Want a glimpse of the news of the day from January 1952? Spies, jewelry thieves & more
As I was trolling through our bookshelves, searching for books that I might somehow have overlooked and not read, I dug out my replica edition of the The New York Times from my birthday, Jan. 29, 1952. My kids gave it to me on a birthday a few years ago.
“All the News That’s Fit to Print” it promised me. No big story dominated the front page that day. Not surprisingly it was snowing and traffic was bad. New city tax bills were ready, the United States was trying to negotiate its way out of Korea and the Western powers were worried about Communism in Southeast Asia.
In news from a different lifestyle from mine, a soft-spoken thief with a knife stole $100,000 in jewelry from an attorney’s wife in her apartment while her servants were unaware, and different thieves stole $34,000 in jewelry from the car of Jeane Kennedy while it was parked in front of the house of her brother, Congressman John Kennedy, in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned yet again a conviction of a young and attractive woman, Judith Coplon, for spying for the Soviet Union. Although she was arrested with classified material from the U.S. Department of Justice in her possession, her first trial was overturned because FBI agents arrested her and seized evidence without an arrest warrant.
The second trial was faulty because prosecutors used wiretap evidence that included conversations with her lawyer which should have been privileged. Out or curiosity I looked her up on the internet and she was never tried again, married one of her lawyers, raised a family and died in her 80s still denying any wrongdoing.
The court also delayed a case from Kansas in which some parents were trying to overturn the separate but equal rule for black schoolchildren.
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Sen. Robert Taft and, of course, perennial losing candidate Harold Stassen were jockeying for the Republican presidential nomination. The edition also has 12 other front pages from 1952 that include President Harry Truman deciding not to run, Richard Nixon pleading to stay on the ticket with Eisenhower despite some suspect money dealings and Eisenhower winning in November.
At a United Nations UNESCO meeting, several government and private leaders asked the United States to ease immigration laws to help out with a lingering refugee crisis left over from World War II. Meanwhile the Philippines was arguing with Japan over war reparations and some U.S. legislators were urging our country to sign a peace treaty with Japan.
Joseph McCarthy, Pakistan and more
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the man who thought there was a communist behind every door in Washington, D.C., was calling for an advertiser boycott of Time magazine for what he thought was a smear article.
In futile effort news, a young college public relations major organized an effort to drop hundreds of tiny glass vials off the shore of China with messages of peace to help keep alive the friendship between our countries.
And in people there live a little differently news, in Pakistan, a lady of high rank was arrested on the charge of beating a 13-year-old female servant to death. She was confined to a special room in jail with two maid servants.
No one I had ever heard of was in the obituaries but then again, I wasn’t in the births because no one had ever heard of me and my small Missouri hometown.
