The first UN General Assembly convenes in London
On this day · 10 January 1946
Five months after the Charter took effect, delegates from 51 nations gathered in a London hall to give the new United Nations its voice.
On January 10, 1946, delegates representing 51 nations filled the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, London, to open the first session of the United Nations General Assembly. The fledgling organization, born from the ashes of the Second World War, now had a working parliament of the world.
The meeting was called to order by Colombia’s Eduardo Zuleta Ángel. Days later the Assembly elected Belgium’s Paul-Henri Spaak as its first president, in a close vote over Norway’s Trygve Lie—who would soon become the UN’s first Secretary-General.
The agenda was nothing if not ambitious. On January 24, the Assembly adopted its very first resolution, calling for the peaceful use of atomic energy and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction—an opening declaration that set the tone for decades of debate.
The session later reconvened in New York, the city that would become the organization’s permanent home.
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