1958: Information and Much More from Answers.com
- ️Mon Apr 13 1959
1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
A United Arab Republic proclaimed February 1 joins Egypt and Sudan with Syria under the leadership of Egypt's President Nasser, but the union will be short lived.
The Arab Federation created February 14 joins Iraq and Jordan under Iraq's Faisal II, but Iraqi general Abdul al-Karim Qasim, 44, and Col. Abdul Salam Arif engineer a military coup d'état at Baghdad July 14, Faisal is gunned down in his courtyard at age 23 along with his infant son and his prime minister, and Gen. Qasim proclaims an Iraqi republic having received support from the 24-year-old Iraqi Communist Party. Hashemite rule continues only in Jordan, Qasim dissolves the Arab Federation August 1, he ousts Col. Arif in the fall for being too pro-Nasser, Arif attracts support from right-wing nationalist, Islamist, and pan-Arab groups, including the Arab Socialist Baath (Renaissance) Party founded in Syria 20 years ago. Qasim will execute a large number of pro-Nasser Iraqis at Mosul next year (see 1959).
Lebanon has riots allegedly provoked by the United Arab Republic, UN observers move in to guard against illegal movement of troops or arms into the country, U.S. troops from the 6th Fleet land near Beirut beginning July 15 as President Eisenhower vows to protect U.S. lives and property and to defend Lebanese sovereignty and independence, a new government comes to power in Lebanon, and U.S. troops are withdrawn October 25.
Former French Army commander Gen. Maurice Gamelin dies at his native Paris April 18 at age 85. Gen. de Gaulle is named premier May 31 after President René Coty threatens to resign in the midst of an Algerian crisis that threatens civil war. Agents of the Algerian rebels commit acts of violence within France as the open revolt that began in 1954 continues under the direction of French military leaders who have seized control of Algeria.
Paris withdraws French troops from all of Tunisia except for Bizerte June 17 after months of conflict in which French planes have bombed the Tunisian village of Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef, killing 79. Tunisia joins the Arab League October 1.
French voters approve a Fifth Republic by more than four to one in a popular referendum September 28, the Gaullist Union gains control of the French assembly in the November elections, Gen. de Gaulle is named president of the republic for a 7-year term to begin January 8 of next year, and France gives her overseas possessions 6 months to decide whether to become departments of the republic or autonomous members of a French Community (see 1959).
Nikita Khrushchev replaces Nikolai Bulganin as chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers March 27, he visits Beijing (Peking) in August, and Bulganin is dismissed from the Communist Party Presidium September 6 (see 1956).
Hungary's communist regime executes former premier Imre Nagy June 16 at age 62 after a secret trial (see 1956). Marxist philosopher György Lukács, now 73, was arrested and deported to Romania last year but allowed to return; deprived of his former status, he devotes himself to his critical and philosophical studies, turning out more books and giving lectures. Premier János Kádar is replaced but will regain his position in 1961.
English philosopher Bertrand Russell introduces a symbol for total nuclear disarmament in an Easter march at Aldermaston. The crow's foot in a circle (based actually on the Royal Navy semaphore code letters ND turned upside down) has been designed February 21 by commercial and conscientious objector artist Gerald Holtom on commission from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, headed by Russell, now 86. It will become a universal peace symbol, but Washington rejects a plan for a denuclearized zone in Central Europe in April and Britain follows suit in May.
President Eisenhower proposes mutual inspection to enforce an atomic test ban April 8. Former diplomat Joseph E. Davies dies at Washington, D.C., May 9 at age 81, having tried to promote Soviet-American friendship and cooperation in world affairs.
The Soviet Union suspends nuclear testing in June, and an Anglo-U.S. agreement to cooperate in the development of nuclear weapons is signed July 3.
The 3-year-old nuclear submarine U.S.S. Nautilus becomes the first ship to reach the North Pole August 3, having voyaged from Pearl Harbor through the Bering Strait to signal U.S. opposition to any effort by the Soviet Union to control the Arctic.
Moscow resumes nuclear testing September 30, and the Geneva Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Weapons Tests opens October 31 with delegates from Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States (see 1957). They agree to declare moratoriums on testing, and the voluntary moratorium takes effect November 4 with London, Moscow, and Washington in accord (see France, 1960).
Nobel statesman Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil, dies at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, November 24 at age 94; former Yugoslav government-in-exile prime minister Slobodan Jovanovic at London December 12 at age 88.
The Federation of the West Indies comes into being January 3 with 3 million people scattered over 77,000 square miles that embrace the British colonies Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, and Trinidad.
Venezuela returns to democratic government following a January coup that overthrows the military junta which took power in 1948 under Gen. Marcós Pérez Jiménez. Former president Rómulo Betancourt, now 49, regains the office that he held from 1945 to 1948 and will remain in power until 1964, buffeted by pro-Cuban communists on the one hand and conservatives on the other.
Canada's prime minister Louis Saint Laurent retires at age 76 after 10 years in office (his Liberal Party was narrowly defeated at the polls last year) and is succeeded by opposition leader Lester B. (Bowles) Pearson, 61 (see 1963). Ottawa and Washington establish the North American Air Defense Command May 12.
South Africa's prime minister Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom wins reelection but dies at his native Cape Town August 24 at age 65 after a Nationalist Party administration of less than 4 years in which he has pursued a policy of strict apartheid. He is succeeded by Dutch-born party leader Hendrik F. (Frensch) Verwoerd, 57, who will take even stronger measures to enforce racial segregation (see human rights, 1961).
Guinea becomes an independent republic October 2 with Sékou Touré as president following a popular referendum in which the people have rejected membership in the French Community, the only French colony in Africa to take such action.
The Malagasy Republic (Madagascar) becomes an autonomous state within the French Community October 14, Senegal gains autonomy November 25, Gabon, the new Republic of the Congo (Middle Congo), Mauritania, and Mali (French Sudan) November 28, the new Central African Republic (Ubangi Shari) December 1, Dahomey and Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) December 4. Hubert Maga, 45, is elected president of Dahomey (later Benin) and will serve until October 1963. Moktar Ould Daddah, 35, is elected president of the North African République Islamique de Mauritania and will serve until July 1978, working to unify the biracial and partly nomadic population.
Cryptographer (and poker player) Herbert O. Yardley dies of a stroke at Washington, D.C., August 7 at age 69; former diplomat Breckinridge Long at Laurel, Md., September 26 at age 77.
The Politician by former Boston candy maker Robert Welch, now 58, is an 80,000-word book that expands on a long letter written by Welch late in 1954. Together with 11 like-minded men, Welch meets at Indianapolis in early December and helps found the John Birch Society (Birch was a World War II intelligence officer who was shot and bayoneted to death at age 27 by Chinese communists on August 25, 1945, while on a reconnaisance mission with some Nationalist Chinese). The "Birchers" maintain that President Eisenhower was planted by Communists "for the purpose of throwing the game" and is a conscious agent of the international communist conspiracy. George C. Marshall is also a communist agent, says Welch. His John Birch Society will publish the monthly magazine American Opinion, support more than 400 American Opinion bookstores, and grow to have more than 60,000 members.
Pakistan's president Iskander Mirza abrogates his country's constitution with army support and appoints the army's commander in chief Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan, 51, chief martial law administrator (see 1956). Ayub Khan soon declares himself president, sends Mirza into exile, and will rule until 1969, reorganizing the administration, encouraging foreign investment, working to restore the economy through agrarian reforms (see 1960).
Thailand has a military coup in October (see 1957): Gen. Sarit Thanarat, now 50, seizes power from the country's civilian "caretaker" government, proclaims an "interim constitution," makes himself prime minister and begins a 5-year rule in which he will mount the first government programs of rural development, construct highways and irrigation systems, increase electrification, improve education, root out corruption in the police department, make it illegal to smoke opium, and try to halt opium smuggling, but severely restrict human rights in the process.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission swears in six members January 3 and begins operations (see 1957).
Veteran Harlem civil rights leader Ella Josephine Baker, 54, moves to Atlanta in January to coordinate the Crusade for Citizenship, a voter rights campaign started by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and backed by the charisma of SCLC president Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (see 1957). Baker favors decision-making at a local, grass-roots level, saying that "strong people don't need strong leaders," and her egalitarian, non-clerical position will bring her into conflict with SCLC leadership (see 1960).
An employee of the Bethel Baptist Church at Birmingham, Ala., finds a dynamite bomb beside the church June 29 and moves it to an open area, where it explodes without injuring anyone. Pastor Fred L. Shuttlesworth is a civil rights leader, and authorities will arrest a Ku Klux Klan leader, now 34, in 1977 on charges of trying to blow up the black church.
The U.S. Supreme Court meets in special term and rules unanimously September 29 that schools at Little Rock, Ark., must integrate according to schedule (see 1957). The Court's decision in Cooper v. Aaron implements its ruling in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education.
A pre-dawn dynamite blast tears out a side wall of Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Congregation temple October 12 and an anonymous caller to the United Press International office vows that this is "the last empty building in Atlanta that we will bomb." Police immediately arrest five white Protestant supremacists (one is an FBI informer), but they will twice be acquitted of all charges.
Venezuelan women protest government restrictions January 17 and Caracas police attack them with machetes, but the military junta of Gen. Marcos Perez Jiminez is overthrown 6 days later after nearly 10 years in power.
Moroccan women gain the right to choose their own husbands. Rabat restricts polygamy.
Tokyo's Yoshiwara prostitute district closes April 1 after 341 years of operation (see 1956). The U.S. occupation authorities who left in 1953 were unable to close it, but feminist Fusaye Ichikawa was elected to the Diet in 1952 and has waged a campaign to end legalized prostitution.
South African police arrest social worker Winnie Nomzano, 24, of the Baragwanath General Hospital for taking part in a women's demonstration against the nation's apartheid pass laws. She marries lawyer Nelson Mandela, now 40 and an executive in the African National Congress (see 1944; 1962).
Britain's First Offenders Act prohibits magistrates from imprisoning any adult first offender if there is a more appropriate way of dealing with the offense. Youth crimes have increased sharply since 1955.
Sputnik I reenters the atmosphere January 4 and disintegrates (see 1957). The American Rocket Society and Satellite Research Panel issue a summary of their proposals for a National Space Establishment January 4, asking that it be responsible for the "broad cultural, scientific, and commercial objectives" of outer space development. James H. Doolittle, chairman of the 43-year-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), announces January 11 that a special committee on space technology was formed in late November of last year, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D. Tex.) gives a radio address on CBS January 14 urging the United States "to demonstrate its initiative before the United Nations by inviting all member nations to join in this adventure into outer space together," and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proposes January 16 that an international commission be formed to insure the use of outer space exclusively for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Navy launches its first Polaris test vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Fla., January 17.
Maryland-born physicist and NACA director Hugh L. (Latimer) Dryden, 59, gives a speech to the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences January 27 stressing the importance of a well-planned and logical space program embracing both civilian and military uses. The first U.S. satellite (Explorer I) is launched January 31; developed by rocket engineer Wernher von Braun and his team at Huntsville, Ala., it discovers the radiation belt around the Earth named for physicist James A. Van Allen, now 43, and marks the start of the U.S. space program.
The U.S. Senate adopts a resolution February 6 creating a Special Committee on Space and Aeronautics to frame legislation for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), President Eisenhower gives approval March 27 to plans for outer space exploration, the Soviet Union puts Sputnik III into orbit May 15 with a total payload of about 7,000 pounds and calls it a "flying laboratory," and President Eisenhower signs legislation (H.R. 12575) July 29, making it the National Aeronautics and Space Act. "The present National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics [NACA] with its large and competent staff and well-equipped laboratories will provide the nucleus for NASA," he says. " . . . The cooperation of space exploration responsibilities with NACA's traditional aeronautical research functions is a natural evolution . . . [one which] should have an even greater impact on our future." Eisenhower asks Congress July 30 to appropriate $125 million to initiate NASA, whose creation has been urged by South Carolina-born presidential assistant (and MIT president) James R. (Rhyne) Killian, Jr., 53. Eisenhower nominates North Dakota-born executive T. (Thomas) Keith Glennan, 52, as NASA's first administrator August 8 and he is sworn in August 19 after being confirmed by the Senate. A former member of the Atomic Energy Commission who headed the U.S. Navy's underwater sound laboratory at New London, Conn., during World War II, Glennan has been president of the Case Institute of Technology; his deputy administrator is former NACA director Hugh L. Dryden. Glennan recruits Wernher von Braun, now 46, and his group to work on space projects, but his intention is to keep NASA small and not compete with the Soviet Union in a space race (see communications [Echo I], 1960; Ranger, 1961).
The British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the first land journey across Antarctica. Led by English geologist Vivian Ernest Fuchs, 50 (who is knighted for his feat), the 12-man group is sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society; it travels 2,500 miles in 99 days from the Filchner Ice Shelf to McMurdo Sound and makes findings that confirm earlier theories that a single continent lies beneath the polar ice sheet.
Australian polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins dies suddenly in his Framingham, Mass., hotel room November 30 at age 70; the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Skate will carry out his last wish next year, scattering his ashes after becoming the first submarine to surface at the North Pole March 17 (see U.S.S. Triton, 1960).
U.S. unemployment reaches a postwar high of more than 5.1 million, and the Department of Labor reports that a record 3.1 million Americans are receiving unemployment insurance benefits. Economic recession grips the nation with nearly one-third of major industrial centers classified as having "substantial" unemployment.
The upper 1 percent of Americans enjoys nearly 9 percent of the nation's total disposable income, down from 19 percent of disposable income in 1929. Sixty-four percent of households have incomes above $4,000 per year, up from 40 percent in 1929, but white families average twice as much as nonwhite families.
The median U.S. family income is $5,087, up from $3,187 in 1948 (half of all families have incomes below the median), but prices have climbed along with incomes. A house that cost $47,409 in 1948 sells for $59,558, a family size Chevrolet that sold for $1,255 sells for $2,081, a gallon of gasoline has climbed from 25.9¢ to 30.4¢, a pair of blue jeans that sold for $3.45 sells for $3.75, a pair of men's shoes that was $9.95 is now $11.95, a daily newspaper that cost 3¢ now costs 5¢, a year's tuition at Harvard that cost $455 costs $1,250, a hospital room that cost $13.09 per day costs $28.17, a pound of round steak that costs 90.5¢ costs $1.04, a Nathan's hot dog that cost 20¢ costs 25¢, a ticket to a Broadway musical that cost $6.00 costs $8.05. Some prices have come down: a ranch mink coat that cost $4,200 in 1948 costs $4,000, a roundtrip flight to London from New York that cost $630 costs $453.60, a phone call from New York to Topeka, Kan., that cost $1.90 costs $1.80 (day rate), a pound of chicken that cost 61.2¢ has come down to 46.5¢.
The Visa card has its beginnings in the BankAmericard introduced by California's Bank of America (see Franklin National, 1951). The card costs the consumer nothing and relieves subscribing merchants of credit worries in return for a small percentage of each retail sale charged. Card users must pay 18 percent interest on unpaid balances and 12 percent on cash advances obtained by presenting the card at teller windows (see 1966).
The American Express Card launched officially October 1 by American Express Co. requires an annual fee from "members" who use what is initially a paper card to charge air fares, auto rentals, hotel and motel rooms, restaurant meals, and other expenses (see travelers cheques, 1891). American Express has issued 250,000 cards before the official launch date. It charges an annual fee of $6, it sets out to overtake Diners Club, whose $5 per year card started the travel and entertainment card business in 1950, and beginning next year will lead the industry in issuing plastic cards.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at its high for the year of 583.65, up from 435.69 at the end of 1957.
France's president Charles de Gaulle pushes through a law requiring suppliers to sell at the same price to all retailers and retailers to end price discrimination.
Diamond dealer Harry Winston, now 64, donates the 44.5-carat Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D.C., sending it by registered mail as he sends all his jewelry (see 1932; 1960).
"The torrent of foreign oil robs Texas of her oil market" and costs the state $1 million per day, says the chairman of the 67-year-old Texas Railroad Commission, which controls petroleum production in the state. The price of oil has risen to about $3 per barrel, up from $2.50 in 1948; the commission reduces the number of producing days from 30 to 21 in an effort to keep prices at a profitable level (see 1959).
Indonesia's president Sukarno seizes Royal Dutch-Shell concessions February 3 in an anti-Dutch campaign as the Netherlands retains Western New Guinea. Dutch refugees pour out of the country.
The first U.S. atomic power station for peaceful purposes is dedicated May 26.
The European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) receives a U.S. pledge November 8 to supply uranium for 20 years and extend a loan of $135 million; Euratom comprises Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany.
The Boeing 707 goes into service to challenge the de Havilland Comet for leadership in the jet aircraft industry (see Comet 1, 1953). The first U.S.-built commercial jet, the 707 uses an engine based on one designed by engineer Leonard S. Hobbs, 62, and it beats out Douglas, which will not have its DC-8 in service until next year, and Consolidated-Vultee, whose Convair 880 will not start flying until 1960. Lockheed has stuck with its Electra turboprop propeller jet and loses out in the race as pure jets begin to make other planes obsolete.
Aircraft designer Ernst H. Heinkel dies at Stuttgart January 30 at age 70 (he fell out of favor with the Nazis late in the war and has been producing bicycles, motorbikes, and midget automobiles since 1950); aviation pioneer Henri Farman dies at Paris July 18 at age 84.
Northwest Airlines obtains a route between the Midwest and Florida (see 1945). It will begin service to the Benelux countries in 1979 and to London in 1980 (see 1982).
Gen. Curtis LeMay, U.S. Air Force, flies a converted KC-135 7,100 miles non-stop from Tokyo to Andrews Air Force Base September 12 in 12 hours, 28 minutes—a new record.
Two BOAC de Havilland Comet 4s complete the first commercial transatlantic jet flights October 4, landing in well under 6 hours (see Comet 1, 1953), the 110-passenger Comet 4 is far better than the Comet 1, but the crashes in 1953 and 1954 have damaged de Havilland's reputation. Only 15 airlines will use it, and production of Comets will end in 1962. The Pan American World Airways Boeing 707 Clipper America flies from New York to Paris October 26, serving food from Maxim's, carrying 111 passengers who include actress Greer Garson, and reducing transatlantic flying time by one half. By the end of next year airlines will be carrying 63 percent of all cross-Atlantic traffic—more than 1.5 million air passengers versus 881,894 sea passengers, and by 1974 jets will account for more than 90 percent of hours flown worldwide, but European companies will continue to launch new passenger liners.
The first domestic U.S. 707 flight takes off December 10. National Airlines has rented two of the big Boeing jets from Pan Am for the winter season in a bid to take business away from Eastern.
The Matson Line's Hawaiian Merchant leaves San Francisco for Honolulu August 31 with 75 containers on her deck, each measuring 24 by 8.5 by eight feet (7.3 x 2.5 x 2.4 meters) (see McLean, 1956). Container-ship pioneer Malcolm McLean will change the name of his company to Sea-Land Service Inc. and convert more of his fleet to container ships; Matson and Sea-Land will both install special gantry cranes for quick and efficient shore-based handling of containers, cranes aboard ships will become unnecessary, and eventually it will be possible for one man operating a gantry to handle about 30 containers per hour (but see 1966).
The Super Cub introduced by Honda is a motorcycle with an automatic clutch and plastic covers (see 1948). Rugged and economical (it gets about 140 miles per gallon), it has a 50 cc. engine that produces 4.5 horsepower, is easy for women to drive, will be sold in Vietnam under the name Dream and under various other names elsewhere as it becomes the world's bestselling vehicle (production will reach 100,000 per month by 1961 and within 40 years it will have sold more than 30 million units in countries that will include Brazil, Burma, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand).
London gets its first parking meters.
Budget Rent-a-Car is founded by Detroit-born salesman-entrepreneur Jules W. Lederer, 41, who undercuts the competition by renting cars at $5 per day and 5¢ per mile; he will pioneer in franchising the Budget name, open offices outside of airports to keep costs low, sell the company in 1968 to San Francisco-based Transamerica Corp., and move to London in the early 1970s.
Automotive pioneer Charles F. Kettering dies at his native Loudonville, Ohio, November 25 at age 82.
The cost of 100,000 computerized multiplication computations falls to 26¢, down from $1.26 in 1952, says IBM (see 1964).
An article in the American Mathematical Monthly by statistician John Tukey notes that "software" has become "at least as important" as the "'hardware' of tubes, transistors, wires, tapes, and the like." Tukey coined the term bit 12 years ago and now coins the word software, becoming the first person to define the programs on which electronic calculators operate.
Boston-born California Institute of Technology geneticist Franklin W. (William) Stahl and his Denver-born colleague Matthew (Stanley) Meselson, both 28, elucidate the way the gene substance DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) replicates itself (see Watson, Crick, 1953). Their research has shown that when bacteria are cultured in a nutrient containing a heavy isotope of nitrogen they incorporate it into their DNA, and when their cells divide the DNA splits into its two component strands, each of which acquires a newly-synthesized partner before passing into one of the daughter cells; and when the bacteria are returned to a culture whose nutrient contains ordinary nitrogen their reproduction creates cells that have a new, medium-weight DNA. They conclude that the new DNA molecules are composed of two strands, a heavy one that they have inherited and a light one that has been newly synthesized (see RNA, 1961).
Nobel organic chemist Kurt Alder dies at Cologne June 20 at age 55; physicist (Jean) Fréderic Joliot-Curie of radiation-caused cancer at Paris August 14 at age 58; Nobel physicist Ernest O. Lawrence following surgery for ulcerative colitis at Palo Alto, Calif., August 27 at age 57; Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli of a stroke at Zürich December 15 at age 58.
The Bird Universal Medical Respirator invented by Stoughton, Mass.-born engineer Forrest M. Bird, 37, will come into widespread use for acute and chronic cardiopulmonary care. Bird will devise a "Babybird" respirator in 1970.
Buffalo-born inventor Wilson Greatbatch, 37, implants a prototype cardiac pacemaker in a dog May 7 at the Buffalo Veterans Administration Hospital with help from the hospital's chief of surgery (see Hyman, 1932). Having accidentally loaded the wrong resistor into equipment that monitors heart sounds, Greatbatch has noticed that the device gave off a pulse that mimicked a heartbeat. The dog's bodily fluids leak through the electrical tape used to seal the device, and it shorts out after 4 hours, but Greatbatch will create a casing to prevent such leakage and shield the heart from battery chemicals; he will build 50 pacemakers in a barn behind his house as he works to improve his design.
The first successful human cardiac pacemaker is implanted under the skin of Swedish engineer Arne H. W. Larsson, 43, at Stockholm (see 1889). Scarring from a viral infection has disrupted the normal electrical circuit that links the heart chambers, his fainting spells (Stokes-Adams attacks) are potentially fatal (he has had to be resuscitated 20 to 30 times per day), heart surgeon Ake Senning opens his chest wall October 8 to implant a battery-powered silicon-transistor device weighing less than three ounces that electrically stimulates Larsson's heart rhythms. Devised by inventor Rune Elmqvist, now 52, and powered by rechargeable zinc-mercury batteries, the pacemaker provides regular, mild, electric shocks that stimulate contractions that restore heartbeat normality, and although it fails 8 hours later and has to be recharged every 3 to 4 hours, it will work on and off for 3 years; Larsson will undergo 25 operations and procedures over the next 40 years to replace pacemakers that have failed for one reason or another but he will live to age 86, and pacemakers will have been much improved and made safer. The devices will not gain general acceptance in the United States for another 7 or 8 years (see 1972).
Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) is founded by Brooklyn-born Georgetown University cardiologist William B. (Bertalan) Walsh, 38, who served as a medical officer aboard a destroyer in World War II and saw South Pacific children dying for lack of simple medical care (see 1960). President Eisenhower has appointed him co-chair of a committee as part of his People-to-People program for developing nations (see hospital ship, 1960).
AARP (initially American Association of Retired Persons) is founded by San Francisco-born retired Los Angeles high school principal Ethel Percy Andrus, 73, who resigned in 1944 to nurse her invalid mother, lived on a pension of $50 per month, and in 1947 started the National Retired Teachers Association to lobby for better funding of pension systems. She established a retirement home for teachers at Ojai 4 years ago, started a mail-order pharmaceutical program to provide prescription medicines at low cost, has approached dozens of insurance companies about providing lost-cost health and accident insurance for people over 65, and has finally found one (New York-based Continental Casualty Co.) willing to assume that risk (see Medicare, 1964).
Syanon opens in a rented storefront at Ocean Park, Calif., where Toledo, Ohio-born recovering alcoholic Charles (Edwin) "Chuck" Dederich, 44, uses a $33 unemployment check to start weekly discussion groups with friends from the 22-year-old Alcoholics Anonymous in an effort to rehabilitate alcoholics and drug addicts. "Crime is stupid, delinquency is stupid, and the use of narcotics is stupid," Dederich will say. "What Syanon is dealing with is addiction to stupidity." He adopts the name syanon after an addict stumbles over the words seminar and symposium, gives up, and comes out with the new word; incorporated under that name September 15 as a nonprofit California foundation with 40 members, Syanon uses as its premise the conviction that addicts are not adults and that efforts to cure them with adult procedures are doomed to fail. Discarding AA's emphasis on faith in God's help, it evolves a new form of attack therapy that will revolutionize rehabilitation programs. "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," says Dederich to addicts, and Syanon communities will be established in several parts of the United States, Puerto Rico, and England as drug abuse increases (see 1980; Phoenix House, 1967).
Acupuncture is used for the first time as an anesthetic after nearly 5,000 years of use in medical therapy in China (see 2700 B.C.).
Psychoanalyst Ernest Jones dies of cancer at Cardiff February 11 at age 79; penicillin production pioneer Andrew J. Moyer at St. Petersburg, Fla., February 17 at age 58; behavioral psychiatrist John Broadus Watson at New York September 25 at age 80.
Pope Pius XII dies of a stroke at Castel Gandolfo October 9 at age 82, having suffered for years from uncontrollable hiccups, after a 19-year reign in which he has aroused controversy regarding Vatican efforts, or alleged lack thereof, to protect Jews and Catholic priests from the Holocaust; the College of Cardinals at Rome elects Venice's patriarch Angelo Giuseppe Cardinal Roncalli, 76, October 28 and he will reign until his death in 1963 as Pope John XXIII.
A U.S. National Defense Education Act adopted by Congress September 3 authorizes federal spending of $480 million over 4 years for "strengthening science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction." The lawmakers have responded to fears that the Soviet Union was giving top priority to science education and gaining an edge on the United States in the cold-war space race; Title III of the act gives a boost to sales of textbooks and tape recorders.
Cliffs Notes (initially Cliff's Notes) are introduced by Nebraska textbook publishing executive Clifton Keith Hillegass, 40. A Toronto publisher has come up with the idea of study guides for 16 Shakespearean works; Hillegass has borrowed $4,000 and started the enterprise in his basement; but some high schools call his plot summaries and commentaries "cheat sheets" or "intellectual crutches." Hillegass includes a note with his signature in each of his pamphlets telling the reader, "A thorough appreciation of literature allows no shortcuts." Millions of students will use the heavily advertised guides, and in 30 years the company will have 230 titles and be taking in $11 million per year.
The University of California makes its Berkeley campus chancellor Clark Kerr president of the entire system (see 1952). A champion of expanding educational benefits, Kerr will create a three-tier system whose structure and objectives mix populism with elitism: students at campuses like Berkeley will come from the top 12.5 percent of the state's high school graduates, state colleges will take one third of the graduates and function primarily as undergraduate institutions, community colleges will offer 2-year transfer and vocational programs open to every California high school graduate, and other states will try to emulate the plan (see politics, 1964).
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) opens at Bombay with 100 of the country's brightest students. Established with help from UNESCO together with equipment and experts from the Soviet government, its purpose is to train people for careers in technology and science, its campus occupies 200 hectares in the suburb of Powai, the Indian government subsidizes tuitions, UNESCO offers fellowships, the curriculum includes not only basic courses in chemistry, mathematics, and physics but also some in economics, engineering, English, philosophy, and social sciences, and although many if not most IIT graduates will emigrate to America the institute will help give India a cadre of trained professionals and make her a major factor in the world community of science and technology.
Sinhalese extremists force Ceylon's prime minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike to nullify the agreement he made 2 years ago to permit Tamil to be used as the official language in parts of the country (see 1956). The action provokes communal violence, rioting, and massive internal migrations, but although the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act signed into law in August permits use of Tamil for some administrative purposes and in secondary and higher education, it does not satisfy either Tamils or more extremist Sinhalese, and conflicts between the two sides will continue for decades.
Zenith Radio founder Eugene F. McDonald Jr. dies of cancer at Chicago May 15 at age 72; CBS newsman (and wartime OWI director) Elmer Davis of a stroke and pneumonia at Washington, D.C., May 18 at age 68.
U.S. television sets number an estimated 41 million, up from 5 to 8 million in 1950.
The United States has 1,751 daily newspapers (307 morning, 1,456 evening), down from 1,878 in 1940. By the end of the century it will have 1,480 (766 morning, 727 evening).
United Press International (UPI) is created May 24 by a merger of the 51-year-old United Press with the 52-year-old Hearst International News Service.
Cartoonist Frank Willard of "Moon Mullins" fame dies at Los Angeles January 11 at age 64. He has been receiving a gross salary of $100,000; the comic strip that he began in 1923 has been running in 250 newspapers with a combined circulation of 15 million, and his longtime assistant Ferd Johnson keeps it going; journalist Herbert Bayard Swope dies at his Sands Point, N.Y., home June 20 at age 76.
U.S. first class postal rates climb to 4¢ per ounce August 1, up from the 3¢ level that has held since July 1932 (see 1963).
Nonfiction: The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith decries the overemphasis on consumer goods in the U.S. economy and the use of advertising to create artificial demand for such goods. More of the nation's wealth should be allocated to public purposes, says the Harvard economist; The Arms Race: A Programme for World Disarmament by British statesman Philip J. Noel-Baker, now 68, who has served as a Labour member in the House of Commons, held several cabinet ministries, and been a member of his country's delegation to the General Assembly; No More War! by Nobel chemist Linus C. Pauling, who in January brought to the United Nations a petition signed by 11,021 scientists worldwide urging an end to nuclear weapons testing; War and Peace in the Space Age by Lieut. Gen. James M. Gavin, 51, U.S. Army (ret.), who led the 82nd Airborne Division at the end of World War II; The Causes of World War Three by C. Wright Mills; Parkinson's Law by English political scientist Cyril Northcote Parkinson, 49, satirizes the growth of bureaucracy: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion"; "Expenditure rises to meet income"; "Expansion means complexity, and complexity, decay. Or: the more complex, the sooner dead"; The Coming of the New Deal by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.; Young Man Luther by Erik H. Erikson; Klondike: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush by Dawson City-born Toronto journalist-historian Pierre Berton, 38; The Americans (Volume 1): The Colonial Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin; The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote; Only in America by North Carolina newspaper editor Harry Golden, 56.
Philosopher G. E. Moore dies at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, October 24 at age 84, having brought a systematic approach to issues of ethics; former "muck raker" journalist and author Samuel Hopkins Adams dies at Beaufort, S.C., November 15 at age 87, having written more than 50 books of biography, exposé, and fiction.
Fiction: Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote; The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac; From the Terrace by John O'Hara; Some Came Running by James Jones; Crazy in Berlin by Cincinnati-born novelist Thomas (Louis) Berger, 34; Exodus by Leon Uris; Things Fall Apart by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, 28; The City and the Dogs (La ciudad y los perros) by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, 22; The Leopard (II gattopardo) by the late Sicilian novelist Prince Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; Balthazar and Mount Olive by Lawrence Durrell; The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and New York-born novelist William J. (Julius) Lederer, 46, who come under attack from the State Department for their revelations of arrogance, insensitivity, and stupidity on the part of U.S. diplomats in the developing countries (like last year's Graham Greene novel The Quiet American, it is thought to have been based on Air Force Major Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, now 51); A Mixture of Frailties by Robertson Davies completes his "Salterton Trilogy"; Memed, My Hawk (Ince Memed) by Turkish novelist Yasar Kemal, 36; Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (Memushiri kouchi) and The Catch (Shiiku) (novella) by Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, 23; The River with No Bridge (first volume) by Japanese novelist and human rights campaigner Sue Sumii, 56, whose writer husband, Shigeru Inuta, died last year. Her work explores the discrimination and humiliation suffered by Japan's burakumin and will have sales of 8.3 million copies; The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot by Angus Wilson; Spinster by New Zealand novelist Sylvia Ashton-Warner, 53; Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by English novelist Alan Silitoe, 30, who draws on his experience as a Nottingham factory worker; Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene; I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch; A World of Strangers by Nadine Gordimer; The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden; The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh; The Oldest Confession by New York-born novelist and political satirist Richard Condon, 43; The Mackerel Plaza by Peter De Vries; As Music and Splendor by Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, 26; The Blackmailer by English novelist Isabel Colegate, 26; The Best of Everything by New York-born novelist Rona Jaffe, 26; Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart; North from Rome by Helen MacInnes; Dr. No by Ian Fleming.
Novelist-essayist H. M. Tomlinson dies at his native London February 5 at age 84; Nobel novelist Roger Martin du Gard at Bellême, France, August 22 at age 77; author Dorothy Canfield Fisher at Arlington, Vt., November 9 at age 79; Lion Feuchtwanger at Los Angeles December 21 at age 74.
Poetry: A Coney Island of the Mind and Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower by Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Gasoline by Gregory Corso includes his poem "Bomb"; Words for the Wind by Theodore Roethke; A Sense of the World: Poems by Elizabeth Jennings; Alibi by Elsa Morante.
Nobel poet Juan Ramón Jiménez dies at San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 29 at age 76; Alfred Noyes on the Isle of Wight June 28 at age 77; Robert W. Service at Lancieux on the French Riviera September 11 at age 84.
Juvenile: Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back! by Dr. Seuss; The Rabbits' Wedding by Garth Williams, whose story of a wedding between a black rabbit and a white rabbit draws condemnation from the White Citizens Council; Do You Know What I'd Do? by Charlotte Zolotow.
Painting: Three Flags by Jasper Johns; Four Darks on Red by Mark Rothko; Peace by Pablo Picasso, whose hand extending a bouquet will be widely reproduced; La Création de l'homme by Marc Chagall; Homage to Malkevich by Victor Vasarely; Song by Asheville, N.C.-born abstract expressionist Kenneth Noland, 34, who helps to pioneer the technique of staining canvas with thinned paints and deploying colors in geometric shapes proportioned to the shapes of the canvases; Blue on a Point by Sam Francis; White Study (oil on canvas) and The Garden (paint, wood, found objects) by Canadian-born U.S. artist Agnes Martin, 46; Lizzie at the Table, Still Life, and Anne, Lizzie, and Kate by Fairfield Porter; The Runaway by Norman Rockwell (cover illustration, Saturday Evening Post, September 2). Georges Rouault dies at Paris February 13 at age 86; Maurice de Vlaminck at Rueil-la-Gadeliére outside Paris October 11 at age 82.
Robert Rauschenberg pioneers pop art with a semi-abstract hole into which he inserts four Coca-Cola bottles.
Sculpture: Marseilles-born Paris sculptor César (César Baldaccini), 37, exhibits his first "compressions"—found objects compacted by an hydraulic press with help on occasion from a welding torch or sledgehammer (his works will include a composition featuring thousands of crushed, counterfeit Cartier watches seized by customs officials and Sein (pink polyester resin modeled on a cabaret dancer's breast); Sea Form (Porthmeor) (bronze) by Barbara Hepworth; New York's Leo Castelli Gallery gives Paris-born Venezuelan artist Marisol (Escobar), 28, her first individual exhibition; Mad House (Douglas fir, metal, enamel) by Los Angeles-born sculptor H. C. (Horace Clifford) Westermann, 35, who joined the Marine Corps at age 19 and later toured the Far East as a USO acrobat; Isamu Noguchi designs a garden for the UNESCO Building at Paris; Giacomo Manzu creates bronze doors for the Salzburg Cathedral (he has revived the tradition of sculptured doors for ecclesiastical buildings).
Edward Weston dies of Parkinson's disease at Carmel, Calif., January 1 at age 71, having used large-format cameras with small apertures to create a new aesthetic.
New York photographer Diane Arbus (née Nemerov), 35, begins 2 years of study with Austrian-born documentary photographer Lisette Model, now 51, who befriends her and will help Arbus get through her separation and divorce in the 1960s.
Theater: The Garden District (Suddenly Last Summer and Something Unspoken) by Tennessee Williams 1/7 at New York's York Theater, with Anne Meacham; Two for the Seesaw by New York-born playwright William Gibson, 42, 1/16 at New York's Booth Theater, with Henry Fonda, New York-born actress Anne Bancroft (Anna Maria Italiano), 26, as Gittel Mosca, 750 perfs.; Sunrise at Campobello by Newark, N.J.-born playwright (and former M-G-M production chief) Dore Schary, 52, 1/30 at New York's Cort Theater, with Ralph Bellamy as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mary Fickett as Eleanor, 556 perfs.; Biedermann and the Firebugs (Biedermann und die Brandstifter) by Max Frisch 3/29 at Zürich's Schauspielhaus; Teahouse (Chaguan) by novelist-playwright Lao She (Shu She Yu), now 58, 3/29 at Beijing's (Peking's) People's Art Theater; Variations on a Theme by Terence Rattigan 3/31 at London's Globe Theatre, with Jeremy Brett, Margaret Leighton, 132 perfs.; The Killer (Tueur sans gages) by Eugène Ionesco 4/4 at Darmstadt's Landestheater; The Birthday Party by English playwright Harold Pinter, 27, 5/19 at London's Lyric Theatre, with Beatrix Lehmann, 8 perfs.; Epitaph for George Dillon by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton 2/11 at London's Comedy Theatre, with Robert Stephens, Philip Locke, Wendy Craig, Malcolm Hays, 52 perfs.; Five Finger Exercise by English playwright Peter Shaffer, 32, 7/16 at London's Comedy Theatre, with Brian Bedford, Roland Culver, Michael Bryant, Adrianne Allan, 609 perfs.; A Touch of the Poet by the late Eugene O'Neill 10/2 at New York's Helen Hayes Theater with Tom Clancy, Eric Portman, Helen Hayes, Kim Stanley, Betty Field, 284 perfs.; The Hostage by Brendan Behan 10/14 at London's Theatre Royal, Stratford; The World of Suzie Wong by Paul Osborn 10/14 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with France Nuyen, William Shatner, 508 perfs.; The Girls in 509 by Howard Teichmann 10/15 at New York's Belasco Theater, with Imogene Coca, Peggy Wood, 117 perfs.; The Pleasure of His Company by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Samuel Taylor 10/22 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Skinner, Cyril Ritchard, Charles Ruggles, Walter Abel, George Peppard, sets by Donald Oenslager, 474 perfs.; Make a Million by Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore 10/23 at New York's Playhouse Theater (to Morosco 4/13/1959), with Conrad Janis, Neva Patterson, Sam Levene, 308 perfs.; End-Game (Fin de Partie) and Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett 10/28 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with George Devine, Jack McGowran, Richard Golden, Frances Cuka, 38 perfs.; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aujhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui) by Bertolt Brecht 11/10 at Stuttgart; The Disenchanted by Budd Schulberg and Harvey Breit (based on Schulberg's novel) 12/3 at New York's Coronet Theater, with Jason Robards Jr. (and Sr.), English actress Rosemary Harris, 28, Milwaukee-born actress Salome Jens, 23, George Grizzard, 189 perfs.; The Cold Wind and the Warm by S. N. Behrman 12/8 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Eli Wallach, Sanford Meisner, Maureen Stapleton, Naples-born actor Vincent Gardenia (originally Scognamiglio), 36, Morris Carnovsky, Suzanne Pleshette, 120 perfs.; JB by poet-playwright-statesman Archibald MacLeish, now 66, 12/11 at New York's ANTA Theater, with Raymond Massey, Christopher Plummer, Pat Hingle, 364 perfs.; The Gazebo by Australian playwright-screenwriter Alec Coppel, 49, 12/12 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with China-born actress Jayne Meadows (originally Jane Cotter), 38, Walter Slezak, 218 perfs.; A Dream for the People (Un soñador para un pueblo) by Antonio Buero Vallejo 12/18 at Madrid's Teatro Español.
Actor Thurston Hall dies at Beverly Hills, Calif., February 20 at age 75; drama critic George Jean Nathan at New York April 8 at age 76; playwright-lyricist Frank Mandel at Los Angeles April 20 at age 73; playwright-composer-lyricist Clare Kummer at Carmel, Calif., April 22 at age 85; playwright F. Hugh Herbert at Beverly Hills May 17 at age 60; actress Catherine Calhoun Doucet at New York June 24 at age 83; playwright-director-producer Rachel Crothers at Danbury, Conn., July 5 at age 79; actor Raymond Hackett at Los Angeles July 7 at age 55; actress Evelyn Varden at New York July 11 at age 65; playwright Lennox Robinson at Dublin October 14 at age 72.
Television: Bluebeard on BBC with Christopher Treece and Leila Williams in a 15-minute children's show that will be expanded to 30 minutes and continue for more than 35 years; The Garry Moore Show 6/26 on CBS with Baltimore-born personality Moore (originally Thomas Garrison Morfit), 43, in a daytime variety show (to 1964 and from 1966 to 1967); Concentration (daytime game show) 8/25 on NBC with host Hugh Downs and Lindenhurst, N.Y.-born emcee Jack Barry, 40, in a format created by Barry and producer Dan Enright, 41 (to 3/23/1973, nearly 3,800 episodes); Huckleberry Hound in September on syndicated stations with Hanna-Barbera animation; The Donna Reed Show 9/24 on ABC with Reed as physician's wife Donna Stone, Carl Betz as her husband (to 9/3/1966, 274 episodes); The Naked City 9/30 on ABC with James Franciscus, John McIntyre (to 9/11/1963).
Soap opera creator Elaine Carrington dies at her native New York May 4 at age 66, having earned upwards of $200,000 per year for churning out 38,000 words per week for her 25-minute radio episodes.
Columbia University English instructor Charles Van Doren, 32, denies any wrongdoing when accused in August of having received answers in advance as a contestant on NBC's 2-year-old quiz show Twenty-One. Van Doren's salary at Columbia is $4,400 per year, his appearances on the show have brought him $129,000 (plus a $50,000-per-year contract to appear on the Today show when he lost his title), and he finally comes clean November 2; a grand jury indicts the show's producers (notably Dan Enright) for fraud. President Eisenhower calls the deception "a terrible thing to do to the American public"; Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill will write that "television had robbed people of a kind of faith which it is dangerous to destroy in a democracy, and it is the more so because it is a reflection on all of us and on our national character. The quizzes revealed our deep psychological lust for material things." NBC cancels Twenty-One November 2 (CBS has canceled its $64,000 Question and $64,000 Challenge earlier because of plummeting ratings). The three networks take control of all programming out of the hands of advertising agencies, and a congressional committee will conduct hearings on the quiz-show fraud next year (but see 1999).
Films: Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones with Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier; Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle with Tati; Roy Baker's A Night to Remember with Kenneth More; Jack Clayton's Room at the Top with Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret; Delbert Mann's Separate Tables with Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Wendy Hiller, Burt Lancaster, Gladys Cooper; Orson Welles's Touch of Evil with Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh; Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo with James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes. Also: Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds with Zbigniew Cybulski; Richard Brooks's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives; Jacques Tourneur's Curse of the Demon with Dana Andrews; Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress with Toshiro Mifune; Ronald Neame's The Horse's Mouth with Alec Guinness; Melville Shavelson's Houseboat with Cary Grant, Sophia Loren; Robert Wise's I Want to Live! with Susan Hayward; John Guillermin's I Was Monty's Double with M. E. Clifton-James, John Mills; John Ford's The Last Hurrah with Spencer Tracy; Tanji Yabushita's Legend of the White Serpent (animated) introduces a new style of "anime" animation that will have far-reaching influence; Tony Richardson's Look Back in Anger with Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Edith Evans; Satyajit Ray's The Music Room; Douglas Sirk's The Tarnished Angels with Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack; George Pal's tom thumb with Russ Tamblyn, June Thornton, London-born comedian Terry-Thomas (Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens), 47; Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions with Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Hope Lange.
Pioneer film producer Jesse L. Lasky dies at Beverly Hills January 13 at age 77; Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn of a coronary occlusion en route to a Phoenix hospital February 27 at age 66 (he has been widely detested in the picture community, but his funeral brings out more than 2,000 mourners, prompting comedian Red Skelton to say, "It only proves what they always say—give the public something they want to see and they'll come out for it"; actor Ronald Colman dies at San Ysitro, Calif., May 14 at age 67; Tyrone Power of a heart attack on location at Madrid November 15 at age 45 while making King Vidor's film Solomon and Sheba.
Hollywood musical: Vincente Minnelli's Gigi with Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, music by Frederick Loewe, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, songs that include "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," "The Night They Invented Champagne," and the title song.
Stage musicals: Say, Darling 4/3 at New York's ANTA Theater, with David Wayne, Vivian Blaine, Johnny Desmond, Robert Morse, Jerome Cowan, Virginia Martin, music and lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule Styne, book by Richard Bissell, his wife, Marian, and Abe Burrows in an adaptation of Bissell's 1957 novel (to the Martin Beck Theater 12/8, 332 perfs.); Expresso Bongo 4/23 at London's Saville Theatre, with Paul Scofield, Millicent Martin, Hy Hazell, Elizabeth Ashley, music by London-born composer Monty Norman, 30, and David Heneker, book by Wolf Mankowitz and Julian More, lyrics by Norman and More, songs that include, "Spoil the Child" and "There's Nothing Wrong with British Youth Today"; Irma la Douce 7/17 at London's Lyric Theatre, with Elizabeth Seal, Keith Mitchell, Clive Revill, music by French composer Marguerite Monmot, book and lyrics by Alexandre Breffet, Julian More, Monty Norman, David Heath, 1,512 perfs.; Flower Drum Song 12/1 at New York's St. James Theater, with Pat Suzuki, Juanita Hall, Myoshi Umeki (as the mail-order bride, Mei Lei), Larry Blyden, music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, 601 perfs.
Broadway producer Mike Todd is killed in the crash of his private plane near Grants, N.M., March 22 at age 48 while en route to New York for a banquet to be given in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria (film star Elizabeth Taylor married him a year ago but has stayed home because of a cold); Broadway musical librettist Herbert Fields dies of a heart attack at New York March 24 at age 60, survived by his sister Dorothy; onetime musical star José Collins dies at her native London December 6 at age 71.
Opera: Vanessa 1/15 at New York's Metropolitan Opera with Eleanor Steber in the title role, music by Samuel Barber, libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti; Noye's Fludde (Noah's Flood) 6/18 at Orford Church, Suffolk, with music by Benjamin Britten, libretto from the 14th century Chester Miracle Play; Spanish mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza, 23, makes her first British appearance at Glyndebourne as Cherubino in the 1786 Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro and sings at Dallas as Isabella in the 1813 Rossini opera L'Italiana in Algeri.
The Santa Fe Opera opens outside the New Mexico town July 3 with a performance of the 1904 Puccini opera Madame Butterfly. His father has given New York-born impresario John (O'Hea) Crosby, 30, $200,000 to acquire a ranch in the Sangre de Cristo mountains seven miles north of town, he has built an open theater with 480 seats and hired a company of 67, he gains attention by inviting Igor Stravinsky to oversee a production of The Rake's Progress, his total budget for the first season comes to $110,000 (about half of it raised through donations), he will give works by new composers their first performances, a new 2,128-seat theater will open in 1998, and by the time Crosby retires as general director in 2000 his company will have a payroll of 550 and an annual budget of $11 million.
First performances: Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra by Dmitri Shostakovich 5/10 at Moscow; Nocturne song cycle for tenor and small orchestra by Benjamin Britten 10/16 at Leeds.
Composer Ralph Vaughn Williams dies at London August 26 at age 80; dancer-choreographer Doris Humphrey at New York December 29 at age 63.
Popular songs: "Diana" by Canadian rock singer-composer Paul Anka, 15, who begins a meteoric rise to stardom (he will have made his first $1 million by age 17); "Come On, Let's Go," "Donna," and "La Bamba" by California-born singer-songwriter Richie Valens (Richard Stephen Valenzuela); "Satin Doll" by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Johnny Mercer; "Volare" ("Nel Blue, Disinto di Blu") by Italian composer Dominico Modugno, English lyrics by Mitchell Parish; "Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin and Jean Murray; "Everybody Loves a Lover" by U.S. composer Robert Allen, lyrics by Richard Adler; "The Ballad of Johnny B. Goode," "Sweet Little Sixteen," and "Reelin' and Rockin'" by Chuck Berry; "Sugartime" by Charlie Phillips and Odis Echols; the Kingston Trio records "Tom Dooley" and scores a smashing success; "Twilight Time" by Morty Lewis, lyrics by Buck Ram; "Catch a Falling Star" by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss; "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" by Ross Bagdasarian; "Jingle Bell Rock" by U.S. songwriters Joe Beal and Jim Boothe.
Blues composer W. C. Handy dies at New York March 28 at age 84. He has been blind and in poor health for some years.
The first Grammy Award given by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences goes to the Italian song "Volare," but the Burbank, Calif., organization comes under fire from much of the recording industry for favoring older, more conservative, white, middle-of-the-road artists over youth-oriented performers.
Irish tenor Josef Locke bids his audiences goodbye, quits show business, and flees to southern Ireland to avoid arrest by British authorities for non-payment of £10,500 in back taxes (see 1947). Now 41, the burly six-foot-three-inch Locke has been earning up to £2,000 per week (20 times more than other entertainers); he buys a racehorse, calls him The Taxman, acquires a Kerry pub called The White Horse Tavern, and will try to keep his various divorces and a paternity suit out of the papers.
The first Monterey Jazz Festival opens in September at Monterey, Calif., where 67 local businessmen have contributed $100 each to back founder Jimmy Lyons in his dream of "having a whole weekend of jazz" in a "sylvan setting with the best jazz people in the whole world playing on the same stage." Participants include Louis Armstrong, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Harry James, John Lewis, Gerry Mulligan, and Max Roach. Lyons has founded the festival as a non-profit educational corporation, with all proceeds going to support musical education.
Sugar Ray Robinson wins the middleweight boxing title for a record fifth time March 25 at Chicago Stadium in a 15-round decision over Carmen Basilio.
Ashley John Cooper, 21, (Australia) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills, Althea Gibson in women's singles.
Pennsylvania-born golfer Arnold Palmer wins his first Masters Tournament title at Augusta, Ga., plus two other golf championships and earns an impressive $42,000. Now 28, Palmer won the U.S. amateur title 4 years ago, turned professional soon after, and will be the most popular golfer since Bobby Jones.
The U.S. ocean yacht Columbia designed by Olin J. Stephens, 50, fends off the British challenger Sceptre in the first America's Cup competition since 1937. The 12-meter yachts are much smaller than the prewar "J"-class boats that nobody can now afford to build.
The New York Giants become the San Francisco Giants and play their first season at Candlewick Park.
The Brooklyn Dodgers become the Los Angeles Dodgers and play their first season at Chavez Ravine.
The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the Milwaukee Braves 4 games to 3.
Brazil wins her first World Cup in football (soccer), defeating Sweden 5 to 2 at Stockholm. Pele scores two of the Brazilian goals (see 1956).
U.S. intercollegiate football rules change to give teams the option of trying for a two-point conversion after touchdown by running the ball or passing it from the three-yard line. A kick between the goal posts from the two-yard line is still worth only one point.
Baltimore Colts fullback Alan Ameche blasts one yard over his right tackle into the end zone at Yankee Stadium December 28 to defeat the New York Giants in a 23-to-17 overtime victory that ends the first championship game to be televised nationally (it is also the first sudden-death overtime game in NFL history).
The Brussels world's fair opens April 16 with pavilions set up by 51 nations. Centered about a huge "Atomium," which symbolizes the safe and peaceful uses of atomic energy, the fair has its 1 millionth visitor April 26.
Fashion designer Claire McCardell dies at New York March 22 at age 53; Lucien Lelong at Anglet outside his native Paris May 10 at age 68, having retired 10 years ago.
Japan's imperial family breaks tradition June 18 by permitting Crown Prince Akihito, 24, to choose his own bride.
Americans buy 100 million Hula Hoops, introduced by Wham-O Mfg., but the fad is short-lived.
Lego creator Ole Kirk Christiansen dies at age 67, and the company he started in 1934 introduces a stud-and-coupling system that permits children to snap the bricks together. It will use plastic exclusively after 1960, when its wooden-goods warehouse burns down, and will later replace the cellulose acetate in its Lego blocks with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, which is more stable (see Legoland, 1968).
Pledge furniture duster and polisher is introduced by the S. C. Johnson Co. of Racine, Wis. (see Off, 1957).
Nebraska police and National Guardsmen mount roadblocks in late January and organize posses to hunt down a "mad dog" killer who has shot Marion Bartlett of Lincoln and his wife Velda through the head, clubbed their younger daughter to death, and run off with Carol Fugate, 14, Mrs. Bartlett's daughter by a previous marriage. Charles Starkweather, 19, has just lost his job as helper on a garbage truck, he proceeds to kill seven more people in the next 3 days before Wyoming police catch him January 30, and he will die in the electric chair June 25 of next year.
A Los Angeles inquest finds April 11 that Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, 14, and her father, restaurateur Stephen Crane, committed "justifiable homicide" in stabbing to death Lana's lover, Hollywood hoodlum Johnny Stompanato, 35, after he threatened her with serious injury or death if she left him.
The 20-story Havana Hilton opens March 27. Designed by Wallace Beckett Associates with help from the local firm Arroyo y Menendez, the $21 million hotel has 320 rooms, competes with Miami mobster Meyer Lansky's Havana Riviera and mobster Santos Traficante's Capri; it will be the Havana Libre beginning next year.
Brasília's Presidential Palace is completed to designs by Brazilian architect Oskar Niemeyer, 51, on a site laid out by architect-urban planner Lucio Costa, 66, on an arid savanna that has been set aside for the nation's new capital, a futuristic city with apartments and private houses placed in green areas largely free of vehicular traffic (see 1960).
Milan's Pirelli building is completed to designs by Italian architects Pier Luigi Nervi, 67, and G. Ponti.
Rome's Palazzetto dello Sport is completed to designs by Pier Luigi Nervi.
Oklahoma City's Gold Dome Bank building is completed on Route 66 to designs by Buckminster Fuller.
Iraq's new Qasim government gains popularity among the country's urban poor by imposing rent controls and increasing expenditures on housing.
U.S. scientists begin testing Earth's radiation shield of ozone to discover what effects if any have been caused by atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and by the growing number of high-altitude flights by military and commercial jet aircraft. Ozone is an unstable form of oxygen containing three atoms instead of the usual two and serves as a barrier at altitudes of 50,000 to 135,000 feet against undue exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays, which can cause human skin cancer. The ozone layers will be found to increase in the next 13 years, but will then begin to shrink, possibly as a result of being broken up by chlorine gas released from freon gas by ultraviolet rays in the atmosphere at altitudes of 12 to 15 miles (see Freon 12 refrigerant, 1931; plastic aerosol valve, 1953). Nearly a million tons of freon will be released into the atmosphere each year by the 1970s, mostly from aerosol cans, and environmentalists will suggest the possibility that the Earth's ozone layer is being depleted (see Crutzen, 1970).
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission physicist Willard Libby says the United States is the "hottest place in the world" in terms of radioactivity largely as a result of fallout from recent Soviet and British nuclear tests in the atmosphere (see Libby, 1947).
Iceland extends her fishery limits to 12 miles offshore. The move will produce conflicts with British fishing vessels (see 1961).
Whalers kill 6,908 blue whales, the largest creatures ever to inhabit the Earth. When hunting ceases in 1965, only one blue whale will be found, and it will be estimated that fewer than 1,000 remain in the seas.
Iraq's new Qasim government shifts spending from agriculture to social programs such as health, education, and housing as it begins a program of land reform in a country whose land has been owned by just 15 percent of the rural population and 2 percent has owned 68 percent of the land. By early 1971 about 95 percent of that population will own land, but while Iraq this year is a net exporter of food and agriculture accounts for about 17 percent of its Gross National Product, she will soon become a net food importer and agriculture's share of her GNP will fall to 8 percent by 1980 as Iraq's population doubles from 7 million to nearly 14 million.
China's wheat crop reaches 40 million tons, 2 million more than the U.S. crop, and cereal grain production jumps 35 percent above last year's levels despite a poor rice crop, but total food production falls far short of estimates (see 1957). The dearth of food encourages peasants to neglect the grain crops of the collectives and raise vegetables and livestock which they can sell privately, if illegally (in some communes half the land is privately cultivated) (see 1959).
Hawaiian pineapple pioneer James D. Dole dies at his Honolulu home May 14 at age 80. He retired 10 years ago from the company that he founded in 1902; it now employs 3,500 people year round plus 7,800 in the packing season and produces 30 million cases of canned fruit and juice per year.
Congress mandates enrichment of rice, but the law does not apply to short-grain rice in the northern states, where that rice is a dietary staple among some ethnic groups.
A Food Additives Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 approved by Congress September 6 permits no additives other than those used widely for many years and "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS list) unless the FDA has agreed after a thorough review of test data that the new additive is safe at the intended level of use (see 1956). The amendment's Delaney "cancer clause" states that if any amount of any additive can be shown to produce cancer when ingested by humans or test animals, no amount of that additive may be used in foods for human consumption. Rep. James J. Delaney (D. N.Y.) has inserted the clause (see cyclamates, 1969).
Jif Peanut Butter is introduced nationwide in August by Procter & Gamble, which continues to produce Big Top Peanut Butter but will use its marketing skills to make Jif the top-selling brand, ahead of Skippy and Peter Pan.
Rice-A-Roni is introduced by San Francisco pasta maker Vincent DeDomenico, whose Italian-born father, Domenico, came to America in 1890 at age 19, moved to California 5 years later, and started out selling vegetables in 1912. He built a macaroni factory and got his four sons to sell 25- and 50-pound boxes of the family's Golden Grain pasta to grocers from Sausalito to Eureka in the 1930s. Vincent watched his sister-in-law mix a can of Swanson's chicken broth with vermicelli and rice to produce a kind of pilaf, experimented by substituting dried soup for canned, and added the seasoned rice-and-pasta recipe to the side of one of his pasta packages. National distribution of Rice-A-Roni will begin in 1961.
Chicken Ramen is introduced by Nissin Food Products of Japan, founded at Osaka August 25 by entrepreneur Momofuku Ando, 48, to make and market the world's first instant ramen (Chinese noodle) product. Ando traveled about his ravaged country after World War II, found few noodle shops where working-class people could buy quick, cheap meals, and saw a need for an easily transportable noodle package. He started a food-trading and wholesaling company, has developed Chicken Ramen during a lull in business, and renames his company Nissin Food. A bag (or pillow pack, or brick/block) type product, Chicken Ramen consists of quick-fried noodles that are placed in a bowl along with a packet of soup seasoning; boiling water is added, the bowl is covered, and in 3 minutes the dish is ready to eat. The product meets with instant success, despite the fact that it sells for six times the price of fresh ramen noodles at any Japanese "ramen house" restaurant, and more than 10 other companies soon have competitive products on the market.
Cocoa Puffs breakfast food, introduced by General Mills, is 43 percent sugar (see 1954; 1959). Cocoa Krispies breakfast food, introduced by Kellogg, is 45.9 percent sugar (see Special K, 1955; Concentrate, 1959).
Sweet 'N Low sugarless sweetener is introduced by Cumberland Packing Co. of Brooklyn, N.Y., which uses saccharin in place of sugar, providing the same amount of sweetness without the 30 calories of sugar. Founder Benjamin Eisenstadt, now 51, opened a tea-bag factory after World War II, invented the modern sugar packet after his wife remarked that restaurant sugar bowls seemed unsanitary, had his idea stolen by sugar company executives (he naively showed them how he made the packets), packs his new granulated product in bright pink packets, and gives it a name derived from a musical rendition of an Alfred Lord Tennyson poem.
Unilever's Thomas J. Lipton division introduces Instant Tea, a powder designed to be mixed with ice water (see 1946; White Rose Redi-Tea, 1953). It is slow to gain acceptance, despite the general popularity of iced tea (see Snapple, 1987).
Beech-Nut Life Savers board chairman and American Broadcasting Co. founder Edward J. Noble dies at his Greenwich, Conn., home December 28 at age 76, leaving $3 million to his wife and daughter. He has established a $2 million trust fund for his daughter and left the residue of his estate to the Edward John Noble Foundation, which makes substantial contributions to support education.
Pizza Hut opens at Kansas City to begin a franchise chain that will grow into the largest group of U.S. pizzerias (see 1953). Frank Carney, 18, has read a story in the Saturday Evening Post about the popularity of pizza with teenagers and college students. He borrowed $600 from his mother, found someone to teach him how to make pizzas, and has gone into business with his brother Dan. Within 16 years Pizza Hut will have gross sales of $114 million, followed closely by Shakey's with annual sales of $100 million (see Little Caesar's, 1959).
International House of Pancakes (IHOP) has its beginnings July 7 at Toluca Lake in Los Angeles County, where New York-born entrepreneur Al Lapin Jr., 30, and his brother Jerry open a family restaurant offering pancakes in flavors and varieties that patrons are not likely to have at home, all made from sugar-laden recipes tested by his mother, Viola, in her kitchen. Lapin will lose control of the business in 1973 and file for bankruptcy in 1989, but the chain will grow by 2004 to employ 55,000 people in more than 1,000 franchised outlets with blue roofs in the United States and Canada.
China's birth control program of 1954 ends as China begins a Great Leap Forward (see 1962).
London-born Roman Catholic Oxford agricultural economist Colin Clark, 53, deplores birth control. He writes in the magazine Nature, "When we look at the British in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at the Greeks in the sixth century B.C., the Dutch in the seventeenth century, and the Japanese in the nineteenth century, we must conclude that the pressure of population upon limited agricultural resources provides a painful but ultimately beneficial stimulus, provoking unenterprising agrarian communities into greater efforts in the fields of industry, commerce, political leadership colonization, science, and [sometimes . . . ] the arts."
Abortion in the United States by Great Neck, Long Island, physician Mary Calderone (née Steichen), 53, reports on conferences of the Planned Parenthood Federation but is almost totally ignored (see 1955). A daughter of the late photographer Edward Steichen, Calderone became medical director of Planned Parenthood in 1953 (see Colorado, 1967).
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