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1949

Centuries:	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:
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Archaeology - Aviation Meteorology - Rail transport - Radio - Science
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Birth and death categories
Births - Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments - Disestablishments
Works category
Works

**1949 in other calendars**
Gregorian calendar	1949 MCMXLIX
Ab urbe condita	2702
Armenian calendar	1398 ԹՎ ՌՅՂԸ
Chinese calendar	4585/4645-12-3 (戊子年十二月初三日) — to — 4586/4646-11-12 (己丑年十一月十二日)
Ethiopian calendar	1941 – 1942
Hebrew calendar	5709 – 5710
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2004 – 2005
- Shaka Samvat	1871 – 1872
- Kali Yuga	5050 – 5051
Iranian calendar	1327 – 1328
Islamic calendar	1368 – 1370
Thai solar calendar	2492

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

[edit] Events

[edit] January

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 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 20 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman begins his full term.
January 22 - Communist Party of China 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.

[edit] February

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 10 - Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman premiered in New York City.
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 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.

[edit] March

NATO formed, April 1949

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 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 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 will be telecast a week later. This will be the only complete opera that Toscanini will ever conduct on television.
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.

[edit] 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, DC, creating the NATO defense alliance.
April 7 - Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific (musical), 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 became the Republic of Ireland.
April 20 - Royal Navy frigate HMS Amethyst (U16) 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 - The News Review reveals that neither Selhurst College nor its headmaster H. Rochester Sneath exist.

[edit] May

May 1 - Nereid, a moon of Neptune, is discovered by Gerard P. Kuiper.
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, upon the death of his maternal grandfather Louis II.
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.

[edit] June-July

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 24 - First Television Western, Hopalong Cassidy, airs on NBC.
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 the HMS Amethyst decides to make a break after nightfall under heavy fire from the Chinese People's Liberation Army both sides of the Yangtze River and successfully rejoins the fleet at Woosung the next day.

[edit] August

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, code named "Joe 1." Its design imitated the American plutonium bomb that was droped on Nagasaki in 1945.

[edit] September

September 5 - A former sharpshooter in World War II, Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbours 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 9 - Notorious World War II veteran Edwin Alonzo Boyd commits his first career bank robbery in Toronto; surprising that he managed to steal $2006, as he'd guzzled a bottle of Irish whiskey, making him drunk.
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 Harbour 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.
Mervyn's reveals their first logo, used until 1994.

[edit] October-November

Flag of the People's Republic of China, founded October 1 1949

Sukarno, first President of Indonesia, elected December 16 1949

October 1 - Birth of the People's Republic of China.
October 7 - Democratic Republic of Germany DDR established officially
October 13 - Severe flooding in Guatemala
October 16 - Civil war ends in Greece - communist troops surrender
October 17 - Chinese communist troops take Canton, China
October 27 - Chinese communist troops fail to take Kinmen in the Battle of Kuningtou. Communist advance towards Taiwan is halted.
October 27 - An airliner flying from Paris to New York crashes in the Azores island of São Miguel. Among the victims are violinist Ginette Neveu and boxer Marcel Cerdan.
November 15 - Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
November 24 - Opening day at the ski resort Squaw Valley California.
November 26 - The Indian Constituent Assembly adopts India's constitution. [1]

[edit] December

December 2 - Boogie-Woogie King Albert Ammons dies of Alcohol Poisoning.
December 8 - Nationalist Chinese finish their evacuation to Taiwan.
December 10- Robert Gordon (Bob) Menzies elected.
December 14 - Traicho Kostov, ex-vice prime minister of Bulgaria, is sentenced to death.
December 15 - Typhoon strikes fishing fleet off Korea - several thousand reported dead.
December 16 - Sukarno elected president of Republic of Indonesia.
December 17 - Burma recognizes People's Republic of China.
December 27 - Queen Juliana of the Netherlands grants Indonesia sovereignty.
December 30 - India recognizes People's Republic of China.

[edit] unknown date

The Fourth Geneva Convention is signed.
Pamir is the last commercial sailing ship to sail round Cape Horn.
The Malta Labour Party is founded
The Vatican announced that bones uncovered in its subterranean catacombs could be the apostle Peter. 19 years later, Pope Paul VI announced confirmation that the bones belonged to this first saint. ^[1]

[edit] Births