July 5: The National Health Service Acts are enacted in United Kingdom.

July 6: The world's first Air Car-ferry service is flown by a Bristol Freighter of Silver City Airways from Lympne to Le Touquet.

July 13: The Coptic and Ethiopian Churches reach an agreement leading to the promotion of the Ethiopian church to the rank of an autocephalous Patriarchate. Five bishops are immediately consecrated by the Patriarch of Alexandria, and the successor to Abuna Qerellos IV is granted the power to consecrate new bishops, who are empowered to elect a new Patriarch for their church.

July 15: The attempted assassination of Palmiro Togliatti, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, incites numerous strikes all over the country. - The first London chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous is founded.

July 20: Cold War: President Harry S. Truman issues the second peacetime military draft in the United States, amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union (the first peacetime draft occurred in 1940 under President Roosevelt).

July 22: The Dominion of Newfoundland votes to join Canada after a referendum.

July 24: A great oil fire breaks out in the harbor of Naantali, Finland.

July 26: U.S. President Truman signs Executive Order 9981, ending racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces.

July 28: Around 200 die in explosion at a chemical plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

July 29: The 1948 Summer Olympics begin in London, the first since the 1936 Summer Olympics

July 31: At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated. (source: Wikipedia)