• January 1 - Nationalisation of UK railways to form British Railways.
• January 4 - Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom
• January 5 - Warner Brothers shows the first color newsreel (Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl).
• January 30 - Indian pacifist and leader Mahatma Gandhi is murdered by a Hindu extremist.
• January 30 - 1948 Winter Olympics open in St. Moritz, Switzerland
• February 4 - Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth. King George VI becomes King of Ceylon.
• February 18 - Eamon de Valera, head of government since 1932, loses power to an opposition coalition. John A. Costello is appointed Taoiseach of Éire (formerly called the Irish Free State) by President O'Kelly.
• February 24 - The Communist Party seizes control of Czechoslovakia
• March 8 - The United States Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution.
• April 1 - Cold War: Berlin Airlift - Military forces, under direction of the Soviet-controlled government in East Germany, set-up a land blockade of West Berlin.
• April 3 - President Harry Truman signs the Marshall Plan which authorizes $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
• April 7 - The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
• May 14 - Israel established as an independent state.
• May 14 - The murder of a three-year-old girl in Blackburn, England leads to the fingerprinting of more than 40,000 men in the city in an attempt to find the murderer.
• May 15 - Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attack Israel.
• May 16 - Chaim Weizmann is elected as the first President of Israel.
• May 26 - The United States Congress passes Public Law 557 which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as the auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
• July 5 - British National Health Service Act enacted.
• July 20 - Cold War: President Harry S. Truman issues the first peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union.
• July 26 - U.S. President signs Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the United States Armed Forces
• July 31 - At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.
• September 4 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons.
• September 6 - Juliana becomes Queen of the Netherlands.
• November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1948: Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey for the US presidency.
• November 12 - In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II.
• November 15 - Louis Stephen St. Laurent becomes Canada's twelfth prime minister.
• November 17 - Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi divorces Queen Fawzia of Egypt after she is unable to produce a male heir.
• December 10, United Nations General Assembly adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• December 30 - The play Kiss Me Kate opens for the first of 1,077 performances.

• Porsche is founded.
• Miranda, the innermost moon of Uranus, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.
• Casimir effect discovered by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir
• Tunnel of Vielha is opened in Val d'Aran, Spanish Pyrenees.
• Fresh Kills, world's largest landfill, opens in Staten Island, New York

Year in topic

• 1948 in film
  • Hamlet
  • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre starring Humphrey Bogart
  • Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman and José Ferrer
  • Key Largo starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
  • Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, starring Jimmy Stewart
• 1948 in literature
• 1948 in music
  • Columbia Records introduces the 33 1/3 LP (“long playing”) record
• 1948 in sports
  • February 21 - The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) was incorporated by William HG France to organize and promote the sport of stock car racing.
  • February 28 - Bud Gartiser sets a new world record after clearing the 50-yard low hurdles in 6.8 seconds.
  • 1948 Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland
  • 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London, United Kingdom
  • Baseball World Series: Cleveland Indians defeat the Boston Braves
• 1948 in television
  • CBS begins network programming.
  • ABC opens it's first television station in New York
  • June 20 - Toast of the Town, with Ed Sullivan, premieres on CBS, with guests Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
  • June 21 - The first network telecast of political conventions from Philadelphia.
  • July 30 - Professional wrestling premieres in prime-time on the DuMont network.
  • August 10 - Candid Camera debuts on ABC.
  • August 15 - The first network nightly newscast, CBS-TV News, debuts on CBS with Douglas Edwards.
  • September - Milton Berle becomes the first television star, with Texaco Star Theatre on NBC
  • Television manufacturing begins in Canada

Births

• January 7 - Kenny Loggins, singer
• January 10 - Donald Fagen, keyboardist
• January 14 - Carl Weathers, actor
• January 14 - T-Bone Burnett, producer, musician
• January 15 - Ronnie Van Zant, musician († 1977)
• January 16 - John Carpenter, director
• January 17 - Davíð Oddsson, Prime Minister of Iceland
• January 22 - George Foreman, boxer
• January 27 - Mikhail Baryshnikov, dancer
• February 4 - Alice Cooper, musician
• February 5 - Christopher Guest, actor, writer, director, composer
• February 5 - Barbara Hershey, actress
• February 11 - Sue Bernard, Playboy magazine's playmate for December 1966
• February 14 - Teller, magician (Penn and Teller)
• February 28 - Bernadette Peters, actress, singer
• February 28 - Mike Figgis, director, writer, composer
• February 28 - Mercedes Ruehl, actress
• March 2 - R. T. Crowley, writer, pioneer of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
• March 8 - Gary Numan, singer
• March 9 - Jeffrey Osborne, singer
• March 11 - Dominique Sanda, actress
• March 12 - James Taylor, musician
• March 17 - William Gibson, writer
• March 20 - Bobby Orr, ice hockey player
• March 22 - Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer
• March 22 - Wolf Blitzer, television journalist
• March 26 - Steven Tyler, musician ("Aerosmith")
• March 31 - Al Gore, Vice President of the United States
• March 31 - Rhea Perlman, actress
• April 1 - Jimmy Cliff, musician
• May 12 - Steve Winwood, singer ("Blind Faith", "Traffic")
• May 15 - Brian Eno, musician, record producer
• May 19 - Grace Jones, singer, actress
• May 21 - Leo Sayer, musician
• May 26 - Stevie Nicks, songwriter, actress
• May 31 - John Bonham ("Bonzo") (drummer)
• June 2 - Todd Rundgren, singer and producer
• June 13 - Marc Flanagan, television writer and producer
• June 13 - Garnet Bailey, professional hockey player & scout
• July 30 - Jean Reno, actor
• August 2 - Dennis Prager, radio talk show host and author
• August 3 - Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Prime Minister of France
• September 5 - Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Austrian diplomat and politician
• September 10 - Margaret Trudeau, future First Lady of Canada
• October 9 - Jackson Browne, musician
• November 10 - Vincent Schiavelli, actor
• November 14 - Prince Charles, later Prince of Wales
• November 16 - Mutt Lange, record producer
• December 27 - Gerard Depardieu, French actor

Deaths

• January 21 - Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, composer
• January 30 - Mohandas Gandhi, Indian politician
• January 30 - Orville Wright of the Wright brothers, American co-inventor of the airplane.
• February 11 - Sergy Eisenstein, film director.
• March 10 - Zelda Fitzgerald (Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald)
• March 10 - Jan Masaryk, Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia
• March 28 - Dianne Wiest, actress
• March 31 - Egon Erwin Kisch, journalist and author
• May 15 - Father Edward J. Flanagan, priest, founder of Boys Town
• May 28 - Unity Mitford, British friend of Hitler (*1914)
• July 23 - David Wark Griffith, film director.
• September 11 - Muhammed Ali Jinnah, first Governor-General of Pakistan
• October 24 - Franz Lehár, composer
• December 31 - Sir Malcolm Campbell, land and water racer

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
• Chemistry - Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius
• Medicine - Paul Hermann Müller
• Literature - Thomas Stearns Eliot
• Peace - Not awarded.
  

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