The world seems to be returning to normal. The winter and summer Olympics are held for the first time since 1936. Bread rationing has ended in Britain. V-8 is introduced by Campbell. Dial, the first deodorant soap is introduced. We now have 1 million homes with television sets. The Perry Como Show premiered on NBC. Ed Sullivan arrives on television in The Toast of Our Town. It will later become the long running Ed Sullivan Show. We are also watching Hopalong Cassidy and Candid Camera. The movie industry is booming too. In movie theaters we are watching, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Fort Apache, Key Largo, Lady from Shanghai, Easter Parade, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, State of the Union and The Three Musketeers. The transistor is developed. It will really change the electronics industry. Trouble is brewing again. Russia is causing problems in Berlin and partitioning in Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors is not going well.

• In January The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Sipeul v. Board of Regents, orders the state of Oklahoma to provide black Americans with educational facilities equal to those of whites.
• On January 30, Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated in Delhi, India.
• On March 31 Congress passes the Marshall Aid Act giving $5.3 billion for European aid.
• On May 3 the Supreme Court rules that the government may not enforce private acts of discrimination in Shelley v. Kramer. Courts can no longer enforce deeds that prohibit sales of houses to minorities.
• President Truman orders the Army to operate the railroads beginning May 10 to prevent a nationwide rail strike. The railroads will be operated under U.S. Army control until 1952.
• On May 15 the Jewish authorities proclaim the new state of Israel, with David Ben Gurion as Prime Minister.
• June 1948 the Republicans nominate Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York for U.S. president and California Governor Earl Warren for vice president.
• June 24 USSR blockades road and rail traffic between Berlin, Germany and the West. Western powers organize a massive airlift to bring in supplies to the U.S., British, and French zones of Berlin. The airlift will continue until September 30, 1949.
• On June 25 President Truman signs the Displaced Persons Act. This act allows 205,000 Europeans uprooted by the war to be admitted to the U.S.
• In July the Democrats nominate Truman for re-election. 1948 campaign was a busy one for Truman.
• President Truman orders the desegregation of the U.S. Military on July 30 with Executive Order 9981.
• On July 31 Idlewild Airport (now JFK) in New York opens. At the time it is the largest airport in the world.
• On August 16 Babe Ruth dies.
• On November 2 President Harry S. Truman wins reelection with 303 electoral votes to 189 for his Republican opponent Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Dewey receives 45% of the popular vote to Truman’s 49.5%. The Chicago Tribune hit the streets a bit too soon with a front-page headline front page headline proclaiming Dewey the winner.
• November 2 Margaret Chase Smith of Maine is elected the first woman senator in the United States.
• November 12 the former Prime Minister Tojo Hideki and six others are sentenced to death; 16 receive life imprisonment; and two are given lesser sentence as the main Japanese war crimes trial ends in Tokyo. Read a translation of his prison diary.
• On November 26, Polaroid begins sales of the Land camera that prints its own photos in minutes.
• In December Alger Hiss, a former U.S. State Department official, is indicted for lying to a federal grand jury about alleged espionage activity.
• The antibiotics Aureomycin and chloromycin are developed.
• Johns Hopkins physicians who discover accidentally that an anti-allergy drug relieves motion sickness develop Dramamine.
• U.S. News and World Report begins publication to compete with Time and Newsweek.

21st Annual Academy Awards
Best Picture: Hamlet
Best Actress: Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda
Best Actor: Laurence Olivier for Hamlet

2nd Annual Emmy Awards
Best Children's Show: Time for Beany
Best Commercial: Lucky Strike
Best Film Made for Television: Life of Riley
Best Live Show: Ed Wynn

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1940s

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last updated 12/04/05