The Year 1949
MAJOR EVENTS:
  • Communists forces gain power in China; nationalists flee to Taiwan
  • North Atlantic Treaty Organization established
  • Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb
  • Israel admitted to U.N.
  • Soviet Union lifts Berlin blockade; Berlin airlift ends
  • Apartheid becomes official government policy in South Africa
  • West Germany, East Germany formally established as nations
  • Vietnam, Indonesia gain sovereignty


    • BUSINESS & ECONOMY:
  • Nearly 500,000 steel workers strike


    • SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY:
  • U.S. Air Force's Lucky Lady completes first non-stop around-the-world flight
  • Electron microscopy developed


    • SPORTS:
  • World Series: New York Yankees over Brooklyn, 4-1


    • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT:
  • Movies:The Third Man, All the King's Men
  • Songs: So In Love, Riders in the Sky, Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Some Enchanted Evening
  • TV Shows: Texaco Star Theatre, Candid Camera, Colgate Theatre, Kukla Fran & Ollie
  • Books: The Man with the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren; The Jacaranda Tree, H.E. Bates; Guard of Honor, James Gould Cozzens; Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford; 1984, George Orwell; This I Remember, Eleanor Roosevelt
  • South Pacific opens on Broadway
  • Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman wins Pulitzer Prize


    • EVERYDAY LIFE:
  • Americans buy 100,000 television sets a week
  • "Pyramid clubs" in which participants send each other money in hopes of receiving large amounts of money themselves, become a fad
  • Editor Russel Lyons coins the terms "highbrow," "middlebrow" and "lowbrow."


    • FUN FACTS:
  • "Silly Putty" introduced