Irgun operatives blew up a British officers' club inJerusalem, killing 16. Three more British soldiers were killed that night in subsequent violence throughout the Holy Land.[1]
France and the United Kingdom signed theTreaty of Dunkirk, a pact of alliance and mutual assistance.
517 leftists were arrested by the Greek government and immediately deported to the islands.[5]
Villarbasse massacre: The last execution for common crimes in Italy took place inTurin when three Sicilians were shot by firing squad for clubbing ten people to death while committing a robbery.
TheJudges' Trial began inNuremberg. 15 German jurists and lawyers stood accused of Nazi war crimes. A sixteenth defendant, Carl Westphal, was indicted but had committed suicide before the trial began.
By a vote of 337 to 185, the British Parliament defeated aConservative motion demanding rejection of the June 1948 deadline for withdrawal from India.[6]
The Austrian Interior Ministry announced that a large underground Nazi movement had been broken up with 57 arrests made.[8]
The American college basketball tradition of the cutting down of the nets by the national championship team began whenNC State coachEverett Scott decided he wanted a souvenir after his team won theSouthern Conference men's basketball tournament. The players lifted Case on their shoulders and he cut the net down.[9]
Philippine PresidentManuel Roxas survived an assassination attempt when a barber fromManila tried to kill him with a hand grenade. Although he failed, a bystander was killed.[5]
ABig Four Conference began inMoscow with the foreign ministers of the UK, United States, France and the USSR to decide on terms for treaties with Germany and Austria.[5]
During a hearing before the House Labor Committee, US Secretary of LaborLewis B. Schwellenbach suggested that theCommunist Party be outlawed in the United States, explaining that he could see no reason why they should be allowed to run for office when their purpose "is to destroy this Government."[10]
The Council of States in the US zone of Germany approved a restitution law that would return identifiable property to all racial, religious and political victims of Nazi Germany.[11]
BBC Television resumed broadcasting after a one-month shutdown due to the energy crisis, although it was initially restricted to evening hours only and would not resume full service until April 18.[12]
US PresidentHarry S. Truman announced theTruman Doctrine, telling Congress that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
TheJewish refugee shipShabtai Luzinsky ran the British blockade of the Palestine coast and beached north ofGaza undetected. Hundreds of local residents came down to the beach to mingle with the refugees, and were arrested by mistake while many of the 823 passengers were able to evade arrest.[13][5]
Turkish Prime MinisterRecep Peker hailed President Truman's landmark speech as inspired by a "point of view both fully realistic and fully humanitarian."[14]
The British government announced a ban on midweek sports in an effort to boost worker productivity.[15]
At the Moscow Conference, Soviet Foreign MinisterVyacheslav Molotov demanded that Germany be made to pay $10 billion in war reparations over a 20-year period. The United States and Britain opposed the idea.[19]
The US Supreme Court upheld the right of theCivil Service Commission to fire communists and communist sympathizers from the government.[20]
TASS published the text of a secret agreement made at theYalta Conference in 1945 on the matter of German reparations, in order to back up Molotov's demand for them. The question then turned to whether the Yalta text was supplemented or superseded by thePotsdam Agreement.[21]
John Zevgos, former Communist minister of agriculture in the Greek government, was gunned down as he stood on a busy street corner inThessaloniki. The assassin was identified as Christos Panu, who told the police he was a member of theOrganization for the Protection of the People's Struggle (OPLA) and that his motive was revenge because Zevgos had told him to go to a Yugoslav camp, where he was imprisoned for six months because he did not accept "the communist line against Greece."[26][27]
Died:Victor Goldschmidt, 59, Swiss geochemist;Heinrich Schwarz, 40, German SS officer and concentration camp commandant (executed by firing squad for war crimes)
Police inHarlem were called to a brownstone at 2078 Fifth Avenue after receiving a telephone call reporting that there was a dead man inside. The result was the discovery of one of the most notorious cases ofcompulsive hoarding in history, that of theCollyer brothers. Finding the front entrance blocked by a solid wall of boxes and debris, police used a ladder to enter a second-storey room where they found the emaciated, dehydrated body of former lawyer Homer Collyer. The remains of his younger brother Langley were only eight feet away but would not be found until April 8. Over 100 tons of debris would be removed from the Collyer home, which was demolished as unsafe within the year.[28]
J. Edgar Hoover told the House Un-American Activities Committee that communists had infiltrated the American film industry and were getting their "message" out to theater audiences.[31]
MPAA PresidentEric Johnston testified for an hour before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He denied repeatedly that American movies were being used by communists to spread propaganda and rejected as impossible a suggestion that all actors and writers suspected of communist sympathies be fired from the industry.[31]
A curfew was imposed in Bombay after 47 had been killed in rioting.[5]
Francisco Franco announced in a broadcast fromMadrid that he had presented a bill to the SpanishCortes providing for a new monarch to succeed him in the event of his death or incapacitation. The person would have to be of Royal blood, at least 30 years of age, a Spaniard and a Catholic, and would require the approval of two-thirds of the Cortes in a vote. If no one met the requirements aregent could be proposed.[33]
TheBishop of London blamed Britain's high divorce rate on the influence of American movies. In an article for the British medical magazineThe Practitioner, Dr.J. C. Wand wrote that Hollywood teaches that love is an "overwhelming impulse without rhyme or reason, which must at all costs be obeyed even if it implies stealing someone else's husband or someone else's fiance."[34]
