British Field Marshal Jan Smuts dies in…

The initial government strategy had been primarily to guard important economic targets, such as mines and plantation estates.

General Sir Harold Briggs, the British Army's Director of Operations in Malaya in 1950, develops an overall strategy known as the Briggs Plan.

Its central tenet is that the best way to defeat an insurgency, such as the government is facing, is to cut the insurgents off from their supporters among the population.

In addition the Brigg's plan also recognizes the inhospitable nature of the Malayan jungle.

A major part of the strategy involves targeting the MLNA food supply, which Briggs recognizes comes from three main sources: camps within the Malayan jungle where land is cleared to provide food, aboriginal jungle dwellers who can supply the MLNA with food gathered within the jungle and the MLNA supporters within the 'squatter' communities that live on the edge of the jungle.

The Briggs Planis multifaceted, with one aspect which has become particularly well known: the forced relocation of some five hundred thousand rural Malayans, including four hundred thousand Chinese, from squatter communities on the fringes of the forests into guarded camps called New Villages.

These villages are newly constructed in most cases, and are surrounded by barbed wire, police posts and floodlit areas, meant to keep the inhabitants in and the guerrillas out.

North Korea’s 1950 invasion of the South sets off the Korean War, involving US armed services in an international "police action."

China assists the North; U.N. troops assist the South.

The US threatens to use the atomic bomb against North Korea.

A U.S. Air Force study conducted in 1946 concludes that titanium-based alloys are engineering materials of potentially great importance, since the emerging need for higher strength-to-weight ratios in jet aircraft structures and engines can not be satisfied efficiently by either steel or aluminum.

Consequently, the Department of Defense provides production incentives to start the titanium industry in 1950.

Similar industrial capacity is founded in Japan, the USSR, and the United Kingdom.

Makarios had been consecrated as bishop on June 13, 1948, in the Cathedral of Larnaca.

He also became secretary of the Ethnarchy Council, a position that made him chief political adviser to the archbishop and swept him into the mainstream of the enosis struggle.

His major accomplishment as bishop is planning the plebiscite that brings forth a ninety-six percent favorable vote for enosis in January 1950.

In June Archbishop Makarios II dies, and in October the bishop of Kition is elected to succeed him.

He takes office as Makarios III and, at age thirty-seven, is the youngest archbishop in the history of the Church of Cyprus.

At his inauguration, he pledges not to rest until union with "Mother Greece" has been achieved.

The Saudi leadership obtains a new agreement in 1950 that requires Aramco to pay to the Saudis an income tax of fifty percent of the net operating income.

The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and the consequent price rises in jute, leather, cotton, and wool because of wartime needs, saves the economy of Pakistan.

New trading relationships are formed, and the construction of cotton and jute mills in Pakistan is quickly undertaken.
Pakistan's early foreign policy espouses nonalignment.

Despite disputes with India, the policies of the two countries are similar: membership in the Commonwealth of Nations; no commitment to either the United States or the Soviet Union; and a role in the UN.

In Soviet-dominated lands, “Titoism” has become synonymous with treason, much as “Trotskyism” had been in the '30s.

Purges and public trials ensue throughout eastern Europe.

In some cases, like that of Wladyslaw Gomulka in Poland (who will be left alive), or Koci Xoxe in Albania, the charge of sympathy with Yugoslavia may be true; in others, like those of László Rajk in Hungary (executed on questionable charges in October 1949; his chief adherents are similarly executed or imprisoned) or Traicho Kostov in Bulgaria, the offense may have been only an attempt to resist Soviet domination.

Aid from the West saves Yugoslavia from hunger in 1950, when a drought threatens the cities with starvation.

Yugoslavia in this year withdraws its diplomatic mission from Tiranë.

Yugoslavia’s break with the Soviet Union also inspires a search for a new model of socialism in Yugoslavia.

In this area Tito, never a theoretician, depends on the ideological formulations of his lieutenants, notably the Slovene revolutionary and politician Edvard Kardelj.

However, Tito supports the notion of workers' management of production, embodied in the formation of the first workers' councils in 1950.

In the process, Soviet-style central planning is abandoned and central agencies are trimmed.

One significant development of the split with the Soviet Union in 1948 is the movement of nonaligned countries, in which Tito's active involvement legitimates his independence from the Soviet Union while underlining the respect for national identity that has become so central to his domestic policy.

In June 1950, the Basic Law on the Management of State Economic Enterprises by Working Collectives takes the first steps toward what comes to be known as workers' self-management.

Largely the creation of Kardelj, Yugoslavia's vice-president and leading ideologist, self-management involves a looser system of planning control, with more initiative devolved to enterprises, local authorities, and a highly decentralized banking structure.

India becomes a republic in 1950.

Turkey holds its first free election in 1950.

China, in 1950, occupies Tibet.

Le Corbusier expands upon the use of rough cast concrete as an architectural finish in his design for the new Punjabi capital of Chandigarh.

A U.S. Air Force study conducted in 1946 concludes that titanium-based alloys are engineering materials of potentially great importance, since the emerging need for higher strength-to-weight ratios in jet aircraft structures and engines can not be satisfied efficiently by either steel or aluminum.

Consequently, the Department of Defense provides production incentives to start the titanium industry in 1950.

Similar industrial capacity is founded in Japan, the USSR, and the United Kingdom.