Also Within This Year in History:
1948
A new world order began to emerge in 1948. The U.S. announced the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe, while a group of European nations formed an alliance that would evolve into NATO. The Berlin Blockade escalated tensions between the emerging superpowers. Israel became a Jewish state, and Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated less than a year after his country won independence from Great Britain. President Truman desegregated America’s military, while 42-year-old Negro League star Satchel Paige became Major League Baseball’s oldest rookie.
Motorcycle builder Soichiro Honda incorporates the Honda Motor Company in Hamamatsu, Japan. In the 1960s, the company achieved worldwide fame for its motorcycles (in particular, its C100 Super Cub, which…
On September 24, 1948, Mildred Gillars—the notorious American citizen known as “Axis Sally,” who had been living in Germany and broadcasting Nazi radio propaganda during World War II—pleads not guilty…
Arthur Eggers, who was convicted of killing his wife, Dorothy, because of her alleged promiscuity, is executed at San Quentin Prison. He probably would have gotten away with the crime…
On October 15, 1948, future President Gerald Ford marries Elizabeth Anne (“Betty”) Bloomer. The handsome, blonde, blue‑eyed Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and went on to play football…
On October 30, 1948, killer smog hovering over Donora, Pennsylvania claims its first two victims. Over a five‑day period, the smog killed about 20 people and made thousands more seriously…
In one of the greatest upsets in presidential election history, Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeats his Republican challenger, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, by just over two…
On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune jumps the gun and mistakenly declares New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of the previous days’ presidential race against incumbent Harry S.…
On November 4, 1948, T.S. Eliot wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, for his profound effect on the direction of modern poetry. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to…
On November 26, 1948, the first “Land Camera”—better known today as the instant Polaroid camera—goes on sale at Jordan Marsh department store in Boston for $89.75. The invention of Edwin…
In Tokyo, Japan, Hideki Tojo, former Japanese premier and chief of the Kwantung Army, is executed along with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War…
On Christmas Eve 1948, a family of three moves into a home in Dover, Massachusetts with unusually large windows—the world’s first fully solar house, an idea decades ahead of its…
