November 25 - Léon-Paul Fargue, French poet (b. 1876)
December 1 - Aleister Crowley, English occultist (b. 1875)
December 7 - Tristan Bernard, French playwright and novelist (b. 1866)
December 15 - Arthur Machen, Welsh author (b. 1863)
December 22 - Hans Aumeier, German Nazi official and concentration camp commandant (b. 1906)
December 22 - Therese Brandl, Nazi concentration camp guard (b. 1902)
Events
January 1 - The American and British occupation zones in Germany, after the World War II, merge to form the Bizone, that later became the Federal Republic of Germany.
January 3 - Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.
January 9 - Elizabeth "Betty" Short, the Black Dahlia, is last seen alive.
January 15 - The brutalized corpse of Elizabeth Short ("The Black Dahlia") is found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California.
January 22 - KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, begins operation in Hollywood, California.
February 3 - The lowest temperature in North America is recorded in Snag, Yukon.
February 10 - Italy cedes most of Venezia Giulia to Yugoslavia.
February 16 - Canadians granted Canadian citizenship after 80 years of being British subjects. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes the first Canadian citizen.
February 17 - The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into the Soviet Union.
February 21 - In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.
February 23 - The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is founded.
February 28 - 228 Incident: In Taiwan, civil disorder is put down with the loss of 30,000 civilian lives.
March 1 - The International Monetary Fund begins financial operations.
March 7 - The Kuomintang and Communist Party of China resume full-fledged Civil War.
March 12 - The Truman Doctrine is proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism.
March 25 - An explosion in a coalmine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
April 6 - The first Tony Awards are presented for theatrical achievements.
April 9 - The Glazier-Higgins-Woodward tornadoes kill 181 and injure 970 in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
April 9 - The Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride begins through the upper South in violation of Jim Crow laws. The riders wanted enforcement of the United States Supreme Court's 1946 Irene Morgan decision that banned racial segregation in interstate travel.
April 15 - Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line.
April 16 - Texas City Disaster: An explosion on board a freighter in port causes the city of Texas City, Texas, to catch fire, killing almost 600.
April 16 - Bernard Baruch coins the term "Cold War" to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.
April 28 - Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.
April 30 - In Nevada, the Boulder Dam is renamed Hoover Dam a second time.
May 3 - New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect.
May 22 - Cold War: in an effort to fight the spread of Communism, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs an act into law that will later be called the Truman Doctrine. The act grants $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece.
June 5 - Marshall Plan: At a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.
June 23 - The United States Senate follows the United States House of Representatives in overriding U.S. President Harry Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
June 24 - Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
July 4 - The "Indian Independence Bill" is presented before British House of Commons, suggesting bifurcation of British India into two sovereign countries
July 5 - Larry Doby signs a contract with the Cleveland Indians baseball team, becoming the first black player in the American League. (Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the National League 11 weeks earlier.)
July 6 - The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union.
July 7 - Alleged and disputed Roswell UFO incident.
July 8 - Reports are broadcast that a UFO has crashed landed in Roswell, New Mexico.
July 10 - Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor General of Pakistan by then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee.
July 11 - The Exodus 1947 heads to Palestine from France.
July 19 - Prime minister of shadow Burma government ,Bogyoke Aung San and 6 of his cabinet and 2 non-cabinet members were assassinated by British , which resulted in the political chaos in the country lasting until now.
July 20 - Police in Burma arrest former Prime Minister U Saw and 19 others on charges of assassinating Prime Minister U Aung San and seven members of his cabinet.
July 20 - The Viceroy of India says the people of the Northwest Frontier Province overwhelmingly voted the previous day to join Pakistan rather than India.
July 26 - Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.
August 4 - The Supreme Court of Japan is established.
August 7 - Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7000-km (4375-mile) journey across the Pacific Ocean proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
August 7 - The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).
August 14 - Pakistan gains Independence from the British Indian Empire under the administration of United Kingdom and joins the British Commonwealth.
August 15 - India gains independence from the United Kingdom and becomes an independent nation within the Commonwealth , Jawaharlal Nehru addresses the nation with the Indian Declaration of Independence and takes office as the first Prime Minister of India.
August 15 - Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah is sworn in as first Governor General of Pakistan at Karachi.
August 17 - The Radcliffe Line, the border between Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan is revealed.
September 9 - First actual case of a computer bug being found: a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University.
September 15 - RCA releases the 12AX7 vacuum tube.
September 15 - Typhoon Kathleen hit Tone River, Saitama and Tokyo area, killing at least 1,930 and injuring 1,750.
September 16 - Typhoon Kathleen hit Saitama, Tokyo and Tone River erea, at least 1,930 killed.
September 17 - James V. Forrestal is sworn in as the first Secretary of Defense of United States.
September 18 - The United States Air Force becomes an independent service.
September 24 - Majestic 12 is allegedly established by secret executive order of President Harry Truman
September 30 - The Islamic Republic of Pakistan joins the United Nations.
September 30 - The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time.
October 1 - The F-86 Sabre flies for the first time.
October 5 - The first televised White House address is given by U.S. President Harry S. Truman.
October 14 - Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight.
October 20 - The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.
October 24 - Walt Disney testifies to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believes to be communists.
October 26 - The Maharaja of Kashmir agrees to allow his kingdom to join India.
October 26 - The British Military Occupation ends in Iraq.
October 30 - The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.
November 2 - In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.
November 6 - Meet The Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
November 17 - The U.S. Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-Communist loyalty oath.
November 18 - Ballantyne's Department Store fire, Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41 (New Zealand's worst ever fire)
November 20 - The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London.
November 24 - Red Scare: After the so-called Hollywood 10 refuse to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee concerning allegations of Communist influence in the movie industry, the United States House of Representatives votes 346 to 17 to approve citations of contempt of Congress against them.
November 25 - Red Scare: The "Hollywood Ten" are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.
November 25 - New Zealand ratifies the Statute of Westminster and thus becomes independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.
November 29 - The United Nations General Assembly votes to partition Palestine (The Partition Plan).
December 2 - Jerusalem Riots of 1947: Riots break out in Jerusalem in response to the approval of the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
December 6 - The Everglades National Park in Florida is dedicated.
December 14 - The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is founded in Daytona Beach, Florida.
December 16 - William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor.
December 22 - The Constituent Assembly of Italy approves its constitution.
December 23 - The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.
December 25 - The Constitution of the Republic of China goes into effect.
