1948

World Events

• March 1948: The United States, Britain, and France met in London and agreed to unite the Western zones they occupied in Germany and to establish a West German republic. The Soviet Union responded by leaving the Allied Control Council and preparing to create an East German state.

• Berlin, the capital of Germany, was divided into occupied zones by the Potsdam Conference in 1945, it is located within the Soviet controlled East Germany. In June 1948, the Soviet Union stops road and rail traffic from West Berlin to the west. The United States participates in an airlift program to provide food and medicine to the people in West Berlin. The blockade is lifted in September, 1949.
• The tension between the United States and the USSR is labeled the "Cold War."
• Israel is established as an independent nation.

• India was granted independence by Great Britain in 1947, but the country was divided in two; Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The countries exploded in violence and Mahatma Gandhi spent the last two months of his life in trying to stop it. He began a starvation protest that led him to the brink of death, this fast finally quelled the rioting. In January, 1948, he was killed by a Hindu fanatic as he walked through a crowd in New Delhi.
• Apartheid begins in South Africa.

San Diego History

• Palomar Observatory opens in June. Construction on the 200-inch mirror had begun in 1934.

• The San Diego Museum of Art re-opens after being closed in order to serve as a hospital ward for the United States Navy.
• Highway 163 intersects Balboa Park, running under the Cabrillo bridge. It replaced a small river; directly under the bridge, there had been a small pond called La Laguna Cabrillo.
• KFMB Channel 8 becomes San Diego's first and only local television station for five years. Channel 10 would follow in 1953.

Arts

• French musician Pierre Schaeffer introduces "musique concréte". It replaces typical musical elements, such as instruments and voice with noises and percussions.

• Andrew Wyeth paints Christina's World, an image of a paralyzed woman in front of her house. Barnett Newman, the abstract expressionist painter, finishes Onement 1.

American Life

• Birth Control activist Margaret Sanger founds the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
• Scrabble® is introduced.
• The world is embracing the circle. Long play records are introduced by CBS; they play at 33 1/3 rpm and can hold 45 minutes of music. In the recreation world, the Frisbee is patented.

• Ferdinand Porsche builds the first "Porsche 356" sports car.
• PanAm offers a flight around the world for $1,700. It is the first passenger airline capable of this service.
• Alfred C. Kinsey releases the report Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.