1947 in the United States
Events from the year 1947 in the United States.
Incumbents
Events
January–March
- January 3 – Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.
- January 15 – Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", is found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The case remains unsolved to this day.
- February 3 – Percival Prattis becomes the first African-American news correspondent allowed in the United States House of Representatives and Senate press galleries.
- February 17 – Cold War: The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
- February 20
- February 21 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", his Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.
- February 28 – The United States grants France a military base in Casablanca.
- March 6 – The USS Newport News, the first completely air-conditioned warship, is launched in Newport News, Virginia.
- March 19 – The 19th Academy Awards ceremony is held. The movie Best Years of Our Lives wins the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with several other Academy Awards.
- March 25 – A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, kills 111 miners.
April–June
- April 1 – Jackie Robinson, the first African American baseball professional, signs a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
- April 9 – Multiple tornadoes strike Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas killing 181 people and injuring 970.
- April 15 – Jackie Robinson becomes the first Negro to play Major League Baseball.
- April 16 – Texas City Disaster: An Ammonium nitrate cargo of the SS Grandcamp explodes in Texas City, Texas, kiling 552, injuring 3,000, causing 200 lost, and destroying 20 city blocks.
- May 22 – Cold War: In an effort to fight the spread of Communism, President Harry S. Truman signs an Act of Congress that implements the Truman Doctrine. This Act grants $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece.
- May 22 – David Lean's film Great Expectations, based on the novel by Charles Dickens, opens in the United States. Critics call it the finest film ever made from a Charles Dickens novel.
- June 5 – Secretary of State George Marshall outlines the Marshall Plan for American reconstruction and relief aid to Europe.
- June 21 – Seaman Harold Dahl claims to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island in Puget Sound, Washington. On the next morning, Dahl reports the first modern so-called "Men in Black" encounter.
- June 23 – The United States Senate follows the House of Representatives in overriding President Harry S. Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
- June 24 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely-reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
July–September
- July 7 – A supposedly downed extraterrestrial spacecraft is reportedly found in the Roswell UFO incident, near Roswell, New Mexico, which has been written about by Stanton T. Friedman and many others.
- July 18 – President Harry S. Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act into law, which places the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate next in the line of succession after the United States Vice President.
- July 26 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into law, creating the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.
- September 17–21 – The 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane in southeastern Florida, and also in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, causes widespread damage and kills 51 people.
- September 17 – Office of Indian Affairs renamed Bureau of Indian Affairs.
- September 18 – Most provisions of the National Security Act go into effect, reorganizing the military to form the National Military Establishment (later the Department of Defense) with subordinate Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; creating the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council; and establishing the Secretary of Defense.
- September 26 – U.S. Air Force is made a separate branch of the military.
October–December
- October 14 – The United States Air Force test pilot Captain Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 rocket plane faster than the speed of sound, the first time that this has been accomplished in level flight, or climbing.
- October 20 – Pakistan establishes diplomatic relations with the United States.
- November 1 – U.S. Caribbean Command.
- November 2 – In California, the designer and airplane pilot Howard Hughes performs the maiden flight of the Spruce Goose, the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built. (The flight lasts only eight minutes, and the "Spruce Goose" is never flown again.)
- November 6 – The program Meet the Press makes its television debut on the NBC-TV network in the United States.
- November 24 – Red Scare: The U.S. House of Representatives votes 346–17 to approve citations of Contempt of Congress against the so-called Hollywood 10, after the ten men refuse to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee concerning allegations of communist influences in the movie business. (The ten men are blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios on the following day).
- December 3 – The Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire opens in a Broadway theater.
- December 6 – Arturo Toscanini conducts a concert performance of the first half of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Otello, which was based on William Shakespeare's playm Othello, for a broadcast on NBC Radio. The second half of the opera is broadcast a week later.
- December 22 – The first practical electronic transistor is demonstrated by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley of the United States.
Undated
Births
Deaths
External links
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