- May 9
- King Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy abdicates the throne. [619.15]
- May 10
- Umberto II succeeds Victor Emmanuel III as king of Italy. [1]
- May 13
- US convicts 58 camp guards of Mauthausen concentration camp to death. [1]
- May 16
- In Santa Ana, Nuevo Leon, a meteorite destroys many houses, injuring 28 people. [521]
- May 17
- KVP Labor/Communists win first post-WW2 Dutch parliamentary elections. [1]
- May 19
- Dutch Cooperation for Sexual Reform (NVSH) forms in Amsterdam. [1]
- May 20
- The Bank of Taiwan is established. [412.84]
- May 22
- Karl Hermann Frank, last Protector of Bohemia, is publicly hanged in Prague. [921.481]
- May 25
- Abdullah ibn Hussein becomes king of Jordan. [1]
- Jordan gains independence from Britain (National Day). [1]
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- May 26
- Klement Gottwald becomes premier of Czechoslovakia. [1]
- Patent filed in US for hydrogen bomb. [1]
- May 29
- KVP wins Provincial National election in Netherlands. [1]
- May 30
- United Airlines Flight 521 crashes on takeoff at LaGuardia Airport (New York), 42 die. [1]
- June 2
- Italian plebiscite chooses republic over monarchy. [1]
- June 3
- Hungary issues the world's largest denomination paper money note, 100 million-billion pengo (100,000,000,000,000,000 pengo). [605.160]
- June 4
- Largest solar prominence (300,000 miles / 500,000 km) observed. [1]
- June 5
- Fire at LaSalle Hotel cocktail lounge kills 61 (Chicago, Illinois, USA). [1]
- June 9
- King Ananda Mahidol of Thailand is found shot to death in his bedroom in the Grand Palace. [626.222]
- Nineteen guests at Canfield Hotel die in fire (Dubuque, Iowa, USA). [1]
- June 10
- Italian Republic established. [1]
- June 14
- Canadian Library Association established. [1]
- June 17
- SouthWest Bell innaugurates mobile telephone commercial service, Saint Louis, Missouri. USA. [1]
- June 21
- Ten die in fire at Baker Hotel, Dallas, Texas, USA. [1]
- June 28
- Enrico de Nicola becomes first president of Italy. [1]
- June 29
- British arrest 2,700 Jews in Palestine as alleged terrorists. [1]
- July 1
- Rajah Charles Vyner Brooke of Sarawak cedes sovereignty to the British crown. [1] [459.15]
- US drops atom bomb on Bikini atoll (4th atomic explosion). [1]
- July 4
- The Philippines gain complete independence. [1] [542.125] [1058.786]
- July 5
- Louis Reard's bikini swimsuit design debuts at a Paris fashion show, modelled by Micheline Bernardi. [1] [5] [55.23]
- July 7
- Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini canonized as first American saint. [1]
- July 11
- A war crimes trial convicts Joachim Peiper, Sepp Dietrich, and 71 other former German SS officers and soldiers. Peiper and 42 others are sentenced to death. (Dietrich is paroled in 1955, Peiper in 1956. None are ever executed.) [10]
- July 15
- British North Borneo Company transfers rights to British crown. [1]
- July 17
- Mikhailovich, resistance leader, executed by Tito regime. [1]
- July 21
- Delegates of 21 nations meet in Paris, France, for a Peace Conference, to attempt to settle on the language of peace treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Finland. (The conference ends in October, having made little progress.) [10]
- July 22
- A bomb explodes in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, British headquarters in Palestine, killing 91 people. The attack was planned and carried out by the Haganah and Irgun Zionist paramilitary groups. [1673.3]
- July 25
- US detonates underwater atomic bomb at Bikini (5th atomic explosion). [1]
- July 30
- First rocket attains 100 miles (167 km) altitude, White Sands, New Mexico, USA. [1]
- July 31
- On last day of hyperinflation in Hungary, a 5-millió adópengö postage stamp costs 10 octillion pengö (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). [977.249]
- August 1
- The forint is introduced in Hungary as new currency, at a rate of 4 x 10^29 pengö to 1 forint, and 4 forint to 1 gold franc. [977.250]
- August 6
- US officially submits to jurisdiction of World Court. [1]
- August 8
- India agrees to give Bhutan 32 square miles. [1]
- August 13
- Britain transfers illegal immigrants bound to Palestine, to Cyprus. [1]
- August 31
- At the Nuremberg Tribunal, defendants make closing statements before the court. Hermann Göring denies all. Joachim von Ribbentrop hopes America and Great Britain are more successful versus Bolshevism. Wilhelm Keitel says his loyalty was exploited for obscure reasons. Albert Speer predicts destruction if technology developments of the previous five years are exploited in another war. [10]
- September 15
- Czar Simeon II of Bulgaria and family are forced into exile. [626.218]
- October 1
- At the Nuremberg Tribunal, public reading of the findings ends, with verdicts and sentences announced. Those sentenced to hanging: Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Martin Boorman, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Those sentenced to life imprisonment: Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, Erich Raeder. Those sentenced to 20 years imprisonment: Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer. Those sentenced to 15 years imprisonment: Constantin von Neurath. Those sentenced to ten years imprisonment: Karl Dönitz. Those acquitted on all charges: Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, Hans Fritzsche. [1] [10]
- October 15
- Hermann Göring, German Reichmarshal, bites a glass cyanide capsule and kills himself in prison. [1] [10] [921.482] [1674.110]
- October 16
- (0000 to 0230 hours) Ten German leaders convicted at the Nuremberg Tribunal are hanged at Nuremberg. The bodies are cremated. [1] [10]
- October 23
- United Nations General Assembly second session convenes in Flushing Meadows, New York, USA. [1] [5]
- October 28
- German rocket engineers begin work in USSR. [1]
- October 29
- The Allied Control Council of Germany issues Directive No. 42, closing the border between the Soviet and Western zones. [10]
- November 1
- West German state of Niedersachsen forms. [1]
- November 4
- United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) forms. [1]
- November 24
- Last day of Office of Price Administration in the USA. [600.64]
- November 30
- In Colford, Gloucestershire, UK, a meteorite fall knocks out telephones service, and knocks a boy off his bicycle. [521]
- December 3
- US government asks United Nations to order dictator Franco out of Spain. [1]
- December 7
- Fire at Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, USA kills 119. [1]
- December 11
- Spain suspended from United Nations. [1]
- The General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously adopts Resolution 95(I) which affirms "the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Judgement of the Tribunal". [921.488]
- The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established. [1] [5]
- December 12
- Ice plant collapses, shearing a tenement building and burying 38. [1]
- United Nations accepts six Manhattan (New York) blocks as a gift from John D Rockefeller Junior. [1]
- December 13
- Léon Blum is elected French premier. [1]
- December 14
- Togo is made a trusteeship territory of the United Nations. [1]
- United Nations General Assembly votes to establish United Nations headquarters in New York City, New York. [1]
- December 19
- War breaks out in Indochina as Ho Chi Minh attacks French in Hanoi. [1]
- December 21
- Earthquake in South Japan kills 1,086. [1]
- December 23
- Belgian Council of State forms. [1]
- December 24
- 4th French republic established. [1]
- US General MacNarney gives 800,000 "minor Nazis" amnesty. [1]
- December 25
- Constitution accepted in Taiwan. [1]
- December 31
- French troops leave Lebanon. [1]
- US President Harry Truman officially proclaims end of World War II. [1]
- Year
- Total amount spent on legal betting in the USA: US$500 million. [80.86]
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