CIA Mind Control
https://youtu.be/NUW-frxo2X4 In 1950 the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence authorized Project BLUEBIRD to discover methods of: conditioning personnel to prevent unauthorized extraction of informationcontrol of an individual by the application of special...
read more
Zoo Parade
https://youtu.be/IwDnUeCh35M 1950 Philadelphia Zoo TV commercial Zoo Parade, a popular Sunday afternoon TV show on NBC from 1950-57 was hosted by Zoo director Marlin Perkins. ~ The show was actually shot at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo (I couldn't find a short video)....
read more
Cigarettes Linked to Cancer
https://youtu.be/gCMzjJjuxQI 1949 Camel ad In 1950 The Journal of the American Medical Association published two articles linking smoking and cancer: Tobacco Smoking as a Possible Etiological Factor in Bronchogenic Carcinoma: A Study of Six Hundred and...
read more
There Will Come Soft Rains
https://youtu.be/bv_D39zKZzc In May 1950, at the height of the Cold War, science fiction writer Ray Bradbury published the short story There Will Come Soft Rains in Collier's magazine. Later that year the story was included in The Martian Chronicles . Plot Summary:...
read more
“Communist” Wisconsin
On May Day 1950 fake Communists took over Mosinee Wisconsin. Conceived by John Decker, a WWII veteran lawyer, and backed by the American Legion, the event was intended to highlight what liberties Americans would lose in an actual Communist takeover. picclick.com...
read more
Dianetics
In May 1950 the magazine Astounding Science Fiction published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics divides the mind into: (1) the conscious analytical mind (2) the subconscious reactive mind (3) the somatic mind...
read more
Einstein Warns of Arms Race
https://youtu.be/K4MjwIFoPn0 Transcript: The Eleanor Roosevelt Show." NBC Radio February 1950 ALBERT EINSTEIN (Physicist): ... The idea of achieving security through national armament is, at the present state of military technique, a disastrous illusion. On the part...
read more
Radio Free Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pQh2PjdziQ&t=65s Headquartered in Munich Germany, Radio Free Europe was founded as an anti-communist propaganda platform in 1949 by the National Committee for a Free Europe (a CIA front organization). Although...
read more
Joseph McCarthy
Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950 ...The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of...
read more
SO LONESOME I COULD CRY
Hear that lonesome whippoorwill He sounds too blue to flyThat means he's lost the will to live I'm so lonesome I could cryDid you ever see a night so slow As time goes draggin' byThe moon just went behind the cloudsTo hide its face and cryThe silence of...
read more
Martians Land in Ecuador
https://youtu.be/zJIHi78T5lA In February 1949 an Ecuadorian folk song was interrupted by a Radio Quito announcer with urgent news: Martian flying saucers had landed and used death rays to destroy a town 25 miles south of Quito.Soon a "reporter" breathlessly reported...
read more
Armistice Day
November 11, 1918: World War I Ends Veterans Day is an official American holiday that originated after WWI as Armistice Day and was originally intended as a remembrance of November 11, 1918 when major hostilities of World War I formally ended at the 11th hour...
read more
Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 –1948) led Indians in a nonviolent independence movement from British colonization. Known worldwide by his honorific Sanskrit title Mahātmā (high-souled, venerable) he was also...
read more
Hollywood Black List
In October 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee (created in 1938) re-convened in Washington D.C. for public hearings on alleged communist infiltration within the American motion picture industry. 50 top Hollywood executives decided to suspend those who...
read more
Post-WWII USSR
Here is an optimistic view of postwar relationships between Great Britain and the USSR. To get a sense of life in the USSR in 1947 it's worth fast forwarding through these interesting, rather upbeat color scenes of everyday life. You don't need to...
read more
Jackie Robinson
Joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American in major league baseball. CAREER BATTING STATISTICS YEAR TEAM GP AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS WAR 1947 BKN 151 590 125 175 31 5 12 48 74 36 29 0 .297 .383 .427...
read more
Billy Graham
William Franklin Graham Jr. (1918 –2018) was an American Southern Baptist evangelist who held huge rallies, broadcasting sermons on radio and television from 1947 until his retirement in 2005. Graham repudiated racial...
read more
Voice of America Calls USSR
Established in 1942 for Allied propaganda broadcasts during WWII, the Voice of America (VOA) continued broadcasts after the war aimed mostly at Western Europe. In September 1947, VOA began broadcasts aimed at the Soviet Union with: “Hello! This is New...
read more
Back in Time
These images seem reflective of the sense of hope and prosperity of post-WWII middle-America. I was only five years old at the time - yet many of these images seem familiar to me. How about you?
read more
Don’t Be a Sucker
This interesting War Department film from 1947, with anti-racist and anti-fascist themes, warns Americans not to let let fanaticism and hatred turn them into suckers. However, with the emerging Cold War, this rhetoric seems oddly out of synch.. In August...
read more
Mickey Spillaine
Frank Morrison Spillane (March 9, 1918 – July 17, 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American cartoonist turned crime novelist, who wrote from the point of view of a private detective named Mike Hammer. "Bestselling writer of shoot-em-up crime novels" is...
read more
Enemy in the Mirror
Excerpts from the book: Once the shoji screen was closed, Kiyoshi said in a low voice, “It’s about the piece I submitted to the Chūō Kōron.” Fumiko took a deep breath. The Chūō Kōron was one of the few literary magazines that still dared to publish articles...
read more
It’s A Wonderful Life
After a series of populist films in the 1930s (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and You Can't Take It With You), Frank Capra read a forgotten story entitled The Greatest Gift written by Philip Van Doren Stern and...
read more
Memorial Day
Memorial Day 1946 - The ways of peace have not returned to us, and the results of war are still upon us. - Eleanor Roosevelt MAY 30, 1946 NEW YORK, Wednesday—This is the first Memorial Day since the end of the war in the Pacific and yet in spite of that...
read more
Song of the South
Song of the South was produced by Walt Disney in 1946 as a live-action/animated musical based on African-American folktales compiled by Joel Chandler Harris in 1881 in the book Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation. The...
read more