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Today is September12, 2026 Saturday.

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The World in 1950 the year the fighting started in Korea

Close to 200,000 people squeezed into the Maracana stadium in Rio for the game that decided the World Cup. Uruguay won it 2 to 1, and the biggest crowd ever to watch a football match went quiet.

Life back then

News came off the radio and out of the paper, and you only saw it move at the cinema, where a newsreel ran before the cartoon and the feature. In Britain the last petrol coupons went in the bin in May, and drivers could fill the tank as they pleased for the first time since 1939. Then in June the fighting started in Korea, and young men who thought war was behind them got letters. Sixteen countries sent soldiers, and British lads were called up for two years whether they wanted to go or not.

The year in 8 events

• 📜Jan 26 India becomes a republic. Its new constitution comes into force less than three years after independence.
• ⚛️Jan 31 President Truman announces he has ordered work on a hydrogen bomb.
• 🏛️Feb 9 Senator Joseph McCarthy claims in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia that communists work inside the State Department.
• 🕊️May 9 France proposes putting French and German coal and steel under one authority, the first step towards the European Union.
• ⚔️Jun 25 North Korean troops cross the border into South Korea and the Korean War begins.
• 🚢Sep 15 United Nations forces land at Inchon behind the North Korean lines and turn the war around.
• ✏️Oct 2 The first Peanuts comic strip runs in seven American newspapers.
• 🏰Dec 25 Four Scottish students take the Stone of Scone out of Westminster Abbey on Christmas morning.

Who Was in Charge?

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