March 23rd, 1940 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM:Devon: IRA prisoners stage a riot in Dartmoor prison.
Heston airfield: The Lockheed 12A civil aircraft, registration code G-AGAR, leaves on a south-east heading. At the controls is Hugh MacPhail, Sidney Cotton's personal assistant. MacPhail and Cotton are to carry out aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet oilfields in the Caucasus as directed by F.W. Winterbotham, the Chief of MI6. After intermediate landings at Malta and Cairo, the Lockheed will reach RAF Habbaniya where its identifying marks will be painted over and the several high-powered hidden cameras that it carries will be inspected.
GERMANY: Field Marshal Göring orders a halt to transports of Jews in eastern Europe, but is ignored.
Commerce raider 'Atlantis' leaves harbour in Suederpiep to begin her first war patrol. She is masquerading as a Norwegian freighter. (Alex Gordon)
PACIFIC: The British Royal Navy forms the "Malaya Force" to shadow 17 German merchant ships trapped in Netherlands East Indies ports.
U.S.A.: The 30-minute
radio show “Truth or Consequences” makes its debut this Saturday night on
CBS radio at 2145 hours Eastern Time sponsored by Ivory Soap. The radio show
was originally heard on only four CBS stations but in August, NBC picked up
the show where it eventually became the most popular of all radio quiz
shows. Hosted by Ralph Edwards, the show ran for 16 years. Supposedly a quiz
show, contestants were paid only US$15 for right answers (= US$197 in 2003
dollars); for wrong answers, guests were required to perform outrageous
stunts--pushing walnuts across the stage with their noses, howling like a
dog, collecting hundreds of thousands of pennies, digging for buried
treasure, and a wide range of other pranks. Some of the shows more elaborate
setups took months to arrange: A New Jersey woman, for instance, was taken
to a New York theater and told to play the violin for 1,500 unsuspecting
people who had turned up to see a European musician promoted for weeks as
the Great Yiffniff. It only took a moment for the audience to realize they'd
been had; after an explanation by the show's host, they were treated to a
real concert, though not by the fictional Yiffniff.