Events in History in 1948 (Part 2)

  • Sep 14 Groundbreaking ceremony for UN world headquarters in New York
  • Sep 15 F-86 Sabre sets world aircraft speed record of 1080 kph
  • Sep 15 WHN-AM in NY City changes call letters to WMGM
  • Sep 18 Communist Madiun-uprising in Dutch Indies (Muso/Sjarifudin)

Appointment of Interest

Sep 18 Ralph Bunche confirmed as acting UN mediator in Palestine

  • Sep 24 The Honda Motor Company is founded in Hamamatsu-city, Japan
  • Oct 1 California Supreme Court voids state statute banning interracial marriages, in Perez v. Sharp case
  • Oct 1 Radio Denmark begins transmitting
  • Oct 3 Columbia University reports discovery of uranium in Belgian Congo
  • Oct 4 World Council of Churches forms under W Fisherman It Hooft
  • Oct 6 Earthquake in Ashgabat kills 100,000 in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic

Event of Interest

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 14 Batavia lt-governor-general van Mook dismissed
  • Oct 14 Large scale fighting between Israel & Egypt
  • Oct 15 China's Red army occupies Chinchou in Guangdong

Event of Interest

Oct 16 Demonstration by Moscow Jews honoring Israeli ambassador Golda Meir

  • Oct 18 Operation 10 Plagues - Israeli offensive against Egyptian army
  • Oct 21 Beersheba liberated by Israeli army
  • Oct 21 Dutch Constellation crashes at Prestwick Scotland (40 murder)
  • Oct 21 Facsimile high-speed radio transmission demonstrated (Washington, D.C.)
  • Oct 21 UN rejects Russian proposal to destroy atomic weapons
  • Oct 22 Egyptian flagship King Farouk sunk by Israel
  • Oct 24 Bernard M Baruch introduces term "Cold War"

Catholic Encyclical

Oct 24 Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical In Multiplicibus Curis

  • Oct 25 Special Council of Annulment convicts writer Friedrich Weinreb for collaboration with the Nazis

Theater Premiere

Oct 27 Albert Camus' play "The State of Siege (L'État de siège)" premieres in Paris

  • Oct 27 Israel recaptures Nizzanim in Negev

Event of Interest

Oct 27 Léopold Sédar Senghor founds the Senegalese Democratic Bloc (BDS).

  • Oct 28 Flag of Israel is adopted
  • Oct 29 Israeli forces liberate Meron & Gush-Halev
  • Oct 29 Safsaf massacre, Israeli defence forces attack Palestinian village of Safsaf in the Galilee
  • Oct 30 20 die & 6,000 made ill by smog in Donora, Pennsylvania
  • Oct 30 Operation Hiram: Israelis take control of Galilee
  • Nov 1 Mao's Red army conquers Mukden, Manchuria

Election of Interest

Nov 2 US President Harry Truman is re-elected in an upset victory over Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey

Nobel Prize

Nov 4 American-born British poet T. S. Eliot wins Nobel Prize for literature

Event of Interest

Nov 12 Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo sentenced to death by war crimes tribunal

  • Nov 12 The first mobile betatron (particle accelerator) begins operation at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory, White Oak, Maryland

Event of Interest

Nov 15 Louis St. Laurent is sworn in as the 12th Prime Minister of Canada

Event of Interest

Nov 15 Mackenzie King retires after 22 years as Prime Minister of Canada

  • Nov 17 Britain's House of Commons votes to nationalize steel industry
  • Nov 20 US balloon reaches height of 42.7 km (record)
  • Nov 23 Dr Frank G. Back (NYC) patents lens to provide zoom effects
  • Nov 25 16-inch coastal guns removed from Fort Funston, San Francisco

Event of Interest

Nov 26 1st polaroid camera sold for $89.75 in Boston at the Jordan Marsh department store. The Land Camera model 95 becomes prototype for all Polaroid Land cameras for next 15 years

  • Nov 27 Honda 1st opens in America
  • Nov 28 "Hopalong Cassidy" premieres on TV
  • Nov 30 Player-manager Lou Boudreau is selected AL MVP
  • Nov 30 Soviets set up a separate municipal government in East Berlin
  • Dec 1 Arabic Congress names Abdullah of Trans Jordan as King of Palestine
  • Dec 1 Piet Roozenburg becomes world champion checker player
  • Dec 3 "Pumpkin Papers" come to light (claimed to be from Alger Hiss)
  • Dec 3 1st US woman army officer not in medical corps sworn in
  • Dec 3 Chinese refugee ship "Kiangya" explodes in East China Sea killing 1,100
  • Dec 4 SS Kiangya hits mine in Whangpoo River, China, sinks killing 2,750
  • Dec 8 Jordan annexs Arabic Palestine
  • Dec 9 UN General Assembly unanimously approves Convention on Genocide

Event of Interest

Dec 10 UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

  • Dec 12 Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali Massacre - 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacre 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.
  • Dec 15 Former state department official Alger Hiss indicted in NYC for perjury
  • Dec 18 Indonesia begins its 2nd political election
  • Dec 19 2nd political action of Java/Sumatra
  • Dec 19 8th largest snowfall in NYC history (15.3")
  • Dec 20 Second Chamber accept 2nd Police Action in Indonesia
  • Dec 21 O'Neil Place in the Bronx erroneously renamed O'Neill Place
  • Dec 21 State of Eire (formerly Irish Free State) declares its independence
  • Dec 24 First US completely solar heated house is occupied (Dover, Mass)
  • Dec 24 Greek government disbands due to state of war, press censorship
  • Dec 26 Hungarian cardinal József Mindszenty arrested
  • Dec 28 IDF crosses Egyptian border
  • Dec 28 Middel-Java as a whole in Dutch hands
  • Dec 28 The DC-3 airliner NC16002 disappears 50 miles south of Miami, Florida.
  • Dec 28 US announced a study to launch an Earth satellite
  • Dec 29 Canada recognizes Israel
  • Dec 29 US State Department announces work on placing objects into Earth orbit
  • Dec 31 Dutch police actions up Java gone on strike