1950s ::: Project ETERNITY

Software
Free
Download
Audio
Graphics
Utilities
Internet
Screen Savers
Games
Development Tools
Business
Audio
Home/Hobby
Education

1920s 1930s 1940s - 1950s - 1960s 1970s 1980s

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades:
Years:

----

Events and trends

Technology

United States tests the first fusion bomb. See History of nuclear weapons

Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, and thus the Sputnik crisis

The De Havilland Comet enters service as the world's first jet airliner

Charles Townes builds a maser in 1953 at Columbia University.

Science

Urey-Miller experiment shows that under simulated conditions resembling those thought to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted, many of the basic organic molecules that form the building blocks of modern life are able to spontaneously form

Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the helical structure of DNA at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge

Bruce Heezen discovers the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Polio Vaccine

War, peace, and politics

Korean War

Red Scare, McCarthy Hearings

Suez Crisis

European Common Market founded.

Warsaw pact founded.

Most aboveground nuclear test explosions happened during this decade.

The United States CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the Guatemalan government.

Hungarian revolution of 1956 brutally suppressed by Soviet Union's troops.

Fidel Castro gains power in Cuba.

Mahmoud Abbas becomes involved in Palestinian politics in Qatar.

Decolonization: Algeria, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

Early history of the People's Republic of China, of the state of Israel, and of the Indonesian state.

Economics

"Economic miracle" in West Germany.

Culture, religion

Brylcreem and other hair tonics have a period of popularity

Television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries.

In the West, the generation traumatized by the Great Depression and World War II creates a culture with emphasis on normality and calm conformity.

Juvenile delinquency said to be at unprecedented epidemic proportions in USA

Traditional pop music reaches its climax; early Rock and roll music embraced by teenagers/youth culture while generally dismissed or condemned by older generation.

Beatnik culture/ The Beat Generation

Optimistic visions of semi-Utopian technological future including such devices as the flying car.

The Day the Earth Stood Still hits movie theaters.

Along with the appearance of the sentence Kilroy was here across the United States, graffiti as an art form develops, especially among urban African Americans; graffiti eventually becomes one of the four elements of hip hop

Others

Wartime rationing ends in the United Kingdom

People

Ferenc Puskás (Hungarian soccer player)

Maurice Richard (Canadian ice hockey player)

Sugar Ray Robinson (U.S. boxer)

Lev Yashin (Russian soccer player)

Copyrights

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "1950s".

main