October 7, 1950: Mother Teresa's Order Is Born and the Yankees Finish a Sweep

Today in 1950 · Saturday, October 7, 1950

Gene Woodling scores for the Yankees during Game 4 of the 1950 World Series

Gene Woodling scores for the Yankees during Game 4 of the 1950 World Series · Los Angeles Daily News photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On this day in 1950, in Calcutta, a 40-year-old Albanian-born nun received what she had spent two years petitioning for: the formal establishment of her new religious congregation. With Vatican authorization, Archbishop Ferdinand Perier erected the Missionaries of Charity as a diocesan congregation — Mother Teresa and about thirteen sisters, pledged to serve, in her words, the poorest of the poor.

From those thirteen women in a Calcutta house, the order grew into thousands of sisters running orphanages, hospices and clinics on every continent; Mother Teresa herself would receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and canonization in 2016. Few institutions founded in 1950 grew farther from a smaller seed.

The same afternoon in New York, a very different institution finished its routine business: the Yankees beat the Phillies 5-2 at Yankee Stadium to complete a four-game World Series sweep. Rookie Whitey Ford pitched into the ninth, Yogi Berra homered, and the Whiz Kids — six days after their tenth-inning pennant miracle — were swept aside almost politely. It was the Yankees' thirteenth championship, their second straight, with three more coming right behind it.

Also on this day

  • The UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 376 (V), endorsing steps to unify Korea — the diplomatic green light for the advance into the North.
  • Chinese forces invaded eastern Tibet, opening the campaign that would end Tibetan independence.
  • The UN established its Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK).

🎵 On the radio that week: America’s No. 1 song was “Goodnight Irene” by Gordon Jenkins and The Weavers (Billboard best sellers) — Billboard's top record of 1950, topping the sales, jukebox and disc-jockey charts alike. That sound never really left — we recreate 1950s doo-wop and slow-dance ballads every week: read the stories behind our songs or listen on the lovesong1950s channel.
🎬 At the movies: “Sunset Boulevard” was in its third month and still drawing crowds to watch Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond prepare for her close-up.

Sources: Britannica: Missionaries of Charity · EBSCO: Mother Teresa founds the order · SABR: Game 4, 1950 World Series · Wikipedia: October 1950 · Billboard best-seller charts, 1950 (issue scans) · Variety National Boxoffice Survey, 1950 (Lantern scans). Every fact above is drawn from the records linked here — no dramatization, no invented details.

More from this series: Today in 1950 — the daily archive · every post from October 2026

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