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Top Song(s)
• Frank Sinatra - Five Minutes More
• Perry Como - Prisoner of Love
• Johnny Mercer - Personality
• Freddy Martin - To Each His Own
• Frankie Carle - Rumors Are Flying
Top Film(s)
• Notorious
• A Matter of Life and Death
• The Big Sleep
• It's a Wonderful Life
• The Best Years of Our Lives
Best Selling Book(s)
• Pippi Goes on Board - Astrid Lindgren
• Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
• All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
• The Moving Toyshop - Edmund Crispin
• Miss Pym Disposes - Josephine Tey
Famous Deaths
• January 26 – Katharine Bushnell, doctor, Christian writer, Bible scholar, social activist
• March 2 - John Whittle, Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross
• April 7 – Padmanath Gohain Baruah, Indian novelist, poet and dramatist
• May 27 - Henri Hauser, French historian, geographer and economist
• June 9 – Ananda Mahidol (Rama VIII), King of Thailand
• July 3 – Edoardo Bianchi, Italian entrepreneur, inventor
• August 5 - Wilhelm Marx, German lawyer, politician and 17th Chancellor of Germany
• September 16 - James Hopwood Jeans, English physicist, astronomer and mathematician
• October 4 – Barney Oldfield, American race car driver, automobile pioneer
• November 23 – Léon Spilliaert, Belgian symbolist painter and graphic artist
Medical/Science/Technology
• The United States Army Signal Corps' Project Diana bounces radar waves off the Moon.
• Peter Scott opens the Slimbridge Wetland Reserve in England.
• The Chamberlin trimetric projection is developed by Wellman Chamberlin for the National Geographic Society.
• The structure of the alkaloid strychnine is determined by English organic chemist Robert Robinson.
• ENIAC, the first non-classified all-electronic Turing complete computer is built.
• Arthur Holmes estimates the age of the Earth, using uranium–lead dating.
• Dr. Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care is first published in New York.
• Atomic Energy Research Establishment established at Harwell, Oxfordshire under John Cockcroft.
• Manhattan Project physicist Louis Slotin accidentally triggers a fission reaction at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• First Martin-Baker ejection seat live-tested from a jet aircraft over England.
Political Events
• January 17 – U.S. Senator Dennis Chávez calls for a vote on a Fair Employment Practice Committee bill.
• February 1 - Trygve Lie of Norway is selected as the first United Nations Secretary-General.
• February 18 – President Truman signs the Rescission Act of 1946.
• April 22 – Girouard v. United States, a citizenship case decided in the Supreme Court.
• August 1 - President Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.
• September 24 – White House counsel presents President Truman with a top secret report by George Elsey.
• October 16 – The United Nations' first meeting in Long Island is held.
• November 6 – Senate and House elections in the United States both give majorities to the Republicans.
• December 14 - Proposed United States purchase of Greenland from Denmark.
• December 31 – President Harry S. Truman delivers Proclamation 2714, which officially ends hostilities in World War II.
National Events
• January 25 – The United Mine Workers rejoins the American Federation of Labor.
• January 29 – The Central Intelligence Group is established (the CIA in 1947).
• April 1 – The 8.6 Aleutian Islands earthquake affects Alaska, causing a tsunami, leaving 165–173 dead.
• April 18 – The United States recognizes Josip Broz Tito's government in Yugoslavia.
• May 10 – The first V-2 rocket to be successfully launched in the U.S. is fired from White Sands Missile Range.
• May 23 – Dwarf Grill, predecessor of Chick-fil-A, a fast food chicken restaurant, is founded in Georgia.
• June 17 - The 1946 Windsor-Tecumseh, Ontario tornado on the Detroit River kills 17.
• July 16 – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) within the Department of the Interior.
• July 25 - At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.
• November 25 – In St. Paul, Minnesota, over a thousand public school teachers go on strike for more than a month.
Worldwide Events
• February 1 - The Kingdom of Hungary becomes a republic, heavily influenced by the Soviet Union.
• February 20 – An explosion kills more than 400 coal miners in Bergkamen, West Germany.
• March 5 – In his speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill talks about the Iron Curtain.
• April 18 - The inaugural session of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) takes place at The Hague.
• May 1 – At least 800 Indigenous Australian pastoral workers walk off the job in Northwest Western Australia.
• May 7 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded, with about 20 employees.
• June 3 – Interpol is re-founded; the telegraphic address "Interpol" is adopted.
• July 5 – The bikini is first modeled in Paris.
• August 4 – An earthquake (magnitude 8.0) hits the northern Dominican Republic, killing 100 and leaving 20,000 homeless.
• September 1 – 1946 Turin Grand Prix, the first official Formula One Grand Prix, is held in Italy.