January
2nd	Luis Muñoz Marín becomes the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico
5th	U.S. President Harry S. Truman unveils his Fair Deal program
11th	Los Angeles, California receives its first recorded snowfall
17th	The first Volkswagen Beetle to arrive in the United States, a 1948 model, is brought over to New York by Dutch businessman Ben Pon. Unable to interest dealers or importers in the Volkswagen, Pon sells the sample car to pay his travel expenses. Only two 1949 models will be sold in America that year, convincing Volkswagen chairman Heinrich Nordhoff that the car has no future in the U.S.
19th	First recorded date of The Poe Toaster to appear at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe
25th	The first Emmy Awards are presented at the Hollywood Athletic Club
25th	In the first Israeli election, David Ben-Gurion becomes Prime Minister

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February
1st	Rationing of clothes ends in Britain
13th	António Óscar Carmona is re-elected president of Portugal for lack of an opposing candidate
19th	Ezra Pound is awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry by the Bollingen Foundation and Yale University
22nd	Grady the Cow, a 1,200-pound cow gets stuck inside a silo on a farm in Yukon, Oklahoma and garners national media attention

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March
1st	World heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis retires
2nd	The B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II under Captain James Gallagher lands in Fort Worth, Texas after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight. It was refueled in flight four times
25th	The extensive deportation campaign was conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet authorities deported more than 92,000 people from Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union
28th	United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal resigns suddenly
29th	The 21st Academy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles, California
31st	The former British colony of Newfoundland and Labrador joins Canada as its 10th province

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April
1st	Éire leaves the British Commonwealth and becomes the Republic of Ireland
1st	The Tokyo Stock Exchange is founded
7th	Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, starring Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, opens on Broadway and goes on to become R&H's second longest-running musical. It becomes an instant classic of the musical theatre. The score's biggest hit is the song Some Enchanted Evening
20th	Royal Navy frigate HMS Amethyst (U16) goes up the Yangtze River to evacuate British Commonwealth refugees escaping the advance of the Mao's communist forces. Under heavy fire it runs aground off Rose Island. After an aborted rescue attempt on April 26 it anchors 10 miles upstream. Negotiations with the communist forces to let the ship leave drag on for weeks
28th	India issues the London Declaration, enabling it (and, thereafter, any other nation) to remain in the British Commonwealth despite becoming a republic, creating the position of 'Head of the Commonwealth', and renaming the organisation as the 'Commonwealth of Nations'

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May
1st	Nereid, a moon of Neptune, is discovered by Gerard P. Kuiper
5th	The Council of Europe is founded by the signing of the Treaty of London
9th	Rainier III of Monaco becomes Prince of Monaco, upon the death of his maternal grandfather Louis II
10th	Wolves won The FA cup
11th	Israel is admitted to the U.N. as its 59th member
11th	Siam officially changes its name to Thailand, a name in use since 1939
12th	The Soviet Union lifts its Blockade of Berlin
23rd	The Federal Republic of Germany is established

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June
2nd	Transjordan changes its name and becomes kingdom of Jordan
8th	Such celebrities as Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members
8th	George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four is published
29th	Last US troops withdraw from South Korea
29th	The South African Citizenship Act suspends the granting of citizenship to British Commonwealth immigrants after five years and imposes a ban on mixed marriages

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July
20th	Israel and Syria sign a truce to end their nineteen-month war
27th	Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner

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August
5th	A 6.75 Richter scale earthquake in Ecuador kills 6000 and destroys 50 towns
8th	Bhutan becomes independent
14th	The Gang of Salvatore Giuliano explodes mines under police barracks outside Palermo, Sicily
14th	Military coup in Syria ousts the president
29th	Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, code named "Joe 1." Its design imitated the American plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945

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September
5th	A former sharpshooter in World War II, Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbours in Camden, New Jersey with a souvenir Luger to become America's first single episode mass murderer
6th	Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control
7th	Federal Republic of Germany officially founded. Konrad Adenauer is the first federal chancellor
13th	Soviet Union vetoes United Nations membership of Ceylon, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Jordan and Portugal
17th	Canadian steamship SS Noronic burns in Toronto Harbour with the loss of over 118 lives
24th	Laszlo Rajk, ex-foreign minister of Hungary, is sentenced to death
29th	Mrs. Iva Toguri D'Aquino is found guilty of broadcasting for Japan as "Tokyo Rose" during World War II

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October
1st	Birth of the People's Republic of China
7th	Democratic Republic of Germany DDR established officially
16th	Civil war ends in Greece as communist troops surrender
27th	Chinese communist troops fail to take Kinmen in the Battle of Kuningtou. Communist advance towards Taiwan is halted
27th	An airliner flying from Paris to New York crashes in the Azores island of São Miguel. Among the victims are violinist Ginette Neveu and boxer Marcel Cerdan

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November
15th	Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi
26th	The Indian Constituent Assembly adopts India's constitution

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December
8th	The government of Republic of China finish their evacuation to Taiwan
14th	Traicho Kostov, ex-vice prime minister of Bulgaria, is sentenced to death
16th	Sukarno elected president of Republic of Indonesia
27th	Queen Juliana of the Netherlands grants Indonesia sovereignty