1948

Events from the year 1948 in the United States.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: Harry S. Truman (D–MO)
* Vice President: vacant
* Chief Justice: Fred M. Vinson (KY)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph William Martin Jr. (R–MA)
* Senate Majority Leader: Wallace H. White Jr. (R–ME)
* Congress: 80th
==Events==
===January===
* January 17 – The latest New Jersey State Constitution goes into effect.
* January 29 – Plane crash at Los Gatos Creek, California kills 4 U.S. citizens and 28 deportees, commemorated in a song by Woody Guthrie.
===February===
* February 1 – The Soviet Union begins to jam Voice of America broadcasts.
* February 21 – The stock car racing organization NASCAR is founded by Bill France Sr. with other drivers meeting at the Streamline Hotel, Daytona Beach, Florida.
===March===
* March 8 – McCollum v. Board of Education: The United States Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violates the U.S. Constitution.
* March 17 – The Hells Angels motorcycle gang is founded in California.
* March 20
** Renowned Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini makes his television debut, conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in an all-Wagner program.
** The 20th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Agnes Moorehead and Dick Powell, is held at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement receives the most nominations with eight and ties with George Seaton's Miracle on 34th Street in winning the most awards with three, including Best Motion Picture and Best Director for Kazan.
===April===
* April 3
** President Harry Truman signs the Marshall Plan, which authorizes $15 billion in aid for 16 countries.
** Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is played on television in its entirety for the first time, in a concert featuring Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The chorus is conducted by Robert Shaw.
* April 19 – The ABC television network begins broadcasting.
* April 22 – WTVR begins television services. WTVR is the first TV station south of Washington D.C., giving it the nickname "The South's First Television station".
* April 30 – 21 American countries sign the Charter of the Organization of American States establishing the Organization of American States (in effect December 1, 1951).
===May===
* May 14 – The United States recognizes Israel as a country.
* May 19 – Mundt–Nixon Bill of 1948 passes the House (but soon after fails to reach a Senate vote. In 1950, the Mundt–Ferguson Communist Registration Bill also fails to pass both chambers–but many parts go into the McCarran Internal Security Act, which passed in 1950)
* May 26 – The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557, which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as the auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
* May 27 – Walt Disney Productions' tenth feature film, Melody Time, is released. It is Disney's fifth of six package films to be released through the 1940s.
* May 30 – A dike along the Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes: 15 people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.
===June===
* June 3 – The Palomar Observatory telescope is finished in California.
* June 11 – The first monkey astronaut, Albert I, is launched into space from White Sands, New Mexico.
* June 12
** MCWR renamed Women Marines.
** Women in the Air Force (WAF) created.
* June 17 – A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Air Lines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
* June 20 – The U.S. Congress recesses for the remainder of 1948, after an overtime session closes at 7:00 a.m. D.C. time (to be shortly interrupted by Truman's recall from Congressional recess for July 20, 1948).
* June 21 – 1948 Republican National Convention (Philadelphia) begins.
* June 24 – The Berlin Blockade begins; in response, the U.S. orders the launch of Operation Vittles, the U.S. action of the Berlin Airlift.
* June 25 – 1948 Republican National Convention (Philadelphia) ends.
* June 28 – David Lean's Oliver Twist, based on Charles Dickens's famous novel, premieres in the UK. It is banned for 3 years in the U.S. because of alleged anti-Semitism in depicting master criminal Fagin, played by Alec Guinness.
===July===
* July 12 – 1948 Democratic National Convention (Philadelphia) begins.
* July 14 – 1948 Democratic National Convention (Philadelphia) ends.
* July 17 – Dixiecrat National Convention (Birmingham).
* July 20 – Cold War: President Harry S. Truman issues the second peacetime military draft in the United States, amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union (the first peacetime draft occurred in 1940 under President Roosevelt).
* July 23 – 1948 Progressive National Convention (Philadelphia) begins.
* July 25 – 1948 Progressive National Convention (Philadelphia) ends.
* July 26
** U.S. President Truman signs Executive Order 9981, ending racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces.
** Turnip Day Session – Truman exhorts 80th United States Congress to pass legislation
* July 31
** At Idlewild Field in New York City, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
** Elizabeth Bentley testifies before HUAC
===August===
* August 1 – The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded.
* August 3 – In an appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor at Time magazine and a former Communist, accuses Alger Hiss of having been a member of "an underground organization of the United States Communist Party".
* August 25 – The House Un-American Activities Committee holds its first-ever televised congressional hearing, featuring "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
===September===
* September 29 – Laurence Olivier's Hamlet opens in the United States.
===October===
* October 1 – National Guard Bureau made a Bureau of the Depart. of the United States Army and an Agency of the Dept. of the Air Force.
* October 8 – WMAQ-TV first airs in Chicago.
* October 11 – The Cleveland Indians defeat the Boston Braves to win the World Series, 4 games to 2.
* October 16 – The 57th Street Art Fair, the oldest juried art fair in the American Midwest, is founded.
* October 26 – Killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania.
===November===
* November 2 – 1948 United States presidential election: Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeats Republican Thomas E. Dewey and 'Dixiecrat' Strom Thurmond.
===December===
* December 4 – The 6.3 ML Desert Hot Springs earthquake affected Southern California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong), causing minor damage and several injuries.
* December 10 – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.
* December 15 – The United States Department of Justice indicts Alger Hiss on two counts of perjury.
==Memoriam==
* January 1 – Edna May, actress (aged 69; Lausanne, Switzerland)
* January 5 – Mary Dimmick Harrison, wife of President Benjamin Harrison (aged 89; New York City, NY, USA)
* January 7 – Charles C. Wilson, actor (aged 53; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* January 9 – Alvah Curtis Roebuck, businessman, co-founder of Sears, Roebuck (aged 84; Evanston, IL, USA)
* January 12 – Herbert Allen Farmer, criminal (aged 56; Joplin, MO, USA)
* January 24 – Bill Cody, actor (aged 57; Santa Monica, CA, USA)
* January 28 – Anna Maria Gove, physician (aged 80; Greensboro, NC, USA)
* January 30 – Orville Wright, pioneer aviator (aged 76; Dayton, OH, USA)
* February 8 – Samuel P. Bush, businessman and industrialist (aged 84; Columbus, OH, USA)
* March 10 – Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist and socialite, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald (aged 47; Asheville, NC, USA)
* April 5 – Angelo Joseph Rossi, Mayor of San Francisco (aged 70; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* June 2 – William C. Lee, general (aged 53; Dunn, NC, USA)
* July 4 – Albert Bates, criminal (aged 54; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* July 5
** Charles Fillmore, Protestant mystic (aged 93; St. Cloud, MN, USA)
** Carole Landis, film actress (aged 29; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* July 9
** James Baskett, African-American actor (Uncle Remus in Disney's Song of the South) (aged 44; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
** Seymour Stedman, lawyer and politician (aged 77; Chicago, IL, USA)
* July 11 – Franz Weidenreich, anatomist (aged 75; New York City, NY, USA)
* July 23 - D. W. Griffith, film director (aged 73; Hollywood, CA, USA)
* July 29 - James Eli Watson, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1916 to 1933 (aged 83; Washington, DC, USA)
* July 31 - Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, mistress of Franklin D. Roosevelt (aged 57; Aiken, SC, USA)
* August 16 – Babe Ruth, baseball player (aged 53; New York City, NY, USA)
* August 17 – Mariette Rheiner Garner, Second Lady of the United States as wife of John Nance Garner (aged 79; Uvalde, TX, USA)
* August 27 – Charles Evans Hughes, 11th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (aged 86; Osterville, MA, USA)
* August 30 — Alice Salomon, German-American social reformer (aged 76; New York City, NY, USA)
* September 30 – Edith Roosevelt as wife of Theodore Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States and Second Lady of the United States (aged 87; Oyster Bay, NY, USA)
* October 24 – Verne L. Reynolds, socialist activist (aged 69; MI, USA)
* October 29 – William Wesley Cox, presidential, vice presidential, and perennial (aged 83; MO, USA)
* November 24 – Anna Jarvis, social activist (aged 84; West Chester, PA, USA)
* November 25 – J. Leonard Replogle, industrialist (aged 72; New York City, NY, USA)
* December 3 – May Wood Simons, writer, editor, teacher and economist (aged 72; New Martinsville, WV, USA)
* December 4 – George L. Berry, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1937 to 1938 (aged 66; Pressmen's Home, TN, USA)
==External links==
* 1948 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 17