WThe 1949 Sabena DC-3 Crash was the crash of a Douglas DC-3 of the Belgian airline Sabena in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, on 18 December 1949. None of the eight people on board survived the incident.
WThe 3rd Cannes Film Festival was held from 2 to 17 September 1949. The previous year, no festival had been held because of financial problems.
WThe Malagasy Uprising was a Malagasy nationalist rebellion against French colonial rule in Madagascar, lasting from March 1947 to February 1949. Starting in late 1945, Madagascar's first French National Assembly deputies, Joseph Raseta, Joseph Ravoahangy and Jacques Rabemananjara of the Mouvement démocratique de la rénovation malgache (MDRM) political party, led an effort to achieve independence for Madagascar through legal channels. The failure of this initiative and the harsh response it drew from the Socialist Ramadier administration radicalized elements of the Malagasy population, including leaders of several militant nationalist secret societies.
WThe Merci Train, also known as the French Gratitude Train or the Forty and Eight, was the 1949 Europe-US response to the Friendship Train. Composed of 49 cars and filled with "gifts of gratitude", the Merci Train arrived in New York City on February 3, 1949, and was divided amongst the 48 states with the remaining car to be shared by the District of Columbia and Hawaii.
WThe Monnet Plan was proposed by French civil servant Jean Monnet after the end of World War II. It was a reconstruction plan for France that proposed giving France control over the German coal and steel areas of the Ruhr area and Saar and using these resources to bring France to 150% of pre-war industrial production. The plan was adopted by Charles de Gaulle in early 1946. The plan would permanently limit German economic capacity, and greatly increase French power.
WThe Petersberg Agreement is an international treaty that extended the rights of the Federal Government of the Federal Republic of Germany vis-a-vis the occupying forces of Britain, France, and the United States, and is viewed as the first major step of the Bonn Republic towards sovereignty. It was signed by Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer and the Allied High Commissioners Brian Hubert Robertson (Britain), André François-Poncet (France), and John J. McCloy on 22 November 1949. The Hotel Petersberg, near Bonn, was at that time the seat of the High Commissioners and the place of signature. It was the first modification of the Occupation statute.
WRadiodiffusion-Télévision Française was the French national public broadcasting organization established on 9 February 1949 to replace the post-war "Radiodiffusion Française" (RDF), which had been founded on 23 March 1945 to replace Radiodiffusion Nationale (RN), created on 29 July 1939. It was replaced in its turn, on 26 June 1964, by the notionally less-strictly government controlled Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), which itself lasted until the end of 1974.