
1949
- "Berlin Airlift" ends
- First Soviet atomic bomb
- Start of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
- German Federal Republic (West Germany) established
- Communist People's Republic of China established
- Independence for Indonesia
- South Africa institutionalizes apartheid
- Americans buy 100,000 TV sets a week
- RCA introduces the 45 rpm phonograph record
- Rotary blade lawn mowers introduced
- Volkswagen "Beetle" introduced in US
- George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman"
- 1st jet airliner - the DeHavilland "Comet"
- Silly Putty
- Broadway - "South Pacific"
- Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis' 1st film - "My Friend Irma"
- Song - "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer"
- TV show - "Hopalong Cassidy" - 1st Western hit TV show
- Meryl Streep, Tom Watson, and Bruce Jenner born
- Margaret Mitchell and Solomon Guggenheim die
© The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, 2000