August 16, 1946: Direct Action Day protest turns into rioting in Calcutta and 10,000 people dieAugust 13, 1946: H. G. Wells dies at age 79August 1, 1946: U.S. President Truman signs Atomic Energy Act of 1946
The five-member Atomic Energy Commission was established, transferring control of nuclear weapons from military to civilian control.[1]
What would become known as the "Battle of Athens" took place in Athens, Tennessee, a group of World War II veterans took up arms to keep the McMinn County sheriff and his deputies from counting the ballots in the primary election.[5]
Died: Red Army General Andrey Vlasov, 45, was executed in the Soviet Union after being convicted of treason for fighting on the side of Nazi Germany since 1942.
Neil Armstrong of Wapakoneta, Ohio, who on July 20, 1969, would be the first man to walk on the Moon, earned his student pilot's certificate on his 16th birthday, learning on an Aeronca Champion airplane.[9]
Born:Shirley Ann Jackson, Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics; in Washington, D.C.
Hungary's gold reserve of $32,000,000 was returned to Budapest, from Frankfurt, where it had been stored by the government of Nazi Germany. The return of the gold stabilized the Hungarian economy following the hyperinflation of the prior two months.[10]
Martin Luther King Jr., a 17-year-old junior at Morehouse College, began a lifelong crusade against racial prejudice, with the publication of a letter in the Atlanta Constitution, in response to an editorial. His father later remarked that the letter was the first "indication that Martin was headed for greatness".[11]
A pair of unmanned B-17 bombers landed in California after having been flown a distance of 2,174 miles from Hawaii, piloted entirely by radio control, as the United States Army carried out "Operation Remote". Press releases declared that the experiment proved "that guided missiles of the air forces can be launched by radio control and successfully hit a target more than 2,000 miles distant".[12]
Died:Tony Lazzeri, 42, American MLB 2nd baseman enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame
The Dardanelles crisis began when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sent a demand to Turkey to permit "joint defense" of the Dardanelles Strait, with the implication that Soviet troops would enter Turkish territory. At the same time, editorials appeared in the Soviet press supporting the retrocession of the Kars Province, Ardahan and Artvin, which had been ceded from Russia to Turkey after World War One. Concluding that a takeover of Turkey would allow the Soviets to control the Middle East, U.S. President Truman sent the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt and two destroyers to the area.[13]
The B-36 Peacemaker bomber was flown by the United States Air Force for the first time. Designed to carry the atomic bomb, and having a range of 6,000 miles, the B-36 was the first intercontinental carrier of nuclear weapons.[15][16]
More than twenty years after his court-martial and resignation from the United States Army, and ten years after his death, Billy Mitchell was awarded the Medal of Honor by the U.S. Congress "for outstanding pioneer service in the field of American military aviation", and posthumously promoted to the rank of Major General.[17][18]
The body of African-American veteran John Cecil Jones, victim of a lynching, was found in a bayou near Minden, Louisiana. As a result of an investigation by the NAACP, the crime was reported nationwide and led to the first FBI investigation of a lynching in Louisiana, followed by the creation of a Committee on Civil Rights by President Truman. One author described the response to the Jones murder as "the first time since Reconstruction that the federal government had evinced any real concern over the discriminatiory treatment of black people".[19][20]
In Athens, Alabama, a mob of white men and teenagers, estimated at 2,000 people, rioted after two white men had been jailed for an unprovoked attack on a black man the day before. Breaking into smaller groups, the mob went into town and began beating any African-American seen in the street. State troops, sent by the Governor, arrived at 4:00 pm and restored order by midnight. Nobody was killed, but more than 50 black persons were injured. Sixteen white suspects were later indicted by a county grand jury for the violence.[23][24]
In the United States, the Indian Claims Commission was established to fix a fair market value for land taken from the American Indians "at the time the land was taken". An example of the low awards of compensation was $29.1 million for the entire state of California, at 47 cents an acre. Between 1946 and the 1951 deadline, 370 petitions were filed.[28][29][30]
Soviet politician Andrei Zhdanov began a campaign against writers and artists whose work showed "anti-Soviet sentiment" or complacency toward Communist party goals. At Zhdanov's direction, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party passed the resolution "About the journals Zvezda and Leningrad" on proper Soviet literature, condemning the two literary magazines for publishing the works of author Mikhail Zoshchenko and poet Anna Akhmatova. The editors of the magazines were replaced, and the two writers were barred from publishing further works.[35] Similar condemnations followed against bourgeois influence in theater (August 26) and film productions (September 4).[36]
An American B-29 reconnaissance plane discovered a large ice floe 300 miles north of Alaska. Nine miles in width, 17 miles long, and ideal for the basing of aircraft, "Target X" was the first of three "floating bases" used by the United States.[37]
The "Truman Doctrine" was announced by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, who told Turkey's President İsmet İnönü that the United States would provide its assistance to help Turkey resist Soviet demands for control of the Dardanelles straits. Over the next year, Truman lobbied Congress to provide more than $400,000,000 in aid to both Turkey and Greece as part of American strategy in the Middle East.[38]
"Direct Action Day", which was intended as a peaceful protest in favor of creating a separate Muslim nation of "Pakistan", rather than having a Hindu-majority government in an independent British India, turned into rioting that killed more than 10,000 people in and around Calcutta. Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah had set a day "for the Muslim Nation to resort to direct action to achieve Pakistan and assert their just rights to vindicate their honor" after the League decided not to participate in a government with the Hindu Indian National Congress led by Mahatma Gandhi.[39] Historians disagree as to which side began the killing, but before the violence was put down, 3,000 Hindus and 7,000 Muslims had been murdered in religious violence.[40]
An American C-47 transport plane was shot down after straying into the airspace of Yugoslavia, a week after another group of American flyers had been captured. All five men aboard the plane were killed in the crash.[49][50][51]
Dawn Steel, 20th-century American film producer and the first woman to serve as president of a major U.S. film studio (as president of Columbia Pictures from 1987 to 1990); in The Bronx, New York City (d. 1997)
Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians became the first Major League Baseball pitcher to have the speed of his throw measured by radar, with a U.S. Army "lumiline chronograph" clocking him at 98.6mph at a game in Washington, D.C. against the Senators. Feller's Indians lost, 5–4.[52]
The Pittsburgh Pirates voted against joining a labor union, the American Baseball Guild. The election was conducted by the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, and only 19 of the 31 eligible players participated. With one vote invalidated, the margin was 15–3 against unionizing. In 1965, the Major League Baseball Players Association would be created for members of all of the MLB teams.[53]
Vojtech Tuka, 66, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the Nazi puppet state Slovak Republic, 1939–1944, was executed
In Marburg in the American zone of Germany, the bodies of Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786, and his father Frederick William I of Prussia (who ruled 1713–1740) were reburied after having been removed from Potsdam in 1943. The ceremony was presided over by Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, grandson of the last Kaiser of Germany and the eldest son of former Crown Prince Wilhelm.[54] Louis Ferdinand, pretender to the throne from 1951 to 1994, lived to see the reinterment of the kings in Potsdam in 1991, following the reunification of Germany.[55]
Döme Sztójay, who had served as Prime Minister of Hungary during occupation by the Nazi Germany, was executed by a firing squad after being convicted of treason and crimes against humanity.[56]
The Seoul National University was established in Korea on the campus of the former Keijo Imperial University, and included colleges of arts and sciences, engineering, agriculture, law, education, commerce, arts, medicine and dentistry.[57]
Frontier guards at Khist-Tepe in the Kunduz Province of Afghanistan were digging a foundation for a cattle shed and struck a buried vase containing 626 ancient Greek silver coins that had been buried 2000 years earlier.[60]
Philippine Communist leader Juan Feleo disappeared and was presumed killed, triggering the eight year insurgency called the Hukbalahap or Huk Rebellion.[62]
A milestone in vascular surgery was achieved when Portuguese surgeon João Cid dos Santos performed the removal of plaque from an artery, a procedure now referred to as an endarterectomy.[70]
King Sisavang Vong
Owners of baseball's National League and American League teams met and secretly voted 15–1 to retain the ban against African-Americans, on grounds that integration of the game would be harmful to the Negro leagues. The dissenting vote was from Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who then went to Commissioner Happy Chandler to overturn the ruling.[71]
Born:Flossie Wong-Staal, Chinese-born American biochemist and co-discoverer (with Robert Gallo) of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); as Wong Yee Ching in Guangzhou (d. 2020)
Died:Grigory Mikhaylovich Semyonov, 55, who had fled the Soviet Union in 1921 to Korea under Japanese protection, then provided intelligence to the Japanese throughout World War II. Captured by the Soviets in 1945 after the Japanese surrender, Semyonov was convicted of treason and hanged.[77][78]
The United States signed an agreement to sell (for $20,000,000) surplus aircraft to the government of Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China, effectively ruining negotiations being conducted by General George C. Marshall between Chiang and Communist Party leader Mao Zedong.[79]
John Hersey's article "Hiroshima," later to be published as a bestselling book, first appeared in The New Yorker with the stories of six survivors of the blast, filling the entire issue.[83]
Naomi B. Lynn and Arthur F. McClure, The Fulbright Premise: Senator J. William Fulbright's Views on Presidential power (Bucknell University Press, 1973) p. 57
J. Samuel Walker, Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 2000) p. 13; Martin G. Pomper, Molecular Imaging in Oncology (Informa Health Care, 2008) iii
"20 Shot in Election Riot", Pittsburgh Press, August 2, 1946, p. 1' "Citizen's Council Takes Over In Riot-Torn Athens", Pittsburgh Press, August 3, 1946, p1; "Tennessee: Battle of the Ballots", Time, August 12, 1946
USGS Historic Earthquakes; James F. Dolan and Paul Mann, Active Strike-slip and Collisional Tectonics of the Northern Caribbean Plate Boundary Zone (Geological Society of America, 1998) p. 151
William Z. Slany, U.S. and Allied Efforts To Recover and Restore Gold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II (DIANE Publishing, 1997) p. 155
Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature Since the Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1982) p180; "Russian Writers Discover Foreign Customs Are Taboo", Pittsburgh Press, August 22, 1946, p8
Carl Hoffman, Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II (Random House, Inc., 2002) p. 15; "Ice-Cube Airport", by Aubrey O. Cookman Jr., Popular Mechanics (September 1952), pp. 134-138
Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi's Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi (Oxford University Press US, 2002) p. 222; Ross Marlay and Clark D. Neher, Patriots and Tyrants: Ten Asian Leaders (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) p. 293
"Pirates Vote, 15-3, Against Baseball Union", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 21, 1946; William Marshall, Baseball's Pivotal Era, 1945-1951 (University Press of Kentucky, 1999) p. 82; MLBPA History
Louis Henkin, Albert J. Rosenthal, Constitutionalism and Rights: The Influence of the United States Constitution Abroad (Columbia University Press, 1990) p. 233
