Events from the year 1945 in the United States. World War II ended during this year following the surrender of Germany in May and that of Japan in September.
January 31 –Eddie Slovik is executed by firing squad for desertion, the first American soldier since the American Civil War, and last to date to be executed for this offense.
Walt Disney Productions' seventh feature film, The Three Caballeros, is released. It is Disney's second of six package films to be released through the 1940s and the first feature film to incorporate traditional animation with live-action actors.
April 7 – The only flight of the German ramming unit known as the Sonderkommando Elbe takes place, resulting in the loss of some 24 B-17s and B-24s of the United States Eighth Air Force.
April 30 –Adolf Hitler commits suicide by shooting himself with a gun in an underground bunker. Eva Braun, his wife, bit into a cyanide capsule.
May
May 3 – Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and 120 members of his team surrender to U.S. forces (later he becomes at the forefront and a pioneer of the U.S. space program).
A Japanese Fu-Go balloon bomb kills five children and a grown woman, Elsie Mitchell, near Bly, Oregon, when it explodes as they drag it from the woods. They are the only people killed by an enemy attack on the American mainland during World War II.
July 30 –WW II: The heavy cruiser USSIndianapolis is hit and sunk by torpedoes from the I-58 in the Philippine Sea. Some 900 survivors jump into the sea and are adrift for up to four days. Nearly 600 die before help arrives. Captain Charles B. McVay III of the cruiser is later court-martialed and convicted; in 2000, he is posthumously exonerated.[5]
August 7 – President Harry Truman announces the successful bombing of Hiroshima with the atomic bomb, while returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USSAugusta in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
August 8 – The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States Senate, and this nation becomes the third one to join the new international organization.
August 14 (August 15 in Japan) – Emperor Hirohito announces Japan's surrender on the radio. The United States calls this day V-J Day (Victory over Japan). This ends the period of Japanese expansionism and begins the period of Occupied Japan.
The Russian code clerk Igor Gouzenko comes forward with numerous documents implicating the Soviet Union in numerous spy rings in North America: both in the United States and in Canada.
September 8 – American troops occupy southern Korea, while the Soviet Union occupies the north, with the dividing line being the 38th parallel of latitude. This arrangement proves to be the indirect beginning of a divided Korea.
October 5 –Hollywood Black Friday: A strike by the Set Decorator's Union in Hollywood results in a riot.
October 23 –Jackie Robinson signs a contract with the Montreal Royals, making him the first black baseball player in the International League since the 1880s.
October 29 – At Gimbel's Department Store in New York City, the first ballpoint pens go on sale at $12.50 each.
November 29 – Assembly of the world's first general purpose electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC), is completed, covering 1,800 square feet (170m2) of floor space, and the first set of calculations is run on it.
↑ Angier, R. B.; Boothe, J. H.; Hutchings, B. L.; Mowat, J. H.; Semb, J.; Stokstad, E. L. R.; Subbarow, Y.; Waller, C. W.; Cosulich, D. B.; Fahrenbach, M. J.; Hultquist, M. E.; Kuh, E.; Northey, E. H.; Seeger, D. R.; Sickels, J. P.; Smith Jr, J. M. (1945). "Synthesis of a Compound Identical with the L. Casei Factor Isolated from Liver". Science. 102 (2644): 227–28. Bibcode:1945Sci...102..227A. doi:10.1126/science.102.2644.227. PMID17778509.
↑ Jessup, John E. (1989). A Chronology of Conflict and Resolution, 1945-1985. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN0-313-24308-5.
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