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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Mexican-Americans in WWII
Ethnic and racial discrimination in WWII-era America was a powerful social force. Just as the civil rights of African-Americans were restricted in the South, similar discrimination weighed heavily against many "Tejanos" of Mexican descent in the Southwest. ...
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Truman Doctrine
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....
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Enemy in the Mirror
Excerpts from the book: Once the shoji screen was closed, Kiyoshi said in a low voice, “It’s about the piece I submitted to the Chūō Kōron.” Fumiko took a deep breath. The Chūō Kōron was one of the few literary magazines that still dared to publish articles hinting...
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Wolves at the Doorstep 1942
Somewhere between the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march and the fierce fighting on Guadalcanal, many of us seem to have forgotten one of the most important American theaters in early WWII - The Battle of the Western Atlantic. In 1942, German...
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It’s A Wonderful Life
After a series of populist films in the 1930s (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and You Can't Take It With You), Frank Capra read a forgotten story entitled The Greatest Gift written by Philip Van Doren Stern and turned...
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Memorial Day
Memorial Day 1946 - The ways of peace have not returned to us, and the results of war are still upon us. - Eleanor Roosevelt MAY 30, 1946 NEW YORK, Wednesday—This is the first Memorial Day since the end of the war in the Pacific and yet in spite of that fact, many...
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William Carlos Williams
This is a scene from the charming 2016 film Paterson (96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) about a bus driver and erstwhile poet named Paterson who lives in Paterson, New Jersey with his wife who dreams of being a country music star and opening a cupcake business. This Is...
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Blue Angels
The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, ordered the establishment of the Blue Angels flight demonstration team in 1946. The Blue Angels team flew the Grumman F6F Hellcat in 1946, the more powerful Grumman F8F Bearcat (1946 to 1949), the Grumman F9F...
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Song of the South
Song of the South was produced by Walt Disney in 1946 as a live-action/animated musical based on African-American folktales compiled by Joel Chandler Harris in 1881 in the book Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation. The story...
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Georgia O’Keefe
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986), a pioneer of American modernism, is renowned for her paintings of flowers, skyscrapers, animal skulls and southeastern landscapes. New York City with Moon (1925) Moving to New Mexico after the death of her photographer husband Alfred...
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