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Top Song(s)
• Dinah Shore - Buttons & Bows
• Pee Wee Hunt - 12th Street Rag
• Nat King Cole - Nature Boy
• Art Mooney - I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover
• Kay Kyser - The Woody Woodpecker Song
Top Film(s)
• The Red Shoes
• Bicycle Thieves
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• Rope
• Key Largo
Best Selling Book(s)
• Blueberries for Sal - Robert McCloskey
• Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
• Cheaper by the Dozen - Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.
• I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
• Kon-Tiki - Thor Heyerdahl
Famous Deaths
• January 8 - Edward Stanley Kellogg, 16th Governor of American Samoa
• February 23 – John Robert Gregg, Irish-born inventor of shorthand
• March 16 – León S. Morra, Argentine physician and university professor
• April 7 – Isabel Andreu de Aguilar, Puerto Rican writer, educator, philanthropist and activist
• May 15 - Father Edward J. Flanagan, Irish-born American Roman Catholic priest, founder of Boys Town
• June 25 – Bento de Jesus Caraça, Portuguese mathematician, economist and statistician
• July 17 – Ildebrando Zacchini, Maltese painter, inventor and traveler
• September 11 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder, first Governor General of Pakistan
• October 12 – Susan Sutherland Isaacs, English educational psychologist and psychoanalyst
• December 21 – Wladyslaw Witwicki, Polish psychologist, philosopher, translator, historian
Medical/Science/Technology
• Miranda, innermost of the large moons of Uranus, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.
• An R-1 (missile) on test becomes the first Soviet launch to enter space.
• Last recorded sighting of the Caspian tiger in Kazakhstan.
• Teaching and research in Mendelian genetics is prohibited in the Soviet Union.
• World's first working program run on an electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby.
• Outbreak of Akureyri disease in Iceland.
• In psychology, Bertram Forer demonstrates the Barnum effect.
• Julius Axelrod and Bernard Brodie identify the analgesic properties of acetaminophen.
• The original Wright Flyer goes on display in the Smithsonian Institution.
• Herbert Frohlich makes a key breakthrough in understanding superconductivity, at the University of Liverpool.
Political Events
• January 17 – The latest New Jersey State Constitution goes into effect.
• March 8 – The U.S Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violates the Constitution.
• April 3 - President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan.
• May 17 – The Dewey–Stassen debate, the first audio-recorded presidential primary debate, is broadcast on the radio.
• May 19 – Mundt–Nixon Bill of 1948 passes the House, but soon after fails to reach a Senate vote.
• May 26 – The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557, which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol.
• June 12 - Women in the Air Force (WAF) created.
• June 21–25 – 1948 Republican National Convention (Philadelphia).
• July 20 – President Harry S. Truman issues the second peacetime military draft in the United States.
• July 26 - President Truman signs Executive Order 9981, ending racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces.
National Events
• February 21 – The stock car racing organization NASCAR is founded.
• March 17 – The Hells Angels motorcycle gang is founded in California.
• April 19 – The ABC television network begins broadcasting.
• May 30 – A dike along the Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes.
• June 17 – A Douglas DC-6 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
• August 1 – The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded.
• October 1 – National Guard Bureau made a Bureau of the Department of the United States Army.
• October 16 – The 57th Street Art Fair, the oldest juried art fair in the American Midwest, is founded.
• November 2 – Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeats Republican Thomas E. Dewey.
• December 15 – The United States Department of Justice indicts Alger Hiss on two counts of perjury.
Worldwide Events
• January 12 – Mahatma Gandhi begins his fast-unto-death in Delhi, to stop communal violence during the Partition of India.
• February 1 – The Soviet Union begins to jam Voice of America broadcasts.
• February 4 – Ceylon (later known as Sri Lanka) becomes an independent country, within the British Commonwealth.
• April 13 – The Hadassah medical convoy massacre takes place, in British Mandatory Palestine.
• May 11 – Luigi Einaudi becomes President of the Italian Republic.
• May 22 – The Soviets launch Operation Vesna, the largest Lithuanian deportation to Siberia.
• June 21 - The Deutsche Mark becomes the official currency of the future Federal Republic of Germany.
• August 15 – The southern half of Korea is established as the Republic of Korea (South Korea).
• September 18 – An inaugural motor race is held at Goodwood Circuit, West Sussex, England.
• December 10 – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is adopted by the UN at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.