• Tour de France - While wearing Holland's first ever Maillot Jaune (race leader's Yellow Jersey), Wim Van Est lost control descending the Col d'Aubisque. Van Est fell 75 meters down a ravine and landed on a ledge. His team had to string together spare tires as a rope to pull Van Est to safety. As race leader he abandoned the Tour.
• Rock & Roll - Cleveland disc jockey, Alan Freed, began playing rhythm and blues records. The R&B sound, labeled “race music” by his mostly white audience, swept the nation and the world. Freed tapped a 1947 Wild Bill Moore song “We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll” to create the phenomenon of Rock & Roll.
• USA - United Nations headquarters were officially opened in New York City.
• TV - I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnes, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley, debuted on CBS.
• Great Britain - Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain for the second time.
• USA - The USA tested a 1-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flat at the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas.
Notable Deaths -
Sinclair Lewis, 1885-1951, died in Rome of heart disease. He was the first American author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930.
Shoeless Joe Jackson, 1889-1951, American baseball player for the Chicago White Sox died of a heart attack. Jackson was given a lifetime suspension from baseballfor his association with the “Black Sox” scandal of 1919.
