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Welcome to Retroville! It’s 1947!
IN THE NEWS:
- Texas City’s piers and waterfront are destroyed when two cargo ships explode in the harbor leaving nearly 600 dead and more than 2,000 injured
- The Truman Doctrine is proposed calling for an attempt to contain communist expansion
- The Marshall Plan for European post-war recovery is proposed calling for a coordinated program to help European nations recover from the war (by 1951, the plan will cost more than $11 billion)
- India and Pakistan gain their independence from the British
- U.S. Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the speed barrier
- Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers making him the first African American to play Major League Baseball
- The Diary of Anne Frank is published
- Transistor is invented at Bell Laboratories
- Tupperware is patented by Earl Silas Tupper
- Carbon-14 Dating is discovered by Willard Libby
- NY Yankees defeat Brooklyn Dodgers to take the World Series
- Jake LaMotta is knocked out by Billy Fox
ON THE RADIO:
- Adventurers Club
- Bickersons
- Calling All Detectives
- Crime Club
- Escape
- Frank Merriwell
- Hearts in Harmony
- Hop Harrigan
- Life of Riley
- Murder at Midnight
ON TELEVISION:
- Kraft Television Theater (first dramatic series)
- Meet the Press
- Howdy Doody Show
- First televised World Series Game – Yankees v Dodgers
- Harry S. Truman gives the first televised Presidential speech
FADS & FASHION:
- Magic 8 Ball
- Howdy Doody dolls
WHAT THINGS COST:
- Car: $1,500
- Gasoline: 23 cents per gallon
- House: $13,000
- Bread: 12 cents per loaf
- Milk: 80 cents per gallon
- Postage Stamp: 3 cents
- Average Annual Salary: $3,500
- Minimum Wage: 40 cents per hour
ACADEMY AWARD – BEST PICTURE:
- Gentlemen’s Agreement – a dramatic film by Elia Kazan starring Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire
TONY AWARD – BEST MUSICAL:
- The Tony Awards begin in 1947 but the first Tony for a musical isn’t given out until 1949 (look ahead to 1949 to see the first winner)
PULITZER PRIZES:
- All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (novel)
- Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III (history)
- The Autobiography of William Allen White (autobiography)
- Lord Weary’s Castle by Robert Lowell (poetry)
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE:
- The Friends of Service Council, London, founded in 1647; and
- The American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), Washington DC, founded in the United States in 1672
TOP SONGS:
- Heartaches by Ted Weems
- Smoke, Smoke, Smoke (That Cigarette) by Tex Williams
- Near You by Francis Craig
- Too Fat Polka by Arthur Godfrey
