On this day...6 September 1946

[jive dancer]

I am pulling together some facts and stats about what happened on 6 September 1946 for my dad's 60th birthday (6 Sept 2006). any interesting, unusual snippets welcome!

[jenstar]

You should try looking at the various "1946 in..." articles on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946 - I see your Dad just missed out on sharing a birthday with Freddie Mercury, who was born on 5 September 1946!

[Octavius]

http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/

You could tell him he shares his birthday with the infamous Octavius - I'm sure he'll be chuffed.

[Octavius]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stori es/september/6/default.stm

Thats this Octavius, not the really old one.

[Toureman]

You can buy newspapers of any date, try to find them by google or ebay

[violetblue]

The BBC's own website does an 'on this day' section; it's a link on the right on the news section.

[Simeon]

Tell him he is hounored to share his birthday with me!

[Octavius]

http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/

[reinganum]

Here we go....Radio Times for Friday 6 September, 1946...
No TV unless you were one of the 1,000 or so owners of TVs (only in London). On the radio:
Home Service (now Radio 4!) mainly light classical music, dance bands and light jazz, interspersed with news during the day
5 p.m Children's Hour
6. pm News
6.30 talk about latest films
7.00 Promenade Concert - all Beethoven programme
8.00 Light comedy play
8.30 Comedy sketch show with Arthur Askey
9.00 News
9.30 Programme about William Blake
10.15 till close at midnight - light music and news summaries

Light Programme (now Radio 2)
Very similar to the Home Service during the day - light music, short talks and stories; Family Favourites (record request programme), variety shows and light music in the evening.

The Third Programme (Radio 3) had not yet started; neither had Woman's Hour, or The Archers. Housewives' Choice had been going just six months.

[reinganum]

Further to my earlier post above...

We have microfilm copies of The Times at work going back to the 19th century so I looked up 7 September 1946 to see what had happened the day before.

The ongoing news stories were mainly about post-war reconstruction in Germany and elsewhere, and there was a meeting of the Four Great Powers in Paris. At home the main worry was the effect the poor weather (constant rain) was having on the harvest.

Otherwise, on 6 September 1946:
There was industrial unrest at Smithfield market
Three men were shot at a house in North Cheam (Surrey), one died.
There was an outbreak of paratyphoid at Middlesbrough.

The San Carlo opera company gave a performance of La Boh�me at Covent Garden

India beat a South of England team at Hastings by 10 runs
Yorkshire drew with MCC at Scarborough
The second round of the Penfold golf tournament took place at Sutton Coldfield
Airborne, the Derby winner, was reported to have done well in training for the St Leger (to be held the following Wednesday).

Major news story: two days later, on Sunday 8 September, 1,500 "squatters" occupied flats in Kensington and Bayswater, to protest about the severe housing shortage (this is in many histories of post-war Britain).

I'm exhausted after that!