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Harry Truman becomes the first president to address the nation on TV from the White House.
President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised presidential address from the White House to a limited audience. There were only about 44,000 TV sets in U.S. homes, concentrated in a few cities, compared with some 40 million radios. Though Truman pioneered the now-familiar ritual of a White House telecast to the nation, he was not the first president to appear on television. President Franklin D. Roosevelt brodcasted on the New York World's Fair on April 30th, 1939. -
Transistor is invented, spurring growth in computers and electronics.
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President Eisenhower and Congress add the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country. 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. Bellamy's daughter objected to this alteration. -
Polio vaccine announced to the world by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis.
Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most frightening public health problem of the post-war United States. The 1952 epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt was the world's most recognized victim of the disease and founded the organization that would fund the development of a vaccine. -
The first nuclear power plant in the U.S. goes online at Shippingport, Pa.
In 1957, Shippingport, along the Ohio River in far western Pennsylvania, became home to America's first commercial nuclear power plant under President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. 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. -
NASA is established
In October 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world, and particularly the American public, by launching the first satellite into orbit around the earth, called Sputnik. Sputnik also provided the Soviets with an important propaganda advantage in terms of reaching out to underdeveloped Third World nations that were looking for scientific and technological assistance. In July 1958, Congress passed legislation establishing NASA as the coordinating body of the U.S. space program.
