Stories from 1949
Browse a timeline of top world events from 1949. Or, use Proust to tell your life story and share personal
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February 10, 1949
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New York, New York
Famed playwright Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman debuted, winning him a Pulitzer Prize.
April 4, 1949
Twelve countries, including the U.S., Great Britain, and France, established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in order to counter Soviet power and the spread of communism.
June 8, 1949
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's book on a future society governed by an authoritarian government, was published.
June 8, 1949
The FBI produced a list of Hollywood luminaries suspected of being communist.
August 3, 1949
The National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America merged to form the National Basketball Association, consisting of 17 teams from both small towns and big cities. Sixty years later, the number of teams would almost double.
August 29, 1949
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Russia
The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb after having received detailed secrets from a physicist about American and British research. This prompted the United States to create the Hydrogen bomb three years later, but by 1955 the Soviet Union developed its own.
