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, furnished...
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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 of...
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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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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 star of tThe Texaco Star Theater,...
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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 slow. ...
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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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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, the...
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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. As a...
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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 by...
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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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Jackie Robinson
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...
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Korean Turmoil
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...
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Groucho Marx
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...
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Bazooka Bubble Gum
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...
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Back in Time
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? ...
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UFO
In July1947, 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...
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Don’t Be a Sucker
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,...
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4th of July 1947
Things were looking up in 1947 observationalism.com Indo Surat.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...
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U-Boat off New York Coast
"I saw Long Island, the coast and all the lights and motor cars..." - Kapitainleutnant Reinhard Hardegen of the U-123 sailing undetected off the coast of Long Island in January 1942. Reinhard Hardegen died June 19 at age 105. What follows is a summary of...
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