A nationwide ban on music recording took effect in the United States by order of American Federation of Musicians President James Petrillo. The ban was aimed at a provision in the Taft-Hartley Act which criminalized a union's collection of money directly from employers "for services that are not performed or not to be performed," which made the AFM's recording fund to support unemployed musicians illegal.[2][3]
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru threatened to invade Pakistan to stop Muslim attacks in Kashmir.[1]
The government of Yugoslavia sent a note to the United States demanding the release of $60–70 million worth of Yugoslav funds which had been deposited with the Federal Reserve Bank in New York prior to the German invasion in 1941. Washington had frozen these assets pending the settlement of various debts and claims.[4][5]
White House Press SecretaryCharlie Ross unveiled plans to add a second-floor balcony to the White House at a projected cost of $15,000. The idea would prove to be controversial, as the White House mail room would soon be flooded with protest letters demanding that the historic building be left unaltered.[6]
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee made his strongest and most specific attack on communism to date when he declared that "today in eastern Europe the Communist Party, while overthrowing the economic tyranny of landlordism and capitalism, has renounced the doctrines of individual freedom and political democracy and rejected the whole spiritual heritage of western Europe."[7]
A large TNT shipment bound for Palestine was seized at Jersey City, New Jersey after a box fraudulently marked as industrial machinery was accidentally dropped. Police said there was little doubt that the explosives were intended for use in the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine.[1][8]
Burma formally gained independence from the United Kingdom. Sao Shwe Thaik became the country's first president and U Nu its first prime minister.
The Al-Wathbah uprising began in Iraq when students from al-Karkh and Al-Adhamiyah secondary schools went on a march in protest of a statement attributed to foreign minister Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali suggesting that the monarchy may renew the Anglo- Iraqi Treaty of 1930. Many students were wounded when the police attempted to break up the protest.
An Irgun car bomb blew up a government complex in Jaffa, killing 26 Arabs.[9]
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Dr. Alfred Kinsey was published. This landmark book about human sexuality, together with 1953's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, are commonly referred to as the Kinsey Report.[11]
The Ministries Trial began in Nuremberg. Twenty-one officials of various ministries of the Third Reich went on trial, facing an assortment of charges for their roles in atrocities committed by the Nazis.
US President Harry S. Truman delivered the annual State of the Union address to Congress. Truman outlined five goals for the future: " to secure fully the essential human rights of our citizens," "to protect and develop our human resources," "to conserve and use our natural resources so that they can contribute most effectively to the welfare of our people," "to lift the standard of living for all our people by strengthening our economic system and sharing more broadly among our people the goods we produce," and "to achieve world peace based on principles of freedom and justice and the equality of all nations."[13]
German officials accepted a US-British offer to assume responsibility for a new economic government in the Bizone, to be called the Bizonal Economic Administration.[14]
US Secretary of State George Marshall appeared before the Senate to make the case for Truman's request for $6.8 billion to cover the first 15 months of the Marshall Plan, warning that US failure to help rebuild Europe's economy would turn the continent into "the dictatorship of police states."[15]
The US State Department designated radar equipment as "arms" so it could not be exported without a license after concerns were raised that some such equipment was going to the Soviet Union and its satellite states.[17]
Fistfights broke out in the French National Assembly. The Communists broke up the session by shouting and fighting in the aisles after the Assembly rejected their demand that Jacques Duclos be re-elected first vice-president.[20]
Mahatma Gandhi began fasting for a "reunion of hearts" between the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs of India.[21]
US Secretary of State Marshall rejected Yugoslavia's request for the return of its funds until all outstanding claims were settled, including the concern of the two American planes shot down over Yugoslavia in August 1946.[22]
The American Communist Party held two rallies in New York City to mark the twenty-fourth anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's death. National chairman William Z. Foster hailed the presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace, telling his followers that millions of Americans believe that "the Wallace movement is the one movement that has the possibility to put a halt to this drive to a new war." A combined total of about 5,000 people attended the two rallies.[23]
A spokesman for the Arab League in Cairo said that regular armies of the Arab countries would occupy all of Palestine as soon as the British withdrew, and that any intervention by an international police force or large contingent of foreign troops "will be considered an unfriendly act by the Arab states, and the Council of the League, which is always in session, will take steps to meet the emergency."[24]
Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov signed a pact of mutual assistance with Romania. Speaking before several hundred thousand in Victory Square in Bucharest, Dimitrov made reference to the civil war in Greece as he declared, "We united our forces today not as aggressors but to protect our people from a new fire that may be kindled there and spread to our countries."[26]
The Convoy of 35, a convoy of Haganah fighters sent on foot to resupply the blockaded kibbutzism of Gush Etzion, was destroyed by Arab villagers and militiamen.
New York Governor and failed 1944 Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey formally entered the race for the Republican nomination for president, announcing through an aide that he "cannot actively seek the nomination of his party for President, but if nominated he would accept."[28]
Mahatma Gandhi ended his five-day fast after leaders of the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities presented a pledge signed by 200,000 persons promising peace. "If today's solemn pledge is fulfilled," Gandhi said, "it will revive with doubled force my intense wish to live a full span of life doing service to humanity." Gandhi said that by a full span he meant "at least 125 years, or as some say 133 years."[30]
The US Supreme Court decided Oyama v. California, ruling that Fred Oyama, an American citizen of Japanese descent, owned land in California purchased by his Japanese father despite the state's Alien Land Law.
The UN Security Council voted 9–0 to establish a three-member commission to mediate the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir.[33]
Republican politician John Foster Dulles accused the Soviet Union of trying "by every art short of war" to ruin Europe. Dulles urged Congress to set up a European aid plan that would bind western Europe into a mutual defense pact to contain the Soviets.[34]
First Lord of the Admiralty Viscount Hall announced the scrapping of the battleships Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Nelson and Rodney and the battlecruiser Renown. Hall said at the press conference that even if the British government could afford to keep the five big ships that "they would be of very little value in any future war."[36]
The flag of Quebec became the first provincial flag to be officially adopted in Canada.
Dwight D. Eisenhower definitively renounced any attempt to draft him to run for president by publicizing a letter declaring that he could not accept the nomination "even under the remote circumstances that it were tendered me."[38]
Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko sent a note informing the United Nations that its Korea commission would not be allowed to enter the Soviet-controlled zone of Korea.[39]
The French government announced that it would devalue the franc, revising the exchange rate from 119 francs to the US dollar to 214.392, and allow free market trading in gold. The announcement came over the formal objection of the International Monetary Fund whose statutes forbade any member country to "engage in multiple-currency practices" without the authorization of the Fund.[41]
An international manpower conference opened in Rome with representatives of sixteen countries participating in the Marshall Plan. The main issue under consideration was that of redistributing manpower from countries that had an excess of workers to countries that had a shortage.[42]
At a branch of Imperial Bank in Tokyo, a man masquerading as a doctor fatally poisoned 12 bank employees and then robbed the bank of all the money he could find. Tempera painter Sadamichi Hirasawa was later arrested and charged with the crime, but was never executed because of doubts about his guilt.
The cabinet of Iraqi Prime Minister Salih Jabr resigned after 24 hours of rioting over a British-Iraqi treaty of friendship and mutual military aid that had yet to be ratified. 70 people were reported killed and 300 wounded in the rioting.[44]
Born:Paul Magee, Provisional Irish Republican Army member, in Belfast
Died:Nigel De Brulier, 70, English film actor; Arthur Coningham, 53, Australian RAF officer (presumed dead in the Star Tiger disappearance); Mahatma Gandhi, 78, Indian independence leader (assassinated); Herb Pennock, 53, American baseball player (cerebral hemorrhage); Orville Wright, 76, American inventor and aviation pioneer
Gandhi's body was carried in a five-hour procession through the streets of Delhi to the bank of the Jumna River where it was cremated on a funeral pyre of sandalwood logs strewn with flowers. An estimated one million Indians witnessed the procession and cremation ceremony.[46]
Soviet finance minister Arseny Zverev presented a record budget to a joint session of the Supreme Soviet, estimating revenue at 428 billion rubles and expenditure at 387.9 billion rubles in 1948.[47]
^Mars, Harvey (July 2016). "The Silence Was Deafening". Associated Musicians of Greater New York. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
^"1948". coldwar.hu. Archived from the original on February 3, 2014. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
^Brands, H. W. (1989). The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947-1960. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 144. ISBN9780231071680.
^ abBose, Sumantra (2007). Contested Land. Harvard University Press. p. 230. ISBN9780674028562.
^Hamilton, Thomas J. (January 6, 1948). "Little Assembly Delays Veto Issue in a Bid to Soviet". The New York Times: 1.
^Suresha, Ron J. "'Properly Placed Before the Public': Publication and Translation of the Kinsey Reports." Bisexual Perspectives on the Life and Work of Alfred C. Kinsey. Ed. Ron J. Suresha. New York: Routledge, 2014. 28. ISBN9781317995012.
