It is well known as the end of World War II and the founding of UNO and UNESCO.

Events 
January 27 - The Red Army liberates Auschwitz concentration camp.
April 30 - Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
May 9 - Victory Day
July 17 - Start of the Potsdam Conference.
August 6 and 9 - U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 August 18 - Death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as given by Habibur Rahman.
September 2 - World War II ends
October 24 - The United Nations is formed.

Births 

January 3 – Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), singer, songwriter
 January 3 – Victoria Principal, actress
January 9 – Levon Ter-Petrossian, first President of Armenia
January 10 – Rod Stewart, singer
January 19 – Maria Jespen, theologian
January 26 – Jacqueline du Pré, cellist (d. 1987)
January 28 – Marthe Keller, actress
January 29 – Tom Selleck, actor (Magnum, P.I.)
January 30 – Michael Dorris, writer (d. 1997)
February 3 – Bob Griese, Football Hall of Famer
February 5 – Charlotte Rampling, actress
February 6 – Bob Marley, Jamaican roots rock reggae singer and musician (d. 1981)
February 7 – Pete Postlethwaite, actor
February 9 – Mia Farrow, actress
February 12 – Thilo Sarrazin, German politician and economist
February 14 – Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein
February 17 – Brenda Fricker, actress
February 24 – Barry Bostwick, actor
February 28 – Bubba Smith, Football Hall of Famer (d. 2011)
March 7 – John Heard, actor
March 8 – Micky Dolenz, actor, director, musician ("The Monkees")
 March 8 – Anselm Kiefer, painter
March 19 – Cem Karaca, Turkish rock musician
March 22 – Paul Schockemöhle, equestrian
March 29 – Walt Frazier, basketball player
March 30 – Eric Clapton, blues guitarist (Cream)
April 2 – Linda Hunt, actress
April 4 – Daniel Cohn-Bendit, political activist
April 25 - Björn Ulvaeus, Swedish guitarist (ABBA)
April 27 – August Wilson, playwright
May 4 – Narasinham Ram, journalist
May 6 – Bob Seger, rock music singer
 May 6 – Jimmie Dale Gilmore, musician
May 8 – Keith Jarrett, jazz musician
May 13 – Magic Dick, musician ("The J. Geils Band")
May 14 – Yochanan Vollach, Israeli footballer, president of Maccabi Haifa
May 15 – Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza presumptive heir to Portuguese crown
May 19 – Pete Townshend, guitarist, lyricist (The Who)
May 21 – Ernst Messerschmid, physicist and astronaut
May 28 – John Fogerty, singer (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
May 31 – Rainer Werner Fassbinder, director
June 11 - Robert Munsch, Canadian children’s author
June 15 – Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent
June 17 – Art Bell – radio talk show host
 June 17 – Eddy Merckx, Belgian cycling champion
 June 17 – Anupam Kher, actor, India
June 19 – Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar poet, politician and Nobel peace laureate
June 25 – Carly Simon, singer, songwriter
July 7 – Michael Ancram (Michael Kerr, Earl of Ancram), British politician
July 8 – Micheline Calmy-Rey, member of the Swiss Federal Council
July 15 – Jürgen Möllemann, German politician (d. 2003)
July 23 - Matias Türk, folk music and Croatian politician
July 28 – Jim Davis, cartoonist
August 14 – Steve Martin, actor and comedian
August 31 – Itzhak Perlman, violinist
 August 31 – Van Morrison, musician
 August 31 - Bob Welch, musician (Fleetwood Mac) (d. 2012)
September 3 – Aldo Moro, Italian politician
September 5 – Khaleda Zia, Bangladeshi politician
September 8 – Jose Feliciano, singer
October 12 – Aurore Clément, French actress
October 15 – Jim Palmer, Baseball Hall of Famer
October 27 – Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazilian President
October 30 – Henry Winkler, actor (Happy Days)
November 3 – J. D. Souther, country rock musician
November 5 – Jacques Lanctôt, FLQ terrorist
November 12 – Neil Young, (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), singer, songwriter
November 15 - Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Swedish singer-songwriter and musician (ABBA)
November 26 – Daniel Davis, actor (The Nanny)
November 26 - John McVie, English bass guitarist (Fleetwood Mac)
December 20 - Peter Criss, American singer-songwriter and musician (Kiss)
December 30 - Davy Jones, English singer-songwriter and musician (The Monkees) (d. 2012)

Deaths 

January 3 – Edgar Cayce, psychic, "exhaustion"
January 22 – Else Lasker-Schuler, poet
January 31 – Eddie Slovik, American soldier
February 5 – Lilian Rolfe, SOE agent executed by the Nazis
 February 5 – Violette Szabo, SOE agent executed by the Nazis
 February 5 – Denise Bloch, SOE agent executed by the Nazis
February 11 – Al Dubin, Swiss songwriter
 February 11 – J. S. H. Lokerman, Dutch resistance fighter
February 17 – Gabrielle Weidner, Belgian heroine of World War II
February 21 – Eric Liddell, Scottish runner
March – Anne Frank, at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, typhus
March 2 – Emily Carr, artist
March 18 – William Grover-Williams, Grand Prix motor racing driver/war hero
March 19 – Friedrich Fromm, Nazi official
March 23 – Elisabeth de Rothschild, executed by the Nazis
March 26 – David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
March 30 – Elise Rivet, Roman Catholic nun and war hero
April 9 – Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German Abwehr, hanged for treason
 April 9 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian in Nazi Germany
April 12 – United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, massive stroke
April 18 – Ernie Pyle, American journalist, sniper fire
April 28 – Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator, hanged
April 30 – Adolf Hitler, German dictator and Nazi party leader, suicide
May 1 – Cecily Lefort SOE agent, WW II heroine, executed by the Nazis
  May 1   – Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist, suicide
May 2 – Martin Bormann, Nazi-German politician (b. 1900)
May 15 – Charles Williams, British writer
 May 15 - Kenneth J. Alford, British composer
May 23 – Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi Gestapo, suicide
July 5 – John Curtin, fourteenth Prime Minister of Australia
August 2 – Pietro Mascagni, Italian composer
August 9 – Harry Hillman, American athlete
August 10 – Robert Goddard, American rocket scientist
August 31 – Stefan Banach, Polish mathematician
September 15 – Anton Webern, Austrian composer
September 24 – Johannes Hans Geiger, inventor of the Geiger counter
September 26 – Béla Bartók, aged 64, Hungarian composer
October 13 – Milton Hershey, chocolate tycoon
October 15 – Pierre Laval, former Vichy French premier, firing squad
October 19 – N.C. Wyeth, illustrator
October 24 – Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian politician, famous traitor, executed
November 11 – Jerome Kern, composer
November 21 – Robert Benchley, The New Yorker, humorist, theatre critic, actor
December 4 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, biologist
December 20 – General George S. Patton, car accident
December 28 – Theodore Dreiser, writer

Nobel Prizes 
Nobel Prize in Physics – Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian-born physicist
Chemistry – Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist
Medicine – Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain, Sir Howard Walter Florey, shared for their work on penicillin
Literature – Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet
Peace – Cordell Hull, American politician

Movies released

Anchors Aweigh starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra
The Bells of St. Mary's starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman
Leave Her to Heaven starring Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde
Mildred Pierce featuring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, and Ann Blyth
Saratoga Trunk starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman
Spellbound starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck
Week-End at the Waldorf featuring Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, and Walter Pidgeon

New Books 

The Age of Jackson – Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The Age of Reason – Jean-Paul Sartre
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Black Boy – Richard Wright
The Black Rose – Thomas B. Costain
Bonheur d'occasion (The Tin Flute) – Gabrielle Roy
The Bosnian Trilogy – Ivo Andric
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept – Elizabeth Smart
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
The Egyptian – Mika Waltari
Gigi – Colette
High Ground – Odella Phelps Wood
Loving – Henry Green
Night Has a Thousand Eyes – Cornell Woolrich
The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
The Open Society and Its Enemies – Karl Popper
Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren
The Policy King – Lewis A. H. Caldwell
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Rabbit Hill – Robert Lawson
A Street in Bronzeville – Gwendolyn Brooks
Stuart Little – E.B. White
Surrender on Demand – Varian Fry
That Hideous Strength – C. S. Lewis
The Thurber Carnival (anthology) – James Thurber
Tootle – Gertrude Crampton
Two Solitudes – Hugh MacLennan
The Wide House – Taylor Caldwell