The almanac
The 1949 Edition
A vintage print: the UN count of births worldwide starts in 1950. About 35 million are still in circulation.
Estimates from the UN World Population Prospects 2024. How we count
What happened in 1949
- The first Emmy Awards were handed outThe Hollywood ceremony honored only Los Angeles shows; a 20-year-old ventriloquist won the first Emmy.January 25 · Source: Television Academy
- Death of a Salesman opened on BroadwayArthur Miller's play starring Lee J. Cobb won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and six Tony Awards.February 10 · Source: Playbill
- A two-stage rocket reached 244 miles upA small rocket launched from atop a V-2 at White Sands set new records for height and speed.February 24 · Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
- Britain's EDSAC computer ran its first calculationMaurice Wilkes built the machine at Cambridge University, and it did 714 operations a second.May 6 · Source: Computer History Museum, This Day in History
- NASCAR ran its first Strictly Stock raceJim Roper of Kansas won the Charlotte race, now counted as the first Cup Series event.June 19 · Source: NASCAR Hall of Fame
- The Lone Ranger rode onto ABC televisionThe masked radio hero and his horse Silver made the jump to TV.September · Source: Television Academy Foundation, The Interviews
- Disney's Ichabod and Mr. Toad openedThe film paired The Wind in the Willows with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.October 5 · Source: D23 (Walt Disney Archives)
Famous people born in 1949
- Haruki MurakamiJapanese writer · born January 12
- Valery LeontievRussian singer · born March 19
- Sigourney WeaverAmerican actress · born October 8
- Bruce SpringsteenAmerican rock singer · born September 23
- Richard GereAmerican actor · born August 31
- Garry ShandlingAmerican comedian · born November 29
- Jeff BridgesAmerican actor · born December 4
- Christopher HitchensEnglish American author and journalist · born April 13
From Wikidata, ranked by how many Wikipedia languages write about them. Spotted a mistake?
If you were born in 1949
- Older than PeanutsThe Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz first appeared, in seven US newspapers on October 2, 1950.
- Older than the DNA double helixWatson and Crick's paper describing the double-helix structure of DNA was published in Nature on April 25, 1953.
- Older than the first climb of EverestEdmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953.
- Older than the four-minute mileRoger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, in Oxford on May 6, 1954.