Important Historical Events of the year 1949, Year 1949 in History
List of 1949 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1949
What happened in the year 1949?
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1, 1949 | United Nations cease-fire takes effect in Kashmir from one minute before midnight. War between India and Pakistan stops accordingly. |
| January 2, 1949 | Luis Muñoz Marín is inaugurated as the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. |
| January 3, 1949 | The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines, is established. |
| January 5, 1949 | In his State of the Union address, United States President Harry S. Truman unveils his Fair Deal program. |
| January 11, 1949 | The first "networked" television broadcasts took place as KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania goes on the air connecting the east coast and mid-west programming. |
| January 15, 1949 | Chinese Civil War: The Communist forces take over Tianjin from the Nationalist government. |
| January 20, 1949 | Point Four Program, a program for economic aid to poor countries, is announced by United States President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address for a full term as president. |
| January 25, 1949 | The first Emmy Awards are presented in the United States; the venue is the Hollywood Athletic Club. |
| January 26, 1949 | The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory sees first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope (until BTA-6 is built in 1976).[30] |
| January 31, 1949 | These Are My Children, the first television daytime soap opera, is broadcast by the NBC station in Chicago. |
| February 14, 1949 | The Knesset (parliament of Israel) convenes for the first time. |
| February 14, 1949 | The Asbestos Strike begins in Canada. The strike marks the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. |
| February 15, 1949 | Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux begin excavations at Cave 1 of the Qumran Caves, where they will eventually discover the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls. |
| February 17, 1949 | Chaim Weizmann begins his term as the first President of Israel. |
| February 19, 1949 | Ezra Pound is awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry by the Bollingen Foundation and Yale University. |
| February 24, 1949 | The Armistice Agreements are signed, to formally end the hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. |
| March 2, 1949 | Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas, after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute. |
| March 10, 1949 | Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") is convicted of treason. |
| March 24, 1949 | Hanns Albin Rauter, a chief SS and Police Leader, in the Netherlands, is convicted and executed for crimes against humanity. |
| March 25, 1949 | More than 92,000 kulaks are suddenly deported from the Baltic states to Siberia. |
| March 30, 1949 | Cold War: A riot breaks out in Austurvöllur square in Reykjavík, when Iceland joins NATO. |
| March 31, 1949 | The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada. |
| April 1, 1949 | Chinese Civil War: The Chinese Communist Party holds unsuccessful peace talks with the Nationalist Party in Beijing, after three years of fighting. |
| April 1, 1949 | The Government of Canada repeals Japanese-Canadian internment after seven years. |
| April 4, 1949 | Cold War: Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. |
| April 5, 1949 | A fire in a hospital in Effingham, Illinois, kills 77 people and leads to nationwide fire code improvements in the United States. |
| April 18, 1949 | The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force, declaring Éire to be a republic and severing Ireland's "association" with the Commonwealth of Nations. |
| April 23, 1949 | Chinese Civil War: Establishment of the People's Liberation Army Navy. |
| April 28, 1949 | The Hukbalahap are accused of assassinating former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, while she is en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and ten others are also killed. |
| May 4, 1949 | The entire Torino football team (except for two players who did not take the trip: Sauro Tomà, due to an injury and Renato Gandolfi, because of coach request) is killed in a plane crash. |
| May 6, 1949 | EDSAC, the first practical electronic digital stored-program computer, runs its first operation. |
| May 12, 1949 | Cold War: The Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin. |
| May 20, 1949 | In the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, is established. |
| May 23, 1949 | Cold War: The Western occupying powers approve the Basic Law and establish a new German state, the Federal Republic of Germany. |
| June 5, 1949 | Thailand elects Orapin Chaiyakan, the first female member of Thailand's Parliament. |
| June 8, 1949 | 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, 1949 | George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is published. |
| June 14, 1949 | Albert II, a rhesus monkey, rides a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 134 km (83 mi), thereby becoming the first mammal and first monkey in space. |
| June 24, 1949 | The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, starring William Boyd, is aired on NBC. |
| July 1, 1949 | The merger of two princely states of India, Cochin and Travancore, into the state of Thiru-Kochi (later re-organized as Kerala) in the Indian Union ends more than 1,000 years of princely rule by the Cochin royal family. |
| July 20, 1949 | The Israel–Syria Mixed Armistice Commission brokers the last of four ceasefire agreements to end the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. |
| July 21, 1949 | The United States Senate ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty. |
| July 27, 1949 | Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner. |
| August 3, 1949 | The Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League finalize the merger that would create the National Basketball Association. |
| August 5, 1949 | In Ecuador, an earthquake destroys 50 towns and kills more than 6,000. |
| August 10, 1949 | An amendment to the National Security Act of 1947 enhances the authority of the United States Secretary of Defense over the Army, Navy and Air Force, and replaces the National Military Establishment with the Department of Defense. |
| August 17, 1949 | The 6.7 Ms Karlıova earthquake shakes eastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), leaving 320–450 dead.[2][7] |
| August 17, 1949 | Matsukawa derailment: Unknown saboteurs cause a passenger train to derail and overturn in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, killing three crew members and igniting a political firestorm between the Japanese Communist Party and the government of Occupied Japan that will eventually lead to the Japanese Red Purge. |
| August 20, 1949 | Hungary adopts the Hungarian Constitution of 1949 and becomes a People’s Republic. |
| August 22, 1949 | The Queen Charlotte earthquake is Canada's strongest since the 1700 Cascadia earthquake. |
| August 24, 1949 | The treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization goes into effect. |
| August 29, 1949 | Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. |
| August 31, 1949 | The retreat of the Democratic Army of Greece into Albania after its defeat on Gramos mountain marks the end of the Greek Civil War. |
| September 4, 1949 | The Peekskill riots erupt after a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York. |
| September 17, 1949 | The Canadian steamship SS Noronic burns in Toronto Harbour with the loss of over 118 lives. |
| September 27, 1949 | Zeng Liansong's design is chosen as the flag of the People's Republic of China. |
| September 30, 1949 | The Berlin Airlift ends. |
| October 1, 1949 | The People's Republic of China is established. |
| October 3, 1949 | WERD, the first black-owned radio station in the United States, opens in Atlanta. |
| October 7, 1949 | The communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed. |
| October 14, 1949 | The Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders in the United States convicts eleven defendants of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the federal government. |
| October 16, 1949 | The Greek Communist Party announces a "temporary cease-fire", thus ending the Greek Civil War. |
| October 24, 1949 | The cornerstone of the United Nations Headquarters is laid. |
| October 25, 1949 | The Battle of Guningtou in the Taiwan Strait begins. |
| October 28, 1949 | An Air France Lockheed Constellation crashes in the Azores, killing all 48 people on board. |
| November 1, 1949 | All 55 people on board Eastern Air Lines Flight 537 are killed when the Douglas DC-4 operating the flight collides in mid-air with a Bolivian Air Force Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft over Alexandria, Virginia. |
| November 2, 1949 | The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference ends with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia. |
| November 3, 1949 | Chinese Civil War: The Battle of Dengbu Island occurs. |
| November 7, 1949 | The first oil was taken in Oil Rocks (Neft Daşları), the world's oldest offshore oil platform. |
| November 18, 1949 | The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria. |
| November 26, 1949 | The Constituent Assembly of India adopts the constitution presented by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. |
| December 2, 1949 | Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others is adopted. |
| December 4, 1949 | Sir Duncan George Stewart was fatally stabbed by Rosli Dhobi, a member leader of the Rukun 13, in Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia during the British crown colony era in that state. |
| December 7, 1949 | Chinese Civil War: The Government of the Republic of China moves from Nanjing to Taipei, Taiwan. |
| December 10, 1949 | Chinese Civil War: The People's Liberation Army begins its siege of Chengdu, the last Kuomintang-held city in mainland China, forcing President of the Republic of China Chiang Kai-shek and his government to retreat to Taiwan. |
| December 13, 1949 | The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. |
| December 27, 1949 | Indonesian National Revolution: The Netherlands officially recognizes Indonesian independence. End of the Dutch East Indies. |