1940s
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s - 1940s - 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
Years: 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949
Events and trends
Technology
- First nuclear bomb
- First cruise missile, the V1 flying bomb and the first ballistic missile, the V-2 rocket
- First transistor
- Colossus, the world's first totally electronic computer. See History of computing hardware
- First supersonic flight by Chuck Yeager an Oct 14, 1947
Science
- Quantum electrodynamics developed by Feynman, Dyson, Schwinger, and Tomonaga
- Mathematics: game theory, cryptology
War, peace and politics
- World War II (ends 1945)
- The shoah
- Beginning of the Cold War
- Independence for some former colonies
- 1948 Arab-Israeli War
- The Irish Free State becomes a Republic (1948)
- The Chinese Civil War ends in victory for the Communists
- Informbiro period in Yugoslavia begins
- Indian Independence and Partition
Economics
- The Marshall Plan is implemented by the United States, giving billions of dollars in aid to reconstruct the war-devastated economies of Europe
Culture, religion
- Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life
- The NBA begins play, in 1947
Others
World leaders
- Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (Canada)
- President Lin Sen (Republic of China)
- President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China)
- Adolf Hitler (Germany)
- Mohandas Gandhi (India) († 1948)
- Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (India)
- Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Israel)
- King Victor Emmanuel III (Italy)
- Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (Italy)
- Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
- Pope Pius XII
- Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Éire)
- Taoiseach John A. Costello (Republic of Ireland)
- Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Clement Attlee (United Kingdom)
- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (United States)
- President Harry S. Truman (United States)
- Governor Luis Muñoz Marín (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico)
- President Getúlio Vargas (Brazil)
Sports figures
- Joe Louis
- Sugar Ray Robinson
- Ted Williams
- Jackie Robinson
- Joe DiMaggio
- Sammy Baugh
- Steve Van Buren
- Satchel Paige
Entertainers
- Abbott and Costello
- Bette Davis
- Bing Crosby
- Bob Hope
- Cary Grant
- Clark Gable
- Frank Sinatra
- Humphrey Bogart
- Ingrid Bergman
- James Cagney
- Jimmy Stewart
- Katharine Hepburn
- Lauren Bacall
- John Wayne
- Orson Welles
- Spencer Tracy
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