Events from the year 1947 in the United States.
Incumbents
Federal government President: Harry S. Truman (D-Missouri) Vice President: vacant Chief Justice: Fred M. Vinson (Kentucky) Speaker of the House of Representatives: Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) (until January 3) Joseph William Martin Jr. (R-Massachusetts) (starting January 3) Senate Majority Leader: Alben W. Barkley (D-Kentucky) (until January 3) Wallace H. White Jr. (R-Maine) (starting January 3) Congress: 79th (until January 3), 80th (starting January 3)
State governments Governors and lieutenant governors Governors
Lieutenant governors
Events
January–March January 15 – Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", is found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The case has never been solved. February 3 – P.L. Prattis becomes the first African American news correspondent allowed in the House of Representatives and Senate press galleries. February 17 – Cold War: Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. February 20 An explosion at the O'Connor Electro-Plating Company in Los Angeles, California, leaves 17 dead, 100 buildings damaged, and a crater in the ground. Ordnance Corps Hermes project V-2 rocket Blossom I launched into space carrying plant material and fruitflies, the first animals to enter space. February 21 – Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", his Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America in New York City. March 6 – USS Newport News, the first completely air-conditioned warship, is launched in Newport News, Virginia. March 13 – The 19th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Jack Benny, is held at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives receives the most nominations with eight and wins the most awards with seven, including Best Motion Picture and Wyler's second Best Director award. March 25 – A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, kills 111 miners.
April–June April 1 – Jackie Robinson signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American Major League Baseball player since the 1880s. April 6 – The 1st Tony Awards, recognizing achievement in American theater, are awarded at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. April 9 Multiple tornadoes strike Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas killing 181 and injuring 970. The Journey of Reconciliation begins, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality. April 15 – Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play Major League Baseball since the 1880s. April 16 Texas City Disaster: The ammonium nitrate cargo of French-registered Liberty ship explodes in Texas City, Texas, killing at least 581, including all but one member of the city fire department, injuring at least 5,000 and destroying 20 city blocks. Of the dead, remains of 113 are never found and 63 are unidentifiable. American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch describes the post–World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "Cold War". April 26 – Academy award-winning Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Cat Concerto, is released to theatres. May 6 – Wisconsin earthquake with a maximum Mercalli intensity of V (Moderate). May 22 Cold War: In an effort to fight the spread of Communism, President Harry S. Truman signs an Act of Congress that implements the Truman Doctrine. This Act grants $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece. David Lean's film Great Expectations, based on the novel by Charles Dickens, opens in the U.S. Critics call it the finest film ever made from a Charles Dickens novel. June – Langer's Deli opens in Los Angeles. June 5 – Secretary of State George Marshall outlines the Marshall Plan for American reconstruction and relief aid to Europe. June 23 – The United States Senate follows the House of Representatives in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act. June 24 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. The Arnold sighting marks the start of the 1947 flying disc craze.
July–September July 4 – Three crew members aboard United Airlines Flight 105 reported seeing multiple unidentified objects in the skies over the Pacific Northwest July 5 - Larry Doby becomes the first African American to ever play baseball in the American League, and the first in Major League Baseball after Jackie Robinson July 7 – A supposedly downed extraterrestrial spacecraft is reportedly found in the Roswell UFO incident, near Roswell, New Mexico, which will be written about by Stanton T. Friedman and many others. In Arizona, the Rhodes UFO photographs are taken, purportedly showing "shoe-heel"-shaped object in the skies over Phoenix. July 11 – A hoaxed flying disc is recovered in Twin Falls July 18 – President Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act into law, which places the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate next in the line of succession after the vice president. July 26 – Cold War: President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into law, creating the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council. August – Fernwood Park race riot in Chicago. August 1 – A B-25 departing McChord Field bound for Hamilton Field crashes near Kelso, Washington, killing both pilot and co-pilot. It is subsequently revealed that plane was returning from investigating a UFO sighting at Maury Island. Seaman Harold Dahl claims to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island in Puget Sound, Washington on June 21 and reports the first modern so-called "Men in Black" encounter. August 29 – US announces the discovery of plutonium fission, suitable for nuclear power generation. September 17–21 – The 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane in southeastern Florida, and also in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, causes widespread damage and kills 51 people. September 17 – Office of Indian Affairs renamed Bureau of Indian Affairs. September 18 – Most provisions of the National Security Act go into effect, reorganizing the military to form the National Military Establishment (later the Department of Defense) with subordinate Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; creating the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council; and establishing the Secretary of Defense. September 26 – U.S. Air Force is made a separate branch of the military. September 27 – Walt Disney Productions' ninth feature film, Fun and Fancy Free, is released. It is Disney's fourth of six package films to be released through the 1940s and notably features Walt Disney's final voice role as Mickey Mouse.
October–December
October–November – Great Fires of 1947: Forest fires in Maine consume more than 200,000 acres of wooded land statewide, including over 17,000 acres on Mount Desert Island alone. 16 persons are killed and more than 1,000 homes destroyed in the blazes, with total property damage exceeding $23 million. October – The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigations into communism in Hollywood. October 6 – World Series games are broadcast on television for the first time. The New York Yankees defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4 games to 3, to win their 11th World Series Title. October 14 – The United States Air Force test pilot Captain Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 rocket plane faster than the speed of sound, the first time that this has been accomplished in level flight, or climbing. October 20 – Pakistan establishes diplomatic relations with the United States. November 1 – U.S. Caribbean Command designated. November 2 – In California, designer Howard Hughes pilots the maiden flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat known as "Spruce Goose", the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built; the flight lasts only eight minutes and the craft is never flown again. November 6 – The program Meet the Press makes its television debut on the NBC-TV network in the United States. November 24 – Red Scare: The U.S. House of Representatives votes 346–17 to approve citations of Contempt of Congress against the so-called Hollywood 10, after the ten men refuse to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee concerning allegations of communist influences in the movie business. (The ten men are blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios on the following day). December 3 – The Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire opens in a Broadway theater. December 6 – Arturo Toscanini conducts a concert performance of the first half of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Otello, based on Shakespeare's play Othello, for a broadcast on NBC Radio. The second half of the opera is broadcast a week later. December 22 – The first practical electronic transistor is demonstrated by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain working under William Shockley at AT&T's Bell Labs.
Ongoing Cold War (1947–1991) Second Red Scare (1947–1957) Baby boom (1946–1964)
Births January
January 1 Jon Corzine, American politician Leon Patillo, American singer and evangelist Leonard Thompson, American golfer January 2 – Jack Hanna, American zoologist January 4 – George Atkinson, American footballer player (d. 2025) January 5 Mike DeWine, American politician Mercury Morris, American football player (d. 2024) January 7 – Scott Reid, American baseball player and scout (d. 2021)Tigers mourn loss of veteran scout Scott Reid January 8 William Bonin, American serial killer (d. 1996) David Gates, American journalist and novelist Pat Hays, American lawyer and politician (d. 2023) Laurie Walters, American actress January 9 – Ronnie Landfield, American artist January 10 George Alec Effinger, American science fiction author (d. 2002) Afeni Shakur, American music businesswoman (d. 2016) January 15 – Andrea Martin, Canadian-American actress (Second City Television) January 16 – Laura Schlessinger, American radio and TV talk show host January 19 Ann Compton, American journalist Paula Deen, American Food Channel television personality January 21 Jill Eikenberry, American actress Bill Stein, American baseball player January 22 Saner Wonggoun, Thai American fugitive January 23 Tom Carper, American politician Joel Douglas, American film producer January 24 Michio Kaku, American theoretical physicist and science popularizer Warren Zevon, American rock musician (Werewolves of London) (d. 2003) January 25 – Marjorie Scardino, American-born business executive January 26 – Mark Dayton, American politician January 27 – Cal Schenkel, American illustrator January 28 – Jeanne Shaheen, American politician January 29 Linda B. Buck, American biologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ernie Lively, American actor (d. 2021) January 31 Jonathan Banks, American actor Nolan Ryan, American baseball player Glynn Turman, African-American actor
February
February 1 – Jessica Savitch, American journalist (d. 1983) February 2 – Farrah Fawcett, American actress (Charlie's Angels) (d. 2009) February 3 Paul Auster, American novelist (d. 2024) Joe Coleman, American baseball player (d. 2025) Melanie (Safka), American folk singer-songwriter (Candles in the Rain) (d. 2024) February 4 Sanford Bishop, African-American politician Dennis C. Blair, American admiral, Director of National Intelligence Dan Quayle, American politician, 44th vice president of the United States from 1989 to 1993 February 5 – Darrell Waltrip, American race car driver, broadcaster February 7 – Wayne Allwine, American voice actor (d. 2009) February 8 – J. Richard Gott, American astronomer and academic February 9 Joe Ely, American singer, guitarist and songwriter (d. 2025) Erik Olin Wright, American sociologist (d. 2019) February 11 – Roy Moore, American politician February 13