Meet the Press has had the longest run of any television program in the United States. Although it began as a Saturday night program moderated by the charmingly Southern-accented Martha Rountree, it ultimately became a popular NBC Sunday morning show hosted by a series of male broadcasters. Martha Rountree 1947–1953 Ned Brooks 1953–1965 Lawrence E. Spivak 1966–1975 Bill Monroe 1975–1984 Roger Mudd and Marvin Kalb (co-moderators) 1984–1985 Marvin Kalb 1985–1987 Chris Wallace 1987–1988 Garrick Utley 1989–1991 Tim Russert 1991–2008 Tom Brokaw 2008 David Gregory 2008–2014 Chuck Todd 2014–present  Recently,Tom Brokaw and Andrea Mitchell  reviewed the legacy of John McCain on Meet the Press .

The largest wooden airplane ever constructed, the Spruce Goose  was actually made from birch.  In the face of staggering losses to German U-boats in 1942, the steel magnate and shipbuilder Henry Kaiser asked Howard Hughes to design and build a massive flying transport. Specifications:    crew: 3  length 218 feet  wingspan 320 feet  height 79 feet  Pratt and Whitney R-4360 radial engine, 4000 HP  cruising speed 250 mph  range 3000 miles  ceiling 20,900 feet The  airplane flew only once on November 2, 1947. With Hughes at the controls, the Spruce Goose flew just over one mile at an altitude of 70 feet for one minute. After Kaiser withdrew from the project, Hughes retained a full crew to maintain the Spruce Goose in a climate-controlled hangar up until his death in 1976.

  Brigadoon, a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe,  premiered on Broadway in 1947 and ran for 581 performances.  A 1954 film version starred Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, and a 1966 television version starred Robert Goulet and Peter Falk. In the show, the American tourist Tommy  falls in love with Fiona whom he discovers in a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every 100 years.  Many of the tunes of Brigadoon, such as  Almost Like Being in Love  and Come To Me, Bend To Me are lovely and memorable. This performance by Adam Lambert is breathtaking.    

  Inspired by reports from Spanish Conquistadors of Inca rafts, native legends and archaeological evidence suggesting contact between South America and Polynesia, the Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. made a balsa wood raft journey across the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Polynesian islands in 1947. The raft was named Kon-Tiki, another name for the Inca sun god  Viracocha.    A dramatized film version of the voyage received many awards in 2012.   Heyerdahl's popular book The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas was translated into 70 languages.  

In 1947 Allen Funt broadcast The Candid Microphone radio show, featuring practical jokes and situations, on ABC radio.   From 1948 -1954  CANDID MICROPHONE, hosted by Allen Funt, were produced by Ben and George Blake of the Columbia Movie Shorts Department.     As a hidden camera reality television series. Candid Camera appeared on television from 1948 until 2014.    Here are more clips 

  In 1925, a Canadian patent was filed for the field-effect transistor principle by Austrian-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld -  but no research was published, and his work was ignored by industry. In 1934, another field-effect transistor was patented by the German physicist Oskar Heil.  While there was no evidence any of these devices were built, subsequent work in the 1990s proved one of Lilienfeld's designs to be effective. During World War II, efforts to produce extremely pure germanium (a chemical element and semicondiuctor) "crystal" mixer diodes for radar and microwave units, preceded the development of the transistor. After the war, a Bell laboratory team failed in several attempts to build a triode-like semiconductor device. In 1947 Bell Laboratory's William Shockley and a co-worker Gerald Pearson built a successful triode-like semiconductor device that became known as the transistor. Source: History of the transistor   WHAT IS A TRANSISTOR?  A transistor is a miniature electronic device that acts either as an amplifier or a switch. When it works as an amplifier, it takes in a tiny electric current at one end (an input current) and produces a much bigger electric current (an output current) at the other. When it works as a switch, a tiny electric current flowing through one part of a transistor can make a much bigger current flow through another part of it.    

In October 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee (created in 1938) re-convened in Washington D.C. for public hearings on alleged communist infiltration within the American motion picture industry. 50 top Hollywood executives decided to suspend those who opposed the hearings (the "Hollywood Ten") until their acquittal or declaration that they were not Communists. Artists and writers were barred from work if they refused to testify, expressed sympathy for Communism or held real/alleged membership in the  American Communist Party.   in November 1947 Congress cited the Hollywood Ten as  being in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry. In April 1948, each of the Hollywood Ten was found guilty and sentenced to spend a year in prison and pay a $1,000 fine. The blacklist lasted until 1960, when Dalton Trumbo (a member of the Hollywood 10) was credited as the screenwriter of the highly successful film Exodus, and later acknowledged as author of the screenplay for the movie Spartacus. However,  many of those blacklisted, remained barred from work in Hollywood for several  more years;

  Here is an optimistic view of postwar relationships between Great Britain and the USSR.   To get a sense of life in the USSR in 1947 it's worth fast forwarding through these interesting, rather upbeat color scenes of everyday life.   You don't need to know Russian to understand this brief clip from the popular 1947 film Cinderella.  

 Joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American in major league baseball. CAREER BATTING STATISTICS YEAR TEAM GP AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS WAR 1947 BKN 151 590 125 175 31 5 12 48 74 36 29 0 .297 .383 .427 .810 3.0 1948 BKN 147 574 108 170 38 8 12 85 57 37 22 0 .296 .367 .453 .820 5.0 1949 BKN 156 593 122 203 38 12 16 124 86 27 37 0 .342 .432 .528 .960 9.3 1950 BKN 144 518 99 170 39 4 14 81 80 24 12 0 .328 .423 .500 .923 7.1 1951 BKN 153 548 106 185 33 7 19 88 79 27 25 8 .338 .429 .527 .956 9.3 1952 BKN 149 510 104 157 17 3 19 75 106 40 24 7 .308 .440 .465 .905 8.1 1953 BKN 136 484 109 159 34 7 12 95 74 30 17 4 .329 .425 .502 .927 6.7 1954 BKN 124 386 62 120 22 4 15 59 63 20 7 3 .311 .413 .505 .918 3.5 1955 BKN 105 317 51 81 6 2 8 36 61 18 12 3 .256 .378 .363 .741 2.4 1956 BKN 117 357 61 98 15 2 10 43 60 32 12 5 .275 .382 .412 .794 4.3 Total Total 1382 4877 947 1518 273 54 137 734 740 291 197 30 .311 .409 .474 .883 -- Season Averages 138.0 487.7 94.7 151.8 27.3 5.4 13.7 73.4 74.0 29.1 19.7 3.0 .311 .409 .474 .883 --    Rookie of the year 1947 Most valuable player 1949 _________________________ Link to: List of abbreviations for  batting statistics  

In 1945 the unconditional surrender of Japan led to the division of Korea into two occupation zones. The 1945 division of Korea was meant to be temporary. The stated Allied intention was to reunify the country once a single government could be established for the peninsula. However, throughout 1947, Soviet and American negotiators were unable to reach an agreement regarding joint trusteeship over Korea. In 1947 the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) ruled the southern half of the Korean Peninsula amidst political and economic chaos arising from: USAMGIK retention of former Japanese colonial officials as advisors, administrators, military and police officers USAMGIK opposition to the radical social changes promoted by the short-lived provisional People's Republic of Korea (PRK) which, in 1945 was banned by the U.S. military in the South and co-opted by the Soviets in the north United Nations elections that divided the country Unfortunately, the U.S. military was woefully unprepared for administration of  Korea after WWII. With little knowledge of Korean culture, language or politics, many American policies had unintended destabilizing effects. Waves of refugees from North Korea and returnees from abroad added to the country's turmoil.

  William Franklin Graham Jr. (1918 –2018) was an American Southern Baptist evangelist who held huge rallies, broadcasting sermons on radio and television from 1947 until his retirement in 2005. Graham repudiated racial segregation and emphasized the relationship between the Bible and contemporary secular viewpoints. He particularly reiterated the message of John 3:16 in his sermons.   Graham claimed to have reached 185 countries, preaching to 250 million people in live audiences. He was also spiritual adviser to every U.S. president from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama.

  The 1947  partition of India into Hindu and Muslim majorities divided three provinces: Assam, Bengal and the Punjab.     The division of >14 million people according to religious beliefs resulted in large-scale violence, with varying estimates between several hundred thousand and two million deaths.    

Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx  (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian with a devilishly-quick wit and and somewhat off-color humor. Marx had a long stage and screen career, making 13 feature films with his brothers. Groucho walked with an exaggerated stoop, puffed on a cigar, and sported a grease-painted mustache and eyebrows, His ABC radio show You Bet Your Life  beginning in 1947,  later aired on NBC television from 1950 until 1961.        

Britain, which controlled Palestine since 1917, promoted the idea of establishing a Jewish state in the holy land. With sympathy for Jews greatly enhanced after the Holocaust, the Palestine issue was brought before the newly created United Nations In 1946. A UN plan to divide Palestine into three Jewish sections, four Arab sections and an internationally-administered city of Jerusalem, had strong support in Western nations and the Soviet Union, but was opposed by Arab nations. When the General Assembly voted, 33-13, in favor of partition, its six Arab nations walked out in protest. On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, allowing for the formation of the Jewish state of Israel. Reactions to the UN resolution were mixed and complex. Most Jews in Palestine and around the world reacted to the UN resolution with satisfaction, but some Zionist did not, feeling the plan was a renunciation of their legitimate claim to national territory. Arab states' delegations declared they would not be bound by the decision, and walked out accompanied by the Indian and Pakistani delegates. Several Arab leaders vowed to forcefully thwart the partition. After prolonged parliamentary debate, Britain announced in December 1947 that its mandate would end in May 1948, but it would not enforce the UN  partition plan. The partition plan did not come about smoothly. Outbreaks of violence between Jews and Arabs in mandated Palestine resulted in the outbreak of the 1947 – 48 Civil War.

Packaged in red, white and blue, Bazooka bubble gum was first marketed in 1947 by the Topps Company of New York.     In 1953 Bazooka packaging began to include small comic strips featuring a character known as Bazooka Joe (although I remember the boy named "Pud" from Fleers Dubble Bubble better) as well as premium offers and fortunes.  

The Doomsday Clock  represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe. Maintained since 1947 by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board, the clock was originally meant to represent the threat of global nuclear war. Since 2007 it also reflects climate change and new developments in the life sciences and technology that could inflict irrevocable harm to humanity.      

In 1947 the highly-controversial East German author Hans Fallada published Jeder Stirbt für sich Allein (Every Man Dies Alone), a novel about an ordinary married couple who, after their son was killed in action in 1942, distributed dissident postcards and leaflets in post-boxes and stairwells around their home district in Berlin. After betrayal, they were arrested by the Gestapo and executed in 1943. Steeped in Berliner dialect, and populated with vivid characters from the city's underbelly, alcoholic Nazi veterans and ordinary working-class people, the novel struck a chord in post-WWII Germany. Ultimately, it was the tale of futile resistance by a brave and reckless couple. The original German version of the book sold well and was filmed for television in both East and West Germany.   An English version of the story in 2016 entitled Alone in Berlin, starring Emma Thompson did not receive many good critical reviews.        

In 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin at the caves of Qumran in Jordan. Although written before the Christian gospels, the scrolls contained many similarities, but also some differences from the traditional Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.   Scroll dates range from the third century BCE to the first century of the Common Era. While mostly written in Hebrew, about 15% of the scrolls were written in Aramaic and several in Greek.       The Scrolls are mainly parchment, with some papyrus, and one was engraved on copper.   The Dead Sea Scrolls contain two types of texts: parts of the Hebrew Old Testament and sectarian works written by small groups of Jews who lived at Qumran. The scrolls date from the mid-third century B.C.E. until the mid-first century C.E. While the Dead Sea Scrolls do not shed light on the person or ministry of Jesus, they do illuminate practices and beliefs of ancient Judaism.   A multitude of books have been written about the Dead Sea Scrolls - some contest the dates cited, others the circumstances around their origin:  Dead Sea Scrolls: Selected full-text books and articles Here is a list compiled by the Gnostic Society Library representative of both traditional and dissenting views.       Dead Sea Scrolls studies are polarized by debate over whether or not an Essene community dwelling at Qumran wrote them.                 

    In October 1947, 24 year-old Air Force test pilot Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager flew an experimental Bell X-XS-1 rocket-propelled aircraft out of Edwards Air Force Base (then called Muroc Army Air Field) in California to break the sound barrier at a speed of Mach 1.07. At 10:25 AM, at an altitude 20,000 feet, Yeager's aircraft (named Glamorous Glennis) was released from the belly of a Boeing B-29 over Roger's Lake (the largest dry bed in the world). Blasting four, paired rocket motor chambers, Yeager broke through the sound barrier as he increased airspeed to almost 700 mph and soared to an altitude of 43,000 feet. The XS-1 remained at supersonic speeds for 20.5 seconds, with none of the buffeting that characterized high-speed subsonic flight. The Air Force and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the forerunner of NASA) did not make the event public until Jun 10, 1948.

Established in 1942 for Allied propaganda broadcasts during WWII, the Voice of America (VOA) continued broadcasts after the war aimed mostly at Western Europe.     In September 1947, VOA began broadcasts aimed at the Soviet Union with: “Hello! This is New York calling.”     Initiation of programs directed at the USSR was intended to provide the Russian audience “pure and unadulterated truth” about life outside the USSR... to “broaden the bases of understanding and friendship between the Russian and American people.” Initial VOA Russian programs provided summaries of current events, discussions of  U.S. economic and political systems  and an eclectic selection of American music (square dance to Cole Porter). Because of frequent poor audio reception in the USSR (due to weather and technical issues), early VOA broadcasts were not highly rated. However, VOA popularity increased over the years as it began to emphasize modern America music (the Russians were particularly fond of jazz). In 1955, Willis Conover, host of the Voice of America America Jazz Hour, became extremely popular in Communist-bloc countries.        

These images seem reflective of the sense of hope and prosperity of post-WWII middle-America. I was only five years old at the time - yet many of these images seem familiar to me. How about you?    

In July 1947, an unidentified disc-shaped object, apparently crashed from the air, was found near Roswell, New Mexico. Although there was initial widespread interest in the possibility it was an extra-terrestrial craft, the US military claimed it was merely a conventional weather balloon. After interest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) was rekindled in the 1970s, and it was rumored that alien occupants had secretly been recovered by the military, the US military published two reports in the 1990s stating the crashed object was in fact a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul. An interesting summary of the topic entitled UFO Sightings & News was published in Live Science - December 20, 2017. An intriguing review of the Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program was published in the New York Times in 2017 A comprehensive statistical summary of 121,036 eyewitness accounts was published in 2017 with the title UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015 The issue does not seem to be closed. Despite Pentagon denials of credible UFO sightings, many seemingly-responsible military and commercial pilots have related impressive details of close encounters with highly-maneuverable UFOs. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record by Leslie Kean contains first-person accounts of over a dozen high-ranking military and government officials, including generals from five countries. Although skeptical of most reports, I was particularly impressed by the quality of the last book mentioned (UFOs:Generals...) What do you think?

  This interesting War Department film from 1947, with anti-racist and anti-fascist themes, warns Americans not to let let fanaticism and hatred turn them into suckers.     However, with the emerging Cold War, this rhetoric seems oddly out of synch.. In August 2017, the film went viral on the internet in the aftermath of the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Things were looking up in 1947 observationalism.com Cost of Living 1947 The People History Average Cost of new house $6,600.00  Average wages per year $2,850.00  Cost of a gallon of Gas 15 cents  Average Cost of a new car $1,300.00  Loaf of Bread 13 cents  United States Postage Stamp 3 cents  Men's Sweater $8.50  Bulova Men's Watch $52.50  Couple of examples of houses for sale this year Harlingen , Texas New Brick House 5 room house with all furniture included $7,100  Long Beach , California Mediterranean style Home with Most beautiful 2 story modern home overlooking the ocean well cared for grounds $37,500  Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup 23 cents for 2 cans  Leg O Lamb 59 cents per pound  Loaf Marvel Enriched Bread 13 cents per loaf  Oranges 49 cents per dozen  Below are some Prices for UK guides in Pounds Sterling Average House Price 1,824

Frank Morrison Spillane (March 9, 1918 – July 17, 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American cartoonist turned crime novelist, who wrote from the point of view of a private detective named Mike Hammer. "Bestselling writer of shoot-em-up crime novels" is how the Guardian described him in a 2006 obituary. "...The most popular of those books, of course, feature Spillane's hard-boiled gumshoe/avenger Mike Hammer, the New York eye whose every case turned into a personal vendetta that -- following a suitable number of trysts with beautiful and generally willing babes and raw scenes of brutality -- inevitably ended with Hammer serving up his own kind of justice, usually out of the smoking barrel of a .45."   -  The Thrilling Detective Web Site I, the Jury, published in 1947, launched Mickey Spillane's crime-writer career.  More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. "Hammer is less a detective than an ultra-violent vigilante. I, the Jury lays down the formula. Mike's marine "buddy" Jack, who lost an arm saving Hammer's life in the Pacific, is sadistically murdered. Hammer sets out to avenge him, skirting the niceties of the law, vowing to his friend's corpse: "I'm going to get the louse that killed you. He won't sit in the [electric] chair. He won't hang. He will die exactly as you died, with a .45 slug in the gut, just a little below the belly button."  - The Guardian Mike Hammer TV series

The purpose of the Truman Doctrine delineated in 1947 was to counter geopolitical expansion of the Soviet Union. Initially, in place of direct military action, the U.S. Congress appropriated financial aid to support the economies and militaries of Greece and Turkey. Eventually, the Truman Doctrine implied American support for all nations threatened by communism. THE NEW WORLD ORDER ________________ Here is an interesting summary of  the new world order from an opinion piece entitled The Trump Doctrine Is Winning and the World Is Losing by Kori Schake in the New York Times on June 15, 2018. "Let’s review what, exactly, that order is. Beginning in the wreckage of World War II, America established a set of global norms that solidified its position atop a rules-based international system. These included promoting democracy, making enduring commitments to countries that share its values, protecting allies, advancing free trade and building institutions and patterns of behavior that legitimize American power by giving less powerful countries a say." (Unfortunately, these goals became so ideologically-oriented that America intervened in the political affairs of other nations and often supported repressive dictatorships as long as they were anti-Communist.)          

Based on American models, the Supreme Allied Commander General Douglas MacArthur directed an effective restoration of the industry and society of occupied Japan. The majority of the Japanese people apparently welcomed his progressive reforms. Most important, after Japanese initial Japanese attempts were deemed too conservative, MacArthur and his staff essentially wrote a new Japanese constitution to replace the 1889 Meiji Constitution. In May 1947, Japan’s postwar constitution went into effect. The constitution: • created a parliamentary system of government • granted universal suffrage • reduced the Emperor's power to a symbolic role • stipulated a bill of rights • abolished hereditary or honorary government positions • prohibited the nation from declaring war Article 4 of the 1947 Japanese constitution: The Emperor shall perform only such acts in matters of state as are provided for in this Constitution and he shall not have powers related to government Although the national flag of Japan is officially called Nisshōki (日章旗, the "sun-mark flag"), it is more commonly known as Hi no maru (日の丸, the "circle of the sun").  The sun plays an important role in Japanese mythology as the Emperor was said to be the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Since the end of WWII, the continued use of the circle of the sun flag and the national anthem Kimigayo has been contentious. Disputes have led to protests and lawsuits in Japan and the flag is not frequently displayed due to its association with ultranationalism, aggression and imperialism.

https://youtu.be/qCLtr33MBZ4     Television shows in 1947  Series Debut Ended Picture Page (UK) October 8, 1936 1939 1946 1952 Starlight (UK) November 3, 1936 1939 1946 1949 For The Children (UK) April 24, 1937 1939 July 7, 1946 1950 The Voice of Firestone Televues 1943 1947 1949 1963 The World in Your Home 1944 1948 Boxing From St. Nicholas Arena 1946 1948 You Be the Judge 1946 194? See What You Know January 1946 1949 Hour Glass May 9, 1946 March 1947 Face to Face June 9, 1946 January 26, 1947 Geographically Speaking June 9, 1946 October 1947 Cash and Carry June 20, 1946 July 1, 1947 Serving Through Science August 15, 1946 1947 I Love to Eat 1946 1947 You Are an Artist 1946 1950 Gillette Cavalcade of Sports November 8, 1946 June 24, 1960 Let's Rhumba 1946 1947 Television Screen Magazine 1946 1949 Campus Hoopla 1946 1947 Swing Into Sports 1947 1949 Chicagoland Mystery Players 1947 July 23, 1950 The Jack Eigen Show 1947 1951 Small Fry Club 1947 1951 Juvenile Jury 1947 1954 The Swift Home Service Club May 1947 ? Doorway to Fame May 2, 1947 July 4, 1949 Kraft Television Theater May 7, 1947 1958 King Cole's Birthday Party May 15, 1947 June 23, 1949 In the Kelvinator Kitchen 1947 1948 The Walter Compton News June 16, 1947 January 1948 Major League Baseball on NBC July 8, 1947 October 17, 2000 Musical Merry-Go-Round 1947 1949 Kukla, Fran and Ollie October 13, 1947 1957 Meet the Press (longest running program with more than 4000 episodes) 1947 Still in broadcast Pantomime Quiz November 13, 1947 October 9, 1959 Mary Kay and Johnny November 18, 1947 March 11, 1950 Charade Quiz 1947 1949 Television Playhouse December 4, 1947 April 11, 1948 Americana 1947 1949 Howdy Doody December 27, 1947 September 24, 1960 Kaleidoscope (UK) November 2, 1946 1953 Pinwright's Progress (UK) November 29, 1946 May 16, 1947 Muffin the Mule (UK) 1946 1955 Paging You (UK) 1946 1948 Café Continental (UK) 1947 1953 Eye Witness 1947 1948          

Named after United States Secretary of State George Marshall (U.S. Army Chief of Staff during WWII), the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program)  had bipartisan support in Washington. An American initiative to assist Western Europe with recovery after WWII, the Marshall Plan gave ~$13 billion in aid to promote reduction of  interstate barriers and excessive regulations as well as to encourage business productivity, labor unions and modern business procedures. Marshall Plan Eastern Bloc Countries Although 18 European countries received benefits from the plan, the USSR refused to participate and blocked the involvement of Eastern European countries under its control. In order to combat the effects of the Marshall Plan, the USSR developed its own economic plan - the Molotov Plan which created an economic alliance of socialist countries. Criticism of the Marshall Plan Historians, such as Walter LaFeber described the plan as economic imperialism by the USA, and an attempt to gain control over Western Europe, much as the USSR controlled the Eastern Bloc countries. Economist Wilhelm Röpke criticized the plan for subsidizing a failing system and thereby hindering transition to a free market system. Journalist Henry Hazlitt argued in his book Will Dollars Save the World? that economic recovery requires savings, capital accumulation and private enterprise -  not large cash subsidies. In his book The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan (Former US Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank) gave credit to German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard for Europe's economic recovery - not the contributions of the Marshall Plan. In the end, the Marshall Plan did promote integration of European economies in a mixture of public and private economic sectors similar to that which existed in the USA. This reorganization also proved to be a boon for American investment.