• Most Successful Ad Campaign Ever: Before the DeBeers 1948 Ad Campaign, diamond rings were not synonymous with marriage or engagement.
• Popular Songs include: I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm by Les Brown, The Woody Woodpecker Song by Kay Kyser, and It’s Magic by Doris Day
• The Big Movies included The Snake Pit, Easter Parade, and The Pirate
• The price of a dozen eggs in 1948 was 79 cents
  In-N-Out cheeseburger: 30 cents
• The World Population was ~ 2,538,000,000
• US Life Expectancy: Males: 64.6 years, Females: 69.9 years
• “Tupperware Parties” became a thing.
• The first Jukeboxes were available.
• Scientists at Bell Labs invented the transistor.
• And… a man was found dead on a beach in Adelaide, South Australia, and the words “Taman Shud”, torn from a book, were in a hidden pocket. The rest of the book was found in a nearby car, with a mysterious code on a page only visible under UV Light. The code and the identity of the man have never been solved.

“Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”
– Alfonso Bedoya, as Gold Hat, in Treasure of the Sierra Madre

“A diamond is forever”
– DeBeers

In 1927, Pez Candy was created to help people quit cigarettes. In 1948, the dispenser was created to mimic a lighter. It wasn’t until the 50s that it was made into a children’s toy.

In an alternate reality, Dewey defeated President Truman in the US Presidential election. In this reality, Truman won.

Mentos were first produced in the Netherlands in 1948. They are now sold in almost every country.

Columbia Records introduced the first ever 12-inch microgroove disc, which could hold up to twenty-three minutes of music per side, allowing for the rise of the Long Play (LP) album. One side of a 10″ 78rpm is limited to about 3 minutes, so musicians did not publish long songs from the beginning of the 20th century onward. This limitation existed until 1948 with the invention of the LP, but pop songs are usually under 4 minutes long.

Jimmy the Greek Snyder, bet $10,000 at 17-1 odds on Harry Truman to defeat Thomas Dewey in the 1948 election because Dewey had a mustache and “American women didn’t trust men with a mustache.”

The Ford F-series truck was introduced.

Muddy Waters hit Rollin’ Stone inspired a 1960s band a few decades later. (Hint: It was NOT “The Beatles”, “The Who,” “The Kinks,” or “Cream.”)

Bar codes were invented by Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland.

Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ordering the integration of the armed forces shortly after World War II, a major advance in civil rights.

Under § 501 of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, Voice of America was forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens until July 2013. The legislation in 1948 intended to protect the American public from propaganda actions by its government.

Almost all chickens eaten today come from the winner of the 1948 ‘Chicken of Tomorrow’ Contest, whose genetics now dominate poultry farms worldwide.

When reviewing the film Isn’t it Romantic, reviewer Leonard Maltin replied, “No,” which is the shortest review ever given to a motion picture.

1948 Winter Olympic Games athletes lacked the resources to compete post-WWII, so the Norwegian team had to borrow skis from the American team.

Japan and Germany were not invited to the Olympic games after WWII In 1948.

Before the NBA had any black players, the Harlem Globetrotters beat the NBA Champion Minneapolis Lakers in a straight-up game.

The Philadelphia Eagles won the 1948 NFL Championship game despite their QB scoring zero passer rating.

Anne Antoinette Françoise Charlotte Zita Marquerite, a former Macy’s salesperson, became Queen of Romania in 1948.

Candid Camera started in 1947 as Candid Microphone and became a TV show in 1948.

Formed in 1948, the Arlington Ladies are a group of women who attend the funeral of every armed forces member buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

McCulloch chainsaws were introduced.

In 1948 the Ford Motor Company was offered the Volkswagen company free of charge and declined the offer because it “wasn’t worth a damn.”

It is estimated that Bing Crosby’s recordings filled more than half of the radio time allocated to recorded music in 1948. He is the biggest pop star of all time – no one else comes close. For perspective, Billboard magazine rates artists by a point system. The Beatles scored 5,230. Elvis got 9,029. Frank Sinatra scored about 13,000. Bing Crosby scored 35,150.

The Nobel Committee declined the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948 because “there was no suitable living candidate.” This was meant as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, who was assassinated earlier that year without receiving the Prize.

Denmark didn’t have the letter “Å” until 1948. Before this, the letter å was written as simply “Aa”. This is why you can see some signs using “Aa” and some other “Å” for the same town.

Sadamichi Hirasawa robbed a bank by pretending to be a public health official and giving cyanide to every bank employee as a “dysentery inoculation.”

The 1948 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology was awarded for the invention of DDT.

Actor Rex Harrison’s mistress, Carole Landis, committed suicide. His career survived, and his marriage to Lilli Palmer survived until 1957.

Between 1946 and 1948, the US Public Health Service hired infected prostitutes to give STDs to prisoners, soldiers, and mental patients in Guatemala, all in the name of research. At least 83 people died.

Huang Yu was the sole survivor of an airplane crash in 1948. His survival is notable for three reasons: it was the world’s first commercial aviation hijacking, he was a hijacker and he was the sole survivor of the crash he caused

Charts based on Billboard music charts.