December 27, 1951

By the winter of 1951, Truman was in the White House and the federal minimum wage stood at $0.75/hr — and the United States Senate had just voted to ask the United Nations to bar Communist China from membership, a direct consequence of Chinese forces fighting against American troops in Korea. On the entertainment front, Patti Page's "The Tennessee Waltz" was sitting at the top of the music charts, while moviegoers were lining up to see "Harvey," the box office hit starring Jimmy Stewart. The Los Angeles Rams were the NFL champions that season, and on February 25, athletes from across the Western Hemisphere gathered in Buenos Aires for the opening of the first Pan American Games, a landmark international sporting event that would go on to become a permanent fixture in the Americas.