August 1950


The following events occurred in August 1950:

August 1, 1950 (Tuesday)

August 2, 1950 (Wednesday)

August 3, 1950 (Thursday)

August 4, 1950 (Friday)

August 5, 1950 (Saturday)

August 6, 1950 (Sunday)

  • General Ye Jianying and General Peng Dehuai were able to dissuade China's Mao Zedong from his belief that China could prepare its army for an invasion of Korea within only three weeks. Mao was wanting an immediate invasion because the U.S., UN and South Korean forces were pinned down within the small Pusan Perimeter, while Yu and Peng believed that a minimum of four months would be necessary. Ultimately, the Chinese intervention would take place in a little less than four months.
  • Born: Winston E. Scott, American astronaut, in Miami
  • Died: William Henry Thompson, 22, African-American U.S. Army private, who would become the first person to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the Korean War. At Masan, Thompson stayed at his machine gun so that his fellow soldiers from the 24th Infantry Regiment could escape an overwhelming North Korean attack.

August 7, 1950 (Monday)

August 8, 1950 (Tuesday)

  • Florence Chadwick of the United States swam across the English Channel in 13 hours, 22 minutes, breaking the women's record set by Gertrude Ederle on August 6, 1926. Chadwick arrived on the shores of Dover at 3:59 p.m. local time, and became only the third woman to cross the Channel, after Ederle and Millie Gade Corson
  • Died: Nikolai Myaskovsky, 69, Russian Soviet composer known as "The Father of the Soviet Symphony"

August 9, 1950 (Wednesday)

  • Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin ordered the development and deployment of the S-25 Berkut anti-aircraft missile system, to be done within one year, to defend Moscow against the possibility of an attack by American B-29 bombers. When finished, the Berkut system would have "56 missile regiments in two concentric rings around Moscow".
  • Died: Philipp Schmitt, 47, German SS Sturmbannfuhrer who oversaw the deportation to Germany of prisoners in Belgium at the Fort Breendonk concentration camp, near Antwerp. Schmitt was shot by a firing squad and became the last person to be executed in Belgium.

August 10, 1950 (Thursday)

August 11, 1950 (Friday)

August 12, 1950 (Saturday)

August 13, 1950 (Sunday)

  • Overloaded, the Soviet steamer Mayakovsky sank in the Daugava River that bisects Riga, the capital of Latvian SSR. There were 147 victims, 48 of whom were children. The disaster, which happened during the rule of Joseph Stalin, was not reported in the Soviet press. On August 19, 2011, a memorial plaque would finally be placed on the Stone Bridge in Riga to honor the people who drowned on the pleasure trip.
  • The English-language propaganda broadcasts of "Seoul City Sue", on the air since June 28, ended after a U.S. airstrike on the North Korean controlled radio broadcast facilities in Seoul. "Sue" was an American, Anna Wallace Suhr of Oklahoma, who had pledged allegiance to the North Korean cause after the invasion of Seoul. After the broadcast tower was repaired, she did not return to the air.

August 14, 1950 (Monday)

August 15, 1950 (Tuesday)

August 16, 1950 (Wednesday)

  • Morton Sobell, an American research scientist and friend of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, was arrested in Mexico City, where he had fled with his wife and children on June 22, 1950. Mexican security police drove Sobel to Nuevo Laredo, then escorted him across the border to Laredo, Texas, where he was turned over to the FBI. Tried along with the Rosenbergs, Sobell would escape the death sentence that they had received, but would be sentenced to 30 years in federal prison; he would be paroled in 1969 after 18 years incarceration.

August 17, 1950 (Thursday)

August 18, 1950 (Friday)

  • The city of Taegu, which had become the temporary capital of South Korea after the fall of Seoul, was evacuated by its 500,000 civilians as troops from North Korea overran the town of Kumwha, 12 miles away. Eight weeks after the Korean War began on June 25, 80% of South Korea had been conquered by the invaders, with the exception of the southeastern portion of the peninsula inside the Pusan Perimeter.
  • The ballet The Witch, performed by the New York City Ballet company, premiered at London's Covent Garden. When it completed its British run, plans for bringing it to the United States were scuttled because "customs officials destroyed the expensive sets and costumes".
  • Fred Snyder, working on his doctoral thesis at Wichita State University Ph.D candidate, completed his experiment in visual perception, after 30 days of having worn "inverted prisms", a set of special glasses, which turned his view upside down. After a few days, he found that his brain was able to adapt to the view, to the point that he was able to drive a car and watch movies. Snyder would later publish his findings in the 1952 book Vision with Spatial Inversion.
  • Belgian Communist anti-monarchist Julien Lahaut was assassinated in Seraing; no-one was brought to justice for the crime.

August 19, 1950 (Saturday)

August 20, 1950 (Sunday)

  • The battles of P'ohang-dong and Taegu ended in United Nations victory.
  • Professor Sayyid Qutb, who would lead the Islamic activist group Muslim Brotherhood, ended his two-year residence in the United States and returned to his native Egypt, where he developed his philosophy of radical Islam.
  • The "Security Suspension Act" was passed by the U.S. Congress, providing for immediate suspension from federal government work for anyone who violated security rules.

August 21, 1950 (Monday)

  • Voters in Puerto Rico elected representatives for a convention to draft the first constitution for the U.S. possession, which had been granted limited self-government on July 3.
  • Born: Arthur Bremer, American janitor, in Milwaukee. On May 15, 1972, Bremer shot and crippled George C. Wallace, who was running for the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. President. Bremer spent 35 years in prison, and was released on November 9, 2007

August 22, 1950 (Tuesday)

  • Abd El Rehim of Egypt broke a 24-year-old record for fastest time crossing the English Channel, finishing in 10 hours and 53 minutes. A swimmer from France also broke the world's record of 11:05 held by Georges Michel since 1926, but was ten minutes behind Rehim. Five other men and two women also made the crossing that day, for the largest group of people to ever swim across the Channel. The nine were competing in a contest sponsored by the London Daily Mail. "
  • Althea Gibson became the first African-American person to qualify for one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, when she was one of the 52 women selected to play in the US Open. On August 28, she would win her first match, beating Barbara Knapp 6-2, 6-2, and nearly upset the world's number-one ranked player, Louise Brough, in the next round before losing the next day.
  • The mission by United Nations envoy Owen Dixon, to resolve the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, ended with his announcement that there was "no immediate prospect of settlement" and that "no purpose can be served by my remaining any longer on the sub-continent". An Indian journalist would note more than 50 years later that "He came within a few feet, if not inches, of solving the Kashmir dispute and bagging the Nobel Prize for Peace."
  • Born: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, American presidential and vice-presidential advisor, convicted of perjury in 2007; in New Haven, Connecticut
  • Died:
  • *Frank Phillips, 76, American oil entrepreneur who co-founded Phillips Petroleum and the Phillips 66 gasoline station chain
  • *Kirk Bryan, 62, American geologist

August 23, 1950 (Wednesday)

  • Eight days after the August 15 earthquake that struck in the Assam State of northeastern India, the Subansiri River broke through the blockage caused by landslides from the quake, sending 23 foot high waves through villages downstream, and killing 536 people.

August 24, 1950 (Thursday)

  • France agreed to send an infantry battalion to fight in the Korean War. More than 1,000 persons, including 211 commissioned and non-commissioned officers, would arrive on November 30. There were 3,421 people serving with the French Battalion during the war. In all, France lost 287 dead in Korea, along with 1,350 wounded, seven missing in action, and 12 POWs. On October 22, 1953, the remaining soldiers of the French Battalion were transferred to Vietnam as the Korea Regiment, and most of them would be killed by the following July.
  • Died: Arturo Alessandri, 81, President of Chile from 1920 to 1924, 1925, and 1932 to 1938

August 25, 1950 (Friday)

  • U.S. President Harry S. Truman issued an order for the federal government to take control of the 131 major railroads in the United States, effective 5:00 pm Washington time Sunday. The order came three days before a strike, affecting an estimated 1,700,000 railway workers, was scheduled to start. President W.P. Kennedy of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, and President R. O. Hughes of the Order of Railway Conductors welcomed the government action and called off the strike indefinitely, pending negotiations.
  • The U.S. Army confirmed that two armored divisions of the Chinese Communist Army had massed along that nation's border with North Korea.
  • After 36 days of avoiding capture by North Korean patrols, U.S. Army Major General William F. Dean was betrayed to the enemy by a South Korean civilian. Dean had been on the run since July 18, when his unit was overrun by North Korean troops. He would be the highest-ranking prisoner of war for North Korea, and finally be released on September 4, 1953.
  • The U.S. hospital ship USS Benevolence sank in San Francisco Bay after being rammed accidentally by the freighter SS Mary Luckenbach, while both were sailing in a dense fog. No patients were aboard the Benevolence because it was on a trial run to prepare for service in Korea, but 31 of its 523 civilians and military personnel drowned.
  • The Battle of the Bowling Alley was won by United Nations forces after two weeks of fighting.
  • In a speech at the 150th anniversary celebration of the Boston Navy Yard, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews advocated the option of a preventive war by the United States, declaring that the U.S. should declare its intention "to pay any price, even the price of instituting a war to compel co-operation for peace", adding that by becoming "an initiator of a war of aggression, it would win for us a proud and popular title— we would become the first aggressors for peace." U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson immediately disavowed the foreign policy speech, stating that "Secretary Matthews' speech was not cleared by the Department of State, and it does not represent U.S. policy. The United States does not favor instituting a war of any kind. Matthews offered to resign, but President Truman allowed him to remain in office for another year.
  • Belgium created the Corps Voluntaires Corea to fight in the Korean War, and sent 900 men in the 1st Belgian Battalion, which would arrive in December. The Belgians had 102 men killed.
  • In tennis, Althea Gibson became the first African-American woman to compete at the United States National Championships.

August 26, 1950 (Saturday)

  • The office of U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur sent the press an advance copy of an address regarding Formosa, site of Nationalist China and located off of the coast of Communist China. Released by MacArthur without White House approval, and meant to be read at the August 28 convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the statement ran counter to the foreign policy of President Truman. U.S. Secretary of Defense Johnson directed MacArthur to withdraw the statement, but not before U.S. News & World Report published it in its upcoming issue.
  • On the same day, China's premier Zhou Enlai met with his battle commanders regarding plans to invade Korea to confront American forces, and stated that "the main target is the U.S. imperialists".
  • Died: Ransom E. Olds, 86, American automotive pioneer who founded the Oldsmobile and REO Motor Car Company

August 27, 1950 (Sunday)

  • An F-51 aircraft, of the 67th Fighter Bomber Squadron of the U.S. Air Force, assigned to attack a North Korean airfield, flew off course and ended up attacking an airstrip in Communist China, five miles from the border. Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai asked the Soviet delegate to the UN Security Council, Yakov Malik, to raise the complaint, and on August 31, U.S. delegate Warren R. Austin admitted to the Security Council that the incident probably had occurred as described and offered to compensate
  • The Battle of Kyongju began.
  • Born: Charles Fleischer, American film actor best known for voicing the title character in Who Framed Roger Rabbit; in Washington, DC
  • Died: Cesare Pavese, 41, Italian novelist, by suicide

August 28, 1950 (Monday)

  • U.S. President Truman signed into law a bill that made 10,000,000 people eligible for Social Security retirement. A gradual increase in the federal payroll tax would go into effect in 1951 and be tripled by the year 1970. The average monthly benefit was increased to $46 effective October 1. Old-age coverage was extended was made optional for state and city government employees, including those of publicly owned transit systems, as well as employees of non-profit organizations.
  • Soldiers from the United Kingdom arrived in South Korea, combining troops from the 27th Infantry Brigade and the Royal Irish Hussars. Of nearly 14,000 who served, 700 would be killed.
  • Born: Ron Guidry, baseball player, in Lafayette, Louisiana

August 29, 1950 (Tuesday)

August 30, 1950 (Wednesday)

  • The Civil Code of the Philippines went into effect, replacing the Civil Code of Spain that had set the law in the Asian nation since the 19th century.
  • British atomic physicist Bruno Pontecorvo defected to the Soviet Union while on a visit to Sweden. "There was great concern that he might transmit nuclear secrets," an author would note later, "but apparently he did not have any essential information."
  • Died: Alexandru Lapedatu, 73, former president of the Romanian Senate, died in the Sighet Prison, less than four months after being arrested in a roundup of dissenters by the ruling Communist government.

August 31, 1950 (Thursday)

  • All 55 persons on board TWA Flight 903, which had a scheduled final destination of New York City, were killed when the Lockheed L-749 Constellation crashed shortly after taking off from Cairo. The flight had originated in Bombay and was on the way to its next scheduled stop, in Rome.
  • Television came to Mexico as XHTV Channel 4 began broadcasting programs in Mexico City Initial programming was for three hours each evening from 5:00 to 8:00, and required TV sets to add power converters adapt from the 60 cycles-per-second on American models to the 50 cycles/second used by XHTV.
  • The battles of Haman and Nam River began as part of the larger Battle of Pusan Perimeter.
  • Died: Pere Tarrés i Claret, 45, Spanish Roman Catholic priest who served as a doctor during the Spanish Civil War and was beatified in 2004