1949

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• Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.

• On 4 April, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is founded.

• On 18 April, a republic is proclaimed in Ireland, which then withdraws from the Commonwealth.

• On 11 May, Siam changes its name to Thailand.

• On 23 May, Germany is divided into the democratic Federal Republic of Germany in the west, with its capital at Bonn, and East Germany, where a (Communist) Democratic Republic is established on 7 October. Cold War tensions continue to increase.

• In July, Chinese Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek begin evacuation to the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), which is completed on 8 December.

• On 1 October, Mao Zedong establishes the People's Republic of China.

• On 27 December, Indonesia achieves its independence from the Netherlands.

• French writer Simone de Beauvoir publishes Le deuxième sexe (The Second Sex), one of the first postwar feminist books.

• British writer George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-four, his vision of a horrifying totalitarian future dominated by the dictator Big Brother.

• British film-maker Carol Reed makes The Third Man, an atmospheric if pessimistic view of postwar Europe.

• In New York, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's breezy musical South Pacific opens, as does Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman, a powerful criticism of the American dream.

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