October 24th, 1945 (WEDNESDAY)
NORWAY: Vidkind Quisling is executed by firing squad at 0230, at the Akershus Festning in Oslo. Quisling was convicted of treason for his collaboration with the Germans on 10 September. Quisling had been named "Minister President" in February 1942 under Reich Commissioner Josef Terboven. (Alex Gordon & Russ Folsom)
CANADA:
Minesweeper HMCS Oshawa commissioned for transfer to Esquimalt.
Frigate HMCS Lanark paid off Sydney , Nova Scotia.
Minesweeper HMCS Miramichi paid off Esquimalt, British Columbia.
U.S.A.: New York: The United Nations is formally established with the ratification of the United Nations Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of other signatories. The first U.N. General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, opened in London, England, on 10 January 10. (Gene Hanson & Jack McKillop)
Maj. Gen. Edward F. Witsell, writes to a relative of an American GI who died in the Berga concentration camp, "With respect to your desire to ascertain the location of Berga Elster, it has been learned that there was no German prisoner-of-war camp by that name." Berga Elster was indeed, not a prisoner-of-war camp, but a semi-permanent concentration camp, 40 miles from Leipzig, where Jews and other undesirables to the Nazi regime were sent to be worked to death or Vernichtung durch Arbeit. Those G.I.s included Private William J. Shapiro of the US 28th Infantry Division. Of the 350 young G.I.' sent there ate least 73 or 21% died in the space of ten weeks. The highest rate of attrition among American prisoners of war in Europe. (Personal recollection of William J. Shapiro and Mordecai Hauer, The Lost Soldiers of Stalag IX-B, by Roger Cohen, New York Times, 27 February, 2005)
Battleship USS PENNSYLVANIA limps into Puget Sound on one shaft. (Randall Steigner)
American Export Airlines made the first commercial scheduled transatlantic flight by landplane when a Douglas DC-4 flew from New York City to Hurn Airport near Bournemouth, England, in 14 hours and 5 minutes.