Timeline February 1948

Events in February 1948 4

• 1898 – 1948 Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) Died 11 February 1948, aged 50 Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet filmmaker behind "Battleship Potemkin" and pioneer of montage editing, died of a heart attack on February 11, 1948. His theories of film editing shaped cinema worldwide. He had been working on the second part of his Ivan the Terrible trilogy at the time of his death.
• 1948 1948 Winter Olympics V Winter Games - St. Moritz First games after a 12-year break due to WWII. Winner: Norway.
• 1948 Ceylon gains independence from Britain Dominion status granted within the British Commonwealth Ceylon became a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth on February 4, 1948, with D. S. Senanayake as its first prime minister. The transition was largely peaceful, following a path of constitutional negotiation rather than armed struggle. The country was renamed Sri Lanka in 1972.
• 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia Communist Party seizes full control of the government Between February 17 and 25, 1948, the Czechoslovak Communist Party, backed by Moscow, forced the resignation of non-communist ministers and consolidated total power. President Edvard Beneš resigned soon after rather than sign further communist legislation. The coup ended Czechoslovakia's postwar coalition government and pulled the country firmly into the Soviet bloc.