1946

1845–1958	Germany [earth sciences]	German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion.
1940–1949	USA [statistics and demography]	Immigration into the USA for the period 1940–49 stands at 856,608.
21 November 1945 - 13 March 1946	USA [unions and associations]	United Auto Workers at the General Motors plant in Detroit strike for 113 days before gaining better wages and benefits; the strike is the first sign of post-war labor trouble.
1946	USA [universities and colleges]	The Fulbright scholarships are instituted in the USA to enable US citizens to study abroad and people from abroad to study in the USA.
1946	France [women's rights]	Women are granted a statutory right to equal pay in France.
1946	Italy [women's rights]	Women gain the vote in Italy.
1946	Mexico [suffrage]	Mexican women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men.
1946	UK [everyday life]	The report produced by the Reith Committee in the UK leads to the founding of New Towns as growth points in Britain, with Stevenage the first New Town to be built.
1946	Italy [everyday life]	Achille Gaggia invents the espresso coffee machine in Italy.
1946	world [everyday life]	Populations (in millions): China, 455; India, 311; USSR, 194; USA, 140; Japan, 73; West Germany, 48; Italy, 47; Britain, 46; Brazil, 45; France, 40; Spain, 27; Poland, 24; Korea, 24; Mexico, 22; East Germany, 18; Egypt, 17.
1946	USA [everyday life]	The Estée Lauder beauty products empire is launched with Estée Lauder's first sales to Saks, New York City.
1946	USA [everyday life]	The US paediatrician Benjamin Spock publishes The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. The book becomes an unexpected best-seller and a generation of children is raised according to its permissive guidelines of parental understanding and flexibility.
1946	Italy [motor vehicles]	Vespa scooters are brought onto the Italian market by Enrico Piaggio as a cheap form of transportation. Vespa means ‘wasp’ in Italian and refers to the noisiness of the engines.
1946	USA [musicals]	The musical Annie Get Your Gun, with words and music by Irving Berlin, is first performed in New York City. One of its best-known songs is ‘There's No Business Like Show Business’.
1946	England [orchestral music]	The English composer Benjamin Britten completes his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell).
1946	England [philosophy]	The Idea of History by the English philosopher R G Collingwood is published posthumously.
1946	USA [plays]	The play The Iceman Cometh, by the US writer Eugene O'Neill is first performed, at the Martin Beck Theater in New York City.
1946	Wales [poetry]	The Welsh writer Dylan Thomas publishes his poetry collection Deaths and Entrances.
1946	England [astronomy]	Cygnus A, the first radio galaxy (a galaxy that is a strong source of electromagnetic waves of radio wavelength), and the most powerful cosmic source of radio waves, is discovered by the English physicist James Hey.
1946	USA [banking and finance]	The Exchange National Bank in Chicago, Illinois, becomes the first drive-in bank.
1946	USA [chemistry]	The US physicists Edward Mills Purcell and Felix Bloch independently discover nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used to study the structure of pure metals and composites.
1946	UK [cinema and film]	The film Great Expectations, directed by David Lean, is released in the UK. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, it stars John Mills, Bernard Miles, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt, Valerie Hobson, and Jean Simmons.
1946	USA [cinema and film]	The film It's a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra, is released in the USA, starring James Stewart, Henry Travers, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore.
1946	USA [companies and organizations]	Procter & Gamble introduces Tide, the first commercially available domestic detergent to wash clothes.
1946	USA [fiction]	The US novelist and academic Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men, based on the career of Louisiana governor Huey Long, is published.
1946	Greece [fiction]	The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis publishes his novel Víos kai politía tou Aléxi Zormá/Zorba the Greek.
1946	Netherlands [gay rights]	The Cultural Relaxation Centre (COC) in the Netherlands is the first cultural facility in the world established for homosexuals.
1946	USA [health and medicine]	The US biologists Max Delbrück and Alfred D Hershey discover recombinant DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) when they observe that genetic material from different viruses can combine to create new viruses.
1946	USA, Japan [historical study]	The US writer John Hersey publishes Hiroshima, a classic account of the atomic bomb explosion over the Japanese city, filling an entire issue of New Yorker magazine.
1946	USA [houses]	The ranch house, a one-story design, becomes the most popular style in the USA's growing suburbs.
1946	USA [industrialization]	The first completely automated production lines are introduced at the Ford Motor Company in the USA.
1946	England [information technology]	The English computer scientist Maurice Wilkes writes the first assembly language – a mnemonic code using alphabetic symbols that translates instructions into computer machine language.
1946	USA [information technology]	ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator, Analyser, and Calculator), the first general purpose, fully electronic digital computer, is completed at the University of Pennsylvania for use in military research. It uses 18,000 vacuum tubes instead of mechanical relays, and can make 4,500 calculations a second. It is 24 m/80 ft long and is built by electrical engineers John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, with input from John Atanasoff.
20 January 1946	France [political events]	Charles de Gaulle resigns the presidency of the post-World War II French provisional government when he is frustrated by the parliamentary system in the implementation of his plans for post-war reconstruction.
1 February 1946	Norway [international organizations]	The Norwegian Labour politician Trygve Lie is elected the first secretary general of the United Nations (UN), serving until 1952.
22 March 1946	Transjordan, UK [decolonization]	Britain recognizes the independence of Transjordan, a British League of Nations mandate since the end of World War I.
5 May 1946	Greece [wars]	Civil war breaks out in Greece between the British-backed monarchists and the communists supported by Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.
1 June 1946	UK [television]	Television licences are introduced in the UK: around 7,500 are sold, at a cost of £2 each.
7 June 1946	UK [television]	Regular television broadcasts by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which have been interrupted for almost seven years by the war, are revived in the UK: at this stage there are fewer than 12,000 viewers.
10 June 1946	USA [births and deaths]	Jack Johnson, US boxer and the first black person to win the world heavyweight boxing championship (1908–15), dies in Raleigh, North Carolina (68).
14 June 1946	Scotland [births and deaths]	John Logie Baird, Scottish engineer who was the first to televise moving pictures, dies in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England (57).
14 June 1946	Italy [political events]	King Umberto II and his male heirs are permanently banished from Italy after the popular vote for a republican constitution.
July 1946	Philippines, USA [decolonization]	The US president Harry S Truman proclaims the independence of the Philippines from the US.
5 July 1946	France [everyday life]	French designer Louis Réard launches the bikini, naming it after the nuclear-test site Bikini Atoll.
7 July 1946	UK [television]	The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) launches the first children's television series For the Children: it is shown every week.
12 July 1946	Italy [television]	Pius XII becomes the first pope to appear on television when the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) broadcasts a papal address from the Vatican.
13 August 1946	England [births and deaths]	H G Wells, English novelist, sociologist, and historian, who wrote The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Invisible Man, dies in London, England (70).
19 August 1946	USA [births and deaths]	(William Jefferson) ‘Bill’ Clinton, US Democratic politician, 42nd president of the USA from 1993, born in Hope, Arkansas.
19 August 1946	England [cricket]	Walter Hammond of England becomes the first batsman to score 7,000 runs in Test cricket.
1 October 1946	Germany [law and government]	The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, announces its verdict on Nazi war criminals: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hermann Goering, and ten other leading Nazis (including Martin Bormann, tried in absentia) are sentenced to death, and Rudolf Hess, Walter Funk, and Erich Raeder to life imprisonment. Four others receive long sentences, but Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche are acquitted.
15 October 1946	Germany [crime and punishment]	The former leading Nazi and head of the Luftwaffe (German air force) Hermann Goering, awaiting execution for war crimes, commits suicide in Nuremberg Prison, Germany, by taking poison.
December 1946	England [clothing and fashion]	Nylon stockings, the first commercial nylon goods to be manufactured in Britain, go on sale in London, England.
19 December 1946	France, Vietnam, French Indochina [decolonization]	The French Indochina War (for Vietnamese independence) begins, and Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietminh (Vietnam Independence League), seeks refuge in a remote area of North Vietnam.
24 December 1946	France [legislation]	The Fourth Republic is declared in France when a new constitution is narrowly ratified by a referendum.