1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba
Israel's birth and the Palestinian exodus shape a long conflict
The day after Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948, Egyptian, Transjordanian, Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese forces entered Palestine. Israel prevailed and under the 1949 armistices held about 78% of the former Mandate; the West Bank went to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. Some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled — the Nakba, or 'catastrophe', for Palestinians; historians still debate its causes.
Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 9 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 3 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 1 year earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — same year
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 1 year later
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 20 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 15 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 12 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 7 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 5 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 12 years earlier
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 7 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 6 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 3 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 9 years later
Africa
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 13 years earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 8 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 10 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 12 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 15 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 3 years earlier
- 1947 Independence and Partition of India — 1 year earlier
- 1949 Founding of the People's Republic of China — 1 year later
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 5 years later
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 18 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 19 years earlier
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — 3 years earlier
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 1 year earlier
- 1969 Moon landing — 21 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 22 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 12 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 7 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 6 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 6 years later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 11 years later
Alive at the time
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 79)
- Winston Churchill (aged 74)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 70)
- Albert Einstein (aged 69)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 67)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 59)
- Mao Zedong (aged 55)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 30)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 19)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 18)