Feb 6 Princess Elizabeth of York, 25, becomes Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon.
Feb 26 Elizabeth's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, announces possession of an atomic bomb.
Mar 10 In Cuba a bright former army sergeant of mixed race who has risen from poverty, Fulgencia Batista, takes power in a coup d'état. It is his second time in power, his first from 1940 to '44. Strategists in the US. are pleased. They see Batista as an anti-Communist and a reliable friend.
Mar 10 Stalin offers a united Germany in exchange for superpower disengagement and German neutrality. The United States and its allies are not interested.
Mar 21 Kwame Nkrumah, 42, is elected the prime minister of the Gold Coast.
Apr 7 Television is becoming a large part of the lives of Americans. On CBS, the "I Love Lucy" show (which began in October) wipes out its competition on NBC. "I Love Lucy" is viewed in 10.6 million households, the greatest number to date for a television show.
Apr 28 The Allied occupation of Japan formally ends with a peace treaty signed in San Francisco.
May 4 While running for President of the United States, Senator Robert Taft suggests that the United States consider breaking diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.
May 6 King Farouk of Egypt declares that he is a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
May 7 Concerning a settlement of the Korean War, President Truman declares his opposition to an agreement that includes prisoners of war being forced to return to North Korea or China against their will.
May 21 The celebrated Hollywood actor John Garfield, 39, is dead. He had been called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, had refused to name names and had been blacklisted by the Studios. He was suffering from heart problems and stress.
Jun 1 The Catholic Church condemns the writings of a Nobel Prize winner for literature, the late André Gide.
Jun 11 The United States Congress has passed the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Naturalization Act. It ends the ban on Asian immigration but increases the power of the government to deport non-citizens suspected of Communist sympathies.
Jun 30 Marshall Plan aid comes to an end.
Jul 9 The Republicans are convening in Chicago. Senator Joe McCarthy tells a cheering audience that he will not soften his blows on Communist issues because "a rough fight is the only fight Communists can understand."
Jul 11 In Chicago, Eisenhower (who detests Senator McCarthy) wins the Republican nomination for president.
Jul 23 General Mark Clark has been in command of the UN forces in Korea since April. He launches massive air strikes against North Korea's hydroelectric power grid.
Jul 23 France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands form the European Coal and Steel community, an organization that will develop into the European Union.
Jul 23 In Egypt, military men claim to dislike King Farouk's corruption and Egypt's failures against Israel. They drive King Farouk into exile in Europe, where he has much money in banks with which to continue living in style.
Jul 25 Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
Jul 26 Eva Peron of Argentina dies of cancer. She was 33.
Aug 11 Jordan's king, Talal bin Abdullah, is mentally ill. The army forces him to resign in favor of his 16-year-old son, Hussein.
Aug 12-25 In Korea the Chinese attack the 1st Marine division in a battle for a ridge called Bunker Hill.
Aug 29 The US bombs Pyongyang in a 1,403-sortie assault from aircraft carriers – the largest single-day air assault of the war. The bombings disturb Europeans, including Winston Churchill.
Aug 30 Finland pays the last of its reparations to the Soviet Union.
Sep 2 At the University of Minnesota the first open-heart surgery is performed.
Sep 18 The Soviet Union vetoes Japan's application for UN membership.
Oct 14 In Korea, the truce talks have halted again. The UN commander, General Mark Clark, has initiated "Operation Showdown."
Oct 16 In Iran the British face nationalization of oil they have controlled. Aware that the British are plotting to have him overthrown, Premier Mossadegh severs diplomatic relations. The British have requested that the US join the plot against Mossadegh, viewed as a dangerous radical, but President Truman does not want the US to become involved.
Oct 20 In Kenya, the Kikuyu are unhappy about having been driven off much of their land, about their unemployment and lives of poverty in the city of Nairobi and other towns. They have rebelled – the Mau Mau Rebellion – and the British declare martial law.
Oct 25 In Korea, General Mark Clark's "Operation Showdown" ends. The area fought over is still held by Communist forces. The US 7th Infantry has lost 365 killed, 1,174 wounded and 1 captured. Basically the front line in Korea remains unchanged.
Oct 25 In the United Nations, China's admission is refused for the third successive year.
Nov 1 The United States tests a hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Nov 4 Dwight Eisenhower defeats the Democrat Party's candidate, Adlai Stevenson. The threat from the Far Left, including the Communist Party, appears not as formidable as some have been suggesting as the Progressive Party candidate, Vincent Hallinan, wins only 140,746 votes – 0.2 percent of the vote. He has denounced the continuation of the Korean War as a long-range imperialist plot by Big Business.
Nov 17 China wants negotiations for Korea moved forward. In the United Nations, India submits a cease-fire proposal which includes a return of willing prisoners and the establishment of a four-member Neutral Nations Reparations Commission.
Nov 18 The British arrest Jomo Kenyatta, alleging that he is connected to the Mau Mau uprising.
Nov 21 In Czechoslovakia the Communist regime sentences eleven former Communist officials to death: the Slansky show trial. All eleven are Jews.
Dec 1 A front page story in the New York Daily News announces the transsexual operation in Denmark on a former US soldier who now goes by the name of Christine Jorgensen. Many in the US are shocked and dismayed.
Dec 1 In Venezuela the left-of-center Nationalist Democratic Union for a Republic leads in returns from elections for a national congress – to return the country to constitutional government.
Dec 2 The military junta in power in Venezuela cancels the elections and declares their leader, Colonel Perez Jimenez, Provisional President. Jimenez will rule as dictator until 1958.
Dec 23 In London, two weeks after five days "killer fog" at least 4,000 deaths have occurred. Thousands more who appear to have recovered will die from reoccurring complications.
Date unknown While US Marines are returning with a wounded fellow Marine on a stretcher, a middle-aged porter in the Korean Service Corps slips in the mud, letting the stretcher fall to the ground. An angry Marine is enraged because the kid on the stretcher is his buddy, and he dislikes Asians in general. He shoots the Korean.
No date A common but not universal opinion among US ground troops in Korea facing Chinese forces is that the Chinese have little respect or passion for life – much less at any rate than do Americans. This would diminish decades later with the rise of television coverage of events in China.
Copyright © 1998-2018 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.