Chinese and North Korean troops gain ground and reach the 38th parallel

Communist forces recapture Pyongyang, North Korea

The US National Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC) takes control of the Nevada test range, 101 km from Las Vegas; 106 atmospheric nuclear tests (the last in 1963) and 822 underground tests will be carried out there, for a total of 928 nuclear explosions (the last in 1992).

UN troops, heavily outnumbered by half a million Chinese and North Korean soldiers, begin their retreat

Massive Chinese intervention in the Korean War: nearly 400,000 Chinese soldiers enter North Korea

The Soviet air cover for the Chinese maneuvers in Korea did not have the desired effect, especially thanks to the work done by the USAF in supersonic flight in the previous years and which placed the F86 Seebers at a clear advantage over the MIGs.

Glenn Seaborg synthesizes Californium. He is probably the greatest discoverer of elements (or inventor, since the ones he “discovered” are not found in nature): plutonium, curium, americium, berkelium, and californium in a span of just 10 years.

United States. The United Press reports that 13 Chinese and North Korean divisions (130,000 soldiers) have broken through UN-allied lines in northwest Korea. The war against North Korea has become a war against Communist China. And that makes a big difference.

United States. A shocked Acheson tells reporters that he is “deeply concerned” about the clash with Chinese troops in North Korea.

North Korea. The unexpected happens: spokesmen for the US X Corps confirm that American troops clashed with Chinese regiments north of the Hungnam River.

American landing in South Korea under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, simultaneously at Pusan, in the south-east and at Inch’on opposite Seoul, 500,000 marines will land; at Inchon the super-defended island of Wolmi-Do, in the port, is immediately taken.

United Nations. The members of the UN Security Council meet. The Soviet envoy is absent, protesting the failure to remove Taiwan’s representative from the UN, once the representative of the People’s Republic of China had been brought in following the success of Mao’s revolution. The United States takes advantage of the opportunity to introduce a motion to use all means to end North Korea’s unprovoked attack on South Korea.

Mikhail Gorbachev moves to Moscow to study at the University

New York. In the New Yorker’s society column, a strange piece of news appears: the University of California at Berkeley has just discovered elements 97 and 98 and named them Berkelium and Californium. (These are the first new elements since the birth of the Solar System.) And the reporter comments that they just missed the opportunity to create a string of elements named Universitium, Offo, Californium, and Berkelium. Glen Seaborg and Albert Ghiorso of UC Berkeley will also comment that the choice stemmed from the dismaying possibility that, after naming 97 and 98 as Universitium and Offo, New Yorkers would then discover 99 and 100 and name them Newium and Yorkium.

Leo Szilard calculates that if 2 grams of Cobalt-60 were released per square kilometer onto the planet, the resulting gamma radiation would wipe out the human race. The weapon could be a multi-stage warhead: for example, a first stage of plutonium, which triggers a hydrogen device, which fuses an outer layer of Cobalt-59, which absorbs neutrons and transforms into the unstable Cobalt-60. In slang, this is called a salted bomb.

The relativistic effect that leads to the extension of the muon’s half-life at speeds close to that of light has been measured with a precision of 5%.

Niels Bohr delivers a speech at the United Nations: “Impact of Science on Society.” He declares that “knowledge itself is the basis of civilization.”

President Truman decides to launch an all-out effort to develop a hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb. Bethe, Fermi, Teller, and von Neumann complete a lengthy feasibility study with unsuccessful results: the difficulties are insurmountable, but then an invention by Stan Ulam and Edward Teller in 1951 will change everything. The Soviets have been developing the H-bomb since at least 1948. According to the memoirs of Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet H-bomb and a future dissident, “Stalin is determined to have it, and any American move toward abandoning it would be interpreted as a sign of weakness or stupidity, and in any case the Soviet strategy would always be the same: to produce the H-bomb as quickly as possible.”

President Truman meets with David Lilienthal, Dean Acheson, and Louis Johnson to discuss the Super Bomb (Teller calls it “The Super”). The president asks if the Soviets could develop it. He is told yes. “In that case, we have no choice. We’ll go ahead.”

Klaus Fuchs, spontaneously confesses in court that in June 1945 he provided the Soviets with a complete description of the American plutonium bomb technology.

United States. Milk production increases significantly from 58 billion liters from 22 million cows (1950) to 105 billion liters from 9 million cows (2015). Yield per cow therefore increases by 330%.