Jump on our Virtual Newsstand as we journey back to 1949. See and read the comic books on sale month by month, and find out the major news of the day.

January: Businessman Ben Pon imports first VW Type 1 to America. Lack of interest convinces VW chairman it has no future in America.

February: Grady, a cow owned by Bill & Alyne Mach becomes trapped in a silo. The story & her eventual rescue captures public imagination.

March: After 25 successful title defenses, Joe Louis World Heavyweight Champion 1937 to 1949, announces his retirement.

April: 12 nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the NATO defense alliance against a possible attack by the Soviet Union.

May: After success of the Berlin Airlift, Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin, leading to creation of 2 separate German states.

June: George Orwell's novel 1984 is published. Introducing doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak & Big Brother to the world.

July: Prototype of the de Havilland Comet, the first commercial jetliner makes its maiden flight. Metal fatigue will later prove fatal.

August: Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb. It copies the design of the U.S. plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

September: Due to public pressure Iva Toguri D'Aquino is tried & found guilty of broadcasting for Japan as 'Tokyo Rose' during the war.

October: The Chinese Civil War is drawing to a close & the communists are in control. Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China.

November: Despite clemency pleas by his sons, Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse & conspirator Narayan Apte are executed.

December: Robert Menzies, founder of the Liberal Party of Australia, becomes Prime Minister a role he will hold until he retires in 1966.