Events and trends

Technology

• United States tests the first fusion bomb. See History of nuclear weapons
• Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, and thus the Sputnik crisis
• The De Havilland Comet enters service as the world's first jet airliner
• Charles Townes builds a maser in 1953 at Columbia University.

Science

• Urey-Miller experiment shows that under simulated conditions resembling those thought to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted, many of the basic organic molecules that form the building blocks of modern life are able to spontaneously form
• Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the helical structure of DNA at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge
• Bruce Heezen discovers the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
• Polio Vaccine

War, peace, and politics

• Korean War
• Red Scare, McCarthy Hearings
• Suez Crisis
• European Common Market founded.
• Warsaw pact founded.
• Most aboveground nuclear test explosions happened during this decade.
• The United States CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the Guatemalan government.
• Hungarian revolution of 1956 brutally suppressed by Soviet Union's troops.
• Fidel Castro gains power in Cuba.
• Mahmoud Abbas becomes involved in Palestinian politics in Qatar.
• Decolonization: Algeria, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
• Early history of the People's Republic of China, of the state of Israel, and of the Indonesian state.

Economics

• "Economic miracle" in West Germany.

Culture, religion

• Brylcreem and other hair tonics have a period of popularity
• Television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries.
• In the West, the generation traumatized by the Great Depression and World War II creates a culture with emphasis on normality and calm conformity.
• Juvenile delinquency said to be at unprecedented epidemic proportions in USA
• Traditional pop music reaches its climax; early rock and roll music embraced by teenagers/youth culture while generally dismissed or condemned by older generation.
• Beatnik culture/ The Beat Generation
• Optimistic visions of semi-Utopian technological future including such devices as the flying car.
• The Day the Earth Stood Still hits movie theaters.
• Along with the appearance of the sentence Kilroy was here across the United States, graffiti as an art form develops, especially among urban African Americans; graffiti eventually becomes one of the four elements of hip hop
• The Catcher in the Rye

Others

• Wartime rationing ends in the United Kingdom

People

World leaders

• Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (Canada)
• Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (Canada)
• Chairman Mao Zedong (People's Republic of China)
• President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China on Taiwan)
• President Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt)
• Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (India)
• Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Israel)
• Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
• Pope Pius XII
• Pope John XXIII
• Taoiseach John A. Costello (Ireland)
• Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Ireland)
• Taoiseach Sean Lemass (Ireland)
• Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)
• Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union)
• King George VI (United Kingdom)
• Queen Elizabeth II (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (United Kingdom)
• Prime Minister Robert Menzies (Australia)
• President Harry S. Truman (United States)
• Prime Minister George Borg Olivier (Malta)
• President Dwight D. Eisenhower (United States)
• Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (West Germany)
• President Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia)

Entertainers

• Abbott and Costello
• Jack Benny
• Chuck Berry
• Humphrey Bogart
• Marlon Brando
• James Dean
• Ava Gardner
• The Goons
• Cary Grant
• Audrey Hepburn
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Tony Hancock
• Buddy Holly
• Jerry Lewis
• Dean Martin
• Groucho Marx
• Marilyn Monroe
• Paul Newman
• Laurence Olivier
• Elvis Presley
• Little Richard
• James Stewart
• Gale Storm
• Jerry Lee Lewis
• Jacques Tati
• Elizabeth Taylor
• John Wayne
• Jack Webb

Sports figures

• Alberto Ascari (Italian racing driver)
• Roger Bannister (English track and field athlete)
• Yogi Berra (U.S. baseball player)
• Maureen Connolly (U.S. tennis player)
• Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentinian racing driver)
• Gordie Howe (Canadian ice hockey player)
• Rocky Marciano (U.S. boxer)
• Stanley Matthews (English soccer player)
• Willie Mays (U.S. baseball player)
• Ferenc Puskás (Hungarian soccer player)
• Maurice Richard (Canadian ice hockey player)
• Sugar Ray Robinson (U.S. boxer)
• Bill Russell (U.S. basketball player)
• Lev Yashin (Russian soccer player)

See also

• United States in the 1950s
• List of rock and roll albums in the 1950s

External Links

• The FiftiesWeb