1949
Contents
1949
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Millennium: 2nd millenniumCenturies: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1910s 1920s 1930s - 1940s - 1950s 1960s 1970s
Years: 1946 1947 1948 - 1949 - 1950 1951 1952
1949 by topic:
Subject: Archaeology - Architecture - Art
Aviation - Film - Literature (Poetry)
Meteorology - Music (Country)
Rail transport - Radio - Science - Spaceflight
Sports - Television
Countries: Australia - Canada - India - Ireland - Malaysia - New Zealand - Norway - Pakistan - Singapore - South Africa - Soviet Union - UK - Zimbabwe
Leaders: Sovereign states - State leaders
Religious leaders - Law
Categories: Births - Deaths - Works - Introductions
Establishments - Disestablishments - Awards
Year 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.
Contents:Events of 1949
January
- January 2 - Luis Muñoz Marín becomes the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico.
- January 4 - RMS Caronia of the Cunard Line departs Southampton for New York on her maiden voyage.
- January 4 - February 22 - Series of winter storms in Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, Colorado and Nevada - winds of up to 72 mph - tens of thousands of cattle and sheep perish.
- January 5 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman unveils his Fair Deal program.
- January 11 - Los Angeles, California receives its first recorded snowfall.
- January 11 - KDKA-TV, Becomes the first local, on-air television station.
- January 17 - 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. (The VW Beetle goes on to become the greatest automobile phenomenon in American history.)
- January 19 - The Poe Toaster first appears at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.
- January 20 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman begins his full term.
- January 25 - Forces from the Communist Party of China enter Beijing.
- January 25 - The first Emmy Awards are presented at the Hollywood Athletic Club.
- January 25 - In the first Israeli election, David Ben-Gurion becomes Prime Minister.
- January 26 - Australian citizenship comes into being.
February
- February 1 - Rationing of clothes ends in Britain.
- 13 February - António Óscar Carmona is re-elected president of Portugal for lack of an opposing candidate.
- February 19 - Ezra Pound is awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry by the Bollingen Foundation and Yale University.
- February 22 - Grady the Cow, a 1,200-pound cow, gets stuck inside a silo on a farm in Yukon, Oklahoma and garners national media attention.
March
- March 1 - World heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis retires.
- March 1 - Indonesia seizes Yogyakarta from the Dutch.
- March 2 - 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 4 times).
- March 17 - The Shamrock Hotel in Houston, Texas, owned by oil tycoon Glenn McCarthy, has its grand opening.
- March 20 - The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Denver & Rio Grande Western and Western Pacific railroads inaugurate the California Zephyr passenger train between Chicago and Oakland, California, as the first long distance train to feature Vista Dome cars as regular equipment.
- March 25 - An extensive deportation campaign is conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet authorities deport more than 92,000 people from the Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
- March 26 - The first half of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, conducted by legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, and performed in concert (i.e. no scenery or costumes), is telecast by NBC, live from Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center. The second half is telecast a week later. This is only complete opera that Toscanini ever conducts on television.
- March 28 - United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal resigns suddenly.
- March 29 - The 21st Academy Awards ceremony is held.
- March 31 - The former British colony of Newfoundland and Labrador joins Canada as its 10th province.
April
- April 1 - Éire leaves the British Commonwealth and becomes the Republic of Ireland.
- April 1 - The Tokyo Stock Exchange is founded.
- April 4 - The North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., creating the NATO defense alliance.
- April 7 - 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.
- April 14 - The day the N'Ko alphabet is held to have been completed by Solomana Kante.
- April 18 - Éire formally becomes the Republic of Ireland.
- April 20 - The Royal Navy frigate HMS Amethyst (U16) goes up the Yangtze River to evacuate British Commonwealth refugees escaping the advance of 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.
- April 23 - Chinese communist troops take Nanking.
- April 28 - 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'.
- April 28 - Former Philippine First Lady Aurora Quezon, 61, is assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and 10 others are also killed.
- April 29 - The News Review reveals that neither Selhurst College nor its headmaster H. Rochester Sneath exist.