1946 in the United States

1946 in the United States
Years:	1943 1944 1945 – 1946 – 1947 1948 1949
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48 stars (1912–59)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1945–64)

Events from the year 1946 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Harry S. Truman (D-Missouri)
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Harlan F. Stone (New York) (until April 22), Fred M. Vinson (Kentucky) (starting June 24)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Sam Rayburn (D-Texas)
• Senate Majority Leader: Alben W. Barkley (D-Kentucky)
• Congress: 79th

Events

January–March

March 5: In Missouri, Churchill speaks on the "Iron Curtain"

• January 6 – A revised revival of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's Show Boat opens on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre.
• January 17 – U.S. Senator Dennis Chávez (D-NM) calls for a vote on an Fair Employment Practice Committee bill which calls for an end to discrimination in the workplace. A filibuster prevents it from passing.
• January 25 – The United Mine Workers rejoins the American Federation of Labor.
• January 29 – The Central Intelligence Group is established (the CIA in 1947).
• February 14 – ENIAC (for "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer"), the first general-purpose electronic computer, is unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania.
• February 28 – In Philadelphia, General Electric strikers and police clash.
• March 5 – In his speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill talks about the Iron Curtain.
• March 6 – Vietnam War: Ho Chi Minh signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.
• March 7 – The 18th Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• March 21 – The Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League, newly relocated from Cleveland, sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in the league since 1933.
• March 24 – BBC Home Service radio in the United Kingdom broadcasts Alistair Cooke's first American Letter. As Letter from America, this programme will continue until a few weeks before Cooke's death in 2004.

April–June

• April 1 – A 14-meter high tsunami strikes Hilo and Laupāhoehoe on the Big Island of Hawaii; 173 are killed, thousands injured.
• April 18 – The United States recognizes Josip Broz Tito's government in Yugoslavia.
• April 23
  • The Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League (which is now the CBA) is founded.
  • Howard Hughes's Western movie The Outlaw (1943), starring Jane Russell, goes on general release.
• June 6 – The Basketball Association of America is formed in New York City.
• June 17
  • A tornado on the Detroit River kills 17.
  • Laurence Olivier's Henry V opens in the United States nearly 2 years after its release in England. It is the first Shakespeare film in color, and critics hail it as the finest film of a Shakespeare play ever made.

July–September

July 7: Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

• July 4 – The Philippines is granted independence by the United States.
• July 7 – Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini becomes the first American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
• July 14 – Benjamin Spock's influential The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care is published.
• July 25
  • Nuclear testing: In the first underwater test of the atomic bomb, the surplus USS Saratoga is sunk near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, when the United States detonates the Baker device during Operation Crossroads.
  • At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.
  • 1946 Georgia lynching: In the last mass lynching in the United States, a mob of white men shoot and kill two African-American couples near Moore's Ford Bridge in Georgia.
• August 1 – President Harry Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which establishes the United States Atomic Energy Commission.
• September 15 – DuMont Television Network begins broadcasting regularly.
• September 22 – Yogi Berra makes his Major League Baseball debut, entering a game for the New York Yankees against the Philadelphia A's and hitting a home run in his first time at bat.
• September 24 – White House counsel Clark Clifford presents President Truman with a top secret report authored by George Elsey on American Relations with the Soviet Union which forms the basis of the U.S. policy of containment.

October–December

• October 16 – The United Nations' first meeting in Long Island is held.
• November 1 – The New York Knicks play against the Toronto Huskies at the Maple Leaf Gardens, in the first Basketball Association of America game. The Knicks win 68–66.
• November 6 – Senate and House elections in the United States both give majorities to the Republicans.
• November 12 – In Chicago, a branch of the Exchange National Bank (now part of the LaSalle Bank) opens the first 10 drive-up teller windows.
• November 27 – Cold War: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appeals to the United States and the Soviet Union to end nuclear testing and to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would "save humanity from the ultimate disaster."
• December 2 – The International Whaling Commission was signed in Washington, D.C. to "provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry".
• December 5 – President Harry Truman establishes the President's Committee on Civil Rights to investigate the status of civil rights in the United States and propose measures to strengthen and protect the civil rights of American citizens.
• December 7 – A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, United States kills 119.
• December 20 – Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, featuring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Henry Travers, and Thomas Mitchell, is released in New York.
• December 22 – The Havana Conference begins between U.S. organized crime bosses in Havana, Cuba.
• December 26 – The Flamingo Hotel opens on the Las Vegas Strip.

Undated

• Airport Homes race riots in Chicago.
• The 20 mm M61 Vulcan Gatling gun contract is released.
• The All-America Football Conference team San Francisco 49ers is formed.

Ongoing

• Cold War (1945–1991)

Births

Deaths

• January 5 – Kitty Cheatham, American singer (born 1864)

See also

• List of American films of 1946

External links

• Media related to 1946 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons