The following events occurred in March 1950:
March 1, 1950 (Wednesday) Klaus Fuchs was convicted of passing along American and British atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. After the 90 minute trial at the Old Bailey court in London, Fuchs was sentenced by Lord Chief Justice, Baron Goddard, to 14 years in prison."BRITISH A-BOMB SPY GETS 14 YEARS", Miami Daily News, March 1, 1950, p1 Acting Republic of China President Li Zongren ended his term in office, and Chiang Kai-shek resumed his duties as president after moving his government to the island of Taiwan.Anita Sharma and Sreemati Chakrabarti, Taiwan Today (Anthem Press, 2010) p44 At 7:35 p.m. in Beatrice, Nebraska, a gas line explosion destroyed the West Side Baptist Church when the 12-member church choir was scheduled to practice. The church was empty, however, because every member of the choir happened to be running late."Choir Members Late, So Blast Hurts No One", AP report in Bakersfield (CA) Californian, March 2, 1950, p17 One member had taken a nap and overslept; another singer and her two daughters had car trouble; the church pastor and his wife had been detained by a problem at home; and none of the other six had even left the house."Big Blast Wrecks Church", Beatrice (NE) Daily Sun, March 2, 1950, p1"Life's Reports: Why the Choir Was Late", by George E. Edeal, LIFE Magazine, March 27, 1950, pp19-22
March 2, 1950 (Thursday) British Prime Minister Clement Attlee told his cabinet that he was temporarily halting the nationalization of British industry after opposition from the more conservative members of his Labour Party coalition."Attlee Calls Halt to Nationalization", Miami Daily News, March 2, 1950, p1 Tawfik Abu al-Huda resigned as Prime Minister of Jordan for reasons of health, but also because he did not want to "be party to a settlement with Israel.Maʾan Abu Nowar, The Jordanian-Israeli War 1948-1951: A History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Garnet & Ithaca Press, 2003) p337 Born: Karen Carpenter, American singer and drummer; in New Haven, Connecticut (d. 1983)
March 3, 1950 (Friday) The U.S. House of Representatives voted 186-146 in favor of statehood for Alaska."House Approves Measure to Make Alaska State", Salt Lake Tribune, March 4, 1950, p1 Although the bill would be approved by the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee of the U.S. Senate on June 29, the House resolutions in favor of statehood for Alaska and Hawaii would be blocked from ever coming to a Senate vote during the remainder of the 1949-1951 session.Claus M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska: A History of the 49th State (University of Oklahoma Press, 1994) pp151-153 France signed a treaty with representatives of the Saar Protectorate on the border with West Germany, pledging a fully independent "Republic of Saarland" by 2000 in return for a fifty-year lease of the areas coal mines."France Signs Treaty With Occupied Saar", Miami Daily News, March 3, 1950, p3 The residents of the Saar would vote in 1955 in favor of reunification with Germany. Tanaka Kōtarō, a Roman Catholic jurist in a predominantly Buddhist and Shinto nation, was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Japan. He served until 1960, when he became a jurist of the World Court.Kevin M. Doak, Xavier's Legacies: Catholicism in Modern Japanese Culture (University of British Columbia Press, 2011) p66 Born: Francesco Nitto Palma, Italian Minister of Justice, in Rome Isabella Bossi Ferdigotti, Italian journalist and novelist who won the Premio Campiello in 1991 for Di buona famiglia; in Rovereto.
March 4, 1950 (Saturday) Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai returned to the People's Republic of China after having been in the Soviet Union since December.Michael Dillon, China: A Modern History (I.B.Tauris, 2012) p274 The celebration, of the February 23 election of Northern Irish nationalist Cahir Healy to the United Kingdom's House of Commons, turned into a riot after supporters displayed the Republic of Ireland flag, in violation of U.K. law."Forbidden Flag Stirs Irish Clash", Miami Daily News, March 5, 1950, p2 Born: Rick Perry, Governor of Texas and 2012 candidate for Republican U.S. presidential nomination; in Paint Creek, Texas Died: Adam Rainer, 50, Austrian man who was the only person on record to have been both a dwarf (4 feet tall at age 18) and a giant (7'8" at the time of his death)
March 5, 1950 (Sunday) Programming began for the first computerized weather forecast, with data from meteorologist Anthony Richardson being encoded into machine code for the ENIAC computer at Princeton University.Robert Henson, The Rough Guide to Climate Change (Penguin, 2011) The signing of a pact between United Mine Workers of America President John L. Lewis and coal operators ended a month-long strike by 370,000 bituminous coal miners"WORKERS SWARM BACK TO MINES", Miami Daily News, March 6, 1950, p1 The first postwar elections in Greece, since the end of the Greek Civil War, were held, with no party having more than 20 percent of the vote.Mogens Pelt, Tying Greece to the West: US-West German-Greek Relations 1949-1974 (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006) pp48-49 In Rome, at the Aviator House, institution of the UIL (Unione Italiana del Lavoro), a syndicate gathering the social-democrat and republican workers, coming from the Federazione iltaliana lavoratori, and some “autonomist” (not pro-communist) socialists coming from the CGIL The new syndicate was sustained by the CIO and by center-left Italian politicians, as Ferruccio Parri; the socialist Italo Viglianesi was its first secretary. Died: Roman Shukhevych, 42, Ukrainian insurgent against the Soviet Union, was assassinated.
March 6, 1950 (Monday) Iran extended diplomatic recognition to Israel.P. R. Kumaraswamy, The A to Z of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Scarecrow Press, 2009) p114 Died: Albert Lebrun, 78, President of France 1932-1940 Harry Redfern, 88, British architect
March 7, 1950 (Tuesday) The U.S. House of Representatives voted 261–110 in favor of granting statehood to Hawaii."House Approves Hawaii Statehood", El Paso Herald-Post, March 7, 1950, p1 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 307 crashed into a home in Minneapolis, killing all 13 people on board and two children who had been sleeping in their beds."Airliner Hits Home, 15 Die", Miami Daily News, March 8, 1950, p1 Former U.S. Justice Department employee Judith Coplon became the first American to be convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001) p372 Born: Franco Harris, American NFL player and Hall of Fame enshrinee; in Fort Dix, New Jersey (d. 2022)
March 8, 1950 (Wednesday) The first Volkswagen van (also known as the Volkswagen Type 2 or the Microbus) rolled off the assembly line in Wolfsburg, Germany.Richard Copping, Volkswagen: The Air Cooled-Era in Color (Veloce Publishing, 2005) p62 The British government announced that it would not recognize Seretse Khama as the chief of the Bamangwato tribe in the African protectorate of Bechuanaland, primarily because of the controversy over his marriage to a white Englishwoman, Ruth Williams. When Bechuanaland became independent as Botswana in 1965, Khama would become its first President.Geoffre Warner, In the Midst of Events The Foreign Office Diaries and Papers of Kenneth G. Younger, February 1950-October 1951 (Routledge, 2005) p9 The World Figure Skating Championships concluded in Wembley, England. Dick Button of the United States won the Men's event for the third year in a row while Alena Vrzáňová of Czechoslovakia won the Ladies' for the second straight year.
March 9, 1950 (Thursday) Iraq enacted the Law of Denaturalization, giving its Jewish citizens one year to legally emigrate from Iraq on condition that they surrender their citizenship and never return. Ninety percent of the Jewish population, nearly 124,000 people, would decide to exercise the option and move to Israel."Jews in Iraq and Zionism", by Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, in Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Volume 3 (ABC-CLIO, 2009) p775
The first successful American science fiction television show, Space Patrol began, as a 15-minute afternoon series about adventures in the 30th century, on a Los Angeles station KECA-TV (now KABC-TV). On December 30, it would be picked up nationally by the ABC Television network and run for four seasons.Jean-Noel Bassior, Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television (McFarland, 2005) p18 Robert Doisneau took the photo Le baiser de l'Hotel de Ville. Born: Danny Sullivan, American race car driver, 1985 Indianapolis 500 winner; in Louisville, Kentucky Died: Timothy Evans, 25, a Welsh van driver, was hanged after the November 30, 1949, murder of his wife and daughter. Later, it would be discovered that the chief prosecution witness, Evans's landlord John Christie, was a serial killer. Christie would be hanged for other crimes in 1953.Gisli H. Gudjonsson, The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions: A Handbook (John Wiley & Sons, 2003) p168 Evans would receive a posthumous pardon from Queen Elizabeth II on October 18, 1966.David Yallop, Beyond Reasonable Doubt? (Little, Brown Book Group, 2014)
March 10, 1950 (Friday) After considering the arguments of Edward Teller and John Archibald Wheeler that the Soviet Union would work on developing the hydrogen bomb even if the United States delayed, U.S. President Truman issued a secret Executive Order for immediate development of the thermonuclear weapons as "a matter of the highest urgency". Truman approved budgeting sufficient funds for research and for production of up to ten "H-bombs".Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (Macmillan, 2003) p222 Albert Schatz, who had been a student at Rutgers University, took the action of suing the university and his former professor, Dr. Selman Waksman. Schatz sought formal recognition as the co-discoverer of Streptomycin and for a share of royalties from the patent. On December 29, the case would be settled, with Schatz receiving acknowledgment, 3% of future royalties, and $125,000.Morton Meyers, M.D., Prize Fight: The Race and the Rivalry to be the First in Science (Macmillan, 2012) pp103-109 Wolfgang Hedler, a West German Bundestag deputy and former Nazi who had recently been acquitted of trying to incite anti-Semitism, was ordered to leave the Parliament House at Bonn. On his way out, he was punched and kicked by ten of his fellow members of parliament."Hedler Is Beaten Up By German Deputies", Miami Daily News, March 10, 1950, p1 Died: Marguerite De La Motte, 47, American silent film actress and leading lady
March 11, 1950 (Saturday) The Czechoslovakia men's national ice hockey team, defending world champions, was preparing to take a flight to London for the 1950 world championship tournament. At the airport, the police arrested the entire team except for one player, Vladimír Zábrodský, on charges that the athletes planned to defect while in London. Most of the national team players would remain imprisoned until October. Twelve were convicted of treason and given sentences ranging from 6 months to 15 years, with the star player, goalie Bohumil Modrý receiving the longest term.Tal Pinchevsky, Breakaway: From Behind the Iron Curtain to the NHL (John Wiley & Sons, 2012) pp36-38