General
Population: 2.56 Billion
- Architecture: UN Building completed
- Fashion: Hazel Bishop manufactures kiss-proof lipstick
- Entertainment: Artists include Chagall, Kokoschka, Matisse begins work on Vence Chapel
Films include Sunset Boulevard
Musicians include Gian Carlo Menotti
Cool Jazz develops from bebop
International Bach Year celebrates 200 years since death
Writers include Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway, Thor Heyerdahl, Ezra Pound, CP Snow, Anouilh, Bertrand Russell (Nobel Prize),
Tennessee Williams, Margaret Mead, Sartre
Neruda's "Canto General"
- Medicine: Ultrasound first used on pregnant women
Antihistamines become popular remedies for colds and allergies
End of third plague pandemic killing 300 million since 1850
- Military: Hydrogen bomb invented
- Politics: International Security Act passed
USSR and Communist China sign 30-year friendship treaty
- Religion: Pope Pius XII proclaims dogma of bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary
- Science: Plutonium separated from pitchblende concentrated
GT Seaborg discovers californium
Berkelium discovered
Einstein attempts to expand Theory of Relativity
Nobel Prizes for hormones
30,000th rose variety catalogued
- Technology: 1.5 million televisions
Phonevision (pay per view) becomes available
- Deaths: George Bernard Shaw, Composer Kurt Weill, Heinrich Mann, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan), Edna St. Vincent Millay, Al Jolson,
Carl Van Doren, Richard Chase – "Vampire of Sacramento" the poisoned soap guy
Africa
- General: Only Egypt, South Africa, and Liberia independent - with Ethiopia gaining independence during WWII
- South Africa: Riots in Johannesburg against apartheid
Americas
- Canada: Moon appears blue due to fire in British Columbia
- Chile: Volcanoes, quakes, and tsunamis kill 5700
- Mexico: Pani and del Moral design University City
- Puerto Rico: Power to write own constitution
Asia
- China: Flooding
Mao makes peasants melt down tools for ship steel and decade results in 30 million dead from famine
Chiang Kai-shek resumes presidency of Nationalist China (Taiwan)
Recognized by Britain
- India: Dominion of India renamed Union of India - independence
Enormous earthquake kills about 1000
Famine
Landslides
- Indonesia: Admission to UN
- North Vietnam: US recognizes North with Saigon capital
- South Korea: War begins when American jets attacked and Communists invade and capture Seoul - MacArthur appointed
Hantavirus breakout
- Tibet: Appeals to UN to enforce cease fire with China
Quake kills 1526 and registers 8.6
- Vietnam: USSR and China recognize Viet minh
Europe
- General: East Germany and Poland settle boundaries - proclaim Oder-Neisse line as frontier
"Winter of Terror" killer avalanches in the Alps
European Broadcasting Union formed
- Belgium: King Leopold III returns from Swiss exile after six years and abdicates and son Baudouin rules
- Great Britain: Cockerell in Britain invents hovercraft – knighted 1969
London dock strike
Klaus Fuchs found guilty of betraying British atomic secrets to USSR and imprisoned – Harry Gold his American confederate sentenced to 30 years
- Italy: Eugenio Montiori designs Rome railroad station
Internation Exhibition of Ecclesiastical Art in Rome
- Sweden: King Gustavus V dies and son Gustavus VI reigns
- West Germany: Joins council of Europe
Heavy earthquake damages Assam,
Middle East
- Israel: Recognized by Britain
- Pakistan: Created through partitioning
Pacific