In 1949, France officially recognized the nominal "independence" of the State of Vietnam as an associated state within the French Union under Bảo Đại. However, France still controlled all foreign relations and every defense issue. The Việt Minh quickly denounced the government and stated that they wanted "real independence, not Bảo Đại independence". Within the framework of the French Union, France also granted independence to the other nations in Indochina, the Kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia.
The Karen people of Kayin State (formerly Karen State) in eastern Myanmar are the third largest ethnic group in Myanmar, consisting of roughly 7% of the country's total population. Karen insurgent groups have fought for independence and self-determination since 1949. In 1949, the commander-in-chief of the Tatmadaw General Smith Dun, an ethnic Karen, was fired because of the rise of Karen opposition groups, which furthered ethnic tensions. He was replaced by Ne Win, a Bamar nationalist who would go on to become the dictator of Myanmar.
After the couple had arguments about Reagan's political ambitions, Wyman filed for divorce in 1948, citing a distraction due to her husband's Screen Actors Guild union duties; the divorce was finalized in 1949. Wyman, who was a registered Republican, also stated that their break-up was due to a difference in politics (Reagan was still a Democrat at the time).
In 1949, AT&T commercialized Mobile Telephone Service. From its start in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1946, AT&T introduced Mobile Telephone Service to one hundred towns and highway corridors by 1948. Mobile Telephone Service was a rarity with only 5,000 customers placing about 30,000 calls each week. Calls were set up manually by an operator and the user had to depress a button on the handset to talk and release the button to listen. The call subscriber equipment weighed about 80 pounds (36 kg).
Russian language study and Communist political instruction were made mandatory in schools and universities nationwide. Religious schools were nationalized and church leaders were replaced by those loyal to the government. In 1949 the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church, Cardinal József Mindszenty, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. Under Rákosi, Hungary's government was among the most repressive in Europe.
The brief period of multi-party democracy came to an end when the Communist Party merged with the Social Democratic Party to become the Hungarian Working People's Party, which stood its candidate list unopposed in 1949. The People's Republic of Hungary was then declared.
Talks for a new military alliance which could also include North America resulted in the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949 by the member states of the Western Union plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
The Annecy Round was a multi-year multilateral trade negotiation (MTN) between 26 nation-states that were parties to the GATT. This second round took place in 1949 in Annecy, France. 13 countries took part in the round. The main focus of the talks was more tariff reductions, around 5,000 in total.
After achieving decisive victory at Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin campaigns, the CPC wiped out 144 regular and 29 irregular KMT divisions, including 1.54 million veteran KMT troops, which significantly reduced the strength of Nationalist forces. Stalin initially favored a coalition government in postwar China, and tried to persuade Mao to stop the CPC from crossing the Yangtze and attacking the KMT positions south of the river. Mao rejected Stalin's position and on 21 April, and began the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign.
The airlift worked; ground access was again granted on May 11, 1949. Nevertheless, the airlift continued for several months after that. The Berlin Airlift was one of Truman's great foreign policy successes; it significantly aided his election campaign in 1948.
In 1949, Du Bois spoke at the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace in New York: "I tell you, people of America, the dark world is on the move! It wants and will have Freedom, Autonomy and Equality. It will not be diverted in these fundamental rights by dialectical splitting of political hairs ... Whites may, if they will, arm themselves for suicide. But the vast majority of the world's peoples will march on over them to freedom!"
On 28 June, the other member countries of the Cominform expelled Yugoslavia, citing "nationalist elements" that had "managed in the course of the past five or six months to reach a dominant position in the leadership" of the CPY.
The Khait or Hoit landslide occurred on July 10, 1949 in the Hoit district in the Gharm Oblast in the Tajikistan, then part of the Soviet Union. The landslide was triggered by the 1949 Khait earthquake and buried 33 villages and has by some estimates killed 28,000 people.
In Brazil, National Thanksgiving Day was instituted by President Gaspar Dutra, through Law 781 of August 17, 1949, at the suggestion of Ambassador Joaquim Nabuco, who was enthusiastic about the commemorations he saw in 1909 in St. Patrick's Cathedral as an ambassador in Washington.
A major wildfire occurred from 19 August 1949 to 25 August 1949 in the Landes forest in France. 50,000 hectares (500 km2) of forest land were burnt - and 82 people killed. It was considered the most deadly forest fire in Europe until the 2007.
Howard Barton Unruh was an American mass murderer (sometimes classified as a spree killer) who shot and killed 13 people (including three children) during a 12-minute walk through his neighborhood on September 6, 1949, in Camden, New Jersey, when he was 28 years old. The incident became known as the "Walk of Death".
The People's Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949. It was the culmination of over two decades of civil and international wars. Mao's famous phrase "The Chinese people have stood up" associated with the establishment of the People's Republic of China was not used in the speech he delivered from the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian'anmen) on October 1.
In November 1949, the logo was modified to incorporate the company's formal name, National Comics Publications. This logo would also serve as the round body of Johnny DC, DC's mascot in the 1960s.
Castro volunteered to deliver a speech for the Movement on 13 November, exposing the government's secret deals with the gangs and identifying key members. Attracting the attention of the national press, the speech angered the gangs and Castro fled into hiding, first in the countryside and then in the United States.
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was born on 1 December 1949, in Rionegro, in the Antioquia Department of Colombia. He was the third of seven children of the farmer Abel de Jesús Dari Escobar Echeverri (1910–2001), with his wife Hilda de Los Dolores Gaviria Berrío, an elementary school teacher.
For the first three years of his life, Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of his maternal grandparents, Samuel (1898–1983) and Eleanor Cowell (1895–1971), who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied birth outside of wedlock.
The CBS document does not illustrate the early versions of the flag and its description of the 1949 flag is not entirely consistent with the photos surviving from 1949. It describes the flag as "square", while the proportions of the flag in the photographs appear closer to 4:5. The document describes the dragon as "facing the fly end", while the dragon visible in the photos faces the hoist. The dragon is described as "parallel to the fly" (meaning, according to a diagram in the document, parallel to the length along the bottom edge of the flag), while the dragon in the photos appears to have a slightly rising vertical slant. The dragon is described as "green", but the shade in the photos, if indeed green, must be very pale.