1948

Events

• January 5 - Semiramis Hotel bombing: members of Haganah blow up a hotel in West Jerusalem, killing 24-26 civilians.
• January 30 - Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated at the Birla House compound in New Delhi by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse.
• February 21 to 25 - The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, lead by Klement Gottwald, seizes power in the country during a coup d'etat. Gottwald subsequently declares the formation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
• April 9 - Jorge Eliécer Gaitán is assassinated by Juan Roa Sierra, who later the same day would be lynched by a mob to death. This event would trigger the beginning of La Violencia in Colombia.
• April 9 - Deir Yassin massacre: fighters from Irgun and Lehi kill at least 107 Palestinian Arabs, including women and children, in Deir Yassin, a village of roughly 600 people near Jerusalem.
• May 15 - Beginning of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
• June 4 - Daniel François Malan is elected Prime Minister of South Africa, allowing the National Party to become the ruling party and marking the beginning of Apartheid in South Africa.
• June 11 - Irgun is dissolved.
• June 12 - Mátyás Rákosi is named General Secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party.
• June 14 - Klement Gottwald becomes President of Czechoslovakia.
• June 16 - Beginning of the Malayan Emergency.
• June 28 - Josip Broz Tito withdraws Yugoslavia from Cominform following ideological differences with Joseph Stalin.
• August 12 - The Babrra Massacre takes place.
• August 15 - The Republic of Korea (South Korea) is declared. Syngman Rhee is elected as the nation's inaugural president.
• September 3 - Bolesław Bierut is named General Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party.
• September 8 - Max Amann is sentenced to ten years in a labor camp by an Allied court.
• September 9 - Kim Il-sung declares the formation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and names himself premier.
• September 17 - Swedish UN diplomat Folke Bernadotte is assassinated in Jerusalem by Lehi.
• December 23 - Six high-ranking officials of Imperial Japan, including former Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, are hanged for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
• December 28 - Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi is assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Births

Villain births

• January 1 - Ismael Zambada García & Arthur J. Jones
• January 9 - John McMichael
• January 24 - Elliott Abrams
• January 28 - Charles Taylor
• February 5 - Roy Norris
• February 13 - Allan Legere
• February 16 - James Edward Pough
• March 9 - Mike Ramirez
• April 4 - Abdullah Öcalan
• May 7 - Susan Atkins
• August 3 - Michael W. Ryan
• August 14 - Abdul Quader Molla
• September 9 - Billie Wayne Coble
• October 7 - Varnado Simpson
• October 8 - Pedro López
• October 22 - Lynette Fromme
• October 30 - Barbara Stager
• November 12 - Hassan Rouhani
• November 20 - Leland Yee
• December 7 - Nikola Šainović
• December 18 - Edmund Kemper
• Unknown - James Patterson Smith

Victim births

• February 4 - Cheri Jo Bates
• September 24 - Phil Hartman
• October 11 - Lynn Eusan

Deaths

Villain deaths

• January 14 - Ans van Dijk
• January 24 - Maria Mandel & Arthur Liebehenschel
• April 9 - Juan Roa Sierra
• June 2 - Viktor Brack, Waldemar Hoven, Karl Brandt ＆ Wolfram Sievers
• August 5 - Alfred Leonard Cline
• September 1 - Feng Yuxiang
• October 18 - Walther von Brauchitsch
• December 23 - Hideki Tojo, Kenji Doihara, Heitarō Kimura, Koki Hirota, and Iwane Matsui

Victim deaths

• January 30 - Mahatma Gandhi
• April 9 - Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
• September 17 - Folke Bernadotte
• December 28 - Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi