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Doris Day enters the public spotlight with the films My Dream Is Yours and It's a Great Feeling as well as popular songs like "It's Magic"
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Red China: The Communist Party of China wins the Chinese Civil War, establishing the People's Republic of China.
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Johnnie Ray signs his first recording contract with Okeh Records, although he would not become popular for another two years.
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Walter Winchell is an aggressive radio and newspaper journalist credited with inventing the gossip column.
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Joe DiMaggio and the New York Yankees go to five World Series in the 1940s, winning four of them
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South Pacific, the prize-winning musical, opens on Broadway on April 7.
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James Dean Pepsi Cola commercial
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Harry Truman was inaugurated as U.S. president after being elected in 1948 to his own lame duck second and final presidential term; previously he was sworn in following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He authorized the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively.
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Joe McCarthy, the U.S. Senator, gains national attention and begins his anti-Communism crusade with his Lincoln Day speech.
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Richard Nixon is first elected to the United States Senate.
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Studebaker, a popular car company, begins its financial downfall.
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Television is becoming widespread throughout Europe and North America.
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Marilyn Monroe soars in popularity with five new movies, including The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve
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North Korea and South Korea declare war after Northern forces stream south on June 25.
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H-Bomb: The United States is in the middle of developing the hydrogen bomb as a nuclear weapon; it would be first tested in late 1952.
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Panmunjom, the border village in Korea, is the location of truce talks between the parties of the Korean War.
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Marlon Brando is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire.
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Sugar Ray Robinson, a champion boxer, defeats Jake LaMotta in the "St. Valentine's Day Masscre"
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The King and I, the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, opens on Broadway on March 29.
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The Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius, were convicted on June 19 for espionage.
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The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger
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The vaccine for polio is privately tested by Jonas Salk.
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Liberace has a popular 1950s television show for his musical entertainment.
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England's got a new queen: Queen Elizabeth II succeeds to the throne upon the death of her father, George VI, and is crowned the next year.
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Rocky Marciano defeats Jersey Joe Walcott, becoming the world heavyweight boxing champion.
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Santayana goodbye: George Santayana, philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, dies on September 26.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower is first elected as President of the United States, winning by a landslide margin of 442 to 89 electoral votes.
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Gamal Abdel Nasser acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
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Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Barbara are involved in a highly publicized divorce, culminating in 1954 with a record-breaking $5.5 million settlement.
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Roy Campanella, an African-American baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
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Communist bloc: The uprising of 1953 in East Germany is crushed by the Volkspolizei and the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.
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Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Stalin for six months following his death. Malenkov had presided over Stalin's purges, but would be spared a similar fate by his successor Nikita Khrushchev.
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Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, dies on March 5.
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Sergei Prokofiev, the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
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Dacron is an early artificial fiber made from the same plastic as polyester.
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Juan Perón spends his last full year as President of Argentina before a September 1955 coup.
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Arturo Toscanini is at the height of his fame as a conductor, performing regularly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on national radio.
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Dien Bien Phu falls. A French/Vietnamese camp falls to Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap, signaling the end of French Indochina and leading to the creation of North Vietnam and South Vietnam as separate states.
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"Rock Around the Clock" is a hit single released by Bill Haley & His Comets in May, spurring worldwide interest in rock and roll music.
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Roy Cohn resigns as Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel and enters private practice with the fall of McCarthy.
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Peter Pan: A year after Walt Disney Animation Studios released an animated adaption of the play by J. M. Barrie, the 1954 stage musical of the same name starring Mary Martin is broadcast on NBC live and in color.
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Albert Einstein dies on April 18 at the age of 76.
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Disneyland opens on July 17, 1955 as Walt Disney's first theme park.
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James Dean achieves success with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, gets nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and dies in a car accident on September 30 at the age of 24.
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Brooklyn's got a winning team: The Brooklyn Dodgers win their first and only World Series before their move to Los Angeles.
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Elvis Presley signs with RCA Records on November 21, beginning his pop career.
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Davy Crockett is a Disney television miniseries about the legendary frontiersman of the same name. The show was a huge hit with young boys and inspired a short-lived "coonskin cap" craze.
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Peyton Place, the best-selling novel by Grace Metalious, is published. Though mild compared to today's standards, it shocked the reserved values of the 1950s
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Nikita Khrushchev makes his famous Secret Speech denouncing Stalin's "Cult of personality" on February 25.
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Princess Grace Kelly releases her last film, High Society, and marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
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Budapest is the capital city of Hungary and site of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
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Trouble in the Suez: The Suez Crisis boils as Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal on October 29.
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Brigitte Bardot appears in her first mainstream film And God Created Woman and establishes an international reputation as a French "sex kitten".
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Alabama is the site of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which ultimately led to the removal of the last race laws in the USA. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr figure prominently.
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Boris Pasternak, the Russian author, publishes his novel Doctor Zhivago.
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Little Rock, Arkansas is the site of an anti-integration standoff, as Governor Orval Faubus stops the Little Rock Nine from attending Little Rock Central High School and President Eisenhower deploys the 101st Airborne Division to counteract him.
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Sputnik becomes the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, marking the start of the space race.
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Charles de Gaulle is elected first president of the French Fifth Republic following the Algerian Crisis.
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John F. Kennedy beats Richard Nixon in the November 8 general election.
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Bob Dylan is signed to Columbia Records after a New York Times review by critic Robert Shelton.
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Ole Miss: A riot was fought between Southern segregationist civilians and federal and state forces as a result of the forced enrollment of black student James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.
