Person report

★26 Jan 1950
Indian independence movement: India became a republic under a new constitution, with Rajendra Prasad as president and Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister.

★01 Mar 1950
In a trial lasting less than 90 minutes, German–British physicist Klaus Fuchs was convicted of violating the Official Secrets Act for supplying information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union.

★08 Jun 1950
Thomas Blamey became the only Australian to attain the rank of field marshal.

★03 Jul 1952
SS United States departed New York Harbor on her maiden voyage and became the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic.

★28 Aug 1955
African-American teenager Emmett Till was murdered near Money, Mississippi, for allegedly flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American civil rights movement.

★06 Dec 1956
At the Melbourne Olympics, 14-year-old swimmer Sandra Morgan became the youngest Australian to win an Olympic gold medal.

★04 Oct 1957
The Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

★10 Mar 1959
An anti-Chinese uprising began as thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Potala Palace in Lhasa to prevent the Dalai Lama from leaving or being removed by the Chinese army.

★31 Mar 1959
After a two-week escape journey from Tibet, the 14th Dalai Lama reached the Tawang Monastery in Arunachal Pradesh in India.

★14 Jan 1960
The Reserve Bank of Australia, the country's central bank and banknote-issuing authority, was established.

Historical data by Wikipedia Contributors CC BY-SA 3.0.