Massachusetts Governor Paul A. Dever signed a bill banning Communists from holding state jobs and requiring all future applicants to take loyalty oaths.[1]
Britain, France and the United States issued separate statements rejecting the USSR's charge of July 19 that the North Atlantic Treaty was a violation of the Italian peace treaty. US Secretary of State Dean Acheson said that "Italy is left quite free by the provisions of the peace treaty to join with other states in a collective defense arrangement."[2]
In the Indonesian conflict, formal ceasefire orders were issued to both Dutch and Indonesian forces, effective at midnight August 10 in Java and midnight August 14 in Sumatra.[3]
The Dutch Upper House ratified the North Atlantic Treaty by a vote of 29 to 2.[4]
Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman announced through her publicist that she was seeking a divorce from her husband Petter Lindström and planned to retire from the screen after her present film was finished. Bergman's press statement made no mention of rumors that she was having an affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini.[7]
Siege of Surakarta: Indonesian Republic forces briefly infiltrated the city of Surakarta. Though repulsed by the Dutch, the attack provided a morale boost for the Indonesians.
A British Gloster Meteor set a new endurance record for jet aircraft in a 3,600-mile (5,800 km) flight over England that lasted 12 hours and 3 minutes.[9]
The Third Geneva Convention received final approval at a conference of 60 nations, adopting almost unanimously three revised agreements regulating the treatment of wounded combatants, prisoners of war and civilians in occupied territory.[13]
The Fourth Geneva Convention was adopted, which included humanitarian protections for civilians in a war zone.[15]
Moscow radio read a bulletin describing Yugoslavia as an "enemy of the Soviet Union" and charging the Tito government of "merging itself to an even greater extent with imperialist circles against the Soviet Union and entering into blocs with them."[16]
The Constituent Assembly of India adopted a measure conferring citizenship on Indians living abroad if they, their parents or grandparents were born in India. About 3 million people living abroad were made eligible for Indian citizenship under the new rules.[17]
Big Ben was slowed down by 4½ minutes when a flock of starlings perched on its minute hand.[18]
The Vatican clarified a point of confusion among Roman Catholics by issuing a declaration that permitted marriages between Communists and Catholics, but only by treating them as "mixed" marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics. Participants would be required to sign a written declaration that all their children would be baptized and brought up Catholic, and Mass was not to celebrated.[21]
The body of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was reinterred at the newly named Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Herzl, who died in 1904, had been buried in Vienna but specified in his will that he wished for his body, and those of his immediate relatives, to be transferred to the Jewish state he hoped would someday be a reality.[22][23]
The Soviet Union sent Yugoslavia a note threatening to "resort to other more effective measures" unless the Tito government ceased the alleged mistreatment of Soviet citizens in Yugoslavia.[24]
The US Senate confirmed Attorney General Tom C. Clark as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by a vote of 73 to 8.[25]
Peru broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba, charging that anti-government leaders sought by the police had been granted asylum by the Cuban embassy in Lima.[27]
It was unofficially reported from the Vatican that the bones of Saint Peter had been discovered beneath St. Peter's Basilica, which, if verified, would confirm the longstanding tradition which held that the early Christian leader had been buried there.[30]
Yugoslavia accused the USSR of attempting to interfere in its internal affairs but offered to repatriate 31 Russians being held on espionage charges.[31]
Ku Klux Klan representatives from six Southern states met in Montgomery, Alabama to unite into a nationwide organization claiming a membership of 265,000.[32]
Judge Harold Medina refused to declare a mistrial in the Smith Act trial despite defense contentions that juror Russell Janney, author of The Miracle of the Bells, discussed the case out-of-court and had answered falsely about having an anti-Communist bias during the jury selection process.[34]
RCA reported the development of a color television which could be adapted to existing black-and-white receivers through the use of a converter.[35]
The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the restoration of American citizenship to three Japanese-American women who had renounced it while being held in internment camps during the war but, according to them, did not do so of their own free will. The court characterized conditions in the camps as "unnessarily cruel and inhuman treatment."[36]
The US submarine Cochino sustained an explosion in its battery room and sank during training maneuvers north of Hammerfest, Norway. One crew member perished, and six aboard a sister vessel were swept overboard and drowned during rescue operations in heavy seas.[37]
The first of the two Peekskill riots took place when a free-for-all fight involving several hundred people resulted in the postponement of an open-air concert by Paul Robeson on the outskirts of Peekskill, New York.[38]
Apartheid was officially introduced to South African post offices when counters in two Cape Town offices were segregated into white and non-white sections, with more to follow soon.[41]
Italy and Greece signed a treaty of economic collaboration in which Italy agreed to pay Greece $101 million US in war reparations and compel Italian nationals in the Dodecanese Islands to sell off their properties there within a year's time.[42][43]