General
Population: 2.51 Billion*
- Anthropology: Leroi-Gourhan discovers Neanderthal art in cave
- Entertainment: Writers include Orwell 1984, Miller's Death of a Salesman, TS Eliot, William Faulkner, Norman Vincent Peale,
Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Schweitzer, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex
The "Great Palindrome" solved
Music includes Arthur Bliss (The Olympians), Britten, Carl Orff,
Rodgers and Hammerstein (South Pacific), Leonard Bernstein, Bela Bartok, Paul Hindemith
Miles Davis releases Birth of the Cool
The samba comes into fashion
Art includes Graham Sutherland, Chagall
Film includes Orson WElles in The Third Man
- Medicine: Philip Hench discovers cortisone, Neomycin isolated by Waksman
- Politics: NATO is formed
Four-Point program announced
North Atlantic Defense Pact - North Atlantic Treaty signed
- Science: WF Giague wins prize for chemical thermodynamics
X-ray astronomy begins
- Sports: Boxer Joe Lewis retires
- Technology: RWG Wyckoff writes about electronic microscopy
Geoffrey de Havilland "Comet" airplane created
- Deaths: Deaths: Rabbi Stephen S Wise, Richard Strauss, José Orozco, John Haigh the "Acid Bath Murderer" executed –
(note that gall stones don't dissolve in sulfuric acid)
Africa
- Kenya: Mau Mau movement founded
- South Africa: Apartheid adopted
Americas
- Canada: Newfoundland becomes province of the Canadian Federation
- Colombia: Mt. Purace erupts killing 57,000
- Ecuador: Earthquake kills over 6000
- Newfoundland: Dominion ends - see Canada
Asia
- General: UN negotiates peace between Pakistan and India and both sides told to withdraw troops from Kashmir
- Cambodia: Independence as breakup of French Indochina
- China: USSR extends Communism into China as Tientsin falls
Chang Kai-shek driven from power while pleading with US for help
Nationalist China (Chang's) limited to Taiwan (Formosa)
Mao Zedong proclaims People's Republic with Chou En-lai as premier
Peking becomes capital
Waterfront fire kills 1700
Flooding as Yangtze overflows
- India: Khait landslide
Border disputes with Pakistan (See Pakistan)
Pandit Nehru becomes Prime Minister
India adopts constitution as federal republic
- Indonesia: Communist-sympathizing president rules as country independent from Dutch
Renamed from Netherlands East Indies
- Laos: Independence after breakup of French Indochina
- Netherlands New Guinea: Forms to 1963 - eventually just New Guinea
- South Korea: US completes withdrawal of occupying forces in S Korea
UN warns of danger of civil war in Korea
- Vietnam: Independence with breakup of French Indochina
Communists give support to Ho Chi Minh
Europe
- General: Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) set up to integrate east Europe's econimies
NATO established against Communists
US Foreign Assistance Bill grants another 5.43 billion to Europe
Charlemagne Prize for European Understanding established
- East Germany: Created (DDR) with Pieck as president
Berlin airlift to supply West Berlin ends after 277,264 flights
Dramatist Bertolt Brecht sets up theater company in Berlin
- Germany: Officially divided
- Great Britain: Britain devalues the pound sterling fromo over $4 to about $2.80
National Health Service in Britain founded
First automatic landing of plane – British RAF
British Gas Industry nationalized
Clothes rationing ends
- Greece: Civil War in Greece ends when communists defeated
- Hungary: Cardinal Mindszenty sentenced to life imprisonment for high treason
- Ireland: Republic of Eire proclaimed in Dublin – Britain recognizes Eire's independence
- Italy: Man killed by lightning in Italy – same place and way his father was killed in 1938 and grandfather in 1899
- Soviet Union: First atomic bomb exploded by USSR
Lomonosov U in Moscow built
Vishinsky replaces Molotov as USSR Foreign Minister
- Turkmenistan: 110,000 killed in earthquake
- West Germany: Created from divided Germany with Bonn as capital
Theodor Heuss elected President with Konrad Adenauer Chancellor
Statute of Council of Europe established with Strasbourg as headquarters
Middle East
- General: UN negotiates ceasefire to end Israeli and Arab League War
- Israel: One million Palestinians flee as Israel admitted to UN
Formal armistice establishes nation of Israel - Jerusalem partitioned
- Jordan: Renamed from Transjordan - Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
- Pakistan: UN negotiates peace between Pakistan and India and both sides told to withdraw troops from Kashmir
- Turkey: Earthquake
Pacific