1947

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.
1947	UK [social services]	The Marriage Guidance Council is set up in Sheffield, England, specifically to help couples adjust to changing roles after the war.
1947	USA [statistics and demography]	In the USA, 18% of white males and 16% of white females finish four years of high school; the corresponding figures for blacks are 8% and 9%.
1947	USA [statistics and demography]	In the USA, 5.4% of white men and 3.7% of white women complete four years of college; the corresponding figures for blacks are 2.3% and 2.6%.
1947	England [fiction]	The English writer Malcolm Lowry publishes his finest novel Under the Volcano.
1947	England, Germany [historical study]	The English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper publishes The Last Days of Hitler.
1947	USA, Hungary [information technology]	The US-Hungarian mathematician John Von Neumann introduces the idea of a stored-program computer, in which both instruction codes and data are stored.
1947	England [everyday life]	Kenneth Wood designs the Kenwood Chef, the first food processor, in Woking, England.
1947	USA [everyday life]	Reynolds Metals introduces an aluminium foil for use in the kitchen, in Louisville, Kentucky.
1947	USA [everyday life]	The first microwave ovens go on sale, in the USA, but the public are slow to buy them.
1947	USA [everyday life]	The first recorded sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) is made in the sky over Kansas, by Kenneth Arnold.
1947	USA [medicine]	The poliomyelitis virus is isolated by US physician Jonas E Salk.
1947	USA [motor-racing and rallying]	At Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, British racing driver John Cobb extends his world land-speed record from 595.02 kph/369.74 mph, set in 1939, to 634.37 kph/394.19 mph. On one of the two runs necessary for the record, he becomes the first person to exceed 400 mph on land, attaining a speed of 648.7 kph/403.1 mph.
1947	England [opera]	The comic opera Albert Herring by the English composer Benjamin Britten is first performed, at Glyndebourne, England. Britten also completes A Charm of Lullabies for voice and piano.
1947	Austria [orchestral music]	The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg completes his vocal work A Survivor from Warsaw, for speaker, male chorus, and orchestra.
1947	USA [painting]	The US artist Jackson Pollock paints Cathedral. This is one of the earliest examples of his characteristic drip-and-splash style of abstract expressionism.
1947	Germany [philosophy]	The German philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer publish Dialektik der Aufklärung/Dialectic of Enlightenment.
1947	Italy [philosophy]	Lettere del carcere/Prison Notebooks by the Italian political thinker Antonio Gramsci is published posthumously.
1947	France [philosophy]	La Pesanteur et la grâce/Gravity and Grace by the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil is published posthumously.
1947	USA [photography]	US inventor Edwin Land causes a revolution in photography when he develops the ‘Polaroid Land Camera’, a camera that develops and prints photographs in 60 seconds; it goes on sale on 26 November the following year.
1947	England [physiology]	English physiologists Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley insert microelectrodes into the giant nerve fibres of the squid Loligo forbesi to discover the chemical and electrical properties of the transmission of nerve impulses.
1947	USA [physics]	US chemist and physicist Willard Libby develops carbon-14 dating.
1947	Palestine [archaeology]	The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered by shepherd boys in a cave near the Dead Sea in Palestine; stored in earthen jars, the Hebrew manuscripts date from the mid-3rd century BC to AD 68.
1947	UK [communications]	The printed circuit board is developed by British scientist John Sargrove. Because the layout of wiring is planned, it greatly simplifies the production of radio and television.
1947	France [plays]	The play L'Invitation au château/Ring Around the Moon , by the French writer Jean Anouilh, is first performed, in Paris, France.
1947	England, USA [poetry]	The English-born poet W H Auden (who took US citizenship in 1946) publishes his long poem The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue. It wins a Pulitzer prize in 1948.
1947	England [economics]	English economist William Beveridge publishes his Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services. The work of Beveridge is to provide the foundation of the welfare society in the post-war years.
1947	UK [schools]	The school-leaving age in the UK is raised to 15.
1947	Switzerland [sculpture]	The Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti sculpts Man Pointing, one of the earliest of the tall, thin sculptures for which he becomes known.
25 January 1947	USA [births and deaths]	Al Capone, US gangster, dies in Miami Beach, Florida (48).
10 February 1947	France, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland [treaties]	By a treaty signed in Paris, France, Italy loses the Dodecanese Islands to Greece and border territories to France and Yugoslavia; Romania loses Bessarabia and North Bukovina to the USSR but regains Transylvania; Bulgaria retains South Dobrudja; Hungary regains its 1938 frontiers; and Finland cedes Petsamo (now Pechenga) to the USSR.
12 March 1947	USA, Greece, Turkey, USSR [diplomacy]	The US president Harry S Truman announces a plan (the Truman Doctrine) to give aid to Greece, which is threatened by communist insurrection, and to Turkey, which is under pressure from Soviet expansion.
18 March 1947	UK [television]	British prime minister Clement Attlee makes the first party political broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), under a scheme to give major parties equal access to radio (Anthony Eden replies for the Conservatives).
7 April 1947	USA [births and deaths]	Henry Ford, US industrialist who developed the mass-production of cheap Ford cars, dies in Dearborn, Michigan (82).
15 April 1947	USA [baseball]	Jackie Robinson becomes the first black American player in major league baseball since Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884 when he plays for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the Boston Braves. Five days earlier Robinson joined the Dodgers from the Montreal Royals of the International League.
21 April 1947	Eire [shops and shopping]	The first airport duty-free shop is opened at Shannon Airport in Eire.
5 May 1947	Japan [women's rights]	The Japanese parliament adopts an equal-rights amendment that bans discrimination by sex and gives women the power to bring lawsuits charging bias.
16 May 1947	England [births and deaths]	Frederick Gowland Hopkins, English biochemist who discovered vitamins, dies in Cambridge, England (85).
5 June 1947	USA, Europe [diplomacy]	The US secretary of state, General George C Marshall, calls for a European Recovery Programme (the Marshall Plan) funded by the USA, to forestall the emergence of communist governments throughout the continent.
11 June 1947	USA [World War II (1939–45)]	Sugar rationing comes to an end in the USA.
15 August 1947	India, Pakistan, UK [political events]	British rule in India ends after 163 years and the two new independent countries of India and Pakistan are established. Jawaharlal Nehru becomes prime minister of India, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah governor general of Pakistan, with Liaquat Ali Khan as prime minister.
9 September 1947	Argentina [women's rights]	Women in Argentina gain the right to vote thanks to the efforts of First Lady Eva Perón.
October 1947	USA [town planning]	Abraham Levitt & Sons builds Levittown on Long Island, New York, for war veterans; this starts the trend towards mass suburbanization in the USA.
4 October 1947	Germany [births and deaths]	Max Planck, German theoretical physicist who was the originator of quantum theory, dies in Göttingen, Germany (89).
5 October 1947	USA [television]	US president Harry S Truman makes the first presidential address to the nation on television.
14 October 1947	USA [aircraft]	US test pilot Major Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound; he does it in a Bell X-1 rocket plane which reaches Mach 1.06 (1,207 kph/750 mph)
20 November 1947	England [political events]	The wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten takes place in Westminster Abbey, London, England.
December 1947	USA [plays]	The play A Streetcar Named Desire, by the US writer Tennessee Williams, is first performed, in New York City, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando.