1940s - Definition and Overview

Events and trends

Technology

• First nuclear bomb
• First cruise missile, the V1 flying bomb and the first ballistic missile, the V-2 rocket
• First transistor
• Colossus, the world's first totally electronic computer. See History of computing hardware
• First supersonic flight by Chuck Yeager on October 14, 1947

Science

• Quantum electrodynamics developed by Feynman, Dyson, Schwinger, and Tomonaga
• Mathematics: game theory, cryptology

War, peace and politics

• World War II (ends 1945)
• The shoah
• Beginning of the Cold War
• Independence for some former colonies
• 1948 Arab-Israeli War
• The Irish Free State becomes a republic (1948)
• The Chinese Civil War ends in victory for the Communists
• Informbiro period in Yugoslavia begins
• Indian independence and partition
• US Air Force civilian auxiliary the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) formed

Economics

• The Marshall Plan is implemented by the United States, giving billions of dollars in aid to reconstruct the war-devastated economies of Europe

Culture, religion

• Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life
• The NBA begins play, in 1947

Others

People

World leaders

• Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (Canada)
• President Lin Sen (Republic of China)
• President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China)
• Marshal Henri Petain (Vichy France}
• Adolf Hitler (Germany)
• Mohandas Gandhi (India) († 1948)
• Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (India)
• Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Israel)
• King Victor Emmanuel III (Italy)
• Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (Italy)
• Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
• Pope Pius XII
• Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Éire)
• Taoiseach John A. Costello (Republic of Ireland)
• Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)
• Prime Minister Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Clement Attlee (United Kingdom)
• President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (United States)
• President Harry S. Truman (United States)
• Governor Luis Muñoz Marín (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico)
• President Getúlio Vargas (Brazil)

Sports figures

• Joe Louis
• Sugar Ray Robinson
• Ted Williams
• Jackie Robinson
• Joe DiMaggio
• Sammy Baugh
• Steve Van Buren
• Satchel Paige

Entertainers

• Abbott and Costello
• Bette Davis
• Bing Crosby
• Bob Hope
• Cary Grant
• Clark Gable
• Frank Sinatra
• Humphrey Bogart
• Ingrid Bergman
• James Cagney
• Jimmy Stewart
• Katharine Hepburn
• Lauren Bacall
• John Wayne
• Orson Welles
• Spencer Tracy