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A RAJKUMAR IS BORN
Bedara Kanappa was the launchpad for Karnataka’s John Wayne and superstar Rajkumar. Directed by H.L.N. Simha, who gave the actor his present name, the film also saw the debut of G.V. Iyer, a leading Kannada filmmaker known for his Sanskrit films, who wrote the story for the film. A partly mythological melodrama folk tale based on the leg-end of hunter Kanappa, the film ran for 100 days.
FIRST CUT
- Air Commodore P.C. Lal, group captain H. Moolgaonkar and wing commander Roshan Suri became the first Indians to break the super-sonic speed barrier.
- Air Marshal S. Mukherji became the first Indian chief of air staff.
- The first high-rise in India—a 14-stoyreyed New Secretariat building in Calcutta came up.
REWIND
During a June visit to India, Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai and Jawaharlal Nehru signed a treaty popularly known as Panchsheel that outlined Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence. In October, the prime minister visited Beijing where he attended a banquet in his honour with Chairman Mao. On his return, Nehru addressed a mammoth public meeting in Calcutta where he affirmed: “The people of China do not want war.”
DID YOU KNOW
13,000 hosewives signed a petition claiming that films threatened the moral health of a country. The matter was then taken up by minister K.M. Munshi’s wife Lilavati Munshi in the Rajya Sabha.
LOTHAL DOCKED
Lothal dock, built during the Harappan civilization, was discovered by the Archaeological Survey of India at the head of the Gulf of Cambay on Gujarat coast. A mound and a town-ship was also found.
“STATISTICS IS THE KEY TO ANALYSIS”
P.C. Mahalanobis
Founder of the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, statistician and physicist Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis made the Planning Commission the “exclusive theatre where economic policy was formulated”, says Sunil Khilnani. The second Five Year Plan, with its devotion to industry, was his creation. The thought behing the Plan: “Unemployment is chronic because of the unavailability of capital goods. It occurs only when means of production become idle.”
Wild Thing
Ramu, seven, known as Wolf Boy, gnaws on raw meat shortly after his discovery in Lucknow. He was apparently raised by wolves after disappearing six years earlier. He couldn’t speak but made animal noises instead.
ELSEWHERE…
- Austria’s worst avalanche killed 200. Nine hours later a second one killed 115.
- Over 22,000 anti-Communist prisoners were turned over to the UN forces in Korea.
- The US signed a mutual defence pact with Japan, offering them $ 100 million in aid within the next three months.
- Egypt and Britain signed a pact on Suez Canal, as the latter agreed to withdraw its 80,000-man force within 20 months.
Courtesy By India Today
