Governor of Kansas: Andrew F. Schoeppel (Republican) (until January 13), Frank Carlson (Republican) (starting January 13)
Governor of Kentucky: Simeon S. Willis (Republican) (until December 9), Earle C. Clements (Democratic) (starting December 9)
Governor of Louisiana: Jimmie H. Davis (Democratic)
Governor of Maine: Horace A. Hildreth (Republican)
Governor of Maryland: Herbert R. O'Conor (Democratic) (until January 3), William Preston Lane, Jr. (Democratic) (starting January 3)
Governor of Massachusetts: Maurice J. Tobin (Democratic) (until January 2), Robert F. Bradford (Republican) (starting January 2)
Governor of Michigan: Harry Kelly (Republican) (until January 1), Kim Sigler (Republican) (starting January 1)
Governor of Minnesota: Edward John Thye (Republican) (until January 8), Luther W. Youngdahl (Republican) (starting January 8)
Governor of Mississippi: Fielding L. Wright (Democratic)
Governor of Missouri: Phil M. Donnelly (Democratic)
Governor of Montana: Sam C. Ford (Republican)
Governor of Nebraska: Dwight Griswold (Republican) (until January 9), Val Peterson (Republican) (starting January 9)
Governor of Nevada: Vail M. Pittman (Democratic)
Governor of New Hampshire: Charles M. Dale (Republican)
Governor of New Jersey: Walter Evans Edge (Republican) (until January 21), Alfred E. Driscoll (Republican) (starting January 21)
Governor of New Mexico: John J. Dempsey (Democratic) (until January 1), Thomas J. Mabry (Democratic) (starting January 1)
Governor of New York: Thomas Dewey (Republican)
Governor of North Carolina: R. Gregg Cherry (Democratic)
Governor of North Dakota: Fred G. Aandahl (Republican)
Governor of Ohio: Frank J. Lausche (Democratic) (until January 13), Thomas J. Herbert (Republican) (starting January 13)
Governor of Oklahoma: Robert S. Kerr (Democratic) (until January 13), Roy J. Turner (Democratic) (starting January 13)
Governor of Oregon: Earl Snell (Republican) (until October 30), John H. Hall (Republican) (starting October 30)
Governor of Pennsylvania:
until January 2: Edward Martin (Republican)
January 2-January 21: John C. Bell, Jr. (Republican)
starting January 21: James H. Duff (Republican)
Governor of Rhode Island: John Orlando Pastore (Democratic)
Governor of South Carolina: Ransome Judson Williams (Democratic) (until January 21), Strom Thurmond (Democratic) (starting January 21)
Governor of South Dakota: Merrill Q. Sharpe (Republican) (until January 7), George T. Mickelson (Republican) (starting January 7)
Governor of Tennessee: Jim Nance McCord (Democratic)
Governor of Texas: Coke R. Stevenson (Democratic) (until January 21), Beauford H. Jester (Democratic) (starting January 21)
Governor of Utah: Herbert B. Maw (Democratic)
Governor of Vermont: Mortimer R. Proctor (Republican) (until January 9), Ernest W. Gibson, Jr. (Republican) (starting January 9)
Governor of Virginia: William M. Tuck (Democratic)
Governor of Washington: Monrad C. Wallgren (Democratic)
Governor of West Virginia: Clarence W. Meadows (Democratic)
Governor of Wisconsin: Walter S. Goodland (Republican) (until March 12), Oscar Rennebohm (Republican) (starting March 12)
Governor of Wyoming: Lester C. Hunt (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governors[]
Lieutenant Governor of Alabama: Leven H. Ellis (Democratic) (until January 20), James C. Inzer (Democratic) (starting January 20)
Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas: James Lavesque Shaver (political party unknown) (until month and day unknown), Nathan Green Gordon (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
Lieutenant Governor of California: Frederick F. Houser (Republican) (until January 7), Goodwin Knight (Republican) (starting January 7)
Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota: Sioux K. Grigsby (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: Larry Morgan (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), George Oliver Benton (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
Lieutenant Governor of Texas: John Lee Smith (Democratic) (until January 21), Allan Shivers (Democratic) (starting January 21)
January 15 – Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", is found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The case remains unsolved to this day.
February 3 – Percival Prattis becomes the first African-American news correspondent allowed in the United States House of Representatives and Senate press galleries.
February 17 – Cold War: The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
February 20
An explosion at the O'Connor Electro-Plating Company in Los Angeles, California, leaves 17 dead, 100 buildings damaged, and a 22-foot-deep (6.7 m) crater in the ground.
Ordnance CorpsHermes projectV-2rocketBlossom I launched into space carrying plant material and fruitflies, the first animals to enter space.
February 21 – In New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", his Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America.
February 28 – The United States grants France a military base in Casablanca.
March 6 – The USS Newport News, the first completely air-conditioned warship, is launched in Newport News, Virginia.
March 13 – The 19th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Jack Benny, is held at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives receives the most nominations with eight and wins the most awards with seven, including Best Motion Picture and Wyler's second Best Director award.
March 25 – A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, kills 111 miners.
April–June[]
April 1 – Jackie Robinson signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American Major League Baseball player since the 1880s.
April 6 – The 1st Tony Awards, recognizing achievement in American theater, are awarded at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.
April 9
Multiple tornadoes strike Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas killing 181 and injuring 970.
The Journey of Reconciliation begins, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality.
April 15 – Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play Major League Baseball since the 1880s.
April 16
Texas City Disaster: The ammonium nitrate cargo of French-registered Liberty shipSS Grandcamp explodes in Texas City, Texas, killing at least 581, including all but one member of the city fire department, injuring at least 5,000 and destroying 20 city blocks. Of the dead, remains of 113 are never found and 63 are unidentifiable.
American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch describes the post–World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "Cold War".
April 26 – Academy award-winning Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Cat Concerto, is released to theatres.
May 6 – The Wisconsin earthquake affected Alaska with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong), causing a destructive basin wide tsunami, leaving 165–173 dead.
May 22
Cold War: In an effort to fight the spread of Communism, President Harry S. Truman signs an Act of Congress that implements the Truman Doctrine. This Act grants $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece.[1]
David Lean's film Great Expectations, based on the novel by Charles Dickens, opens in the U.S. Critics call it the finest film ever made from a Charles Dickens novel.
June 5 – Secretary of State George Marshall outlines the Marshall Plan for American reconstruction and relief aid to Europe.
June 21 – Seaman Harold Dahl claims to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island in Puget Sound, Washington. On the next morning, Dahl reports the first modern so-called "Men in Black" encounter.
June 23 – The United States Senate follows the House of Representatives in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
June 24 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
July–September[]
July 7 – A supposedly downed extraterrestrial spacecraft is reportedly found in the Roswell UFO incident, near Roswell, New Mexico, which has been written about by Stanton T. Friedman and many others.
July 18 – President Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act into law, which places the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate next in the line of succession after the Vice President.
July 26 – Cold War: President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into law, creating the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.
August – Fernwood Park race riot in Chicago.
August 29 – US announces the discovery of plutoniumfission, suitable for nuclear power generation.
September 17–21 – The 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane in southeastern Florida, and also in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, causes widespread damage and kills 51 people.
September 17 – Office of Indian Affairs renamed Bureau of Indian Affairs.
September 18 – Most provisions of the National Security Act go into effect, reorganizing the military to form the National Military Establishment (later the Department of Defense) with subordinate Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; creating the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council; and establishing the Secretary of Defense.
September 26 – U.S. Air Force is made a separate branch of the military.
September 27 – Walt Disney Productions' ninth feature film, Fun and Fancy Free, is released. It is Disney's fourth of six package films to be released through the 1940s and notably features Walt Disney's final voice role as Mickey Mouse.
October–December[]
October 14: Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier in the Bell X-1
Girls sunbathing at Cabrillo Beach, California, Dec. 28, 1947
October–November – Great Fires of 1947: Forest fires in Maine consume more than 200,000 acres of wooded land statewide, including over 17,000 acres on Mount Desert Island alone. 16 persons are killed and more than 1,000 homes destroyed in the blazes, with total property damage exceeding $23 million.
October – The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigations into communism in Hollywood.
October 6 – World Series games are broadcast on television for the first time.
The New York Yankees defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4 games to 3, to win their 11th World Series Title.
October 14 – The United States Air Forcetest pilot Captain Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 rocket plane faster than the speed of sound, the first time that this has been accomplished in level flight, or climbing.
November 2 – In California, designer Howard Hughes pilots the maiden flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat known as "Spruce Goose", the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built; the flight lasts only eight minutes and the craft is never flown again.
November 6 – The program Meet the Press makes its television debut on the NBC-TV network in the United States.
November 24 – Red Scare: The U.S. House of Representatives votes 346–17 to approve citations of Contempt of Congress against the so-called Hollywood 10, after the ten men refuse to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee concerning allegations of communist influences in the movie business. (The ten men are blacklisted by the Hollywoodmovie studios on the following day).
December 3 – The Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire opens in a Broadway theater.
December 6 – Arturo Toscanini conducts a concert performance of the first half of Giuseppe Verdi's operaOtello, which was based on William Shakespeare's play Othello, for a broadcast on NBC Radio. The second half of the opera is broadcast a week later.
December 22 – The first practical electronictransistor is demonstrated by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain working under William Shockley at AT&T's Bell Labs.
Ongoing[]
Cold War (1947–1991)
Second Red Scare (1947–1957)
Baby boom (1946–1964)
Births[]
January[]
Andrea Martin
Jill Eikenberry
Jonathan Banks
Glynn Turman
January 1
Jon Corzine, American politician
Leon Patillo, American singer and evangelist
Leonard Thompson, American golfer
January 2 – Jack Hanna, American zoologist
January 5
Mike DeWine, American politician
Mercury Morris, American football player
January 7 – Scott Reid, American baseball player and scout (d. 2021)[2]
January 8
William Bonin, American serial killer (d. 1996)
David Gates, American journalist and novelist
Laurie Walters, American actress
January 9 – Ronnie Landfield, American artist
January 10
George Alec Effinger, American science fiction author (d. 2002)
Afeni Shakur, American music businesswoman (d. 2016)
January 15 – Andrea Martin, Canadian-American actress (Second City Television)