General
Population: 2.43 Billion*
- Entertainment: Dylan Thomas publishes Deaths and Entrances
Dr. Benjamin Spock publishes The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care
Writers include Simone de Beauvoir, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Sartre, Hermann Hesse (Nobel Prize), Aldous Huxley
- Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony
Copeland's Third Symphony
Picasso founds pottery at Vallauris
Buckminster Fuller designs Dymaxion House
Music includes Benjamin Britten, Gian Carlo Menotti, Irving Berlin (Annie Get Your Gun), Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe (Brigadoon)
Artists include Fernand Leger, Chagall
- Food: Worldwide wheat shortage
- Politics: First meeting of United Nations with Trygve Lie of Norway as Secretary-General
"Iron Curtain" speech by Churchill as cold war begins
Commission on Human Rights established
League of Nations dissolved
UN Atomic Energy Commission approves US plan for control
- Religion: Pope Pius XII creates 32 new cardinals
Francis Xavier Cabrini canonized
- Science: Precambrian fossils found resembling jellyfish and corals
Appleton discovers that sun spots emit radio waves
Isotope Carbon-13 discovered
Nobel prizes for work with enzymes, x-ray mutations, and high pressure
South Pole expedition of R. E. Byrd
- Technology: Pilotless rocket missle constructed by Fairey Aviation Company
Xerography process invented
Mauchly and Eckert create the ENIAC computer
- Deaths: James J Walker, Economist John Maynard Keynes, British TV inventor John Logie Baird, Paul Nash, WC Fields, Joseph Stella, US boxer Jack Johnson,
Alfred Stieglitz, Gertrude Stein, German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, HG Wells, Victor Emmanuel III of Italy,Nazi leader Hermann Goering
Africa
- Egypt: Relapsing fever outbreak
- Liberia: Houphouet-Boigny founds African Democratic Federation
Americas
- Argentina: Juan Perón elected with aid of wife Eva
Social reforms introduced
- Canada: 7.3 Quake in Vancouver British Columbia
- Dominican Republic: 8.0 quake and possibly unrelated tsunami kills 100
Asia
- General: Straits Settlements split with independent Singapore and Malay
- China: Famine and drought
Civil war begins, truce
Plague outbreak
- Hong Kong: Smallpox
- India: Independence offered
Hindus and Muslims riot
Pakistan considered
- Indo-China: French return to the peninsula - Civil war between those loyal to France and Nationalists
- Japan: Tsunami and 8.1 quake kill 2000
Gen. MacArthur makes deal with Japanese physician trading information gained from human experimentation for immunity – vivisections included
Power transferred from the Emperor to an elected assembly
- Malay: Independence from Britain - forms Malayan Union
- Philippines: Independence
- Sarawak: Kingdom of Sarawak in SE Asia ceded to British Crown by the Rajah Sir Charles Brooke - then independent
- Singapore: Independence from Britain
- Thailand: King Mahidol dies and turmoil follows
- Vietnam: Hanoi attacked by Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh proclaimed president and independence from France proclaimed
Europe
- General: Nuremberg trials - Goering and 10 other Nazis sentenced to death Hess and Funk life imprisonment and Schacht and Von Papen acquitted –
- Goering commits suicide before execution
- Albania: Independence
- Bulgaria: Independence and Dimitrov becomes premier
- Czechoslovakia: Klement Gottwals becomes Premier
- France: One third of seats go to Communists
De Gaulle resigns presidency and is succeeded by Bidault – Leon Blum forms Socialist government
Marcel André Henri Félix Pétiot a Paris doctor killed at least 60 during the war
Peace conference opens in Paris to formally end war with 21 nations
- Germany: Britain and US agree on united west Germany
Salzburg Festival reopens
East German Social Democrats merge with Communists
- Great Britain: Bank of England nationalized
Worldwide wheat shortage – in Britain bread rationing introduced
New Bodleian Library in Oxford
British Arts Council founded
London airport opened
Churchill gives "Iron Curtain" speech
- Greece: Civil War between Communists and Royalists
- Hungary: Super-inflation of the pengo 1:828 octillionths
Republic proclaimed in Hungary
- Italy: Christians prevent Communists from gaining power
Women ensured the right to vote
Vote to abolish monarchy and establish republic
Victor Emmanuel III abdicates as King of Italy and is succeeded by don Umberto II
- Italian referendum in favor of republic so Umberto II leaves country and de Gasperi becomes head of state
- Norway: Statesman Trygve Lie elected first secretary-general of UN
- Soviet Union: Non-aggression pact with Turkey denounced
Middle East
- Lebanon: Britain and France evacuate
- Palestine: Dead Sea Scrolls discovered
Zionist terrorists blow up King David Hotel in Jerusalem – headquarters of British administration – 91 killed
- Syria: Independence from France
- Turkey: Non-aggression pact with Soviet Union denounced by Soviets
- Transjordan: Independence and annexes West Bank - renames self Kingdom of Jordan
Pacific
- General: US and French test nuclear devices in Pacific - US at BIkini and Einwetok atolls
- Antarctica: South Pole expedition of R. E. Byrd
- Marshall Islands: Atomic bombs tested