Truman unveils his Fair Deal programme (1949), and Soviet Union recognises the new Provisional Government of Poland (1945). Born on this day: Bradley Cooper, Konrad Adenauer and Umberto Eco. Died: Calvin Coolidge, Max Born and Eusébio.
29 events, 69 births and 65 deaths on this date.
Speaking to Congress, Truman laid out his Fair Deal, a set of liberal domestic reforms built on the New Deal. Few of its proposals passed, as a conservative coalition dominated Congress.
National Archives and Records Administration. Office of Presidential Libraries. Harry S. Truman Library. · Public domainMoscow gave its backing to a Polish government in Lublin that answered to the Kremlin rather than the exiled government in London. The move cut across Britain and the United States, who still recognised the London government, and it foreshadowed Soviet control over postwar Poland.
Central America's governing body voted to join the First Mexican Empire outright, a move that tied the former Captaincy General of Guatemala to Mexico just months after independence from Spain. The decision set off debates over whether the region would stay a single state or split apart.
Ford's company announced higher pay and shorter hours for its workers, an early step toward the modern working week. Ford was among the industrialists who helped show that a shorter schedule could work in industry.
Fred Hartsook · Public domain
The announcement came from a president whose name is tied to the Apollo 11 landing and the Watergate scandal that forced his resignation. The Space Shuttle was the next big American project in orbit, a spacecraft meant to be flown again and again.
Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. (ca. 1974 - 05/15/1984) · Public domain
Benedict Arnold, who had defected from the American side, led British naval raiders up the James River to set fire to Richmond, then the Virginia state capital. The raid was part of a wider British campaign to pressure the southern colonies during the Revolutionary War.
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Bradley Cooper is an American actor and filmmaker, best known for The Hangover films and for directing, co-writing and starring in A Star Is Born. He has earned multiple Academy Award nominations across his career.
Raph_PH · CC BY 4.0
Adenauer became the first chancellor of West Germany in 1949 and led it through its postwar recovery and into NATO. Before that he was Mayor of Cologne and a leading Catholic Centre Party politician in the Weimar Republic.
Katherine Young (1906–1993) · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Umberto Eco was an Italian semiotician and novelist, best known for The Name of the Rose, a medieval murder mystery that drew on his scholarship. He also wrote essays and a long-running newspaper column, and taught at the University of Bologna for most of his career.
Rob Bogaerts for Anefo · CC0
Coolidge, the 30th US president, earned the nickname Silent Cal for his taciturn manner and dry wit. He is remembered for restoring public trust in the White House after the Harding scandals and for a booming economy of the Roaring Twenties.
Harris & Ewing · Public domain
Max Born was a German-British physicist who helped build quantum mechanics and later shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics. He turned Göttingen into one of the world's leading centres for physics in the 1920s.
Public domain
Eusébio was a Portuguese striker known as the Black Panther, and he is remembered as Benfica's greatest scorer, with 473 goals. He also won the Ballon d'Or in 1965 and finished as the World Cup's top scorer with nine goals in 1966.
Panini · Public domain
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