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President Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb
*On January 18th a long article about the new weapon appeared in the New York Times.
* On January 31st Truman announced that, in accordance with his responsibility to see that the country was able to defend itself against any possible aggressor, he had directed the Atomic Energy Commission 'to continue with its work on all forms of atomic energy weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super-bomb'. -
Joseph McCarthy - McCarthyism
*The American public went crazy with the thought of seditious communists living within the United States, and roared for the investigation of the underground agitators.
*Joseph McCarthy then accused several innocent citizens, most notably Owen Lattimore, of being associated with communism. -
Two Cars in Every Garage
- For the first time, the 1950 census counts a population in the United States over 150 million people. *The 14% increase since the last census now showed a count of 150,697,361.
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Harry Truman
*Pres Harry Truman denies there are communists in US government.
*Relieved General Douglas MacArthur as commander of American and U. N. forces in the Far East on April 11 -
First Modern Credit Card Introduced
*he first Diners Club credit cards were given out in 1950 to 200 people (most were friends and acquaintances of McNamara) and accepted by 14 restaurants in New York.
*The concept of the card grew and by the end of 1950, 20,000 people were using the Diners Club credit card. The Diners Club credit card is considered the first modern credit card. -
Korean War Begins
*Armed forces from communist North Korea smash into South Korea, setting off the Korean War.
*The Korean War was the first "hot" war of the Cold War. Over 55,000 American troops were killed in the conflict. Korea was the first "limited war," one in which the U.S -
The First Color Shows
*It wasn't until the 1960s that the public began buying color TVs in earnest and in the 1970s the American public finally started purchasing more color TV sets than black-and-white ones
*However, sales of new black-and-white TV sets lingered on even into the 1980s -
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Executed for Espionage
*The Rosenbergs were convicted on March 29, 1951, and sentenced to death under Section 2 of the Espionage Act.
*The Rosenbergs stoically maintained their innocence throughout the length of the trial and appeals. They were executed by the electric chair on June 19, 1953. -
First Playboy Magazine
*This first edition of Playboy was 44-pages long and had no date on its cover because Hefner wasn't sure there would be a second edition.
*In that first run, Hefner sold 54,175 copies of Playboy magazine at 50 cents each. The first edition sold so well because Marilyn Monroe was the "Sweetheart of the Month -
USS Nautilus: First Nuclear Submarine .
*In July 1951, after several years of experiments with marine applications for nuclear power, Congress authorized the US Navy to build a nuclear-powered submarine.
* On January 21, 1954, Nautilus was christened by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and launched into the Thames River. -
Roger Bannister Breaks the Four-Minute Mile
*Bannister explained that his failure to win medal in the fifteen hundred metres at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics ignited his two-year quest to break the four-minute mark—a plotline that the producers of “Downton Abbey” recently announced they plan to adapt for a BBC miniseries.
*The Carbon Dioxide Stimulus to Breathing in Severe Exercise.” Bannister discovered that running consistent lap times demanded less oxygen than varying the pace. -
Segregation Ruled Illegal in U.S.
*Approximately half a century before, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that the belief ‘separate but equal’ was just.
*The significance of the 1954 Segregations Laws ruled to be illegal was greatly due to the Brown v. Board of Ed case. -
Brown v. Board of Education
*The dramatic civil rights and segregation battles that set the tone for much of the 1960s didn’t just happen. Several events preceded those battles, perhaps none more important than the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.
*Before the 1950s, most court cases challenging segregated schooling targeted higher education -
From Jewish Folk Poetry
*D Shostakovitch' "From Jewish Folk Poetry," premieres in Leningrad
*The year 1960 marked another turning point in Shostakovich's life: he joined the Communist Party. -
Disneyland Opens
*Disneyland opened for a few thousand specially invited visitors; the following day, Disneyland officially opened to the public.
* Disney sat on park benches with the other parents who had nothing to do but watch. It was on these Sunday excursions that Walt Disney began to dream of an activity park that had things for both children and parents to do. -
Rosa Parks
*She attended the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education.
*. She helped to form the “Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor,” which was described by the Chicago Defender as the “strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade.” -
Elvis Gyrates on Ed Sullivan's Show
*After negotiating with Elvis' manager, Ed Sullivan paid Elvis the huge sum of $50,000 for appearing on three of his shows: September 9, 1956, October 28, 1956, and then on January 6, 1957.
*Although the cameras stayed mostly from the waist up on Elvis' first appearance on the show, the second time he appeared that night, the camera widened out and the TV audience was able to see Elvis' gyrations. During this second set, Elvis sang "Ready Teddy" and then ended with a portion of "Hound Dog." -
Dr. Seuss Published The Cat in the Hat
*The Cat in the Hat is a children's book written and illustrated by Theodor Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss and first published in 1957.
* The story centers on a tall anthropomorphic cat, who wears a red and white-striped hat and a red bow tie. -
Peace Symbol Created
*A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts.
*It seems the Peace symbol surfaced on letters from the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War in its original form as early as March 1958 -
NASA founded
*On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union had sent the satellite Sputnik to orbit around the Earth.
*There was some debate about whether the new agency should fall under the auspices of the military or remain a civilian operation. -
Vietnam War
*The U.S. helped non-Communist South Vietnam fight invasion by Communist North Vietnam.
*The U.S. began a military assault on Cambodia in 1970 and later heavily bombed North Vietnam in order to bring them to discussions about ending the conflict. -
Most Powerful Earthquake Ever Recorded Hits Chile
*Approximately 1,655 killed, 3,000 injured, 2,000,000 homeless, and $550 million damage in southern Chile; tsunami caused 61 deaths, $75 million damage in Hawaii; 138 deaths and $50 million damage in Japan; 32 dead and missing in the Philippines; and $500,000 damage to the west coast of the United States.
*On May 24, Volcan Puyehue erupted, sending ash and steam as high as 6,000 m. The eruption continued for several weeks. -
First Televised Presidential Debates
*On this day in 1960, Massachusetts Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon face each other in a nationally televised presidential campaign debate.
*Nixon's negative experience with televised debates led him to refuse to engage in such debates during the 1968 and 1972 campaigns. -
Kitchen Debate Between Nixon and Khrushchev
*Vice President Nixon and Premier Krushchev waged an impromptu debate on the benefits of communism vs. capitalism, which became known as the “kitchen debate.
*They were standing before a new color television camera at an international trade exibition in Moscow. -
Freedom Riders Challenge Segregation on Interstate Buses
*The Freedom rides of 1961 were bus riders made up of black and white Americans
*Freedom Riders Bus Burned near Anniston, Alabama, 1961 ... to challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South by organizing “freedom rides” through the region. -
First Person Killed Trying to Cross the Berlin Wall
*East German guards gun down a young man trying to escape across the Berlin Wall into West Berlin and leave him to bleed to death
*On August 17, 1962, two young men from East Berlin attempted to scramble to freedom across the wall. One was successful in climbing the last barbed wire fence and, though suffering numerous cuts, made it safely to West Berlin -
Tsar Bomba, the Largest Nuclear Weapon to Ever Be Exploded
*The hydrogen bomb was air dropped by a Tu-95 bomber using huge fall-retardation parachute.
*The detonation occurred 4km above the ground producing a yield of 50Mt, which is believed to be equivalent to the explosive power from the simultaneous detonation of 3,800 Hiroshima bombs. -
Marilyn Monroe Found Dead
*She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room.
*An autopsy found a fatal amount of sedatives in her system, and her death was ruled probable suicide -
Medgar Evers Is Murdered
*n the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, African American civil rights leader Medgar Evers is shot to death by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith.
*After a funeral in Jackson, he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. -
First Woman in Space
*After her historic space flight, Valentina Tereshkova received the Order of Lenin and Hero of the Soviet Union awards.
*The United States screened a group of female pilots in 1959 and 1960 for possible astronaut training but later decided to restrict astronaut qualification to men. -
Martin Luther King Jr. Makes His "I Have a Dream" Speech
*King had been drawing on material he used in the “I Have a Dream” speech in his other speeches and sermons for many years.
*King continued to give versions of this speech throughout 1961 and 1962, then calling it “The American Dream.” -
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
*The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions became high when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to register African American to vote in Birmingham.
*A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of -
Assaination of John F Kennedy
*Crowds of excited people lined the streets and waved to the Kennedys. The car turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza around 12:30 p.m. As it was passing the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly reverberated in the plaza.
*Less than an hour earlier, police had arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, a recently hired employee at the Texas School Book Depository. He was being held for the assassination of President Kennedy and the fatal shooting, shortly afterward, of Patrolman J. D. Tippit on a Da -
Civil Rights Movement
*The Supreme Court decided in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 1962, that prayer in the public schools was unconstitutional
*Assassination of John F. Kennedy -
Civil Rights Act Passes in U.S.
*The provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The word "sex" was added at the last moment.
*As West defines the term, affirmative action "refers to both mandatory and voluntary programs intended to affirm the civil rights of designated classes of individuals by taking positive action to protect them" from discrimination -
First Super Bowl
*Attended by 61,946 football fans, it is the only Super Bowl on record that was not sold out.
*Credited for leading the Green Bay Packers to its 35-10 victory, Bart Starr was named the Most Valuable Player of the first Super Bowl game -
First Man on the Moon
*when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the United States was surprised to find themselves behind in the race to space.
*At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969, the Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 into the sky from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. -
Manson Family Murders
*That night the Kotts, Sharon's nearest neighbors who lived about 100 yards away, thought they heard a few gunshots coming from the direction of Sharon's property sometime between 12:30 and 1 A.M. But since they heard nothing else, they went to bed.
*Once inside the kitchen, she picked up the telephone and confirmed that it was a telephone wire that had fallen, completely knocking out all phone service. -
Kent State Shootings
The Kent State shootings occurred at Kent State University in the US city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970
*Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30. -
London Bridge Brought to the U.S
*There has been a bridge across the River Thames in London for nearly 2,000 years.
*The first "London Bridge" was built by the Romans in 43 A.D. They built a temporary pontoon bridge which was planks laid across a row of anchored boats, or they may have used ferry boats. -
Abortion Legalized in U.S.
*Abortion has been performed for thousands of years, and in every society that has been studied.
*In the mid-to-late 1800s states began passing laws that made abortion illegal. -
U.S. Pulls Out of Vietnam
*President Richard Nixon announces that 50,000 additional U.S. troops will be pulled out of South Vietnam by April 15, 1970.
*Concurrent with this effort, Nixon announced that he would begin to bring U.S. troops home. This third increment would bring the total reductions to 115,000. By January 1972, there were only around 70,000 U.S. troops left in South Vietnam -
U.S. Vice President Resigns
*On 31 July, Agnew's lawyers were handed a letter written by George Beall, United States attorney for Baltimore, informing him that he was under investigation for conspiracy, extortion, and bribery.
*In September, Agnew began to plea-bargain with the prosecutors, but negotiations dragged on for more than a month as he sought a deal that would not involve any admission on his part of wrongdoing -
Elvis Found Dead
*After being found on the bathroom floor, Elvis was rushed to the hospital where he was officially pronounced dead.
* These drugs included codeine, Valium, morphine, and Demorol, to name a few. After this information was revealed, Vernon Presley, Elvis' father, had the complete autopsy report sealed. It will remain sealed until 2027, fifty years after The King's death -
Ayatollah Khomeini Returns as Leader of Iran
*n the 1970s, Mohammad Reza further enraged Islamic fundamentalists in Iran by holding an extravagant celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the pre-Islamic Persian monarchy and replaced the Islamic calendar with a Persian calendar.
* In December, the army mutinied, and on January 16, 1979, the shah fled. -
Failed U.S. Rescue Attempt to Save Hostages in Tehran
*Eight servicemen were killed.
*The rescue mission’s failure symbolized larger failures of the Carter administration in particular and of American policy toward the Middle East in general. -
John Lennon Assassinated
*wenty years after Lennon’s death, Barbara Walters revisited her 1992 interview with Mark David Chapman. This was the killer’s first televised interview.
*Chapman was sentenced t0 20 years to life for killing Lennon and is serving his time at New York’s Attica Prison. -
Assassination Attempt on U.S. President Reagan
*John Hinckley Jr. opened fire on U.S. President Ronald Reagan just outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.
*Reagan only had to walk about 30 feet from the hotel door to his awaiting car, so the Secret Service had not thought a bullet-proof vest to be necessary. Outside, waiting for Reagan, were a number of newspapermen, members of the public, and John Hinckley Jr. -
Pope John Paul II assassination Attempt
*The first attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II took place on Wednesday, 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square at Vatican City.
* Due to his uncommon skills and great sense of humor he is dangerous, because he charms everyone, especially journalists -
HIV AND AIDS
*The history of HIV and AIDS in the USA began in 1981, when the United States of America became the first country to officially recognise a strange new illness among a small number of gay men.
*Today, it is generally accepted that the origin of AIDS probably lies in Africa. -
First Woman Appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court
- President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to be the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. *September 21, the United States Senate confirmed O'Connor in a vote of 99 for and zero against.
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Soviets Shoot Down a Korean Airliner
*On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines (KAL) flight 007 was on the last leg of a flight from New York City to Seoul, with a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska.
*Soviets sent two fighters to intercept the plane -
Michael Jackson Releases Thriller
*Michael Jackson's Thriller is an American 13-minute music video for the song of the same name released on December 2, 1983
*To qualify for an Academy Award as a short subject, the film was shown in a theatrical screening along with the 1940 Disney animated feature Fantasia, in December 1983; the video however failed to earn an Academy Award nomination -
Wreck of the Titanic Found
*Seventy-three years after it sunk to the North Atlantic ocean floor, a joint U.S.-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The sunken liner was about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic
*American Robert D. Ballard headed the expedition, which used an experimental, unmanned submersible developed by the U.S. Navy to search for the ocean liner -
New York Stock Exchange Suffers Huge Drop on "Black Monday"
*Black Monday had global repercussions, as stock prices around the world reeled.
*As experts described it, the calamity on Wall Street would set in motion an inexorable chain reaction. Fearful consumers, their net worth crippled by the deflation of stock prices, would put off purchases, forcing industry to slow production and lay off workers -
Official End of the Cold War
*Throughout the 1980s, the Soviet Union fought an increasingly frustrating war in Afghanistan.
*During 1989 and 1990, the Berlin Wall came down, borders opened, and free elections ousted Communist regimes everywhere in eastern Europe. In late 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved into its component republics. With stunning speed, the Iron Curtain was lifted and the Cold War came to -
Riots in Los Angeles After the Rodney King Verdict
*On March 3, 1991, paroled felon Rodney King led police on a high-speed chase through the streets of Los Angeles County before eventually surrendering.
*Violence first erupted at the intersection of Florence Boulevard and Normandie Avenue in south-central Los Angeles. -
O.J. Simpson Arrested for Double Murder
*O.J. Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and friend Ronald Goldman are found dead in Los Angeles. Simpson is arrested after a widely televised freeway chase in his white Ford Bronco.
*As the truck sat parked, its hazard lights blinking silently in the balmy June night, Cowlings got out of the driver's seat and walked into the house
