empowered to elect a new Patriarch for their church. July 14 – The attempted assassination of Palmiro Togliatti, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, results in numerous strikes all over the country. July 15 – The first London chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous is founded. July 20 – Cold War: President Harry S. Truman issues the second peacetime military draft in the United States, amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union (the first peacetime draft occurred in 1940 under President Roosevelt) Eugene Dennis, William Z. Foster, and ten other CPUSA leaders are arrested, and charged under the Alien Registration Act. July 22 – The Dominion of Newfoundland votes to join Canada, after a referendum. July 26 – U.S. President Truman signs Executive Order 9981, ending racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces. July 28 – Around 200 die in explosion at a chemical plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. July 29 – The 1948 Summer Olympics begin in London, the first since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. July 31 At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated. Elizabeth Bentley appears under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of the United States House of Representatives regarding Communist espionage; she implicates Whittaker Chambers. Claude Shannon publishes "A mathematical theory of communication" - the paper that laid the foundations for the field of "Information Theory" and all modern digital communications. August August 3 – Whittaker Chambers appears under subpoena before the HUAC, and alleges that several former U.S. Federal officials were communists, including Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss. August 5 – Alger Hiss appears before the HUAC, to deny the allegations of Whittaker Chambers. August 10–23 – The Herrenchiemsee convention prepares the draft for the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. August 12 – Babrra massacre: About 600 unarmed members of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement are shot dead on the orders of the Chief Minister of the North-West Frontier Province, Abdul Qayyum Khan Kashmiri, on Babrra ground in the Hashtnagar region of Charsadda District, North-West Frontier Province (modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Pakistan. August 13 – Harry Dexter White and Donald Hiss refute allegations of Communism by Whittaker Chambers, before the HUAC. August 14 – 1948 Ashes series: Australian batsman Don Bradman, playing his last Test cricket match, against England at The Oval, is bowled by Eric Hollies for