Dr. Who's History Time Warp: 1940's

11/17/15

Year: 1947

French General Leclerc broke off all talks with Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh.
Gangster Al Capone died in Miami, FL.
Britain agreed to give Burma independence following negotiations with nationalist leader Aung San.
Chester Carlson, patent attorney and kitchen inventor, signed a licensing agreement with Haloid Corp. of Rochester, NY, to develop a copy machine. This marked the beginning of Xerox’s copy business. 12 years later, the company launched a practical dry copier. Entrepreneur Joe Wilson propelled Xerox to success.

Percival Prattis became the 1st black reporter in Congressional press gallery.
Bank robber Willie Sutton escaped jail in Philadelphia.
A daytime fireball & meteorite fell and was seen in eastern Siberia.
The Voice of America began broadcasting to the Soviet Union.
A chemical mixing error caused an explosion that destroyed 42 blocks in LA.
Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera in NYC. It could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds. Polaroid Corp. was co-founded by Land and George W. Wheelwright III

Gen. Eisenhower opened a drive to raise $170M in aid for European Jews.
Britain and France signed a 50-year pact to curb Germany.
The Big Four met in Moscow to discuss Germany. The Big Four were Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy and Georges Clemenceau of France.

Pres. Truman outlined the Truman Doctrine of economic and military aid to nations threatened by Communism. The doctrine was intended to speed recovery of Mediterranean countries. He specifically requested aid for Greece and Turkey to resist Communism.
The U.S. signed a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.
Pres. Truman signed Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to swear allegiance to the United States.
Congress proposed the limitation of the presidency to two terms.
A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Ill., claimed 111 lives.
Madagascar rebelled against French colonial rule. Repression followed and an estimated 100,000 Malagasy were killed. This became known as Martyr’s Day, first celebrated in 1967.
A series of tornadoes struck Kansas, West Texas and Oklahoma. 181 were killed and some 1,300 injured. The Woodward tornado ranked as the deadliest ever to hit Oklahoma.
Jackie Robinson played in an exhibition between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees, the first African-American to play in Major league baseball.

The French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up, devastating Texas City, Texas. It was America's worst harbor explosion. Another ship, the Highflyer, exploded the following day. The final death toll was 576, and more than 3,000 Texas City residents were left homeless. Property damage ran into the millions.
Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl (d.2002) and five others sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day, 4,300 nautical mile journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia. They wanted to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia.
President Truman signed a measure officially changing the name of Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam.
he House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convened in Hollywood to hunt for Communists in the film industry.
Pan Am Airways was chartered as the 1st worldwide passenger airline.

As a result of the worker strikes in 1946, the US government passed the Taft-Hartley Act that put the brakes on union activities. The Senate joined the House and passed the Taft-Hartley Act over the veto of the president. It prohibited the use of union funds for political purposes and introduced a 60-day notice before a strike or lockout, outlawed the closed shop, and empowered the government to serve injunctions against strikes likely to cripple the nation’s economy. The act prohibited employer payments to a union of its officials except in certain cases, such as payment to an employee benefit fund.
In Japan Mount Asama erupted and left 11 people dead.
An object crashed near Roswell, N.M. The Army Air Force later insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.
Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat jailed by the Soviets who believed that he was an American spy, reportedly died at the Lubyanka prison in Moscow of an alleged heart attack. He had saved more than 20,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps.
President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.
Legendary bullfighter Manolete was mortally wounded by a bull during a fight in Linares, Spain; he died the following day at age 30.

The National Security Act went into effect. It created a Cabinet secretary of defense and unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force into a National Military Establishment. The US Air Force was carved out of the old Army Air Corps. The act established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Air Force test pilot Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager flew the experimental Bell X-1 rocket plane aircraft and broke the sound barrier to Mach 1.07 for the first time over Edwards Air Force Base, CA.
Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden airplane, known as the Spruce Goose, on its only flight, which lasted 70 sec. over Long Beach Harbor in California.

Dr. Who's History Time Warp