Tag archive: 1950
May 31st, 2019 at 01:01am
1950: The United States expected imports from postwar Japan would be limited to knick-knacks, quaint oriental goods and not much else. At a party in Tokyo, President Harry Truman's special envoy John Foster Dulles suggested that there might be a market in the United States for Japanese-made shirts, pyjamas and cocktail napkins.
Source: John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986), p. 312
Clever Doggies
Konrad Lorenz, photographed in 1973 by the Nobel Foundation
1950: In Man Meets Dog, the animal behaviourist Konrad Lorenz drew attention to the ability of dogs to detect quite subtle variations in human speech. Victor Sarris's three German shepherds, for example, understood who was who, despite their quirky trio of names: Aris, Harris and Paris.
Source: Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog (1994), p. 143
July 4th, 2018 at 12:56am
Slugs And Shaws
George Bernard Shaw, photographed in 1925
1950: The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw died on 2 November. Three weeks later, in accordance with the terms of his will, his ashes were mingled with those of his wife, who had died in 1943, and scattered in the garden of their village home.
Sniffy To Snoopy
1950: Charles Schulz's cartoon strip Peanuts started with four characters: Charlie Brown, his friends Shermy and Patty, and the dog Sniffy, whose name was changed, just before the strip first appeared, to Snoopy.
Source: Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts Jubilee: My Life and Art with Charlie Brown and Others (1975), pp. 18–19
Black Widow Deaths
1959: Between 1950 and 1959, black widow spiders killed 63 people in the United States.
Source: American Family Physician, January 1992
September 27th, 2017 at 07:54am
Eccentric Englishman
1950: Lord Berners, who died in April, was a classical composer and the author of several novels, though he's probably best remembered for his eccentricities: the clavichord in his Rolls-Royce; fake pearl necklaces round his dogs' necks; blue mayonnaise; the warning, "Trespassers will be prosecuted, dogs shot, cats whipped," in his garden; pigeons dyed magenta, copper green and ultramarine, "tumbling about like a cloud of confetti in the sky"; the notice at the entrance to his folly at Faringdon, "Members of the Public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk".
Source: Mark Amory, Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric (1998), pp. 79, 120, 137–8, 150
Seuss Zoo Quest
1950: American children's writer Theodor Geisel, alias Dr. Seuss, coined the name "nerd" for a tousle-haired, grumpy-looking creature in If I Ran the Zoo:
I'll sail to Ka-Troo
an IT-KUTCH
a PREEP
and a PROO
a NERKLE
a NERD
and a SEERSUCKER, too!
Source: Dr. Seuss, If I Ran the Zoo (2000), pp. 48–9
December 21st, 2016 at 12:35am
Carrying What?
1950: In the early 1950s, bull semen was conveyed around Japan by carrier pigeon.
Source: Asahi Evening News, 14 September 1997
Nasty New Meaning
Instead Of A Tip
GRID Becomes AIDS
Justifiable Killing
"What A Dandy Car You Make"
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