1948

Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s - 1940s - 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s

Years: 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 - 1948 - 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953

See also:

Table of contents

1 Events
2 Year in topic
3 Births
4 Deaths
5 Nobel Prizes

Events

January 1 - Nationalisation of UK railways to form British Railways.
January 4 - Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
January 5 - Warner Brothers shows the first color newsreel (Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl).
January 30 - Indian pacifist and leader Mahatma Gandhi is murdered by a Hindu extremist.
January 30 - 1948 Winter Olympics open in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
February 4 - Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth. King George VI becomes King of Ceylon.
February 18 - Eamon de Valera, head of government since 1932, loses power to an opposition coalition. John A. Costello is appointed Taoiseach of ÃÂÃÂire (formerly called the Irish Free State) by President O'Kelly.
February 24 - The Communist Party seizes control of Czechoslovakia.
March 8 - The United States Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution.
April 1 - Cold War: Berlin Airlift - Military forces, under direction of the Soviet-controlled government in East Germany, establish a land blockade of West Berlin.
April 3 - President Harry Truman signs the Marshall Plan which authorizes $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
April 7 - The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
April 9 - The Deir Yassin massacre takes place in Palestine.
May 14 - Israel is declared as an independent state.
May 14 - The murder of a three-year-old girl in Blackburn, England leads to the fingerprinting of more than 40,000 men in the city in an attempt to find the murderer.
May 15 - Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attack Israel.
May 16 - Chaim Weizmann is elected as the first President of Israel.
May 18 - The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convenes in Nanking.
May 26 - The United States Congress passes Public Law 557 which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as the auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
May 30 - A dike along the Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. 15 people died and tens of thousands are left homeless.
June 28 Cominform Resolution marks the beginning of the Informbiro period in Yugoslavia and Soviet/Yugoslav split.
July 5 - British National Health Service Act enacted.
July 20 - Cold War: President Harry S. Truman issues the first peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
July 26 - U.S. President signs Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the United States Armed Forces.
July 31 - At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
September 4 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons.
September 6 - Juliana becomes Queen of the Netherlands.
November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1948: Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey for the US presidency.
November 12 - In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II.
November 15 - Louis Stephen St. Laurent becomes Canada's twelfth prime minister.
November 17 - Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi divorces Queen Fawzia of Egypt after she is unable to produce a male heir.
December 10 - United Nations General Assembly adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
December 30 - The play Kiss Me Kate opens for the first of 1,077 performances.
Porsche is founded.
Miranda, the innermost moon of Uranus, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.
Casimir effect discovered by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir.
Tunnel of Vielha is opened in Val d'Aran, Spanish Pyrenees.
Fresh Kills, world's largest landfill, opens in Staten Island, New York.

Year in topic

1948 in film
- Hamlet
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre starring Humphrey Bogart
- Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman and JosÃÂÃÂ© Ferrer
- Key Largo starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
- Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, starring Jimmy Stewart
1948 in literature
1948 in music
- Columbia Records introduces the 33 1/3 LP (“long playing”) record.
1948 in sports
- February 21 - The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) was incorporated by William HG France to organize and promote the sport of stock car racing.
- February 28 - Bud Gartiser sets a new world record after clearing the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.
- 1948 Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland
- 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London, United Kingdom
- Baseball World Series: Cleveland Indians defeat the Boston Braves.
1948 in television
- CBS begins network programming.
- ABC opens its first television station in New York.
- June 20 - Toast of the Town, with Ed Sullivan, premieres on CBS, with guests Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
- June 21 - The first network telecast of political conventions from Philadelphia.
- July 30 - Professional wrestling premieres in prime-time on the DuMont network.
- August 10 - Candid Camera debuts on ABC.
- August 15 - The first network nightly newscast, CBS-TV News, debuts on CBS with Douglas Edwards.
- September - Milton Berle becomes the first television star, with Texaco Star Theatre on NBC.
- Television manufacturing begins in Canada.

Births

January 7 - Kenny Loggins, singer
January 10 - Donald Fagen, keyboardist
January 14 - Carl Weathers, actor
January 14 - T-Bone Burnett, producer, musician
January 15 - Ronnie Van Zant, musician (d. 1977)
January 16 - John Carpenter, director
January 17 - DavÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ° Oddsson, Prime Minister of Iceland
January 22 - George Foreman, boxer
January 27 - Mikhail Baryshnikov, dancer
February 4 - Alice Cooper, musician
February 5 - Christopher Guest, actor, writer, director, composer
February 5 - Barbara Hershey, actress
February 11 - Sue Bernard, Playboy playmate for December 1966
February 14 - Teller, magician (Penn and Teller)
February 28 - Bernadette Peters, actress, singer
February 28 - Mike Figgis, director, writer, composer
February 28 - Mercedes Ruehl, actress
March 2 - R. T. Crowley, writer, pioneer of Electronic Data Interchange
March 9 - Jeffrey Osborne, singer
March 11 - Dominique Sanda, actress
March 12 - James Taylor, musician
March 17 - William Gibson, writer
March 20 - Bobby Orr, ice hockey player
March 22 - Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer
March 22 - Wolf Blitzer, television journalist
March 26 - Steven Tyler, musician ("Aerosmith")
March 31 - Al Gore, US Vice President
March 31 - Rhea Perlman, actress
April 1 - Jimmy Cliff, musician
May 12 - Steve Winwood, singer
May 15 - Brian Eno, musician, record producer
May 19 - Grace Jones, singer, actress
May 21 - Leo Sayer, musician
May 26 - Stevie Nicks, songwriter, actress
May 31 - John Bonham ("Bonzo"), drummer (d. 1980)
June 2 - Todd Rundgren, singer and producer
June 13 - Marc Flanagan, television writer and producer
June 13 - Garnet Bailey, professional hockey player & scout
July 25 - Peggy Fleming, figure skater
July 28 - Sally Struthers, actress
July 30 - Jean Reno, actor
August 2 - Dennis Prager, radio talk show host and author
August 3 - Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Prime Minister of France
August 20 - Robert Plant, singer (Led Zeppelin)
September 5 - Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Austrian diplomat and politician
September 10 - Margaret Trudeau, former First Lady of Canada
September 22 - Denis Burke, Australian politician
October 9 - Jackson Browne, musician
November 10 - Vincent Schiavelli, actor
November 14 - Prince Charles, later Prince of Wales
November 16 - Mutt Lange, record producer

Deaths

January 21 - Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, composer
January 30 - Mohandas Gandhi, Leader of Indian Non-Violent Independence movement
January 30 - Orville Wright of the Wright brothers, co-inventor of the airplane
February 2 - Bevil Rudd, South African athlete
February 11 - Sergy Eisenstein, film director
March 10 - Zelda Fitzgerald (Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald)
March 10 - Jan Masaryk, Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia
March 28 - Dianne Wiest, actress
March 31 - Egon Erwin Kisch, journalist and author
April 17 - Suzuki Kantaro, Japanese admiral and prime minister
May 15 - Father Edward J. Flanagan, priest, founder of Boys Town
May 28 - Unity Mitford, British friend of Hitler
July 23 - David Wark Griffith, film director
September 11 - Muhammed Ali Jinnah, first Governor-General of Pakistan
October 24 - Franz LehÃÂÃÂ¡r, composer
December 23 - Doihara Kenji, Hirota Koki, Itagaki Seishiro, Kimura Heitaro, Matsui Iwane, Muto Akira, and Tojo Hideki, Japanese war leaders (hanged)
December 31 - Sir Malcolm Campbell, land and water racer

Nobel Prizes

Physics - Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
Chemistry - Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius
Medicine - Paul Hermann MÃÂÃÂ¼ller
Literature - T. S. Eliot
Peace - Not awarded.