Events 
 April 15 – Jackie Robinson, an African-American, plays first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers major-league baseball team, ending the sport's unofficial rule against blacks playing.
 June 26 - Sindh province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
 June 29 - Balochistan (Pakistan) province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
 July 2 - North-West Frontier Province province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
 July 19 - Punjab (Pakistan) province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
 July 22 – The former East Bengal province joins Pakistan on the basis of a Muslim-majority region the people had voted in to join the cause for Pakistan, according to the Partition Plan, based on the Two-nation theory. It later becomes the present day People's Republic of Bangladesh, since 1971.
 August 14 – Pakistan is granted freedom from Britain, end of the British Raj.
 August 15 – India gains independence from Britain.

Births 
 January 1 - Jon Corzine, American politician
 January 8 – David Bowie, British singer (d. 2016)
 February 18 - Dennis DeYoung, American keyboardist (Styx)
 March 8 – Carole Bayer Sager, American actress and singer
 March 24 - Alan Sugar, British businessman
 March 24 - Christine Gregoire, American politician
 March 25 – Elton John, British singer
 March 29 - Bobby Kimball, American singer (Toto)
 April 16 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, American basketball player
 April 18 - James Woods, American actor
 May 8 - John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan, British politician
 May 25 - Mitch Margo, American singer (The Tokens) (d. 2017)
 May 31 - Junior Campbell, Scottish musician and composer
 June 24 - Mick Fleetwood, English drummer (Fleetwood Mac)
 July 2 - Elijah Kostunica, Serbian politician
 July 9 - O. J. Simpson, American football player
 July 17 - Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall
 July 19 - Brian May, English guitarist (Queen)
 July 19 - Bernie Leadon, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
 July 22 - Don Henley, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
 July 30 - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-born actor, bodybuilder and politician, former Governor of California
 July 31 - Richard Griffiths, British actor (d. 2013)
 August 16 – Carol Moseley Braun, American jurist
 September 21 - Don Felder, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
 September 30 - Marc Bolan, British musician (d. 1977)
 October 4 - Ann Widdecombe, British politician
 October 26 – Hillary Clinton, former First Lady of the United States and United States Secretary of State
 October 30 - Timothy B. Schmit, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
 November 1 - Bob Weston, English rock guitarist (Fleetwood Mac) (d. 2012)
 November 10 - Bachir Gemayel, Lebanese politician (d. 1982)
 November 10 - Greg Lake, English musician (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) (d. 2016)
 November 20 - Joe Walsh, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
 December 8 – Gregg Allman, American rock musician (The Allman Brothers Band) (d. 2017)
 December 11 - David E. Stone, American sound editor

Deaths 
 Emil J. Brach, American candy manufacturer (b. 1859)
 January 25 – Al Capone, American gangster (b. 1899)
 March 11 – Victor Lustig, Austrian-born con artist (b. 1890)
 March 18 – William C. Durant, American automobile pioneer (b. 1861)
 March 19 – Prudence Heward, Canadian painter (b. 1896)
 March 20 – Victor Goldschmidt, Swiss geochemist (b. 1888)
 March 30 – Arthur Machen, Welsh-born writer (b. 1863)
 April 1 – King George II of Greece (b. 1890)
 April 7 – Henry Ford, American automobile manufacturer (b. 1863)
 April 20 – King Christian X of Denmark (b. 1870)
 April 24 – Willa Cather, American novelist (b. 1873)
 May 8 – Harry Gordon Selfridge, American department store magnate (b. 1858)
 May 16 – Frederick Hopkins, English biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (b. 1861)
 May 17 – George William Forbes, Prime Minister of New Zealand
 May 20 – Philipp Lenard, Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1862)
 May 24 – C. F. Ramuz, Swiss writer (b. 1878)
 July 19 – Aung San, Burmese nationalist (assassinated) (b. 1915)
 July 30 – Joseph Cook, sixth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1860)
 October 4 – Max Planck, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1858)
 November 25 – Léon-Paul Fargue, French writer (b. 1876)
 December 1 – Aleister Crowley, British occultist (b. 1875)
 December 1 – G. H. Hardy, British mathematician (b. 1877)
 December 7 – Tristan Bernard, French writer and lawyer (b. 1866)
 December 7 – Nicholas M. Butler, American president of Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1862)
 December 17 – J. N. Brønsted, Danish chemist (b. 1879)

Movies released 
 Hue and Cry

New books 
 The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
 Bright November – Kingsley Amis' first collection of poems
 Country Place – Ann Lane Petty
 Creatures of Circumstance – W. Somerset Maugham 
 The Cold War – Walter Lippmann
 Dark Carnival – Ray Bradbury's first book
 Dialectic of Enlightenment – Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
 Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
 Eyes of a Blue Dog – Gabriel García Márquez
 Froth on the Daydream – Boris Vian
 God Is For White Folks – Thomas Will
 Goodnight Moon – Margaret Wise Brown
 Great Northern? – Arthur Ransome
 A High Wind Rising – Elsie Singmaster
 I, the Jury – Mickey Spillane
 Les Jeux Inconnus – François Boyer
 Knock On Any Door – Willard Motley
 Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool – George Orwell
 Masquerade, a Historical Novel – Oscar Micheaux 
 Miss Hickory – Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
 The Moneyman – Thomas B. Costain 
 Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost & Found Generation – Samuel Putnam
 The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
 The Pearl – John Steinbeck
 The Adventures of Tintin
 The Plague (La Peste) – Albert Camus
 Prince of Foxes – Samuel Shellabarger
 Rocket Ship Galileo – Robert A. Heinlein
 Saggy Baggy Elephant – Kathryn Jackson and Byron Jackson
 Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
 Tales of the South Pacific – James A. Michener
 Tarzan and the Foreign Legion – Edgar Rice Burroughs
 Tea with Mrs Goodman – Philip Toynbee
 Theatre – W. Somerset Maugham
 Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
 Who Has Seen the Wind?  – W.O. Mitchell

Nobel prizes
 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine won by Carl Ferdinand Cori, Gerty Cori and Bernardo Houssay