The post war boom was on. You could buy a two-bedroom house for $10,000. Congress raised the president's salary to $100,000 a year. RCA introduces small 45 rpm records. Congress raises the minimum hourly wage from 40¢ to 75¢. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences confers its first Emmy Awards. On May 12 the Berlin airlift comes to an end. The Lone Ranger starring Clayton Moore debuts in August.

• President Truman announced his Fair Deal in his State of the Union address on January 5.
• China’s Chiang Kai-shek resigns his presidency January 22, moves his power base to Formosa (becomes Taiwan), and communists come to power. 

• The U.S. B-50 bomber Lucky Lady II is the first airplane to fly nonstop around the world, doing all of it refueling in midair. From February 26, 1949–March 2, 1949 the pilot and his 13 member crew flew 23,452 miles in 94 hours and 1 minute.

• On April 4, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is created by a treaty signed in Washington.
• The German Federal Republic (West Germany) is established May 23.
• A South African apartheid program takes effect in June under terms of the South African Citizenship Act. Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 bans marriages between whites and blacks. It will be quickly followed by the Population Registration Act which classifies people by race.
• Published on June 8, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a chilling projection of a totalitarian state whose authorities exercise mind control "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past," says one of Orwell’s characters
• Congress passes a federal Housing Act July 15 to fund slum-clearance and low-rent public housing projects. Sen. Robert Taft (R. Ohio) sponsored the legislation.
• LA native and UCLA graduate Iva Toguri D’Aquino, 34, is one of at least a dozen Tokyo radio announcers who were called "Tokyo Rose" by English-speaking listeners in the Pacific during the war. She goes on trial for treason in July in San Francisco. Iva was caught in Tokyo after the war breaks out and is pressured by the Japanese secret police to read scripts during the "Zero Hour." Iva had refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship. D’Aquino was found innocent of eight alleged overt acts of treason but guilty on one count of trying to undermine U.S. morale. Sentenced to 6 years in prison, she will serve 6 1/2. Freedom of Information Act FBI Report President Gerald Ford, a WWII pacific veteran, pardoned Iva D'Aquino as his last presidential act in 1977.
• On August 3 the Basketball Association of American merges with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association(NBA).
• The U.S. Defense Department is created August 11 by a retitling of the War Department under terms of the National Security Act of 1947.
• On September 25, North Carolina evangelist Billy Graham, 31, began a tent crusade in Los Angeles. Scheduled for three weeks the crusade lasted over eight weeks. William Randolph Hearst will later order positive stories about Graham to run. Graham has just become first vice president of Youth for Christ International.
• The People’s Republic of China is proclaimed October 1 at Beijing with Mao Zedong as chairman of the central people’s administrative council.
• On October 9 the New York Yankees win the first of five consecutive World Series championships by defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers 4 games to 1.
• Amos 'n' Andy becomes a weekly TV program with black actors.
• Chicago's O'Hare Airport is named in honor of the late Lt. Commander Edward H. "Butch" O’Hare who earned a Congressional Medal of Honor in 1942 for having shot down five Japanese bombers and crippled a sixth, but died in 1943 at age 29. 
• Germany’s Volkswagen begins commercial production and is introduced into the United States, but only two of the odd-looking "beetles" are sold in America.
• Parke, Davis introduces the antibiotic chloramphenicol under the trade name Chloromycetin; it is hailed as the first major breakthrough against typhoid fever.
• Pfizer biochemists develop the antibiotic oxytetracycline; Pfizer will be awarded a patent on the drug in 1955, but American Cyanamid’s Lederle Laboratories will introduce tetracycline under the trade name Achromycin in 1953 and will maintain a large share of the market.
• Jean Paul Getty, 56, obtains permission in a 60 year concession for his Pacific Western Co. to drill for petroleum in Saudi Arabia. This desert will turn out to house one of the world’s largest petroleum reserves, and the oil will make Getty richest man in the world.
• Silly Putty  in an immediate success when it is is introduced by New Haven, Conn., advertising man Peter C. L. Hodgson, 37. The useless silicone substance can be molded, stretched, bounced, and can pick up printed matter when pressed down on newsprint.
• General Mills and Pillsbury introduce prepared cake mixes.
• Sara Lee Cheese Cake is introduced by Chicago baker Charles Lubin, 44, whose refrigerated product will make his Kitchens of Sara Lee (named after his daughter) one of the world’s largest bakeries.
• Radio Free Europe begins beaming world news to listeners behind the Iron Curtain. Nearly all its support comes from the CIA.
• The Department of Justice charges American Telephone & Telegraph with having monopolized the telephone instrument market in violation of the Sherman Act of 1890. AT&T may be a "natural monopoly," says Justice, but the manufacture of telephones is by no means a natural monopoly. It asks the company to break its Western Electric division into three separate companies so as to permit competition in telephone instrument production and installation.

22nd Academy Awards
Best Picture: All the King's Men
Best Actress: Olivia De Havilland in The Heiress
Best Actor: Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men

1st Annual Emmys
Outstanding Children's Program: Time for Beany
Most Outstanding Television Personality: Shirley Dinsdale and Splinters
Most Popular Television Program: Pantomime Quiz Time
Best Film Made for Television: The Necklace (Your Show Time Series)

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1940s

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last updated 12/04/05