The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.

Evelyn Waugh publishes Brideshead Revisited

Hugh MacLennan publishes Two Solitudes

Chester Himes publishes If He Hollers, Let Him Go

John Hersey receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for A Bell for Adano

Hanay Geiogamah is born

Pat Booth is born

Jacques Roumain’s Bois d’ebene (Ebony Wood) is published

Leopold Sedar Senghor publishes Chants d’ombre

Jean-Paul Sartre publishes Huis-clos (No Exit)

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. publishes Marching Blacks: An Interpretive History of the Rise of the Black Common Man

Earle Birney publishes Now Is Time

Gabrielle Roy publishes Bonheur d’occasion (The Tin Flute)

George Orwell publishes Animal Farm

Gabriela Mistral receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

James Thurber publishes The Thurber Carnival

American B-29s drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

German forces surrender in May; Japanese forces surrender in September; World War II ends

First atomic bomb is detonated near Alamagordo, New Mexico

The United Nations is founded at a conference in San Francisco

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. publishes The Age of Jackson

Ezra Pound is arrested by Italian partisans and U.S. Army personnel for wartime radio broadcasts from fascist Italy; judged mentally unfit to stand trial, he is incarcerated in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C.

Mary Chase receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Harvey

Karl Shapiro receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for V-Letter and Other Poems

Bertrand Russell publishes A History of Western Philosophy

Ivo Andrič publishes Gospojica (The Women of Sarajevo)

Ivo Andrič publishes Travnicka hronika (Bosnian Chronicle)

E. B. White publishes Stuart Little

Robert Olen Butler is born

Explore: On Distant Ground, Tabloid Dreams, Robert Olen Butler

Michael Cristofer is born

Explore: The Shadow Box, Michael Cristofer

Michael Anthony Dorris is born

Explore: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Morning Girl, Michael Dorris

Franklin Roosevelt, Josef Stalin, and Winston Churchill meet at Yalta in the Crimea

Explore: Franklin D. Roosevelt

Shiva Naipaul is born

Explore: Fireflies, Shiva Naipaul

Anne Frank dies

August Wilson is born

Explore: Fences, The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, August Wilson

Annie Dillard is born

Explore: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, Annie Dillard

Dean Koontz is born

Explore: False Memory, The House of Thunder

S. E. K. Mqhayi dies

Explore: What contributions did S. E. K. Mqhayi make to South African culture and literature?

Albert Jay Nock dies

Hatcher Hughes dies

Pat Conroy is born

Explore: Beach Music, The Water Is Wide, Pat Conroy

Ellen Glasgow dies

Explore: The Difference, Ellen Glasgow

The Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal begins, with Nazi leaders put on trial for crimes against humanity

Nuruddin Farah is born

Explore: Secrets, Nuruddin Farah

John Banville is born

Explore: John Banville

Theodore Dreiser dies

Explore: Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, The Lost Phoebe, Theodore Dreiser, Evaluating Sister Carrie as a city novel