1949

1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1949 calendar).

Events

January 2 - Luis Muñoz Marín became 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 22 - Communist forces enter Peking
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 1 - Rationing of clothes ends in Britain
February 8 - Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary is sentenced to life imprisonment for treason against the Hungarian Communist government.
February 12 - The Vatican announces the excommunication of all persons involved in the trial and conviction of Cardinal Mindszenty.
February 14 - The Knesset (Israeli parliament) first convenes.
February 14 - Antonio Carmona re-elected president of Portugal for lack of 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 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 four times.
March 3 - The Tucker automobile Corporation folds.
March 12 - The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Denver & Rio Grande Western and Western Pacific railroads inaugurate the California Zephyr passenger train between Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California as the first train to feature Vista Dome cars as regular equipment.
March 25 - The extensive deportation campaign was conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet authorities deported more than 92,000 people from Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
March 28 - United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal resigns suddenly.
March 31 - The former British colony of Newfoundland joins Canada as its 10th province.

April 1 - Éire leaves the British Commonwealth and becomes the Republic of Ireland
April 1 - Founding of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
April 4 - North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington, DC.
April 18 - Éire formally became the Republic of Ireland.
April 20 - Royal Navy frigate HMS Amethyst goes up the Yangtze River to evacuate British Commonwealth refugees escaping the advance of the Mao's communist forces. Under heavy fire it runs aground off Rose Island. After an aborted rescue attempt at 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 29 - News Review reveals that neither Selhurst College nor its headmaster H. Rochester Sneath exist

May 5 - The Council of Europe is founded by the signing of the Treaty of London.
May 9 - Rainier III of Monaco becomes Prince of Monaco.
May 11 - Israel is admitted to the U.N. as its 59th member.
May 11 - Siam changes its name to Thailand.
May 12 - Cold War: The Soviet Union lifts its Blockade of Berlin.
May 20 - The AFSA (predecessor of the NSA) is established.
May 22 - After two months in Bethesda Naval Hospital, James Forrestal commits suicide, under circumstances that seem suspicious to many.
May 23 - The Federal Republic of Germany is established.
EDSAC, the first stored-program computer, begins operation at Cambridge University.

June 2 - Transjordan becomes kingdom of Jordan
June 6 - With the passage of the Bodh Gaya Temple Act by the Indian government, Mahabodhi Temple is restored to partial Buddhist control.
June 8 - Red Scare: Such celebrities as Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are named in an FBI report as Communist Party members.
June 8 - George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four is published.
June 29 - Last US troops withdraw from South Korea
June 29 - Dock strike in the UK
June 29 - Beginning of Apartheid - The South African Citizenship Act suspends the granting of citizenship to British Commonwealth immigrants after five years and imposes a ban on mixed marriages

July 31 - Captain Kerans of HMS Amethyst decides to make a break after the nightfall under heavy fire from both sides of the river and successfully rejoins the fleet at Woosung the next day July 26 John Mansford born.

August 5 - 6.75 Richter scale earthquake in Ecuador kills 6000 and destroys 50 towns.
August 8 - Bhutan becomes independent
August 14 - Gang of Salvatore Giuliano explodes mines under police barracks outside Palermo, Sicily
August 14 - Military coup in Syria ousts the president
August 28 - Last surviving veterans of the United States Civil War meet in Indianapolis - all six
August 29 - First meeting of the Council of Europe
August 29 - Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb.

September 5 - A former sharpshooter in World War II, Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbors in Camden, New Jersey with a souvenir Luger to become America's first single-episode mass murderer.
September 6 - Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control.
September 7 - Federal Republic of Germany officially founded. Konrad Adenauer is the first federal chancellor
September 9 - Albert Guay affair: dynamite bomb destroys Canadian Pacific Airlines Douglas DC-3 in Quebec
September 13 - Soviet Union vetoes United Nations membership of Ceylon, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Jordan and Portugal
September 17 - Canadian steamship SS Noronic burns in Toronto Harbor with the loss of over 118 lives.
September 24 - Laszlo Rajk, ex-foreign minister of Hungary, is sentenced to death.
September 29 - First Plenary Session of the National People's Congress approves design for the Flag of the People's Republic of China.
September 29 - Mrs. Iva Toguri D'Aquino is found guilty of broadcasting for Japan as "Tokyo Rose" during World War II.