Topics
Understanding our world and that of our enemies
London Olympic Games
The 1948 Games of the XIV Olympiad were the first Summer Olympics held since the 1936 Games in Berlin. The 1940 Olympic Games, originally scheduled for Tokyo, then Helsinki, were canceled with the outbreak of World War II. The 1944 Olympic Games, provisionally...
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U.S. Armed Forces Desegregated
During WWII, the U.S. Army had become the nation's largest minority employer. More than one million of 2.5 million African-American males were inducted into the armed forces by 1945. African Americans, ~11% of all registrants liable for military service,...
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Post-WWII Life is Good
In 1948 post-WWII prosperity was rising for most Americans. Consumerism was on the march. While cartoon humor often had a violent edge to it. And the Babe...
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Armistice Day
November 11, 1918: World War I Ends Veterans Day is an official American holiday that originated after WWI as Armistice Day and was originally intended as a remembrance of November 11, 1918 when major hostilities of World War I formally ended at the 11th hour...
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Berlin Airlift
In June 1948, in response to Allied currency change in West Berlin, the Soviet Union closed vehicular and railroad entry routes through East Germany into the Western sectors of Berlin. The Western allies responded with daily flights to transport goods to West...
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Polaroid Land Camera
Land Cameras, instant cameras with self-developing film named after their inventor Edwin Land, were manufactured by Polaroid from 1947 to 1983. Instant cameras have made quite a comeback these days.
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Author Interview – Mark Scott Smith
Texaco Star Theater
The Texaco Star Theatre with the comedian Milton Berle was first broadcast on radio (1938-1949) before it became an extremely popular American variety show on television (1948 -1956). LISTEN As...
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Jeju Uprising
Jeju Island is a 40km x 90km island province of South Korea 120 km south of the Korean Peninsula The Jeju uprising, which began on April 3, 1948, resulted in extreme suppression by the South Korean Army, police and right-wing paramilitary groups. The rebellion...
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Superman
The first live-action Superman movie serial, released in 1948 was the most profitable movie serial in history. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, Superman first appeared in Action Comics in 1938. Paramount Pictures released a series...
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World Health Organization
The concept of an international health organization was first suggested in 1945 by the Chinese United Nations delegate Dr. Szeming Sze. Although the initial resolution failed, at an international conference the following year, all 51 member countries of the...
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North Korean People’s Army
The Korean People’s Revolutionary Army was established in 1932 as a guerrilla force fighting against Imperial Japanese rule that had colonized the country since the turn-of-the-century. In 1939, the Korean Volunteer Army (KVA), was formed in China to fight alongside...
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Tupperware Parties
The type of plastic that would ultimately be used for food containers was developed by Earl Tupper in 1938. Marketed after WWII as a new lightweight, unbreakable and airtight alternative for food storage, initial hardware and retail store sales were...
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Communists Take Over Czechoslovakia
Summary of 1948 events in Czechoslovakia from MACROHISTORY Feb 8 - The Czechoslovakian Communist party, in cooperation with the General Confederation of Labor and left-wing Social Democrats, is preparing measures to nationalize apartment houses, office buildings and...
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Marshall Plan Initiated
In April 1948 sixteen nations joined the Marshall Plan's economic cooperation organization. In the Cold War atmosphere, Eastern European countries in the Soviet sphere that did not join were Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Albania. Finland also...
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Tales of the South Pacific
In 1948 James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for his series of short stories entitled Tales of the South Pacific. Derived from his experience with the US Navy in the New Hebrides Islands during the Pacific Campaign of World War II, the fascinating stories focus on...
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Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 –1948) led Indians in a nonviolent independence movement from British colonization. Known worldwide by his honorific Sanskrit title Mahātmā (high-souled, venerable) he was also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for father)...
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Miracle On 34TH Street
Miracle on 34th Street was a 1947 film written and directed by George Seaton and based on a story by Valentine Davies. It stars Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, a very young Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn as the charming Kris Kringle. The heartwarming story, about a...
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Meet The Press
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...
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Spruce Goose
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....
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Brigadoon
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,...
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Kon-Tiki
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...
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Candid Camera
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....
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Transistor Invented
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...
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Hollywood Black List
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...
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