Past Daily

Convicted members of the U.S. Communist Party – after 9 months, working on an all-out ban.

Click on the link here for Audio player: News for Week ending Oct. 16, 1949

This week, ending on October 16th in 1949 was about news bringing the Cold War closer to home. With the verdict in, regarding the presence of the U.S. Communist Party (a party which had been legal since it’s founding in the 1920′s), the U.S. was one step closer to an outright ban of the Communist Party in the U.S. and all its activities.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the Senate was holding hearings on the future of the Atomic Bomb, with some testimony coming in via the Navy that an Atomic Bomb blast was relatively harmless – citing a hypothetical argument that, if a bomb was detonated on one end of a North-South runway of National Airport, a person standing on the opposite end of the runway, wearing no protective clothing, would receive little or no damaging effects from the blast.

The statement was met with a goodly amount of incredulity by members of the committee. And when clarification was requested with respect to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, the proverbial “I’ll get back to you on that” was given.

Things were continuing to heat up at the United Nations, with long and heated blasts at the U.S. from the Soviet Union.

Under less insane circumstances was a visit to Washington and an address to Congress by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and pledges of support.

Also on the broadcast, part of the Voices and Events series for the week, was a re-cap of voices from Politics past, featuring excerpts of addresses by Al Smith, Fiorello LaGuardia, Huey Long, “Cotton Ed” Smith and many others. A reminder that Politics has always been just a little skewed.

And ending the week was a story on “Swindlin’ Sam” Engle, or “The White Haired Woo-Maker” who was convicted of swindling large amounts of money from wealthy widows and sentenced to prison for his deeds. Upon his release this week in 1949, he immediately ran into trouble with his former attorney who insisted he be under the watchful eye of an armed guard – and fists flew. Gotta love it.

And so went this week in history as reported on Voices And Events for October 16, 1949.

~ by gordonskene on October 16, 2012.

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Tags: 1949, Cold War, Hiroshima, Jawaharlal Nehru, Nagasaki, Navy, News, news broadcast, newscast, Nuclear weapon, Radio, Soviet Union, World War II