Top News Stories from 1945

World Events

World Statistics

Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade
Nobel Peace Prize: Cordell Hull (US)
More World Statistics...

U.S. Events

U.S. Statistics

Vice President: Harry S Truman
Population: 139,928,165
Life expectancy: 65.9 years
Homicide Rate (per 100,000): 5.7
More U.S. Statistics...

Economics

US GDP (1998 dollars): $223.2 billion
Federal spending: $92.71 billion
Federal debt $260.1 billion
Consumer Price Index: $18
Unemployment: 1.9%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.03

Sports

World Series
Detroit d. Chicago Cubs
Stanley Cup
Toronto d. Detroit
Wimbledon
Women:

Not held


Men: Not held (World War II)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Hoop Jr
NCAA Basketball Championship
Oklahoma A&M d. NYU
NCAA Football Champions
Army (9-0-0)

Entertainment

Entertainment Awards

Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction:

A Bell for Adano, John Hersey

Music: Appalachian Spring, Aaron Copland
Drama: Harvey, Mary Chase
Academy Award, Best Picture: Going My Way (Paramount)
Nobel Prize for Literature: Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
Miss America: Bess Myerson (NY)
More Entertainment Awards...

Events

  • The FCC creates the commercial broadcasting spectrum of 13 channels, and receives 130 applications for broadcast licenses.
  • Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes premieres in London, which signals the rebirth of British opera.

Movies

  • The Lost Weekend, Mildred Pierce, National Velvet, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Spellbound

Music

Books

Science

Nobel Prizes in Science

Chemistry: Artturi Illmari Virtanen (Finland), for research in the field of conservation of fodder
Physics: Wolfgang Pauli (Austria), for work on atomic fissions
Physiology or Medicine: Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain, and Sir Howard Florey (all UK), for discovery of penicillin
More Nobel Prizes in 1998...
  • ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), the first all-electronic computer, completed. Background: Computers and Internet
  • First atomic bomb is successfully detonated at Alamagordo, NM. Background: nuclear weapons
  • Grand Rapids, Michigan becomes the first community to fluoridate its water supply.
  • Raymond Libby develops oral penicillin.
  • American Cyanamid discovers folic acid, a vitamin abundant in green leafy vegetables, liver, kidney, and yeast. Background: Health & Nutrition

Death

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