Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 4, 1994 TAG: 9405030045
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Gen. Douglas MacArthur rejected all suggestions that he become a Republican candidate for president, saying any such movement would hurt the war effort.
Two thousand U.S. war planes dropped 2,500 tons of bombs, including fire bombs, on Berlin. Sixty-three bombers and 14 escorting fighter planes were lost in the raid. Eighty-eight German planes were shot down, 72 by the guns of the flying fortresses.
Pilots returning from the raid on Berlin said that for the first time they had seen the German fighters attacking without any plan. "They acted like crazy men," one bomber pilot said. Some German fighter pilots even attempted to ram U.S. bombers with their planes, bomber pilots said.
The Columbia Broadcasting System unleashed a major controversy with a proposal that television be moved to higher frequencies after the war to give a wide-band fine-screen picture. Improvements in television made since the start of the war would allow for larger and better pictures and even the transmission of programs in full color, CBS said.
Virginia Tech set up a special course for women in the fundamentals of engineering for the duration of the war. It was part of an effort to relieve a critical shortage of engineers in government agencies and war industries.
Eighty-eight youngsters were drawn to the city marbles eliminations in Elmwood Park. The winner of the event would get a free trip to the national tournament, courtesy of the Times-World Corp.
The Cooperative Education Association and the PTA launched a clothes for Russia drive with a goal of four pounds of clothing and a pair of shoes set for each school child in Roanoke and Roanoke County. The Russians, who had stopped Hitler on the eastern front, were in desperate need of clothing, organizers of the drive said.
Soviet leader Josef Stalin, in a May Day radio address, again called for the United States and Britain to open a second front against Nazi Germany. Acknowledging the contribution of America and Britain to Russian victories, he said only a combined blow could crush Germany completely.
The House of Representatives Rules Committee was ready to report a resolution calling for an investigation of the government seizure of the offices of Montgomery Ward in Chicago. President Franklin Roosevelt had ordered the seizure after the company had defied a government labor order.
Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell's invasion army was smashing the Japanese steadily back in northern Burma. Vinegar Joe was moving through the jungle with the help of the first all-American armored unit to fight in Asia.
Daniel De Luce, who made a trip into Nazi-dominated Yugoslavia to report on the resistance led by Marshal Tito's forces, won the Pulitzer Prize for international telegraphic reporting. Ernie Pyle, who wrote about the everyday events in the lives of fighting men, won the award for distinguished correspondence.
The 93rd Division, the first Negro infantry division seeing action overseas, had its baptism of fire in the jungles of Bougainville against the Japanese.
Negroes voted unchallenged in Democratic primaries in Alabama and Florida but were refused ballots in at least two cities. Deputy Sheriff Frank Pryor in Mobile, Ala., told 10 black voters that the election was restricted to white voters.
After a two-week diet of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Chicago, the 1943 batting champ, Stan Musial, was hitting .447 in the first 11 games for the St. Louis Cardinals.
The British government of India announced it had decided to immediately release Mohandas K. Gandhi, the frail and ascetic Indian nationalist leader who had been imprisoned 21 months earlier, because of his failing health.
Two U.S. planes and two PT boats were destroyed in the southwest Pacific when American forces failed to recognize identification signals and fired on each other.
Congress applauded as most meat was removed from the ration list, but some members saw political implications in the move and said it should have been made long before.
Strikes at 23 war plants at Windsor, Ont., and Detroit, involving roughly 28,000 workers posted the most serious threat to the war effort in months.
American and British dive bombers cracked open the huge Pescara dam in Italy, releasing a wall of water that threatened to engulf German strongholds.
by CNB