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