All Events

Vidkun Quisling, Fascist president of occupied Norway from 1942, is tried and executed for treason

Fifty-one states agree the Charter of the United Nations, thus establishing the UN

Evelyn Waugh publishes Brideshead Revisited, a novel about a rich Catholic family in England between the wars

In George Orwell's fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig, Napoleon, controls the farmyard using the techniques of Stalin

Richard Wright publishes Black Boy, an account of his early life in Mississippi and then Chicago

All Saints is used variously for worship by the Anglican and the Greek Orthodox Church, and as a recording studio

Joshua Lederberg and Edward Tatum announce their discovery of bacterial conjugation, meaning that in effect bacteria mate and transfer genes

Sergei Eisenstein completes Part 2 of his intended epic film trilogy Ivan the Terrible

Sadler's Wells Ballet moves to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (and is known from 1956 as the Royal Ballet)

Perón, with the orchestrated support of gangs of thugs, is elected president of Argentina

The takeover of the Bank of England launches an extensive programme of nationalization by the Attlee government

Eudora Welty sets her novel Delta Wedding in a contemporary southern plantation

Syria becomes fully independent with the withdrawal of French forces

Aung San's party, the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League, wins a landslide victory in the Burmese election

Frederick Ashton choreographs Symphonic Variations, to music by César Franck

David Lean directs Trevor Howard and and Celia Johnson in Noel Coward's Brief Encounter

Sonatine, for flute and piano, brings early success to French composer Pierre Boulez

A new style of American painting, involving artists such as Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, is given the name Abstract Expressionism

US pediatrician Benjamin Spock recommends a permissive approach in his Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care

Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, set in a down-and-out bar of the kind he had known in his youth, is performed in New York

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates in favour of his son a month before a referendum on the Italian monarchy

Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff makes his debut in Puccini's La Bohème in Reggio Calabria

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