1947
India and Pakistan gain independence
At midnight India awoke, as Nehru put it, to life and freedom, and so did the new Muslim state of Pakistan. The partition Cyril Radcliffe had drawn in six weeks triggered the largest forced migration in history. Fifteen million fled across the new border; perhaps a million died in the killings. The subcontinent was free and wounded.
Transistor invented at Bell Labs
In a New Jersey lab, Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley demonstrated a tiny germanium device that could amplify and switch electric current without vacuum tubes. Nobody outside the lab much noticed. Within twenty years the transistor would be shrinking into integrated circuits and turning the computer from a room into a chip.
Dead Sea Scrolls discovered
A Bedouin shepherd boy, tossing stones into a cliffside cave near the Dead Sea, heard pottery break. He had found the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, two-thousand-year-old Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts that rewrote the scholarly understanding of early Judaism and Christianity. More caves and more scrolls followed over the next decade. Biblical scholarship was permanently reset.
Indian Independence and Partition
At midnight, Nehru spoke of a tryst with destiny as India became free. But the freedom came twinned with partition - a line drawn by a British lawyer who had never been to India split the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Twelve million people fled across the new borders. A million died in the crossing. Independence tasted of ash and joy together.
Truman Doctrine declares Cold War
In a speech asking Congress to aid Greece and Turkey against communist pressure, Harry Truman pledged that the United States would support free peoples resisting subjugation. It was an open-ended commitment that quietly reversed American tradition. The Cold War had a mission statement. Within two years there would be a NATO to back it.
Marshall announces his Plan at Harvard
In a short speech at Harvard's commencement, Secretary of State George Marshall offered American aid to Europe for reconstruction if Europeans worked out a plan together. The speech was not reported loudly in the American press. Bevin in London caught it on the radio and moved fast. The Marshall Plan had its public birth.
Marshall Plan announced
Secretary of State George Marshall, in a fifteen-minute speech at Harvard's commencement, offered American aid to Europe for postwar reconstruction. Over the next four years thirteen billion dollars flowed to Western Europe, saving economies and locking the continent into the American-led order. Stalin called it economic imperialism and forbade his satellites from taking a cent.