August 27 - Charles Evans Hughes, U.S. Supreme Court justice (b. 1862)
August 31 - Billy Laughlin, American actor (b. 1932)
September 2 - Sylvanus Morley, American archaeologist and spy (b. 1883)
September 8 - Thomas Mofolo, Lesotho writer (b. 1876)
September 24 - Warren William, American actor (b. 1894)
October 10 - Ted Horn, American race car driver (b. 1910)
October 12 - Susan Sutherland Isaacs, educational psychologist and psychoanalyst (b. 1885).
October 15 - Edythe Chapman, American actress (b. 1863)
October 24 - Franz Lehár, Austrian composer (b. 1870)
November 12 - Umberto Giordano, Italian composer (b. 1867)
November 23 - Hack Wilson, American baseball player (b. 1900)
November 25 - Kanbun Uechi, karate master (b. 1877)
December 31 - Malcolm Campbell, English race car driver (b. 1885)
Events
January 1 - British railways are nationalised to form British Rail.
January 1 - After partition, India declines to pay the agreed share of Rs.550 million in cash balances to Pakistan.
January 1 - The Constitution of Italy comes into force.
January 4 - Burma regains its independence from the United Kingdom.
January 21 - The Flag of Quebec is adopted and flown for the first time, over the National Assembly of Quebec. The day is marked annually as Quebec Flag Day.
January 30 - Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.
February 4 - Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth.
February 7 - Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Army chief of staff and was succeeded by Gen. Omar Bradley.
February 11 - John Costello succeeds Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach of Ireland.
February 18 - Eamon de Valera resigns as Taoiseach of Ireland.
February 25 - The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia takes control of government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the Third Republic ends.
March 7 - The Dodecanese islands officially become part of Greece again, ending the Italian rule.
March 10 - The Indian Union Muslim League is founded, by remnants of the old Muslim League.
March 17 - Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the NATO Agreement.
March 18 - Soviet consultants have left Yugoslavia in first sign of Tito-Stalin split.
March 20 - With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC.
March 27 - The Second Congress of the Workers Party of North Korea is convened.
April 1 - Faroe Islands receive autonomy from Denmark.
April 3 - President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
April 3 - In Jeju, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses begins, known as the Jeju massacre.
April 7 - The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
April 7 - A Buddhist monastery burns in Shanghai, China, leaving twenty monks dead.
April 9 - Jorge Eliécer Gaitán's assassination provokes a violent riot in Bogotá (the Bogotazo), and a further ten years of violence in Colombia (La violencia).
April 13 - Seventy-seven doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital are ambushed and massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.
April 23 - 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Haifa, the major port of Israel, is captured from Arab forces.
April 30 - In Bogotá, Colombia, the Organization of American States is established.
May 1 - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is established, with Kim Il-sung as president.
May 7 - The Council of Europe is founded during the Hague Congress.
May 13 - 1948 Arab-Israeli War: the Kfar Etzion massacre is committed by Arab irregulars, the day before the declaration of independence of the state of Israel on May 14.
May 14 - Israel is declared to be an independent state and a provisional government is established. Immediately after the declaration, Israel is attacked by the neighboring Arab states, triggering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
May 15 - Following the demise of the British Mandate of Palestine, Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attack Israel.
May 16 - Chaim Weizmann is elected the first President of Israel.
May 18 - The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convenes in Nanking.
May 26 - The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557 which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
May 29 - Creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation
May 30 - A dike along the flooding Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. Fifteen people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.
June 7 - Edvard Beneš resigns as President of Czechoslovakia rather than signing a Constitution making his nation a Communist state.
June 8 - Milton Berle hosts the debut of Texaco Star Theater.
June 16 - The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first skyjacking of a commercial plane.
June 17 - A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
June 20 - Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, makes its television debut.
June 21 - The "Manchester Baby" (SSEM) runs the first ever computer program stored in electronic memory.
June 21 - Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
June 24 - Start of the Berlin Blockade. The Soviet Union makes overland travel between the West with West Berlin impossible.
June 26 - The Western allies begin an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union blockades West Berlin.
June 26 - William Shockley filed the original patent for the grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.
June 28 - Cominform circulates the "Resolution on the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia"; Yugoslavia is expelled from the Communist bloc.
June 28 - Boxer Dick Turpin beat Vince Hawkins at Villa Park, Birmingham to become the first black British boxing champion in the modern era.
July 1 - Quaid-i-Azam inaugrates Pakistan's central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan.
July 5 - National Health Service Acts created the national public health systems in the United Kingdom
July 9 - Pakistan issues its first set of Postage stamps, bearing images of the Constituent Assembly, the Jinnah International Airport (Quaid-e-Azam International Airport), and the Shahi Fort.
July 14 - Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party, is shot near to the Italian Parliament.
July 16 - The city of Nazareth, hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel led by Ben Dunkelman, after little more than token resistance, during 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
July 20 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman issues a peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
July 20 - In New York City, twelve leaders of the Communist Party USA are indicted under the Smith Act including William Z. Foster and Gus Hall.
July 24 - Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian makes his first appearance in the cartoon Haredevil Hare.
July 26 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military of the United States.
July 28 - The Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foils a bullion robbery in the "Battle of London Airport".
July 29 - Olympic Games: The Games of the XIV Olympiad
July 31 - At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
August 1 - The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded.
August 3 - Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union.
August 10 - Candid Camera makes its television debut after being on radio for a year as Candid Microphone.
August 15 - The Republic of Korea is established south of the 38th parallel north.
August 25 - The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
August 31 - Actor Robert Mitchum was arrested in a Hollywood drug raid. He would later be found guilty of criminal conspiracy to possess marijuana and was sentenced to 60 days in prison.
September 4 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons.
September 5 - In France, Robert Schuman becomes President of the Council while being Foreign minister, As such, he is the negotiator of the major treaties of the end of World War II.
September 6 - Juliana becomes Queen of the Netherlands.
September 9 - The Republic Day of Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
September 12 - Invasion of the State of Hyderabad by the Indian Army on the day after the Pakistani leader Jinnah's death.
September 13 - Margaret Chase Smith is elected senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
September 14 - Groundbreaking for the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
September 15 - The F-86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record at 671 mph (1080 km/h).
September 17 - The Lehi (also known as the Stern gang) assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the UN to mediate between the Arabs and Jews.
September 18 - Communist Madiun uprising in Dutch Indies.
September 18 - Margaret Chase Smith of Maine becomes the first woman elected to the US Senate without completing another senator's term when she defeats Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten.
September 18 - Ralph Bunche is confirmed as acting United Nations mediator for Palestine and Israel.
September 18 - Yoni Abramski, age 12, shot and killed by Jordanian sniper in Jerusalem.
September 24 - The Honda Motor Company is founded.
October 5 - The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 110,000.
October 26 - Killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania.
October 27 - Léopold Sédar Senghor founds the Senegalese Democratic Bloc (BDS).
October 28 - Swiss chemist Paul Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.
November 1 - Off southern Manchuria, 6,000 people are killed as a Chinese merchant ship explodes and sinks.
November 12 - In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II.
November 15 - Louis Stephen St. Laurent succeeds William Lyon Mackenzie King as Prime Minister of Canada. King had the longest combined time (3 terms, 22 years in total) as Premier in Commonwealth of Nations history.
December 10 - The UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today is also International Human Rights Day.
December 12 - Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali Massacre
December 23 - Seven Japanese convicted of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East are executed at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.
December 26 - Cardinal Mindszenty is arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy.
December 28 - The DC-3 airliner NC16002 disappears 50 miles south of Miami, Florida.
