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Top Song(s)
• Francis Craig - Near You
• Vaughn Monroe - Ballerina
• Ted Weems - Heartaches
• Frankie Laine - That's My Desire
• Frank Sinatra - Mam'selle
Top Film(s)
• Out of the Past
• Black Narcissus
• The Lady from Shanghai
• Monsieur Verdoux
• Dark Passage
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
• The Plague - Albert Camus
• Goodnight Moon - Margaret Wise Brown
• A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
• Misty of Chincoteague - Marguerite Henry
Famous Deaths
• January 27 – Vassily Balabanov, Soviet administrator, Provincial Governor of Imperial Russia
• February 19 – James W. Bagley, American aerial photographer, topographic engineer and inventor
• April 7 - Henry Ford, American industrialist, automobile manufacturer
• May 11 – Frederic Goudy, American printer, artist and type designer
• July 7 – José Luis Tamayo, 20th President of Ecuador
• August 21 – Ettore Bugatti, Italian car designer, founder of Bugatti
• September 1 – Frederick Russell Burnham, American Scout, father of the international Scouting movement
• October 4 – Max Planck, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• November 15 – Eduard Ritter von Schleich, German fighter ace, air force general
• December 14 - Stanley Baldwin, British Conservative politician, 3-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Medical/Science/Technology
• Zika virus first isolated from a rhesus macaque in the Zika Forest of Uganda.
• Influenza C virus first isolated.
• Official start of construction of Automatic Computing Engine in the United Kingdom.
• First recorded use of the word computer in its modern sense, referring to an electronic digital machine.
• The first antithyroid drug, propylthiouracil, is introduced in the United States.
• The first use of defibrillation on a human subject is performed by Claude Beck, at Case Western Reserve University.
• Mary Barber publishes her classic paper on antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus bacteria.
• Edwin H. Land demonstrates the first practical instant camera, the Land Camera, in New York City.
• The disposable nappy is invented by Valerie Hunter Gordon.
• Raytheon produces the first commercial microwave oven.
Political Events
• January 1 – The Canadian Citizenship Act comes into effect, providing a Canadian citizenship separate from British law.
• January 10 – The United Nations adopts a resolution to take control of the free city of Trieste.
• February 3 - P.L. Prattis becomes the first African American news correspondent allowed in the House of Representatives.
• May 22 - President Harry S. Truman signs an Act of Congress that implements the Truman Doctrine.
• June 5 – Secretary of State George Marshall outlines the Marshall Plan for American reconstruction and relief aid to Europe.
• June 23 – The United States Senate follows the House of Representatives in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
• July 18 – President Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act into law.
• July 26 – President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into law.
• September 17 – Office of Indian Affairs renamed Bureau of Indian Affairs.
• September 26 – U.S. Air Force is made a separate branch of the military.
National Events
• February 3 - The lowest air temperature in North America (?63 degrees Celsius) is recorded in Snag, in the Yukon Territory.
• March 6 – USS Newport News, the first completely air-conditioned warship, is launched in Newport News, Virginia.
• April 9 - Multiple tornadoes strike Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas killing 181 and injuring 970.
• April 15 – Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play Major League Baseball since the 1880s.
• May 2 – The movie Miracle on 34th Street, a Christmastime classic, is first shown in theaters.
• June 24 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
• July 1 – The United States begins the National Malaria Eradication Program, successfully eradicating malaria in 1951.
• October 1 – The North American F-86 Sabre jet fighter aircraft makes its first flight.
• October 5 – President Harry S. Truman delivers the first televised White House address, speaking on the world food crises.
• October 14 – Captain Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 rocket plane faster than the speed of sound.
Worldwide Events
• January 19 – Ferry SS Heimara sinks in the South Euboean Gulf of Greece killing 392.
• February 7 – The South Pacific Commission (SPC) is founded.
• February 17 – Cold War: Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
• March 15 – Hindus and Muslims clash in Punjab.
• April 1 - Paul I becomes King of Greece, aged 45, following the death of his brother, King George II.
• May 3 – The new post-war Constitution of Japan goes into effect.
• May 11 – The Ferrari 125 S, the first car to bear the Ferrari name, debuts.
• July 11 – The ship Exodus leaves France for Palestine, with 4,500 Jewish Holocaust survivor refugees on board.
• August 5 – The Netherlands ends Operation Product, the first of its major military 'police actions' in Indonesia.
• August 27 – The French government lowers the daily bread ration to 200 grams, causing riots in Verdun and Le Mans.