What Happened in 1948

Major Events

  • Jan 12 Mahatma Gandhi begins his final fast
  • Jan 30 Mahatma Gandhi assassinated in the garden of the New Delhi home he was visiting by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse
  • Mar 8 US Supreme Court rules in McCollum v. Board of Education that religious instruction in public schools is unconstitutional
  • Apr 1 "Big Bang" theory proposed in scientific journal "Physical Review" by American cosmologists Ralph Alpher, Hans Bethe, and George Gamow
  • Apr 3 US President Harry Truman signs the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Western Europe after World War II, granting an initial $5 billion in aid to 16 European countries
  • Apr 7 World Health Organization formed by the United Nations
  • Apr 16 Organization for European Economic Cooperation (EEC) forms in Paris
  • May 14 David Ben-Gurion declares Israel independent from British administration, Golda Meir one of the signatories
  • May 26 South Africa elects a nationalist government under D. F. Malan with an apartheid policy
  • Jun 21 Lord Mountbatten resigns as Governor General of India (formerly the last Viceroy)
  • Jul 8 500th anniversary of the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated in Moscow
  • Oct 6 Earthquake in Ashgabat kills 100,000 in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
  • Oct 6 Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and humans on Rusinga Island, Kenya
  • Oct 21 UN rejects Russian proposal to destroy atomic weapons
  • Nov 15 Mackenzie King retires after 22 years as Prime Minister of Canada
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1948 in Film & TV

  • Jul 30 Professional wrestling premieres on US prime-time TV (DuMont Network)
  • Aug 10 ABC enters network TV at 7 PM (WJZ, NY)
  • Sep 29 "Hamlet" directed by and starring Laurence Olivier's opens at Park Avenue Cinema (Best Picture 1949)

1948 in Music

  • Mar 27 Just 11 days after being released from prison, jazz singer Billie Holiday plays in front of a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall, NYC
  • Jun 21 Columbia Records unveil the 33-1/3 rpm LP phonograph record invented by Peter Carl Goldmark, allowing up to 20 minutes per side (available in 10 and 12 inch diameters), at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, NYC; over the next decade the popularity and profitability of the LP pushed the 78 rpm out of production [1]

1948 in Sport

  • May 16 First chess world championship since WWII; Russian player Mikhail Botvinnik wins a 5-player tournament to begin 20-year Russian domination
  • Aug 6 Dutch super athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen wins London Olympics 200m in 24.4s to become the first women to claim 3 individual track & field gold at a Games, having already won the 100m and 80m hurdles

Did You Know?

Alcoholic Anonymous founded in Britain

July 15, 1948


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Famous Weddings in 1948

  • Jan 29 American singer and comic actor Dennis Day (31) weds American Peggy Almquist (24) in San Juan Capistrano, California, until his death in 1988
  • Feb 12 American comic Dick Van Dyke (22) weds American girlfriend Margerie Willett (20) on the radio show "Bride and Groom" in Los Angeles California; divorce in 1984 after a long separation
  • Feb 16 American baseball player and manager Leo Durocher (41) weds actress Laraine Day (27) in Santa Monica, California; divorce in 1960

Famous Divorces in 1948

  • Mar 22 American musician Nat King Cole (29) divorces dancer Nadine Robinson after 11 years of marriage

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