Civilisation/20th Century History
For more information on World War I, see <WWI page>
For more information on World War II, see <WWII page>
Note – although the new millennium was widely celebrated on 1 January 2000, this page follows strict construction where the 20th century starts in 1901 and finishes in 2000.
1901
US president William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo by anarchist Leon Czolgosz.
Guglielmo Marconi transmitted a message from Poldhu in Cornwall to Signal Hill in St John’s, Newfoundland.
Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
The first Nobel Prize ceremony was held in Stockholm.
1902
Second Boer War ended.
The Order of Merit was founded by Edward VII to reward those who provided especially eminent service in the armed forces or particularly distinguished themselves in science, art, literature, or the promotion of culture. The order is limited to only 24 members.
Oscar Eckenstein and Alexander Crowley undertook the first attempt to scale K2.
A statue of Boudica was erected by Westminster Bridge.
1903
First powered flight by the Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were formed in Russia.
Cuba leased Guantanamo Bay to USA ‘in perpetuity’.
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded.
1904
Entente cordiale was signed between Britain and France.
Herero Genocide was a campaign of racial extermination and collective punishment that the German Empire undertook in German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) against the Herero people.
The General Slocum caught fire and sank in the East River of New York City. An estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board died.
Longacre Square in Manhattan was renamed Times Square after The New York Times.
Trans-Siberian Railway was opened.
1905
Norway achieved full independence from Sweden.
Russo-Japanese War ended.
Las Vegas was founded as a city, when 110 acres of land adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks were auctioned in what would become the downtown area.
Fauvist artists’ first exhibit was held at the Salon d’Automne in Paris.
1906
Magnitude 7.9 earthquake in San Francisco earthquake killed more than 3,000 people.
Magnitude 8.2 earthquake in Chile, destroyed most of the city of Valparaiso.
Mahatma Gandhi coined the term Satyagraha to characterize the Non-Violence movement in South Africa.
First dreadnought designed by John Fisher entered service.
SOS became an international distress signal.
1907
Panic of 1907 was a financial crisis that occurred in the United States when the New York Stock Exchange fell close to 50% from its peak the previous year. The crisis was triggered by the failed attempt in October to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company.
Finland held the first elections in Europe where universal suffrage was applied.
Florence Nightingale became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit.
Robert Baden-Powell held the first Brownsea Island scout camp, which is seen as the beginning of Scouting.
1908
Tunguska event was an explosion in Siberia, most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment. The explosion over the sparsely populated East Siberian taiga flattened an estimated 80 million trees.
FBI was founded as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI).
Samuel Cody made the first powered flight in Great Britain.
Thomas Selfridge became the first person to die in a plane crash. Orville Wright, the pilot of the plane, was injured in the crash in Virginia.
1909
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed.
Louis Bleriot made the first airplane flight across the English Channel, winning the prize of £1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper.
Charles Rolls was the first Briton to be killed in a flying accident, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display near Bournemouth.
Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole.
Tonypandy riot was a dispute between miners and mine owners that took place at the Cambrian Colliery mine in South Wales.
1910
Great Flood of Paris was a catastrophe in which the Seine River, carrying winter rains from its tributaries, flooded Paris.
The Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet.
A wireless telegraph sent from the SS Montrose resulted in the identification, arrest and execution of murderer Dr. Hawley Crippen.
5 October 1910 revolution was the overthrow of the Portuguese monarchy and its replacement by the First Portuguese Republic. Manuel II was the last King of Portugal.
1911
Agadir Crisis was the international tension sparked by the deployment of the German gunboat Panther to the Moroccan port of Agadir.
Xinhai Revolution ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China.
Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole.
Harriet Quimby earned the first U.S. pilot's certificate issued to a woman by the Aero Club of America, and less than a year later became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
Siege of Sidney Street, popularly known as the Battle of Stepney, was a notorious gunfight in London. It ended with the deaths of two members of a politically-motivated gang of burglars supposedly led by Peter Piatkow, also known as ‘Peter the Painter’.
1912
Novarupta volcano in Alaska was formed during the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.
African National Congress was founded.
Robert Falcon Scott and his companions died on their way back from the South Pole.
Meiji Era ended in Japan.
RMS Titanic, operated by the White Star Line, sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.
Ulster Covenant was signed by just under half a million people from Ulster, in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill, introduced by the Government in that same year. Sir Edward Carson was the first person to sign the Covenant at Belfast City Hall.
Ulster Volunteers were a unionist militia founded to block Home Rule for Ireland. They aimed to recruit 100,000 men who had signed the Covenant. The following year they were organized into the Ulster Volunteer Force.
Charles Dawson discovered the first of two skulls found in the Piltdown quarry in Sussex, skulls of an apparently primitive hominid, an ancestor of man. Piltdown man, or Eoanthropus dawsoni, was the ‘missing link’. In 1953 Piltdown man was exposed as a hoax.
1913
The Federal Reserve System (the Fed) was established.
Rudolf Diesel disappeared from the post office steamer Dresden on a voyage from Antwerp to London, in an apparent suicide.
Emily Davison committed suicide by throwing herself under King George V's horse, Anmer, at the Epsom Derby.
Senghenydd Colliery Disaster occurred near Caerphilly, killing 439 miners and one rescuer. It is the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom.
1914
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, triggering the start of World War I.
Christmas truce was celebrated along the Western Front.
Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica.
Panama Canal was opened.
While steaming on the St. Lawrence River in fog, the RMS Empress of Ireland was struck amidships by the Norwegian collier SS Storstad, and the Empress sank very quickly. This accident claimed 1,012 lives, making it the deadliest maritime disaster in Canadian history.
Suffragette Mary Richardson damaged Velazquez' painting Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery with a meat chopper.
1915
The first widespread use of poison gas in World War I.
Start of the Armenian Genocide.
Edith Cavell was executed for helping allied soldiers escape from Belgium.
RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, causing the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew. William Turner was the captain of Lusitania. Sunk off the Old Head of Kinsale.
Henry Ford and 170 prominent peace leaders travelled to Europe on a Peace Ship.
The United States occupation of Haiti began.
Quintinshill rail disaster occurred near Gretna Green. The crash involved five trains on the Caledonian railway and killed 226 people. It is the worst rail crash in the United Kingdom in terms of loss of life.
The first British Women’s Institute meeting took place at Llanfairpwll on Anglesey.
1916
Hospital ship HMHS Britannic, designed as the third Olympic-class ocean liner for White Star Line, sank in the Aegean Sea.
Sopwith Camel made its maiden flight.
Grigori Rasputin was assassinated.
Easter Rising was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week.
British Summer Time, first advocated by William Willett in 1907, was introduced on 21 May.
The Saturday Evening Post published its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting.
1917
United States declared war on Germany.
Russian Revolution was inaugurated with the February Revolution. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, ending Romanov dynastic rule and the Russian Empire.
The October Revolution was the precipitating event of the Russian Civil War.
The Balfour Declaration supported the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.
Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey.
Our Lady of Fatima is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus, based on the Marian apparitions reported by three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria in Fatima, Portugal.
The Pulitzer Prize was established.
1918
World War I ended. At 11am on 11 November an armistice with Germany was signed in a railroad carriage at Compiegne in northern France.
Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated.
Tsar Nicholas II and his family were assassinated in Yekaterinburg.
Civil War in Finland.
Mehmed VI became the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Caliph.
RAF was founded on 1 April by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS).
In January the Ministry of Food decided to introduce rationing. Sugar was the first commodity to be rationed, followed by butchers' meat.
Spanish Flu pandemic infected nearly a third of the global population. It was named because Spain, a neutral country in World War I, had no special censorship for news against the disease and its consequences.
1919
Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June, following six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference. The treaty required Germany to disarm, make ample territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers.
Boston Molasses Disaster occurred when a large molasses storage tank burst, and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets of Boston, killing 21 people.
May Fourth Movement was a political movement growing out of student demonstrations in Beijing, protesting against the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles.
The International Labour Organization was established.
John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. They flew a modified First World War Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, County Galway.
The Battle of George Square was a confrontation between police and striking workers in Glasgow. Government troops were supported by six tanks.
The first international commercial flight took place from Paris–Le Bourget to Hounslow Heath.
1920
Prohibition was introduced following the passing of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution a year before.
The League of Nations was an inter-governmental organization founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, and the precursor to the United Nations. At its greatest extent it had 58 members. Although U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for his role as the leading architect of the League, the United States was never a member.
The Non-Cooperation Movement was launched by Mahatma Gandhi with the aim of self-governance and obtaining full independence for India.
Greece restored its monarchy after a referendum.
1921
Communist Party of China was founded.
Adolf Hitler became Fuhrer of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP).
Kronstadt rebellion against the Bolshevik government was initiated by sailors of the Soviet Navy’s Baltic Fleet.
Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labour uprising in United States history. For five days in Logan County, West Virginia, 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders in a dispute over unionization.
Anglo-Irish Treaty concluded the Irish War of Independence. It provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion within the "community of nations known as the British Empire".
Marie Stopes opened the first birth control clinic in London.
Edward Elgar opened the first HMV store in Oxford Street in London.
1922
Nansen passports were first issued by the League of Nations to stateless refugees. The passport was designed by Norwegian statesman and polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.
March on Rome brought Benito Mussolini to power in Italy.
The USSR was formed.
Irish Civil War was a conflict that followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State.
Ernest Shackleton was buried at Grytviken, South Georgia.
The BBC was established.
1923
Turkish War of Independence ended. It resulted in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the Turkish monarchy and of the Islamic Caliphate.
Kemal Ataturk became the first President of the newly established Republic of Turkey.
Treaty of Lausanne was a peace treaty between Turkey and the Allies.
Beer Hall Putsch was a failed coup attempt by the Nazis in Munich. The putsch began in one of Munich’s largest beer halls.
Rentenmark currency was issued in Weimer Germany to stop hyperinflation.
International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) was founded.
Great Kanto earthquake struck the Kanto plain on the Japanese main island of Honshu, killing over 100,000 people.
1924
Vladimir Lenin died.
Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) was renamed Leningrad five days after Lenin’s death.
George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared on Mount Everest.
Adolf Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison having served nine months for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.
The first Surrealist Manifesto was published.
1925
Locarno Treaties to guarantee peace in Western Europe were signed by Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and Italy.
Pahlavi dynasty, the last Iranian royal dynasty, was founded by Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee led to the law that forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution. John Scopes was represented by lawyer Clarence Darrow.
The first public demonstration of a television was given by John Logie Baird in Selfridges in London.
Serum run to Nome was a transport of diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled relay across Alaska by 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs.
1926
Balfour Declaration recognized the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire as fully autonomous states.
28 May 1926 coup d'état was a military coup in Portugal.
General Strike lasted from 3 May to 12 May. It was called by the General Council of the TUC in an unsuccessful attempt to force the government to act to prevent wage reduction and worsening conditions for coal miners.
The Electricity (Supply) Act created the Central Electricity Board, which set up the UK's first synchronized, nationwide AC grid. It began operating in 1933.
1927
Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris in the Spirit of St Louis. The flight lasted for 33 hours.
The world's most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory at the Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons. The leading figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.
Chinese Civil War began.
The first public transatlantic telephone call was made.
World population reached two billion.
1928
Kellogg-Briand pact was signed. Official title is the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy.
Geneva Protocol came into force. It is a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts.
The International Astronomical Union replaced Greenwich Mean Time with Universal Time.
Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia was founded by the Reverend John Flynn in Queensland.
1929
The initial Wall Street crash occurred on Black Thursday (24 October), but it was the catastrophic downturn of Black Monday and Tuesday (28 and 29 October) that precipitated widespread panic. $30 billion was lost overnight.
Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty with Italian leader Benito Mussolini, after which the Vatican City was recognised as a sovereign state.
Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre was the murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang.
1st Academy Awards were presented.
Lady Grace Drummond-Hay became the first woman to circumnavigate the world, in a zeppelin airship.
1930
Salt march by Mohandas Gandhi. The march was a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly.
Haile Selassie became Emperor of Abyssinia.
Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, was instituted in the United States.
Construction of the Chrysler Building in New York City was completed.
1931
Mukden Incident was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Construction of the Empire State Building in New York City was completed.
Invergordon mutiny at Cromarty Firth in Scotland, by 1,000 sailors in the British Atlantic Fleet. Naval ratings refused to prepare ships following pay cuts.
Mohandas Gandhi visited Britain.
Guglielmo Marconi set up Vatican Radio for Pope Pius XI.
1932
Holodomor was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The existence of the Holodomor was first publicized by Welsh journalist Gareth Jones.
Eamon de Valera became President of the Executive Council (prime minister) of the Irish Free State.
Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay began.
The son of aviators Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was abducted from his crib in the Lindberghs' home in New Jersey.
Al Capone was jailed for tax evasion.
Pecora Commission was set up by the US Senate Committee to investigate the causes of the Wall Street Crash.
Declaration of the Unification of Saudi Arabia was officially announced by Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz.
George V agreed to deliver a Royal Christmas speech on the radio, an event which became annual thereafter.
Emu War addressed public concern over the number of emus said to be running amok in Western Australia. The emu population persisted and continued to cause crop destruction.
1933
Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.
Germany withdrew from the League of Nations.
Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire. Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe was executed for the crime.
Gestapo secret police force was established in Nazi Germany by Hermann Goering.
New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
21st Amendment to the US Constitution was passed, repealing prohibition.
Wiley Post became the first person to fly solo around the world, in a Lockheed Vega aircraft, the Winnie Mae.
1934
Night of the Long Knives was a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate the power of Adolf Hitler.
Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, was shot dead
First Red Army under Mao Zedong begin the Long March.
British Union of Fascists held a rally at Olympia.
British Council was set up by Richard Leeper.
National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) was founded. In 1989, NCCL rebranded as "Liberty".
1935
The antisemitic and racist Nuremburg Laws were enacted in Nazi Germany.
Second Italo-Abyssinian War began.
Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio, by Bill Wilson and Bob Smith.
Radar experiments by Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins led to development of the Chain Home system of coastal early warning radar stations.
1936
Spanish Civil War began.
Construction of the Hoover Dam was completed.
Start of the Great Purge of Joseph Stalin to solidify his power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the state.
Jarrow March (or Jarrow Crusade) was an October protest march against unemployment and extreme poverty suffered in Northeast England. The 200 marchers travelled from Jarrow to the Palace of Westminster.
Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak was an outbreak of at least 12 tornadoes that struck the Southeastern United States in April. Over 400 people were killed.
Aramco, the predecessor of Saudi Aramco, dug the Dammam No. 7 well that proved beyond doubt that the Kingdom possessed a large supply of hydrocarbons.
Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits was an agreement that gave Turkey control over the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits and regulated the transit of naval warships.
Battle of Cable Street was a clash between the Metropolitan Police Service, overseeing a legal march by the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, and anti-fascists.
1937
The rigid airship Hindenburg crashed at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey, causing 35 fatalities. The airship was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company.
Second Sino-Japanese War began.
Nanjing Massacre was the mass murder of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army.
Volkswagen was founded by the German Labour Front.
Coronation of George VI was the first live outside broadcast on British TV.
999 emergency service was introduced.
1938
The Anschluss was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich.
Evian Conference was convened to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany.
Munich Agreement provided for the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland.
Adolf Hitler was Time Magazine Man of the Year.
Neville Chamberlain returned to Britain from a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich and declared "Peace for our Time".
Orson Welles' radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds caused panic in various parts of the United States.
1939
23 August – Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union was signed.
1 September – German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish military transit depot at Westerplatte, in the Free City of Danzig.
3 September – Britain and France declared war on Germany.
Francisco Franco became dictator of Spain following the end of the Spanish Civil War.
MI9 was formed to help POWs escape and to help allied troops trapped behind enemy lines.
Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt warning against a German atomic bomb.
1940
Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico by Ramon Mercader, using an ice axe as a weapon.
A memorandum written by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls with new calculations about the size of the critical mass needed for an atomic bomb helped accelerate British and US efforts towards bomb development during World War II.
64 people were killed when a bomb fell on Balham tube station.
Bacon, butter and sugar were rationed in Britain.
British Restaurants were communal kitchens created to help people who had been bombed out of their homes or had run out of ration coupons.
Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington collapsed into Puget Sound. Known as ‘Galloping Gertie’ as it moved vertically in windy conditions.
The first McDonald’s restaurant opened in San Bernardino, California.
1941
Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December led to the USA joining World War II.
Construction of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota was completed.
Amy Johnson drowned in the Thames Estuary, baling out while flying an Airspeed Oxford for the Air Transport Auxiliary.
German spy Josef Jakobs became the last person to be executed at the Tower of London.
1942
Quit India Movement, or the India August Movement, was a civil disobedience movement launched in India by Mahatma Gandhi.
George VI awarded the George Cross to the island of Malta.
The premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, nicknamed the Leningrad, took place in Leningrad with the city still under siege.
A team led by Enrico Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
The Manhattan Project to produce the first nuclear weapons was led by the USA.
Prince George, Duke of Kent was killed in the Dunbeath air crash. A Short S.25 Sunderland flying boat crashed in the Scottish Highlands near Dunbeath, Caithness, killing 14 of 15 passengers and crew.
1943
Cairo Conference was a strategy meeting of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek.
Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill.
Norman Rockwell's illustration of Rosie the Riveter first appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
Chiang Kai-shek became Chairman of the National Government of China.
The Pentagon was completed.
Gloster Meteor had its first test flight. Britain’s first jet fighter.
173 people were killed on a staircase at Bethnal Green tube station.
1944
Colossus computer was developed by British codebreakers to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher.
The Dumbarton Oaks Conference was an international conference at which the United Nations was formulated and negotiated among international leaders. The conference was held at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C.
The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as the Bretton Woods conference, was held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II. The conference led to the formation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) the following year.
Pay as you earn (PAYE) tax was introduced in the UK.
Helen Duncan became the last woman in Britain to be convicted of witchcraft when one of her seances exposed a government attempt to cover up the deaths of 862 sailors.
1945
Yalta Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. Held in February.
Franklin D. Roosevelt died on 12 April. Vice President Harry Truman assumed the office of President.
Benito Mussolini was executed by Italian communist partisans in April.
Adolf Hitler committed suicide via gunshot on 30 April in the Führerbunker in Berlin. Karl Donitz succeeded Hitler as head of state.
Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on 8 May. It marked the official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front.
Potsdam Conference allowed the three leading Allies to plan the post-war peace.
Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army as part of the Manhattan Project. The White Sands Proving Ground, where the test was conducted on 16 July, is in New Mexico.
Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August.
Atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August.
Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day) is the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, bringing the war to an end. 15 August is the official V-J Day for the United Kingdom.
First United Nations Organization meeting took place in San Francisco in April, and 50 of the 51 members signed up to the United Nations’ Charter in New York in June. The UN officially came into existence on 24 October upon ratification of the Charter by the five then-permanent members of the Security Council – France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States – and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.
An exclave was set up in Claridge’s Hotel in London so that the heir to the Yugoslav throne could be born on Yugoslav soil.
Arab League was formed in Cairo in March, initially with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a member in May.
Indonesia declared independence from Netherlands but was not recognised until 1949.
The Korean Peninsula was divided into two zones along the 38th parallel.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was founded in Quebec City. Its Latin motto, ‘fiat panis’, translates into English as ‘let there be bread’.
1946
The first meetings of the UN General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, and the Security Council, took place in Westminster City Hall in London in January.
Trygve Lie became the first Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Abdication of Umberto II, the last King of Italy. He also renounced the title of King of Albania.
Twelve of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials were sentenced to death. Geoffrey Lawrence was the main British judge. Robert H. Jackson was Chief United States Prosecutor.
Winston Churchill made his iron curtain’ speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. The speech included the line “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”.
Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll. Its purpose was to test the effect of nuclear weapons on naval ships. The series consisted of two detonations, known as Able and Baker.
Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) was hanged for treason.
Bank of England was nationalised.
DuMont Television Network was the world's first commercial television network, beginning operation in the United States. It was owned by DuMont Laboratories, a television equipment and set manufacturer.
King David Hotel in Jerusalem, that housed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, was bombed by the Irgun paramilitary organization.
Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the US.
Hungary went through the worst inflation ever recorded. When the pengo was replaced in August by the forint, the total value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation amounted to 1/1000 of one US dollar.
Heathrow Airport opened for civilian use.
Bread rationing started in the UK. Ended in 1948.
1947
United States Air Force (USAF) was founded.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was founded when Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law.
Partition of India was the dissolution of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent and the creation of two independent dominions: India and Pakistan. Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, remained governor-general of India for ten months after independence.
Thor Heyerdahl sailed by a raft made from balsa 4,300 miles across the Pacific from South America to the Polynesian Islands in the Kon-Tiki Expedition.
Doomsday clock is a symbolic clockface maintained by the University of Chicago. It uses the analogy of the human race being at a time that is ‘minutes to midnight’ where midnight represents destruction by nuclear war.
Roswell incident was the crash of a United States Army Air Forces balloon at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, and the subsequent conspiracy theories claiming that the crash involved a flying saucer.
Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier flying a Bell X-1.
Star Dust was a British South American Airways airliner that mysteriously disappeared. The wreckage became incorporated into the body of the glacier, with fragments emerging many years later and much farther down the mountain.
First Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square presented annually by the city of Oslo.
1948
On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
In the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 – May 1949) during the multinational occupation of Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies’ railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied control. The Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin.
The Marshall Plan, officially the European Recovery Program, was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of communism. The plan was in operation for four years. Named after Secretary of State George C Marshall.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was founded.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was founded.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) came into effect.
National Health Service was launched by Aneurin Bevan. The first patient to be treated under the NHS was Sylvia Diggory, at Park Hospital in Manchester.
Empire Windrush brought the first Jamaicans to Britain, and docked at Tilbury. The ship was originally named MV Monte Rosa and was used as a troopship by the German navy in World War II.
The Organization of American States (OAS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., was founded. Its members are the thirty-five independent states of the Americas.
1949
Ireland left the Commonwealth when it declared itself a republic, after enacting The Republic of Ireland Act 1948.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) implemented the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C.
After its victory in the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, controlled most of Mainland China. On 1 October they established the People's Republic of China, laying claim as the successor state of the ROC.
The first Soviet atomic test was named First Lightning and was codenamed by the Americans as ‘Joe 1’. It was a replica of the American Fat Man bomb whose design the Soviets knew from espionage.
West Germany and East Germany were created.
Costa Rica became the first country in the world constitutionally to abolish its army.
Council of Europe was established by the Treaty of London to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. It consists of 47 member states.
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was founded by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
Superga air disaster occurred when a plane carrying almost the entire Torino A.C. football squad crashed into the hill of Superga near Turin killing all 31 aboard including 18 players.
George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four.
National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act provided the framework for the creation of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England and Wales.
1950
Korean War began.
Winter of Terror is a term used to describe the three-month period when a previously unrecorded number of avalanches took place in the Alps.
Sverdlovsk plane crash killed 11 members of the VVS Moscow ice hockey team.
Alan Turing published the Turing test, that tests a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.
Tollund Man, who lived during the 5th century BC was found, preserved as a bog body, near Silkeborg in Denmark.
Vladimir Raitz, the co-founder of the Horizon Holiday Group, pioneered the first mass package holidays abroad with charter flights between Gatwick airport and Corsica, and organized the first package holiday to Palma in 1952.
Petrol rationing ended in the UK.
Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill published a report in the British Medical Journal linking lung cancer to smoking.
The first successful kidney transplant was performed on Ruth Tucker.
