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Harry Truman
was inaugurated as U.S. president after being elected in 1948 to his own 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. -
Studebaker
a popular car company, begins its financial downfall. -
Panmunjom
the border village in Korea, is the location of truce talks between the parties of the Korean War. -
Albert Einstein
dies on April 18 at the age of 76. -
Budapest
is the capital city of Hungary and site of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. -
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 Dwight D. Eisenhower deploys the 101st Airborne Division to counteract him. -
Lawrence of Arabia:
The Academy Award-winning film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence starring Peter O'Toole premieres in America on December 16. -
Pope Paul VI
Cardinal Giovanni Montini is elected to the papacy and takes the papal name of Paul VI. -
Birth control
In the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae which declared artificial birth control a sin. -
Ho Chi Minh
A Vietnamese communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969. March 2 Operation Rolling Thunder begins bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line from North Vietnam to the Vietcong rebels in the south. On March 8, the first U.S. combat troops, 3,500 marines, land in South Vietnam.
