50 Fun Facts About 1947

Which kitchen appliance did Raytheon first sell in 1947 as the Radarange, standing nearly six feet tall?

The microwave oven came from Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer, who discovered by accident that a microwave beam could heat food. The first model weighed about 340 kg.

Which National League team started Jackie Robinson at first base in April 1947, breaking baseball's color line?

The Brooklyn Dodgers had scouted the Negro leagues under general manager Branch Rickey. Robinson ended 1947 as the first winner of baseball's Rookie of the Year award.

Which New Mexico town made headlines in July 1947 when its Army air base announced it had recovered a flying disc?

Roswell's flying disc was only a weather balloon, an Army general in Texas told reporters within a day. The debris actually came from a secret balloon project designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests.

Which new country came into being alongside independent India when British India was partitioned in August 1947?

Pakistan was created in two wings on either side of India, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as governor-general in Karachi. The eastern wing later became Bangladesh.

Which test pilot became the first person to break the sound barrier, flying the Bell X-1 in October 1947?

Chuck Yeager flew with two ribs broken in a riding fall two nights earlier, an injury he kept from his superiors. He had named the rocket plane Glamorous Glennis after his wife.

Which teenager's wartime diary was first published in Amsterdam in June 1947 under the Dutch title Het Achterhuis?

Anne Frank's father Otto, the family's only survivor, edited her notebooks for publication. The Dutch title means 'the annex', after the hidden rooms where they lived.

Which creatures became the first animals in space when a V-2 rocket carried them from New Mexico in February 1947?

Fruit flies rode a captured German V-2 launched from White Sands and were recovered alive. The first primate in space, a rhesus monkey, followed in 1949.

Which future US president testified at the 1947 HUAC hearings on communist influence in Hollywood?

Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, appeared as a friendly witness, as did Walt Disney and Gary Cooper. He said a small clique in his union used communist-like tactics.

Which aviation tycoon piloted his giant wooden flying boat, nicknamed the Spruce Goose, on its only flight in 1947?

Howard Hughes kept the plane airborne for 26 seconds and about a mile, 70 feet above the water. Despite the nickname, which he disliked, it was built almost entirely of birch.

Which singer and pianist was born Reginald Dwight in Pinner, England, in March 1947?

Elton John took his stage name from two bandmates in Bluesology, saxophonist Elton Dean and singer Long John Baldry. At 11 he won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

Which US aid program to rebuild Europe was first proposed in a June 1947 speech at Harvard University?

The Marshall Plan was named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who gave the speech. Congress went on to appropriate $13.3 billion for European recovery over the next four years.

Which Norwegian explorer sailed the balsa raft Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia in 1947?

Thor Heyerdahl and five companions spent 101 days crossing about 4,300 miles of the Pacific before the raft smashed into a reef at Raroia. The film of the voyage won an Oscar.

Which ancient Jewish manuscripts did Bedouin shepherds first find in caves at Qumran in the winter of 1946–1947?

The Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books of the Bible. The shepherds kept their first finds hanging on a tent pole while deciding what to do with them.

Which London church hosted the November 1947 wedding of Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II?

Westminster Abbey held the ceremony while Britain was still under rationing, so the princess needed ration coupons to buy the fabric for her Norman Hartnell gown.

Which Paris couturier's first collection, shown in February 1947, was dubbed the New Look by Harper's Bazaar?

Christian Dior had named the 90-garment collection Corolla. It was the magazine's editor, Carmel Snow, who supplied the label that stuck.

Which Italian carmaker's first car to carry its founder's name, the 125 S, made its racing debut in May 1947?

Ferrari saw the 125 S fail to finish its first race at Piacenza, then win the Grand Prix of Rome two weeks later. Only two of the cars were made.

Which 1947 film puts a Macy's department store Santa in court to decide whether he really is Santa Claus?

Miracle on 34th Street shot its parade scenes live during the real 1946 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Edmund Gwenn won an Academy Award for playing Kris Kringle.

Which rock star, born in Brixton, London, in January 1947, changed his surname to avoid confusion with a Monkee?

David Bowie was born David Jones, too close to Davy Jones of the Monkees. He borrowed his new surname from the American pioneer James Bowie and the knife he popularized.

Which US spy agency was created by the National Security Act that President Truman signed in July 1947?

The CIA was born from a law Truman signed aboard his presidential plane, the Sacred Cow. The same act set up the National Security Council.

Which picture book by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd, was first published in September 1947?

Goodnight Moon sold only 6,000 copies that first autumn. The New York Public Library kept it off its shelves until 1972 because an influential children's librarian there hated the book.

Which two-word phrase did presidential adviser Bernard Baruch bring into American politics with an April 1947 speech?

Cold War was Baruch's name for the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. Columnist Walter Lippmann then spread it with a book of the same name.

Which electronic component, first made to work at Bell Labs in December 1947, went on to replace the vacuum tube?

The transistor emerged when John Bardeen and Walter Brattain pressed two gold contacts onto a germanium crystal and got more power out than in. They shared a Nobel Prize with William Shockley.

Which little-known actor played Stanley Kowalski when A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway in December 1947?

Marlon Brando was a virtual unknown; the producer had originally wanted John Garfield. Tennessee Williams felt his youth made Kowalski's cruelty seem ignorant rather than vicious.

Which crooner re-recorded White Christmas in March 1947 because the 1942 master had been damaged by heavy use?

Bing Crosby brought back the same orchestra and backing singers to copy the original session as closely as possible. The 1947 take is the one usually played on radio each December.

Which author, born in Maine in September 1947, saw his wife rescue the first pages of Carrie from the trash?

Stephen King had thrown away the opening of what began as a short story. His wife Tabitha fished the pages out because she wanted to know what happened next, and Carrie became his debut novel.

The UN General Assembly voted in November 1947 to partition which British-run territory into Arab and Jewish states?

Palestine was to be divided under Resolution 181, which passed by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions. The plan was never put into effect as the Assembly had envisaged.

Which team won the 1947 World Series, the first to be televised, with most viewers watching on sets in bars?

The New York Yankees needed all seven games. In Game 4 their pitcher Bill Bevens came within one out of the first World Series no-hitter, then lost when a pinch-hitter drove in two runs.

The AK-47 rifle takes its number from the year 1947; which Soviet designer's surname does the letter K stand for?

Kalashnikov completed the prototypes in November 1947, and the Soviet Army began issuing the rifle the next year. The A stands for avtomat, Russian for an automatic weapon.

The unsolved January 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia, took place in which American city?

Los Angeles newspapers ran with the nickname, which may echo the 1946 film noir The Blue Dahlia. The case is one of the oldest unsolved murders in the county.

Which annual theatre honors were first handed out at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel in April 1947?

The Tony Awards had no trophy at first: winners received a scroll and a gift such as a cigarette lighter, a gold compact or a money clip. The medallion arrived at the third ceremony.

Under the Truman Doctrine of March 1947, Congress approved $400 million in aid for Turkey and which other country?

Greece was fighting a communist insurgency, and Britain had warned Washington that it could no longer afford to support the government in Athens.

Which British admiral served as the last Viceroy of India, overseeing the transfer of power in August 1947?

Lord Mountbatten stayed on after independence as India's first governor-general, at Nehru's request. Jinnah refused his offer to hold the same post in the neighboring dominion.

Which insect did engineers find jammed in a relay of Harvard's Mark II computer in 1947, a famous early computer bug?

A moth was pulled from the machine and taped into the team's log book, which the Smithsonian now holds. Computing pioneer Grace Hopper was working on the Mark II at the time.

Which fashion retailer began in 1947 as a single womenswear shop in the Swedish town of Västerås?

H&M began as Hennes, Swedish for 'hers'. It gained its second initial in 1968, when founder Erling Persson bought the Stockholm hunting outfitter Mauritz Widforss and added menswear.

Which future secretary of state, born in Chicago in October 1947, campaigned for Barry Goldwater as a teenager?

Hillary Clinton, born Hillary Rodham, grew up in the suburb of Park Ridge and volunteered for the Republican's 1964 presidential run. She went on to Wellesley College and Yale Law School.

Pilot Kenneth Arnold's June 1947 sighting, which gave rise to the term flying saucer, happened near which Cascade peak?

Mount Rainier was the backdrop for nine shiny objects that Arnold judged to be moving at 1,200 miles per hour or more. He later said they moved like saucers skipping on water.

Which children's show named for a freckled cowboy puppet began its NBC run in December 1947 with host Buffalo Bob Smith?

Howdy Doody had 48 freckles, one for each state at the time. The show's studio audience of children, the Peanut Gallery, later gave the comic strip Peanuts its name.

Which country's postwar constitution, in effect since May 1947, renounces the right to wage war in its Article 9?

Japan had its constitution drafted largely by American civilian officials during the occupation, replacing the Meiji Constitution of 1889.

Which late-night host, born in Indianapolis in April 1947, started out as a local TV weatherman?

David Letterman, on air in his home city after college, congratulated a tropical storm on being upgraded to a hurricane and predicted hailstones the size of canned hams.

Which guitarist, born in July 1947, plays a guitar he built with his father and later earned a PhD in astrophysics?

Brian May was 16 when he and his father, an electronics engineer, built the Red Special he used for most of his work with Queen. He finished his doctorate at Imperial College London in 2007.

Which part of Canada contains Snag, the village that set continental North America's record low in February 1947?

Yukon's tiny settlement, home to about ten people, hit −63.0 °C a day after it had already broken a continental record that had stood since 1910.

Which Gulf Coast port was devastated in April 1947 when a ship's cargo of ammonium nitrate exploded at the dock?

Texas City lost at least 581 people, including all but one member of its 28-man volunteer fire department. It was the deadliest industrial accident in American history.

Which Burmese independence leader, father of a future Nobel Peace Prize winner, was assassinated in July 1947?

Aung San was meeting his new cabinet in the Secretariat Building when gunmen in army fatigues drove into the courtyard by jeep. His daughter Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old.

Which country's King Michael was forced to abdicate by its communist-led government on 30 December 1947?

Romania's king was called away from preparing a New Year's party at Peleș Castle and made to sign. A month earlier he had been in London for Princess Elizabeth's wedding, where he met his future wife.

Two relief organizations accepted the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of which religious group?

Quakers were honored through the American Friends Service Committee and its British counterpart, the Friends Service Council, in recognition of their war relief work.

Which 1947 Lerner and Loewe musical is set in a Scottish village that appears for one day every 100 years?

Brigadoon was the pair's first real hit, after one show that closed before reaching Broadway and two that did only moderately well. It ran for 581 performances at the Ziegfeld Theatre.

Which team beat the Chicago Stags in 1947 to win the first championship of the league that became the NBA?

The Philadelphia Warriors took the series four games to one behind early scoring sensation Joe Fulks. The franchise moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1962.

Which French writer published The Plague in 1947, a novel about an epidemic that seals off the Algerian city of Oran?

Albert Camus drew on a cholera epidemic that had killed a large share of Oran's population in 1849, but moved the story to the 1940s.

In which 1947 Best Picture winner does Gregory Peck play a journalist who poses as Jewish to expose antisemitism?

Gentleman's Agreement was made after producer Darryl Zanuck was refused membership of a country club that wrongly assumed he was Jewish. Other studio heads asked him to drop the film.

Which novelist, born in Bombay in June 1947, won the Booker Prize for a story of children born at India's independence?

Salman Rushdie was born about eight weeks before independence. The narrator of his Midnight's Children arrives at the very moment the new nation does, making him exactly as old as India.