturer Alfred Krupp (43) and 28 other convicted German war criminals granted amnesty
- Feb 1 UN condemns People's Republic of China as aggressor in Korea
- Feb 1 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site; 1st live television broadcast of such detonation by KTLA in Los Angeles, California at 5:30 AM local time
- Feb 2 -35°F (-37°C), Greensburg, Indiana (state record until 1994)
- Feb 2 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
"The Victor Borge Show"
Feb 3 "The Victor Borge Show" debuts on NBC-TV
- Feb 3 Dick Button wins US skating title for 6th time
- Feb 3 Largest purse to date in horse racing, $144,323, won by Great Circle
"The Rose Tattoo"
Feb 3 Tennessee Williams' play "The Rose Tattoo" premieres in NYC
- Feb 6 "Broker Special" train crashes in Woodbridge NJ, killing 84
- Feb 6 Radio commentator Paul Harvey arrested for trying to sneak into Argonne National Laboratory, a nuclear test site located 20 miles (32 km) west of Chicago, Illinois
- Feb 6 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site Argonne Atomic Lab (Ill), to demonstrate lax in security
Browns Sign Paige
Feb 9 St Louis Browns sign pitcher Satchel Paige, 45
- Feb 10 "John and Marsha" by Stan Freberg, a parody of daytime soap operas which had only two voices repeating each other's names, peaks at #21 in the USA
1st General Election in the Gold Coast
Feb 11 Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention People's Party wins 1st legislative general election in the Gold Coast (Ghana) in a landslide
Sports History
Feb 14 Sugar Ray Robinson defeats Jake LaMotta & takes middleweight title
- Feb 16 NYC passes bill prohibiting racism in city-assisted housing
- Feb 16 San Francisco City Hall dome fire
Sports History
Feb 17 Detroit right wing Gordie Howe scores his 100th career NHL goal and adds an assist in a 2-1 Red Wings' victory over the Canadiens, in Montreal, Quebec
- Feb 18 3 City College of NY basketball players admit to accepting bribes
- Feb 18 Nepal becomes a constitutional monarchy
- Feb 18 Netherlands Radio School forms
- Feb 21 South Carolina House of Representatives urges "Shoeless Joe" Jackson be reinstated by Major League Baseball
- Feb 24 Ice Pairs Championship at Milan won by Ria Baran & Paul Falk of GER
- Feb 24 Ladies' Figure Skating Champion in Milan won by Jeanette Altwegg of Great Britain
- Feb 25 1st Pan American Games opens (Buenos Aires Argentina)
- Feb 26 Bread rationing in Czechoslovakia begins
- Feb 27 22nd amendment ratified, limiting US Presidents to 2 terms
- Feb 28 French government of Pleven dissolves
- Feb 28 Senate committee reports of at least 2 major US crime syndicates
- Mar 3 Bill Mikvy of Temple University scores NCAA basketball record 73 points, including 54 straight, in 93-69 win on the road at Wilkes College [1]
- Mar 6 Belgium extends conscription to 24 months
Rosenberg Trial
Mar 6 Trial of Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel Rosenberg begins for providing top-secret information to the Soviet Union
- Mar 7 Ezzard Charles beats Jersey Joe Walcott in 15 for 2nd time to win National Boxing Association world heavyweight title, at the Olympia in Detroit, Michigan
Autumn Garden
Mar 7 Lillian Hellman's play "Autumn Garden" premieres on Broadway in NYC
- Mar 8 Intl Table Tennis Federation bans Egypt (for refusing to play Israel)
Hydrogen Bomb Proposed
Mar 9 Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam submit a classified paper at the Los Alamos lab, in which they proposed their revolutionary new design, staged implosion, for a practical megaton-range hydrogen bomb
Hoover Declines Post
Mar 10 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declines post of baseball commissioner
- Mar 12 Baseball Commish Happy Chandler loses fight (9-7) to stay in office
- Mar 12 Comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appears in the British comic magazine The Beano'
- Mar 12 Communist troops driven out of Seoul
- Mar 13 2nd Dutch government of Drees forms
- Mar 13 Israel demands DM 6.2 billion compensation from Germany
Event of Interest
Mar 14 Bess Fosburgh Kaiser, wife of Henry J. Kaiser, dies
- Mar 14 Earthquake at Euskirchen, Germany
- Mar 15 Persia nationalizes Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
- Mar 15 UN forces recapture Seoul, the fourth and final time the city changes hands in the Korean War
- Mar 17 Government of Drees takes power
- Mar 17 Test cricket debut of great English fast bowler Brian Statham, England v NZ at Christchurch; goes on to play 70 Tests, 252 wickets @ 24.84
- Mar 18 LPGA Titleholders Championship Women's Golf, Augusta CC: Pat O'Sullivan wins her only major title by 2 strokes from fellow amateur Beverly Hanson
- Mar 18 William Grant Still's Symphony No. 4 ("Autochthonous"), premiere performance, by the Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra with Victor Alessandro conducting
- Mar 19 Herman Wouk's novel "The Caine Mutiny" published (Pulitzer Prize 1952)
- Mar 20 Fujiyoshida, a city located in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, in the center of the Japanese main island of Honshū is founded
- Mar 20 Indonesian army offensive against Darul Islam on Java
- Mar 21 2,900,000 US soldiers in Korea
- Mar 23 Wages in France increase 11%
- Mar 25 5th Tony Awards: "Guys & Dolls" (musical) and "The Rose Tattoo" (play) win
- Mar 25 Edward Mills Purcell and Harold I. Ewen detect 21-cm radiation at Harvard physics lab
Air Force Flag
Mar 26 United States Air Force flag officially adopted by President Harry S. Truman
I'm a Fool to Want You
Mar 27 Frank Sinatra records "I'm a Fool to Want You"
Academy Awards
Mar 29 23rd Academy Awards: "All About Eve", Judy Holliday and José Ferrer win
Event of Interest
Mar 29 American citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted and sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union
Music Premiere
Mar 30 1st performance of Walter Piston's 4th Symphony commissioned to mark the University of Minnesota's centennial, debuts by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Antal Doráti conducting
Royal Dutch Visit
Apr 4 Dutch Prince Bernhard visits Argentine President Juan and Eva Perón in Buenos Aires
A Place in the Sun
Apr 5 "A Place in the Sun", film adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy", directed by George Stevens, starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters premieres at the Cannes Film Festival in France
- Apr 5 Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, atomic spies, sentenced to death
- Apr 7 American Bowling Congress begins 1st masters tournament
- Apr 7 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll
Truman Relieves MacArthur
Apr 11 US President Harry Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command in Korea
Sports History
Apr 17 NY Yankee Mickey Mantle's 1st game, he goes 1 for 4
- Apr 18 Dutch Antilles government of Da Costa Gomez forms
- Apr 18 France, West Germany & Benelux form European Steel & Coal Community
- Apr 19 General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career
- Apr 20 4th Cannes Film Festival: "Miss Julie" directed by Alf Sjoberg and "Miracle in Milan" directed by Vittorio De Sica jointly awarded the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film
- Apr 20 Huge ticker-tape parade held in NYC for World War II and Korean War General Douglas MacArthur after he was relieved of Command by President Truman
- Apr 20 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll
- Apr 20 Velsen city council demands investigation of police collaborators
- Apr 21 Stanley Cup Final, Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, ON: Toronto Maple Leafs beat Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 for a 4-1 series victory
Brielsche Mausoleum
Apr 26 Queen Juliana of the Netherlands opens Brielsche Mausoleum
Mosaddegh Prime Minister
Apr 28 Mohammad Mosaddegh elected Prime Minister of Iran by the Parliament of Iran (Majlis)
- Apr 29 China seizes the assets of the Asiatic Petroleum Company, a joint venture between the Shell and Royal Dutch oil companies in retaliation for the Hong Kong Government's requisitioning of the tanker Yung Hao
- May 1 600,000 march for peace & freedom in Germany
- May 1 Dutch Reformed Church introduces new church choir
- May 1 Future Baseball Hall of Fame slugger Mickey Mantle hits first career home run in 8-3 win v White Sox in Chicago; Minnie Miñoso homers in Sox debut
- May 3 Gil McDougald ties major league record with 6 RBIs in 1 inning
- May 3 NY Yankee Gil McDougald is 5th to get 6 RBIs in an inning (9th)
- May 3 Royal Festival Hall opens in London
- May 3 The Festival of Britain opens
- May 6 Pitts Pirate Cliff Chambers no-hits Boston Brave, 3-0
- May 7 International Olympic committee allows Russia to participate in 1952 Olympics
- May 7 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded to Conrad Richter, for his novel "The Town"
- May 8 Dacron men's suits introduced
- May 8 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll
- May 9 Air raid on Chinese positions at Yalu River
- May 10 Z Alexander Looby elected to Nashville City Council
- May 11 American engineer Jay Forrester applies for patent for computer core memory
- May 14 "The Ernie Kovacs Show", a television variety program debuts on NBC-TV
- May 15 AT&T becomes the first US corporation to have a million stockholders after young car salesman Brady Denton purchases 7 shares worth $1,078
First Vaginoplasty
May 15 First vaginoplasty procedure (sex reassignment surgery) in the UK performed on Roberta Cowell by Harold Gillies
- May 15 Polish cultural attache in Paris, Czesław Miłosz, asks the French government for political asylum
- May 16 The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (New York International Airport) and Heathrow Airport (London), operated by El Al Israel Airlines
- May 18 US General Collins predicts use of atom bomb in Korea
- May 21 The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition - a gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively know as the New York School.
Theater Premiere
May 23 Peter Ustinov's play "Love of Four Colonels" premieres in London
- May 23 Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet signed in Beijing, formally establishes Chinese sovereignty over Tibet
- May 24 Racial segregation in Washington, D.C. restaurants ruled illegal
- May 24 US performs nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll (atmospheric tests)
Baseball History
May 25 New York Giants outfielder Willie Mays (20) plays 1st major league game, an 8-5 win over the Phillies at Shibe Park in Philadelphia; he bats 0 for 5
- May 26 Vaughan Williams' "Pilgrim's Progress" premieres in London
Dalai Lama Surrenders
May 27 Chinese Communists force Dalai Lama to surrender his army to Beijing
- May 28 After starting MLB career going 0-for-12, New York Giants Willie Mays connects for his 1st major league home run in a 4-1 loss to the Boston Braves at the Polo Grounds, NYC
- May 28 Bernardus Johannes Alfrink appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Utrecht and Titular Archbishop of Tyana
Radio Premiere
May 28 Radio programme "Crazy People" (later titled The Goon Show) premieres on the BBC, created by Spike Milligan
- May 28 The Jerry Colonna Show debuts on ABC-TV
- May 29 1st North Pole flight in single engine plane-CF Blair
- May 30 Ezzard Charles beats Joey Maxim in 15 for heavyweight boxing title
- May 31 Netherlands & South Africa sign cultural accord
- Jun 1 1st self-contained titanium plant opens (Henderson Nevada)
- Jun 1 International Cheese treaty signed
- Jun 1 Massey Commission issues its landmark report in Canada, advocating for funding wide range of cultural activities (resulted in the founding of the National Library of Canada) [1]
- Jun 4 Pirate's' Gus Bell hits for cycle helps beat Phillies 12-4
- Jun 9 "Doodles Weaver Show" debuts on NBC-TV
- Jun 11 Mozambique becomes an oversea province of Portugal
- Jun 11 NY Times reports the NYC subway will auction off unclaimed items left behind on the trains
- Jun 13 UN arm forces reach Pyongyang Korea
- Jun 14 1st commercial computer, UNIVAC 1, enters service at Census Bureau
De
Jun 18 Charles De Gaulle wins French parliamentary election
- Jun 18 In South Africa, the Suppression of Communism Act commences
- Jun 20 Cleveland Indian Bobby Avila hits 3 HRs, double & single vs Red Sox
- Jun 20 Fist major revision of Canada's Indian Act; removes political, cultural and religious restrictions for First Nations Peoples, like the potlatch and sun dance [1]
Sports History
Jun 21 LPGA Western Open Women's Golf, Whitemarsh Valley CC: Patty Berg defeats Pat O'Sullivan, 2-up in the final
1st Color TV Broadcast
Jun 25 First color TV broadcast, Arthur Godfrey hosts a musical variety special titled "Premiere" from CBS NYC to a network of 5 East Coast cities
- Jun 28 "Amos 'n' Andy" premieres on CBS TV
- Jun 30 "Victor Borge Show" last airs on NBC-TV
- Jun 30 NAACP begins attack on school segregation & discrimination
Sports History
Jul 1 Cleveland Indians veteran hurler Bob Feller pitches his 3rd career no-hitter beating Detroit Tigers, 2-1
- Jul 2 "Bob & Ray show" premieres on NBC radio
Sports History
Jul 2 Bill Veeck buys MLB St Louis Browns from Bill & Charlie DeWitt; after 1953 season sells franchise to Clarence Miles, who move team Baltimore (Orioles)
- Jul 2 Island advisor of Curacao installed
- Jul 2 Leidse astronomers discover radio signal out of Milky Way system
- Jul 2 Worcestershire cricket wicket-keeper Hugo Yarnold makes a record 6 stumpings in an innings in a 1st-class match vs Scotland at Dundee
Historic Invention
Jul 5 Dr William Shockley invents the junction transistor at Murray Hill, New Jersey
Sports History
Jul 8 Yankee Joe DiMaggio and manager Casey Stengel feud after Stengel pulls DiMaggio out of game
- Jul 9 US President Harry Truman asks Congress to formally end state of war with Germany
- Jul 10 Armistice talks to end Korean conflict began at Kaesong
- Jul 12 Mob tries to keep black family from moving into all-white Cicero, Illinois
Sports History
Jul 12 NY Yankees pitcher Allie Reynolds throws no-hitter in Cleveland against the Indians, his former team, in a 1-0 win
- Jul 13 Great Flood: 2.000,000 acres in Kansas and Missouri in central US are flooded from rain swollen Missouri and Kansas Rivers
- Jul 14 1st color telecast of a sporting event (CBS-horse race)
- Jul 14 In his last race, 1948 Triple Crown champion Citation wins the Hollywood Gold Cup by 4 lengths, to become American racing's first millionaire horse.
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