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The post war years at home
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Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House.
Truman called on Americans to conserve food to help hard-pressed Europeans, still recovering from the devastation caused by the war and threatened with a massive winter famine. He asked the agricultural industry reduce grain use. He asked Americans to forgo eating meat on Tuesdays and eggs and poultry on Thursdays and to consume one fewer slice of bread every day. The food-saving initiative was short-lived, however, as the Marshall Plan spurred Western Europe’s -
Transistor is invented
When it was placed in computers the transistor became an integral part of the technology boom. In the years following its creation, the transistor gradually replaced the bulky, fragile vacuum tubes that had been used to amplify and switch signals. The transistor became the building block for all modern electronics and the foundation for microchip and computer technology. -
NASA is established
After Congressional hearings during spring 1958, Congress passed the legislation and President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law on July 29, 1958. The Space Act has been amended many times since 1958, but these goals have been little changed. -
President Eisenhower and Congress add the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words "under God," creating the 31-word pledge we say today.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." -
• Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
The vaccine proved successful as everybody who received the test vaccine started producing anti-bodies against the virus so that nobody else became inflicted with polio and no side effect was observed. Jonas Salk published the results in the Journal of the American Medical Association the following year and a nationwide testing was made. It was during this time that worst polio outbreak happened involving 57,628 cases. -
The first nuclear power plant in the U.S. goes online at Shippingport, Pa.
It's a double milestone for nuclear energy. The first man-made sustained nuclear chain reaction was created this day in 1942. And just 15 years later, the first full-scale nuclear power plant went online.
