| 1948-01-21
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.
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| 1948-04-03
In Jeju, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses begins, known as the Jeju massacre.
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| 1948-05-15
Following the demise of the British Mandate of Palestine, Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invade the territory partitioned for the Arab state by the British Mandate of Palestine thus starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
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| 1948-02-21
NASCAR is incorporated.
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| 1948-11-01
Off southern Manchuria, 6,000 people are killed as a Chinese merchant ship explodes and sinks.
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| 1948-06-28
Boxer Dick Turpin beats Vince Hawkins at Villa Park in Birmingham to become the first black British boxing champion in the modern era.
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| 1948-09-18
The Donald Bradman-led Australian cricket team completes the unprecedented feat of going through an English summer without defeat.
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| 1948-04-07
The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
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| 1948-07-28
The Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foils a bullion robbery in the "Battle of London Airport".
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| 1948-09-12
Invasion of the State of Hyderabad by the Indian Army on the day after the Pakistani leader Jinnah's death.
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| 1948-02-07
Neil Harvey becomes the youngest Australian to score a century in Test cricket.
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| 1948-03-17
Benelux, France, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO.
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| 1948-06-17
A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
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| 1948-09-18
Ralph Bunche is confirmed as acting United Nations mediator for Palestine and Israel.
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| 1948-04-03
President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
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| 1948-10-28
Swiss chemist Paul Müller is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the insecticidal properties of DDT.
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| 1948-01-30
Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.
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| 1948-12-23
Seven Japanese convicted of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East are executed at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.
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| 1948-10-26
Killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania.
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| 1948-11-15
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.
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| 1948-09-15
The F-86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour (1,080 km/h).
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| 1948-05-14
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.
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| 1948-09-24
The Honda Motor Company is founded.
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| 1948-06-21
Columbia Records introduces the long-playing record album in a public demonstration at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
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| 1948-06-08
Milton Berle hosts the debut of Texaco Star Theater.
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| 1948-04-23
1948 Arab-Israeli War: Haifa, the major port of Palestine, is captured from Arab forces.
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| 1948-09-17
The Lehi (also known as the Stern gang) assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the UN to mediate between the Arab nations and Israel.
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| 1948-07-20
In New York City, twelve leaders of the Communist Party USA are indicted under the Smith Act including William Z. Foster and Gus Hall.
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| 1948-11-12
In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.
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| 1948-10-05
The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 110,000.
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| 1948-07-31
At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
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| 1948-08-10
Candid Camera makes its television debut after being on radio for a year as Candid Microphone.
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| 1948-05-07
The Council of Europe is founded during the Hague Congress.
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| 1948-07-25
The Australian cricket team sets a world record for the highest successful run-chase in Test cricket history in the Fourth Test against England.
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| 1948-08-31
Actor Robert Mitchum is arrested in a Hollywood drug raid. He would later be found guilty of criminal conspiracy to possess marijuana and sentenced to 60 days in prison.
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| 1948-04-09
Massacre at Deir Yassin.
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| 1948-08-03
Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union.
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| 1948-10-27
Léopold Sédar Senghor founds the Senegalese Democratic Bloc.
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| 1948-04-19
Burma (now Myanmar) joins the United Nations.
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| 1948-01-01
The British railway network is nationalised to form British Railways.
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| 1948-05-03
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.
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| 1948-07-01
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Quaid-i-Azam) inaugurates Pakistan's central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan.
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| 1948-04-01
Faroe Islands receive autonomy from Denmark.
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| 1948-04-07
A Buddhist monastery burns in Shanghai, China, leaving twenty monks dead.
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| 1948-06-24
Start of the Berlin Blockade: the Soviet Union makes overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible.
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| 1948-05-30
A dike along the flooding Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. Fifteen people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.
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| 1948-08-15
The Republic of Korea is established south of the 38th parallel north.
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| 1948-07-16
The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane.
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| 1948-06-20
Toast of the Town, later The Ed Sullivan Show, makes its television debut.
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| 1948-06-26
Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery is published in The New Yorker magazine.
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| 1948-02-18
Eamon de Valera resigns as Taoiseach of Ireland.
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| 1948-06-28
The Cominform circulates the "Resolution on the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia"; Yugoslavia is expelled from the Communist bloc.
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| 1948-03-27
The Second Congress of the Workers Party of North Korea is convened.
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| 1948-04-13
The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.
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| 1948-05-26
The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557 which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
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| 1948-05-16
Chaim Weizmann is elected the first President of Israel.
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| 1948-09-13
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.
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| 1948-09-09
Republic Day of Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
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| 1948-09-14
Groundbreaking for the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
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| 1948-12-10
The UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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| 1948-07-14
Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party, is shot and wounded near the Italian Parliament.
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| 1948-02-22
Communist revolution in Czechoslovakia.
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| 1948-01-01
The Constitution of Italy comes into force.
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| 1948-04-30
In Bogotá, Colombia, the Organization of American States is established.
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| 1948-06-26
The Western allies begin an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union blockades West Berlin.
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| 1948-09-18
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.
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| 1948-05-18
The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convenes in Nanking.
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| 1948-03-20
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.
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| 1948-06-07
Edvard Beneš resigns as President of Czechoslovakia rather than signing a constitution making his nation a Communist state.
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| 1948-09-18
Communist Madiun uprising in Dutch Indies.
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| 1948-06-26
William Shockley files the original patent for the grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.
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| 1948-09-18
Yoni Abramski, age 12, killed by sniper in Jerusalem.
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| 1948-07-09
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.
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| 1948-09-05
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.
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| 1948-07-05
National Health Service Acts created the national public health systems in the United Kingdom
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| 1948-10-29
Safsaf massacre
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| 1948-04-01
Cold War: Berlin Airlift – Military forces, under direction of the Soviet-controlled government in East Germany, set-up a land blockade of West Berlin.
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| 1948-07-08
The United States Air Force accepts its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).
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| 1948-01-04
Burma regains its independence from the United Kingdom.
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| 1948-08-25
The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
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| 1948-03-18
Soviet consultants leave Yugoslavia in the first sign of a Tito-Stalin split.
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| 1948-05-29
Creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation
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| 1948-07-26
U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military of the United States.
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| 1948-06-25
The Berlin airlift begins.
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| 1948-12-30
The Cole Porter Broadway musical, Kiss Me, Kate (1,077 performances), opens at the New Century Theatre and becomes the first show to win the Best Musical Tony Award.
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| 1948-08-01
The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations is founded.
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| 1948-08-23
World Council of Churches is formed.
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| 1948-07-16
Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
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| 1948-09-04
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons.
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| 1948-08-14
Don Bradman, widely regarded as the best cricket batsman in history, makes a duck in his final Test innings.
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| 1948-12-26
Cardinal Mindszenty is arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy.
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| 1948-07-29
Olympic Games: The Games of the XIV Olympiad – after a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin open in London.
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| 1948-03-25
The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
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| 1948-07-17
The South Korean constitution is proclaimed.
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| 1948-12-28
The DC-3 airliner NC16002 disappears 50 miles south of Miami, Florida.
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| 1948-05-01
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is established, with Kim Il-sung as leader.
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| 1948-04-09
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán's assassination provokes a violent riot in Bogotá (the Bogotazo), and a further ten years of violence in Colombia known as La violencia.
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| 1948-09-06
Juliana becomes Queen of the Netherlands.
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| 1948-02-25
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia takes control of government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the Third Republic ends.
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| 1948-05-13
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.
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| 1948-12-12
Malayan Emergency: Batang Kali Massacre – 14 members of the Scots Guards stationed in Malaysia allegedly massacre 24 unarmed civilians and set fire to the village.
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| 1948-07-20
U.S. President Harry S. Truman issues a peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
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| 1948-02-04
Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth.
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