1946
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation on interstate buses is unconstitutional.
1946
Malcolm Little (Malcolm X) is sentenced to prison for burglary in New York. While serving his time, Malcolm adopts the Islamic religion as practiced by the Nation of Islam.
1946
American author Robert Penn Warren publishes All the King's Men, said to be loosely based on the career of Louisiana populist Huey Long.
1946
Communists abolish the monarchy in Bulgaria and Georgi Dimitrov becomes premier.
1946
Dr. Spock publishes The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care.
1946
EAM-ELAS communist forces begin a civil war in Greece.
1946
ENIAC, the first successful electronic digital computer, becomes operational.
1946
Elections in Italy abolish the monarchy in favor of a republic.
1946
General De Gaulle resigns as president of France; the Fourth Republic is formed.
1946
Juan Peron is elected president of Argentina.
1946
General MacArthur promotes Japanese democracy with the emperor as constitutional monarch.
1946
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini becomes the first U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Catholic Church.
1946
The Philippines are granted independence with Manuel Roxas y Acuna as president.
1946
The Viet Minh begin a guerrilla war against the French in Indochina (Vietnam).
1946
Winston Churchill uses the term "Iron Curtain" to describe the divide created in Europe by the Soviets. It should be noted that Joseph Goebbels had used the same term as early as 1944 during a speech in Berlin.
1946
Leon Blum serves briefly as interim French premier, playing a key role in the establishment of the Fourth Republic.
1946
The United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly holds its first meeting in London, with Norway's Trygve Lie elected secretary general.
1946
John D. Rockefeller gives $8.5 million for a United Nations (U.N.) center in New York City.
1946 January 3
Karl Maria Weisthor (Wiligut) dies in Arolsen, Germany. Elsa Baltrush, his SS-assigned housekeeper, had been a member of Himmler's personal staff until she was appointed as Weisthor's housekeeper and
traveling companion after his retirement from SS active duty in August 1939. (Mund; Roots)
1946 January 8
Articles of incorporation for American Action, Inc. are filed in Delaware and headquarters are established in Chicago.
1946 February
The Soviets are said to have buried the remains of Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva, as well as those of Joseph Goebbels and his family, at a site near Magdeburg, East Germany, in the Soviet zone of occupation.
1946 February
Ezra Pound, after a psychiatric exam, is judged unfit to stand trial, and is confined to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Washington, D.C., for the next 12 years. Pound continued to write, but was not released until April 1958. He then returned to Italy where the Pisan Cantos, written while in custody resurrected his career after publication in 1948. It was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949.
1946 February 1
Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie is chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United Nations.
1946 February 18
Pope Pius XII, during a reception for the
diplomatic corps, declares that he has always condemned acts of injustice and
moral outrages and merely avoided expressions (during the war) that could have
done more harm than good. (Lewy)
1946 March 5
Winston Churchill delivers his famous "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Goebbels had used the term in German several years earlier during a speech at the Berlin Sportspalatz.
