Sino-Soviet Treaty
https://youtu.be/l6x7fzcx5oc Beginning in early 1950, the newly-established People's Republic of China (PRC) Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou En-lai met with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Foreign Minister Andrei Vyshinsky in Moscow to discuss an alliance for...
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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...
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Understanding Post-WWII East Asia
East Asia ~ Wikimedia I am currently on a trip to Seoul, Vladivostok and Tokyo to research locations for my upcoming historical-fiction novel covering the years 1940-1950. My protagonists are: a young Korean physician, trained in the Imperial Japanese medical system...
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McMinnville UFO
McMinnvile Oregon UFO - Wikipedia In May 1950 photographs of UFOs taken on a farm near McMinnville, Oregon were published in Life magazine and nationwide newspapers. Although some skeptics believe UFOs are a hoax, many ufologists argue that the photos are...
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USSR Repatriates German POWs
https://youtu.be/5Skoh6n2SB4 In 1950, while releasing 17,538 German soldiers, the Soviet Union claimed it had completed repatriation of all WWII German POWs numbering 1,939,063. Since the Russian TASS news agency had reported 3.5 million German POWs held in the USSR...
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Nuclear “Doom” Towns
https://youtu.be/wgpo0qAfwDk In the 1950s, nuclear testing began at the Nevada National Security Site with nuclear bombs mounted on top of a 1500 foot detonation tower so the fireball wouldn't damage the monitoring equipment. "Doom" towns were assembled with shops,...
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Beat the Clock
https://youtu.be/H0cBnWgZOKg First televised by CBS in 1950, Beat the Clock was an American television game show that required its contestants to accomplish various stunts within 60 seconds. Contestants were chosen from the studio audience and usually were...
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Taiwan
Brittanica.com By the end of 1949, most of mainland China was under Communist control. Official Communist figures counted some 1.5 million dead and wounded among the People’s Liberation Army. ~600,000 Nationalists troops were killed in combat, while roughly three...
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American Shopping Mall
Pinterest In April 1950 Northgate Center, the first urban shopping mall, was opened in Seattle.Originally an open air complex where the stores faced each other, Northgate began adding a roof over the concourse in 1962 and was completely enclosed by 1974....
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NSC 68 ~ No Preventive War
https://youtu.be/7ugz3eS1R6Q NSC 68 the United States Objectives and Programs for National Security was issued by U.S. President Truman's National Security Council in April 1950. Classified top secret until 1975, the document defined American foreign policy...
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First Black NBA Player
https://youtu.be/08IK0FjcPss In 1950 Chuck Cooper an All-American basketball player from Duquesne University (a private Catholic school in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania) was selected in the second round by the Boston Celtics. Cooper thus became the first...
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Color TV
https://youtu.be/e7hpZbGd2Uw In 1950, the first public demonstration of the RCA system for color television, the all electronic tri-color picture tube, was made at a press conference in Washington, DC. The RCA system was eventually accepted by the...
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U.S. Navy Plane Shot Down
Consolidated Vultee PB4Y-2 Privateer In April 1950, Soviet fighters shot down a US Navy PB4Y-2 Privateer patrol bomber over the Baltic Sea. At the time, Privateers were used by the US Navy for signals intelligence flights off of the coast of the Soviet Union and the...
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Father of the Bride
https://youtu.be/ok7pNklkNhA IN 1950 director Vincente Minelli's comedy Father of the Bride (adapted from a book of the same title by Edward Streeter) told the story of a man (Spencer Tracy) dealing with his daughter's upcoming wedding. The cast...
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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:...
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“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...
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B-36 Crash~British Columbia
https://youtu.be/uLnagDIlfZQ In February 1950 a US Air Force B-36 crashed near the coast of northern British Columbia during a simulated nuclear attack on San Francisco. A Mark 4 nuclear bomb, which lacked the plutonium core needed for a nuclear blast, was...
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Mao and Stalin
Transcripts of the December 1949 and January 1950 sessions between Mao Tse-tung and Joseph Stalin were obtained from Soviet archives by the New York Times in 1995, Moscow December 1949: The first meeting between Mao Tse-tung and Joseph Stalin took place only months...
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Silly Putty
When the Japanese invasion of Asia threatened America’s rubber supply during World War II, chemists at General Electric began looking for a synthetic substitute. James Wright stumbled upon ... a stretchy material that withstood decay and bounced 25 percent higher than...
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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...
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First Kidney Transplant
https://youtu.be/EP9gnlmEyo8 In June 1950 Dr. Richard Lawler performed the first successful kidney transplantation. The donor kidney was removed from a patient who had died of cirrhosis of the liver. The recipient was a 44-year-old woman with polycystic kidney...
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Arthur Godfrey
https://youtu.be/3FlVhQTIL1Q Sponsored by Lipton Tea, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts was broadcast on CBS radio and television from 1946 until 1958. Godfrey was also hosting Arthur Godfrey and His Friends at the same time. Arthur Godfrey delivered...
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Diners Club Card
https://youtu.be/iR5QYkdiaq4 In February 1950 the Diners Club issued the first credit card which only allowed charges at restaurants. By the end of the year, Diners Club had 20,000 members. In 1950 the company charged participating establishments 7%...
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U.S. Reveals H-Bomb Plans
In 1949 the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. https://youtu.be/ZQOZp4ThymU USSR conducts its first atomic bomb test - 1949 Several weeks after a successful Soviet...
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Klaus Fuchs Atomic Spy
https://youtu.be/mqQ5_Na8DIc The German theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs helped develop the first effective atomic bomb at Los Alamos during the WWII Manhattan Project. German born, Fuchs fled Nazi Germany and became a British citizen in August 1942. As a long-time...
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