On January 10

On this day in ...
... 1946 (65 years ago today), in London, the U.N. General Assembly met for the 1st time ever. (credit for U.N. photo of British Prime Minister Clement Atlee giving an opening address) The lead of The New York Times' page 1 story, written by James B. Reston, captured the significance of this post-World War II event:

The fifty-one nations of the greatest war-time coalition in history, representing four-fifths of the people in the world, started today another chapter in man's melancholy search for peace and security.
One hundred and forty-seven days after the close of the war that cost more than 20,000,000 casualties and left countless millions homeless, and on the twenty-sixth
anniversary of the ratification of the ill-fated League of Nations Covenant, the nations met this afternoon in the blue and gold auditorium of the Central Hall of Westminster ....

(Prior January 10 posts are here, here, and here.)

On July 28

On this day in ...
... 1945, in a move that New York Times reporter James B. Reston termed the payment of "a first installment on an old debt," the U.S. Senate voted 89-2 to ratify the Charter of the United Nations (right). The "debt" to which Reston referred: the Senate's 1920 rejection of a post-World War I precursor to the post-World War II Charter, the Covenant of the League of Nations. Debate in 1945 lasted "only six days," compared with the nine-month Senate debate over the League. Voting against the Charter were 2 Republicans, Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota and William Langer of North Dakota; the latter maintained that the Charter "would mean 'perpetual war' and the 'enslavement' of millions of poor people from Poland and India."
... 2003 (5 years ago today), Lady Valerie Goulding (below left) died in a nursing home in Shankill, County Dublin, Ireland. Born in England in 1918, she'd moved to Ireland following her marriage to "a fertiliser manufacturer and art collector, Sir Basil Goulding." In Dublin in 1951, she founded the Central Remedial Clinic for the care of 2 persons with physical disabilities; it now serves 4,000 patients. This launched her life's work on behalf of the disabled. She served by appointment to Seanad Éireann, Ireland's Senate, from 1977 to 1981; lost 2 bids for election to the Dail, Ireland's principal parliamentary chamber; and was considered as a candidate for Uachtarán na hÉireann, President of Ireland, in 1983. (photo credit)