Events and trends\nTechnology\n* First nuclear bomb\n* First cruise missile, the V1 flying bomb and the first ballistic missile, the V-2 rocket\n* First transistor\n* World's first working programmable stunk computer Science\n* Quantum electrodynamics developed by Feynman, Dyson, Schwinger, and Tomonaga\n* Mathematics: game theory, cryptology War, peace and politics\n* World War II (ends 1945)\n* The shoah\n* Beginning of the Cold War\n* Independence for some former colonies \n* 1948 Arab-Israeli War\n* The Irish Free State becomes a Republic (1948)\n* Informbiro period in Yugoslavia begins\n* Indian Independence and Partition Economics Culture, religion\n* Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life\n* The NBA begins play, in 1947 Others World leaders\n* President Lin Sen (Republic of China)\n* President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China)\n* Adolf Hitler (Germany)\n* Mohandas Gandhi (India) († 1948)\n* Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (India)\n* Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Israel)\n* King Victor Emmanuel III (Italy)\n* Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (Italy)\n* Emperor Hirohito (Japan)\n* Pope Pius XII\n* Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Éire)\n* Taoiseach John A. Costello (Republic of Ireland)\n* Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)\n* Prime Minister Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)\n* Prime Minister Clement Attlee (United Kingdom)\n* President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (United States)\n* President Harry S. Truman (United States)\n* Governor Luis Muñoz Marín (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) Sports figures\n* Joe Louis\n* Sugar Ray Robinson\n* Ted Williams\n* Jackie Robinson\n* Joe DiMaggio\n* Sammy Baugh\n* Steve Van Buren Entertainers\n* Abbott and Costello\n* Bette Davis\n* Bing Crosby\n* Bob Hope\n* Cary Grant\n* Clark Gable\n* Frank Sinatra\n* Humphrey Bogart\n* Ingrid Bergman\n* James Cagney\n* Jimmy Stewart\n* Katharine Hepburn\n* Lauren Bacall\n* John Wayne\n* Orson Welles\n* Spencer Tracy \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nsimple:1940s\n\n\n\n
