1947

1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday in the Gregorian calendar.

• February 28 incident in Taiwan was an affair in which large numbers of people protested against the government, in which thousands were killed by the regime's forces.
• April 15 – Jackie Robinson, an African-American, plays first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers major-league baseball team, ending the sport's unofficial rule against blacks playing.
• June 26 - Sindh province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
• June 29 - Balochistan (Pakistan) province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
• July 2 - North-West Frontier Province province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
• July 19 - Punjab (Pakistan) province joins Pakistan, after the majority voted in favour.
• July 22 – The former East Bengal province joins Pakistan on the basis of a Muslim-majority region the people had voted in to join the cause for Pakistan, according to the Partition Plan, based on the Two-nation theory. It later becomes the present day People's Republic of Bangladesh, since 1971.
• August 14 – Pakistan is Created from British India ,end of the British Raj.
• August 15 – India gains independence from Britain.

• January 1 - Jon Corzine, American politician
• January 8 – David Bowie, British singer (d. 2016)
• January 22 – Vladimir Oravsky, Swedish author
• February 18 - Dennis DeYoung, American keyboardist (Styx)
• March 3 - Jennifer Warnes, American singer
• March 8 – Carole Bayer Sager, American actress and singer
• March 24 - Alan Sugar, British businessman
• March 24 - Christine Gregoire, American politician
• March 25 – Elton John, British singer
• March 29 - Bobby Kimball, American singer (Toto)
• April 16 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, American basketball player
• April 18 - James Woods, American actor
• May 8 - John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan, British politician
• May 25 - Mitch Margo, American singer (The Tokens) (d. 2017)
• May 31 - Junior Campbell, Scottish musician and composer
• June 24 - Mick Fleetwood, English drummer (Fleetwood Mac)
• July 2 - Elijah Kostunica, Serbian politician
• July 9 - O. J. Simpson, American football player (d. 2024)
• July 17 - Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall
• July 19 - Brian May, English guitarist (Queen)
• July 19 - Bernie Leadon, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
• July 22 - Don Henley, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
• July 30 - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-born actor, bodybuilder and politician, former Governor of California
• July 31 - Richard Griffiths, British actor (d. 2013)
• August 16 – Carol Moseley Braun, American jurist
• September 21 - Don Felder, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
• September 30 - Marc Bolan, British musician (d. 1977)
• October 4 - Ann Widdecombe, British politician
• October 26 – Hillary Clinton, former First Lady of the United States and United States Secretary of State
• October 30 - Timothy B. Schmit, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
• November 1 - Bob Weston, English rock guitarist (Fleetwood Mac) (d. 2012)
• November 8 - Marianne Wiggins, American author
• November 10 - Bachir Gemayel, Lebanese politician (d. 1982)
• November 10 - Greg Lake, English musician (Emerson, Lake & Palmer) (d. 2016)
• November 20 - Joe Walsh, American singer-songwriter and musician (Eagles)
• December 8 – Gregg Allman, American rock musician (The Allman Brothers Band) (d. 2017)
• December 11 - David E. Stone, American sound editor

• Emil J. Brach, American candy manufacturer (b. 1859)
• January 25 – Al Capone, American gangster (b. 1899)
• March 11 – Victor Lustig, Austrian-born con artist (b. 1890)
• March 18 – William C. Durant, American automobile pioneer (b. 1861)
• March 19 – Prudence Heward, Canadian painter (b. 1896)
• March 20 – Victor Goldschmidt, Swiss geochemist (b. 1888)
• March 30 – Arthur Machen, Welsh-born writer (b. 1863)
• April 1 – King George II of Greece (b. 1890)
• April 7 – Henry Ford, American automobile manufacturer (b. 1863)
• April 20 – King Christian X of Denmark (b. 1870)
• April 24 – Willa Cather, American novelist (b. 1873)
• May 8 – Harry Gordon Selfridge, American department store magnate (b. 1858)
• May 16 – Frederick Hopkins, English biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (b. 1861)
• May 17 – George William Forbes, Prime Minister of New Zealand
• May 20 – Philipp Lenard, Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1862)
• May 24 – C. F. Ramuz, Swiss writer (b. 1878)
• July 19 – Aung San, Burmese nationalist (assassinated) (b. 1915)
• July 30 – Joseph Cook, sixth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1860)
• October 4 – Max Planck, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1858)
• November 25 – Léon-Paul Fargue, French writer (b. 1876)
• December 1 – Aleister Crowley, British occultist (b. 1875)
• December 1 – G. H. Hardy, British mathematician (b. 1877)
• December 7 – Tristan Bernard, French writer and lawyer (b. 1866)
• December 7 – Nicholas M. Butler, American president of Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1862)
• December 17 – J. N. Brønsted, Danish chemist (b. 1879)

• Hue and Cry

• The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
• Bright November – Kingsley Amis' first collection of poems
• Country Place – Ann Lane Petty
• Creatures of Circumstance – W. Somerset Maugham
• The Cold War – Walter Lippmann
• Dark Carnival – Ray Bradbury's first book
• Dialectic of Enlightenment – Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
• Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
• Eyes of a Blue Dog – Gabriel García Márquez
• Froth on the Daydream – Boris Vian
• God Is For White Folks – Thomas Will
• Goodnight Moon – Margaret Wise Brown
• Great Northern? – Arthur Ransome
• A High Wind Rising – Elsie Singmaster
• I, the Jury – Mickey Spillane
• Les Jeux Inconnus – François Boyer
• Knock On Any Door – Willard Motley
• Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool – George Orwell
• Masquerade, a Historical Novel – Oscar Micheaux
• Miss Hickory – Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
• The Moneyman – Thomas B. Costain
• Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost & Found Generation – Samuel Putnam
• The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
• The Pearl – John Steinbeck
• The Adventures of Tintin
• The Plague (La Peste) – Albert Camus
• Prince of Foxes – Samuel Shellabarger
• Rocket Ship Galileo – Robert A. Heinlein
• Saggy Baggy Elephant – Kathryn Jackson and Byron Jackson
• Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
• Tales of the South Pacific – James A. Michener
• Tarzan and the Foreign Legion – Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Tea with Mrs Goodman – Philip Toynbee
• Theatre – W. Somerset Maugham
• Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
• Who Has Seen the Wind? – W.O. Mitchell

• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine won by Carl Ferdinand Cori, Gerty Cori and Bernardo Houssay