1947

**1947** (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday in the Gregorian calendar.

## Events

- February 28 incident in Taiwan was an affair in which large numbers of people protested against the government, in which thousands were killed by the regime's forces.
- 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 Created  from British India ,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)
- January 22 – Vladimir Oravsky, Swedish author
- February 18 - Dennis DeYoung, American keyboardist (Styx)
- March 3 - Jennifer Warnes, American singer
- 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 (d. 2024)
- 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 8 - Marianne Wiggins, American author
- 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