Moonman by David Donohue, published by Egmont UK

Jan 2Mahatma Gandhi began a march for peace in East-Bengali.
Jan 3 In Trenton, New Jersey, Al Herrin, the handyman who claimed he had no bed to sleep in because he had never slept a wink in his life, passed away at age 92. He was famed for catnapping in chairs but never sleeping in a bed. No bed was found in his living quarters after he died. Doctors said there was evidence that he had gone several months without sleep and they confirmed that if he went that long, it could well be that he was awake his entire life.
Jan 5Great Britain nationalized its coal mines.
Jan 25American gangster Al Capone died of syphilis in Miami Beach, Fla., at age 48.
Feb 20A chemical mixing error caused an explosion that destroyed 42 blocks in LA.
Feb 20The British pledged to leave India by June 1948.
Feb 21Edwin H. Land publicly demonstrated his Polaroid Land camera in NYC. It could produce a black-and-white photograph in 60 seconds.
Mar 4France and Britain signed an alliance treaty.
Mar 6Winston Churchill opposed the withdrawal of troops from India
Mar 25A coal mine explosion in Centralia, Ill., claimed 111 lives. Harper’s Magazine commissioned Ben Shawn to create drawings to accompany an article on the disaster.
Apr 28Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl (d.2002) and five others sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day, 4,300 nautical mile journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia. They wanted to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia.
Apr 30President Truman signed a measure officially changing the name of Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam.
May 3Japan formed a constitutional democracy.
Jun 1The OPA, which issued WW II rationing coupons, disbanded.
Jun 11The government announced the end of household and institutional sugar rationing, to take effect the next day. It began May 28, 1942.
Jun 14Farmer William ‘Mac’ Brazel noticed some strange debris while working on the Foster ranch, wehre he was foreman, some 70 miles north of Roswell (though this exact date is a point of contention).
Jun 24Flying saucers were "sighted" over Mount Rainier by pilot Ken Arnold.
Jul 2An object crashed near Roswell, N.M. The Army Air Force later insisted it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts gave rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.
Jul 8Jul 8, In New Mexico the Roswell Daily Record reported the military’s capture of a flying saucer. It became know as the Roswell Incident. Officials later called the debris a "harmless, high-altitude weather balloon. In 1994 the Air Force released a report saying the wreckage was part of a device used to spy on the Soviets.
Aug 7The balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, which had carried a six-man crew 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean, crashed into a reef in a Polynesian archipelago.
Aug 15India gained independence after some 200 years of British rule. Britain partitioned the subcontinent. Prior to independence, 565 princes ruled a third of India. After independence the government let the royals retain their titles and assets in return for incorporating their principalities into the new nation. The 664 princely states of India were given the choice of which country they wanted to join. Although most of the people of Kashmir were Muslim, the maharaja was Hindu and he appealed to India for help. Independence in Pakistan and India led to bloody conflicts and thousands died.
Aug 18Naval torpedo and mine factory exploded at Cadiz, Spain, killing 300
Aug 24In Scotland the first annual Edinburgh Festival was held at the Usher Hall
Sep 18The National Security Act went into effect. It created a Cabinet secretary of defense and unified the Army, Navy and newly formed Air Force into a National Military Establishment. The US Air Force was carved out of the old Army Air Corps. The act established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Oct 3The 1st telescope lens 200" (508 cm) in diameter completed.
Oct 14Air Force test pilot Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager (24) flew the experimental Bell X-1 [Bell XS-1] rocket plane aircraft and broke the sound barrier to Mach 1.07 for the first time over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., which was then called Muroc Army Air Field. The area has the largest dry lake bed in the world, a 44-square mile area known as Rogers Lake. Suspended from the belly of a Boeing B-29, Glamorous Glennis was dropped at 10:26 a.m. from a height of 20,000 feet. Yeager (who had broken two ribs in a riding accident the night before) fired the four rocket motor chambers in pairs, breaking through the sound barrier as he increased airspeed to almost 700 mph and climbed to an altitude of 43,000 feet. The XS-1 remained at supersonic speeds for 20.5 seconds, with none of the buffeting that characterized high-speed subsonic flight. The 14-minute flight was Yeager’s ninth since being named primary pilot in June 1947. The Air Force and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the forerunner of NASA) did not make the event public until Jun 10, 1948.
Nov 2Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden airplane, known as the Spruce Goose, on its only flight, which lasted 70 sec. over Long Beach Harbor in California. The plane had an 8-story tail and a 320-foot wingspan. It was designed to take seven hundred soldiers into battle. The plane had a wing span longer than a football field, and was powered by 8 engines and was crafted out of 200 tons of plywood. The war ended before the plane was deployed, but Hughes proved the Spruce Goose's was air-worthy.
Nov 1615,000 demonstrated in Brussels against mild sentences of Nazis.
Dec 23John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, unveiled what was soon to be called the transistor, short for the electrical property known as trans-resistance, which paved the way to a new era of miniaturized electronics. The device was improved by William Schockley as a junction transistor. All 3 received a Nobel Prize in 1956.
Dec 27Buffalo Bob Smith (1917-1998) and puppet Howdy Doody starred on the first nationally broadcast children’s TV show. It ran to Sep. 30, 1960. The show was produced by Martin Stone and was shot in NBC studio 3-K at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The characters Clarabell the Clown (Bob Keeshan later Captain Kangaroo), Dilly Dally, Chief Thunderthud, Princess Summerfall, Phineas T. Bluster and Flub-a-Dub were featured. The theme song was based on the French ditty: "Ta-ra-ra-Boom-der-e." The show ran for 2,543 episodes. Rufus Rose was the puppeteer for most of the shows. The Rose family later fought with the Detroit Institute of Arts for possession of the original show puppet.