Great Moments In TIME: 60 Years in Europe

Shanghai, China
Jan. 10, 1949
The cold, muddy waters of Shanghai's Soochow Creek teemed with thousands of Chinese junks and smaller sampans. Terrified refugees were preparing once more to flee before the surging tide of communism. Nevertheless, the great majority of Chinese were becoming more reconciled to the prospects of communist rule. The cagey Reds had switched to a "soft"

line ... In Chengchow, ... two Shanghai cotton brokers reported "all was quiet." Their warehouse of cotton had been untouched by the communists. Said a Red officer: "When the kettle belonged to Chiang, we tried to break it; now that it is ours, we want to preserve and use it."

Berlin
July 19, 1948
The people came. In the thronged square, Social Democratic leader Ernst Spars climbed on to a platform. He pointed to the overcast skies. "Up there," cried Spars, "the American people are showing their faith in the cause of our Berlin brothers. Yet we — their fellow countrymen — have done nothing. Now we must act! There is not much food for us here in Melsungen, but let us share with those brave Berliners what little we have!"

Oxford, England
May 17, 1954
Then, according to plan, [Chris] Chataway sprinted into the lead, [Roger] Bannister right at his heels. Some 300 yds. from the finish, Bannister began pouring it on, lengthening his stride for his famed finishing kick, his head rolled back, his neck painfully arched. He tore the tape and collapsed unconscious into the arms of Trainer [Franz] Stampfl. "I wasn't thinking about anything in particular," he said afterward. "I saw the tape faintly ahead, put everything into getting there and that was the last I knew about it." Over the loudspeakers came the meticulous voice of the announcer:"A time which is a new meeting and track record, and ... a new English native, a British national, a British all comers, European, British Empire and world record. The time was three ... " At that point, the 1,500 track fans in the stands broke into such an uproar that the rest of the announcement was lost: "Three minutes, fifty-nine and four-tenths seconds."

London
July 21, 1947
There were many arrangements to be made. Philip, for instance, was comparatively poor ... But in Manchester a bus driver
conceded: "I think the royal family gives us something other countries haven't got. I'm willing to pay for it." King George was expected to ask Parliament for £35,000 a year for Philip. Elizabeth's own allowance (£15,000) would be upped. In time the couple would get their own town house, though they expected to start by living with the family.

Elugelab Island, W. Pacific Ocean
April 26, 1954
Ivy's explosion broke the stillness of a mid-Pacific morning on Nov. 1, 1952; at 7:15 a.m.,
observers on ships and planes 50 miles away watched an enormous deep-orange fireball blaze up in the distance. Then it rose to the stratosphere, trailed by a churning grey-brown pillar of water and the pulverized remains of the little sandspit of Elugelab ... Its colors lost their infernal intensity, paled to harmless-looking but deadly pastels.

Bruneval, France
April 14, 1947
Dignitaries and former Resistance leaders last week plodded across muddy fields to the remote hamlet of Bruneval in Normandy. There, at a ceremony to honor a British commando raid, Charles de Gaulle ... opened a campaign to recapture power. "The tide goes up and down," said De Gaulle. "Perhaps it is in the course of nature that a period of clear and gigantic efforts should be followed by a period of obscure fumbling. But times are too difficult, life too uncertain, the world too hard to enable one to vegetate too long in the darkness without risk of succumbing." Then De Gaulle lashed out against the French parliamentary system and the new constitution. Said he: "The day is coming when ... the immense mass of the French will rally to France."