1959: Information from Answers.com
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1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
Cuban dictator Gen. Fulgencio Batista resigns January 1 after nearly 7 years of corrupt rule, flees to Dominica, and moves on to Miami with a fortune of more than $150 million as rebel leader Fidel Castro takes the provincial capital of Santa Clara, captures Santiago January 2, roars into Havana January 3, and assumes office as premier February 16 after a 5-year rebellion (see 1956). Now 32, Castro arrives at Washington on an unofficial visit April 15 and 2 days later calls his revolution "humanistic," not communist, but the government that he establishes with help from Che Guevara is decidedly Marxist. Guevara becomes a Cuban citizen and plays a prominent role in the new regime.
Former Argentine foreign minister (and 1936 Nobel Peace Prize winner) Carlos de Saavedra Lamas dies at his native Buenos Aires May 5 at age 80.
Alaska enters the Union January 3 as the 49th state, Hawaii August 21 as the 50th.
Former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) chief William J. Donovan dies at Washington, D.C., February 8 at age 76; former secretary of state John Foster Dulles at Washington May 24 at age 71 (he retired in April and has been succeeded by Paris-born diplomat Christian A. [Archibald] Herter, 63); Admiral William D. Leahy, (ret.) at Bethesda, Md., July 20 at age 84; Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey (ret.) at Fishers Island, N.Y., August 16 at age 76; former U.S. Army chief of staff and secretary of state George C. Marshall at Washington October 16 at age 78.
Iraq's prime minister Abdul al-Karim Qasim appoints Naziha Dulaymi minister of muncipalities in July and she becomes the first Arab woman to hold a cabinet position (see 1958). A Baath Party gang headed by 23-year-old Saddam Hussein tries to assassinate Qasim in October; Saddam joined the Party in 1957; he is wounded in the attack on Qasim but escapes to Syria, makes his way to Egypt, and attends Cairo Law School. A code promulgated December 30 contains provisions that improve the status of women, with reforms of inheritance laws and new regulations governing marriage and divorce (see 1963; Kurdish revolt, 1961).
Former British foreign secretary Sir Samuel Hoare dies at his native London May 7 at age 79; Italian Christian Democratic Party leader Luigi Sturzo in the convent of the Canassian Sisters at Rome August 8 at age 87; former British foreign secretary Edward F. L. Wood, earl of Halifax, outside York December 23 at age 78; former Croatian fascist leader Ange Pavelic at Madrid December 28 at age 70, having survived an assassination attempt in Argentina 2 years ago.
Tibet's Dalai Lama escapes to India March 31 and receives asylum after a rising against the Chinese garrison at Lhasa (see 1951). The new Chinese puppet government seals the border to India, which refuses to recognize the Dalai Lama as head of a "separate" Tibetan government functioning in India. Chinese and Indian forces have border clashes.
Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) steps down as China's chief of state April 27 in favor of Liu Shao-qi (Liu Shao-chi) but remains chairman of the Communist Party.
Japan's prime minister Ichiro Hatoyama dies at Tokyo March 7 at age 76, having improved relations with other Asian nations, reached an agreement to resume trade with the Soviet Union, and been the first politician in Japan to use radio and television for campaign purposes. Gen. Shiro Ishii dies of throat cancer at Tokyo October 9 at age 67, having headed his country's biological weapons program in World War II and given his secrets to the Americans in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Moscow urges Japan to end her agreement permitting U.S. bases on Japanese soil. The May 4 note from the Kremlin invites Tokyo to accept a Soviet guarantee of permanent neutrality. The MiG-21 delta-wing fighter jet that goes into production at Gorky has limited range and carries minimal armament but with improvements will gain huge success (see 1953).
Singapore becomes self-governing June 3 after 13 years as a British crown colony. Singapore-born Cambridge-educated lawyer Lee Kuan Yew, 36, is prime minister of the new state and will rule wisely but strictly until 1990 over an entrepot that lacks agriculture or natural resources but is gaining importance as a world-class port and financial center (see 1963).
Indonesia's president Sukarno dissolves the constituent assembly July 5 and moves his nation toward a new "Guided Democracy" regime that will grow progressively more authoritarian as Sukarno's Communist Party (PKI) gains more power.
Ceylon's prime minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike dies at his native Colombo September 26 at age 60 just 3½ years after taking office; a disgruntled Buddhist monk has shot him the day before, 3 months after conclusion of a trade pact with Beijing (Peking) (see 1960); former Philippines president José Laurel dies at Manila November 6 at age 68.
The Federal State of Mali is created January 17 by a merger of the African republics Senegal and French Sudan a week after Michel Debre is installed as premier of France's Fifth Republic. Novelist-statesman Modibo Keida, 45, is elected first president of Mali but is overthrown later in the year and will reportedly be held in detention at Bamako until his death in 1977.
Former South African prime minister Daniel F. Malan dies at Stellenbosch February 7 at age 83. Transvaal-born assemblywoman Helen Suzman, 41, quits the United Party that has opposed the ruling National Party and helps found a new Progressive Party under the leadership of Jan van A. Steytler that initially advocates a central government with sharply defined but limited powers and "qualified" franchise for all South African citizens regardless of race or color (see human rights, 1963).
Premiers of the 12 autonomous republics in Africa's French Community confer at Paris in early February with President de Gaulle (see 1958; 1960).
Rwanda is torn in November by a great uprising of Hutu (Bahutu) tribesmen, who constitute 85 percent of the population, against the minority Tutsi (Batutsi) aristocracy. The country has been a Belgian protectorate since 1918 and Belgium continues to rule under a UN mandate. Rwanda's monarchy is abolished and thousands of Tutsi refugees flee across the borders into the Belgian Congo (where anti-European riots at Leopoldville killed 71 in early January), Uganda, and Tanganyika (see 1994).
The Antarctic Treaty signed at Washington, D.C., December 1 pledges 12 governments to ensure free and peaceful status for the entire continent. President Eisenhower sent notes on May 2 of last year to Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, and the Soviet Union proposing such status; the United States has joined with the other 11 nations in agreeing to reserve Antarctica for free and nonpolitical scientific investigation, renouncing all prior claim rights. The treaty will be ratified and become operative June 23, 1961.
Atlanta integrates its buses January 21, but the governor of Georgia asks citizens to continue "voluntary" segregation. Buses in most other Southern states remain segregated, with blacks obliged to sit in the back, and segregation continues at airport and railroad terminals, bus depots, and recreational facilities (see "Freedom Riders," 1961).
Switzerland's electorate votes February 1 to reject a proposed constitutional amendment that would permit women to vote in national elections and run for national office.
Japanese-Americans who renounced their citizenship in 1942 when placed in internment camps under Executive Order 9066 regain full citizenship May 20 but receive no compensation for the losses they incurred as a result of their relocation (see Internment Compensation Act, 1989).
The Street Offences Act passed by the British Parliament July 16 makes it an offense "for a common prostitute to loiter or solicit in a secret or public place for the purpose of prostitution," and says, "A constable may arrest without warrant anyone he finds in a street or public place and suspects, with reasonable cause, to be committing an offence under this section" (see 1869; 1957). English and Welsh prostitutes will circumvent the law by posting their telephone numbers at news kiosks or buying dogs and "walking" them as an excuse for being in the streets.
The UN General Assembly votes November 10 to condemn racial discrimination anywhere in the world, including South Africa.
President Eisenhower speaks out February 18 against continued emergency aid to America's unemployed. The nation's economy is on a "curve of rising prosperity," he says, but the price of a $1,000 2½ percent U.S. Treasury bond issued in 1945 falls to $820, and inflation has eroded the purchasing power of $820 to half what it was in 1945.
A University of Michigan study shows that 10 percent of U.S. families live on the "poverty line" and 20 percent live below it (see 1957).
One American with an income of $20 million pays no federal taxes, five with incomes of more than $5 million each pay no federal taxes, one with an annual income of nearly $2 million has paid no federal taxes since 1949 (see 1960).
Cuba's per capita income of $353 per year is among the highest in Latin America, but the average rural worker earns only $91 per year, the nation has a high rate of unemployment and underemployment, foreign interests own about 75 percent of arable land and control the economy, owning 40 percent of sugar production and 90 percent of essential services (which are conspicuously lacking). Income from hotels, casinos, and brothels augments the nation's basic sugar-industry revenues, but the new Castro regime will close the casinos and brothels.
Vice President Nixon opens an American exhibit at Moscow July 25 and engages in a public debate with Premier Khrushchev. The dialogue takes place in a model kitchen, and Nixon boasts of America's material progress and abundance of consumer goods (see Nonfiction [Galbraith], 1958).
France demonstrates the industrial strides that she has taken under the Schuman Plan of 1953 by producing twice as much steel as in 1929. The nation uses four times as much electricity as in 1929 and manufactures nearly five times as many cars and trucks.
The Landrum-Griffin Act passed by Congress September 14 marks the first major change in U.S. labor law since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The new law requires labor unions to file annual financial reports with the secretary of labor but includes a "bill of rights" for labor.
President Eisenhower seeks a Taft-Hartley Act injunction October 19 to halt a steel strike that has begun July 15 (see 1952). The United Steel Workers (CIO) challenges the validity of the injunction provision, but the Supreme Court upholds the entire act November 7. The 116-day strike has shut down 90 percent of the nation's steel production, opening the door to imports, which up to now have been negligible. Japanese steel makers take advantage of the opportunity and will hereafter compete vigorously in U.S. markets (see price increase, 1962).
The U.S. federal deficit jumps to 2.6 percent of gross domestic product—the largest increase since 1946. The decade has seen an economic boom in the country along with its baby boom; despite two recessions, unemployment has averaged only 4.5 percent, the economy has grown at an average rate of 4 percent (it surged by 4.8 percent between 1947 and 1953 and has averaged 2.5 percent since then), inflation has been 2.1 percent as consumer spending—adjusted for inflation—has spurted 38 percent; the next decade will be less prosperous, what with military expenditures and the costs of ambitious social programs, but the nation will move forward in the area of civil rights.
The New York Stock Exchange reports June 15 that 13 million Americans own stock.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at a new high of 679.36, up from 583.65 at the end of 1958.
The Knox Coal Co. mine disaster January 22 at Port Griffith, Pa., ends deep mining of anthracite coal in the Wyoming Valley of northern Pennsylvania, where such mining has been in decline since its peak in 1917 as surface mining elsewhere has made underground operations uncompetitive. Company officials have ordered workers to dig illegally under the Susquehanna River, 2.7 million gallons of water per minute pour into the mine, 12 men are killed, and their bodies will never be recovered.
President Eisenhower imposes mandatory quotas on U.S. oil imports in response to pleas from domestic producers, saying that the move is based on reasons of national security. The quotas effectively subsidize domestic producers of crude oil, force U.S. consumers to pay higher prices for gasoline and home heating oil, and hasten depletion of domestic petroleum reserves.
The St. Lawrence Power Project delivers full hydroelectric energy beginning in July as the complex is completed by the New York Power Authority, Hydro Quebec, and Ontario Hydro.
Union Carbide introduces the Eveready Alkaline Power Cell, a battery so much stronger and more compact than previous batteries that it will largely replace them in portable radios, flashlights, and other consumer devices, some of them still on the drawing board.
British engineer Francis Thomas "Tom" Bacon, 54, at Cambridge demonstrates the first practical hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell (see Mond, 1889). Converting air and fuel directly into energy through electrochemical processes that involve the use of nickel electrodes (instead of porous platinum electrodes) and an alkaline electrolyte bath (instead of corrosive sulfuric acid), it generates six kilowatts of electricity, enough to power a welding machine. Allis-Chalmers engineer Karl Ihrig demonstrates a 20-horsepower tractor in October—the first vehicle to be powered by a fuel cell (see bus, 1993).
A new, independent Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) comes into being January 1, replacing the U.S. Department of Commerce's Civil Aeronautics Board.
American Airlines introduces transcontinental jet passenger service January 25. CEO C. R. Smith last year committed the company to having an all-jet fleet to serve its 8 million passengers, American has invested $440 million to upgrade its aircraft for the jet age, and its single Boeing 707 has a monopoly on transcontinental jet service until March 23, when TWA begins flying 707-120s on the route.
The Bristol Britannia wins approval for use in commercial aviation. Powered by Rolls-Royce engines, the 133-passenger plane is the first large turboprop aircraft.
English engineer Christopher Sydney Cockerell, 46, demonstrates his SRN-1 hovercraft with a crossing of the English Channel on a cushion of air. He has been experimenting since 1953 with ways to reduce the friction round the hulls of boats. Within 6 years the industry will be well established as hovercraft ferries and patrol boats come into use.
The new St. Lawrence & Great Lakes Waterway gives ocean-going vessels access to Great Lakes ports as far west as Duluth, some 2,342 miles from the Atlantic. Dedicated by Queen Elizabeth June 26, the Seaway is twice the length of the Panama Canal, its locks raise ships from sea level to elevations of 246 feet (Lake Ontario), 572 feet (Lake Erie), 578½ feet (Lakes Michigan and Huron), and a maximum of 602 feet (Lake Superior), it can accommodate vessels up to 78 feet wide with up to 25-foot nine-inch draught—80 percent of the world's saltwater fleet—but although it will be used heavily for grain, steel, iron, and automobile exports, it will be closed by ice from January through March each year and prove costly to maintain.
The first nuclear-powered U.S. merchant ship is launched July 21 at Camden, N.J.
The Holland-American Line's S.S. Rotterdam leaves for New York on her maiden voyage September 3, a 38,645-ton luxury liner 749 feet in length, 93.8 feet wide, that will be renamed the S.S. Rembrandt.
Volvo obtains a patent on a three-point lap/shoulder seat belt invented by company engineer Nils Bohlin, 39, but makes no effort to protect its patent rights. Hired by the company last year, Bohlin has seen that conventional waist-level seat belts do not prevent people's heads from being smashed against steering wheels and windshields in sudden stops, so he has added a second belt that extends up from the waist and diagonally across the chest to the shoulder. By 1963 every Volvo will be equipped with the Bohlin-designed belt, the Swedish company will encourage other carmakers to follow its example, and safety experts will hail the three-point belt as the single most significant contribution to safety in automotive history (see Studebaker-Packard, 1964).
British Motor Corp. introduces the Mini, a $1,299 compact car with a tiny transverse (sideways-mounted) engine and front-wheel drive. Sold under both the Austin and Morris names, the vehicle is only 120 inches long, 48 wide, but uses 80 percent of its interior for passengers, only 20 percent for mechanical components; it fits into spaces that larger cars cannot, and gains immediate popularity (Europeans compete to see how many people they can cram into the car). Upwards of 5 million Minis will be sold by 2000 (when a redesigned model will be introduced), and production will continue at Birmingham for more than 40 years.
U.S. Volkswagen sales reach 120,000, up from 29,000 in 1955, while total sales of foreign-made U.S. cars such as British Fords, the General Motors Opel, and Chrysler's Simca top 120,000. Sales of "the bug" continue to climb (see 1968).
The Ford Falcon is Detroit's first major response to the competition from Volkswagen and other foreign compact cars. Chevrolet tools up to market a rear-engined Corvair compact (see Mustang, 1964).
American Motors introduces the Rambler, a 14-foot 10-inch compact designed to compete with Volkswagen and the new Ford Falcon (see 1954).
The average U.S. automobile wholesales at $1,880, up from $1,300 in 1949.
Japanese automakers produce 79,000 cars, up from just 110 in 1947. Most are Nissans and Toyotas; the number will increase to 3.2 million by 1970.
The RCA 501 computer introduced by Radio Corp. of America is the world's first fully transistorized computer (see 1948).
The Control Data Model 6600 is the first commercially successful "super" computer (see 1957); designed by Seymour Cray, it will be a mainstay of atomic energy laboratories and other scientific research labs.
The microchip invented September 12 by Jefferson City, Mo.-born, Kansas-raised Texas Instruments engineer Jack (St. Clair) Kilby, 34, is a single silicon wafer about the size of a small finger that contains a single transistor (see transistor, 1947; TI, 1954). Hired in July, the six-foot-six-inch Kilby found everyone else away on a company-wide vacation and worked on his own to find a way to incorporate all the necessary electronic components on a single crystal of silicon, a cheap, plentiful material that works well as a semiconductor under conditions of intense heat. Burlington, Iowa-born Fairchild Semiconductor engineer and cofounder Robert Noyce, now 32, will find a way in March of next year to join the circuits by creating a transistor through a photolithographic process that etches and plates a series of regions on a tiny sheet of silicon. The planar process developed this year by Geneva-born U.S. scientist Jean (Amédée) Hoerni, 34, permits volume production of silicon chips. By eliminating thousands of man-hours formerly spent in soldering a bank of transistors to a printed circuit board, and sharply lowering the size, weight, and cost of electronic components, the microchip will eventually reduce the cost of electronic functions by a factor of 1 million to one and open the way to a host of miniaturized products.
Computer users and manufacturers join the U.S. Department of Defense in creating the Conference on Data Systems Languages to agree on a common programming language for business applications (see FORTRAN, 1957). The conference comes up with COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), which can be run with little modification on any computer, regardless of manufacturer, and can be read with ease like ordinary English sentences. Naval Reserve officer Grace Brewster Hopper will be credited with having invented COBOL, the first user-friendly English-language business-oriented language for computers (see Ascii, 1963).
Mary Leakey captures public attention by finding some 400 skull fragments of an Australopithicus boisei—a 1.75-million-year-old hominid—while she is being filmed at Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika, where she has been working since 1951 (see 1948). Potassium-argon dating of volcanic ash surrounding the fossils indicates their age, and Leakey's find brings huge new funding for the excavations that she and her husband are making, but the Australopithicus species that she finds July 17 will later be shown not to be a direct ancestor of modern humans (see 1976).
Russian-born U.S. archaeologist Tatiana Proskouriakoff, 49, finds a pattern of dates indicating a list of important events in the lives of certain Mayan individuals in the Yucatán. The find enables scholars to decipher the periods in which certain rulers reigned and thus establish dynasties, but scholars will argue about whether the Mayan styphs represent ideas, words, or both.
The first complete amino acid sequence of the enzyme ribonuclease sheds some light on the chemical composition of the enzyme that helps break down ribonucleic acid (RNA), one of the two fundamental chemicals that determine normal and abnormal growth in living things. New York-born Rockefeller University biochemists William H. (Howard) Stein, 47, and his Chicago-born (Nashville-raised) colleague Stanford Moore, 45, studied under the late Max Bergmann and have joined with others to work up the sequence (see Crick and Watson's DNA research, 1953; 1966).
Nobel physicist Sir Owen W. Richardson dies at Alton, Hampshire, February 15 at age 79; zoologist and pioneer embryologist Ross G. Harrison at New Haven, Conn., September 30 at age 89; Nobel physicist-meteorologist Charles T. R. Wilson at Carlops, Peebleshire, November 15 at age 90.
West German clinics observe 12 cases of the birth defect phocomelia. Infants are born with flipper-like stubs in place of one or more normal limbs. Not one case has been seen in the past 5 years and the large number sounds alarms (see 1960).
New York physicist in medicine Rosalyn S. Yalow (née Sussman), 38, begins with a colleague to develop a new method of radio immunoassay that will permit the measurement of blood levels of hormones, enzymes, and drugs. It shows that diabetics have high blood levels of insulin and will be used to detect hepatitis in potential blood donors (see 1977).
U.S. Surgeon General Leroy Burney issues a stronger warning than his 1957 statement linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, calling it "the principal" causative factor. "Unless the use of tobacco can be made safe, the individual person's risk of lung cancer can best be reduced by the elimination of smoking," he writes in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). A smoker himself, Burney adds that "stopping cigarette smoking even after long exposure is beneficial," but the American Medical Association has major investments in tobacco companies and comments in an editorial that there is insufficient evidence "to warrant the assumption" that smoking is the principal factor in the increase in lung cancer. "A number of authorities who have examined the same evidence cited by Dr. Burney do not agree with his conclusions" (see 1963).
Medical researcher Louise Pearce dies at her Skillmann, N.J., home August 7 at age 74; fluoridation pioneer Frederick S. McKay at Colorado Springs August 22 at age 85; medical education reformer Abraham Flexner at Falls Church, Va., September 21 at age 92.
Chicago-born Harvard paleontologist George G. Simpson, 57, observes that pressure from so-called creationists has forced publishers of most U.S. high school science texts to relegate evolution to a separate, optional section.
Pope John XXIII announces October 11 that Mother Elizabeth Anne Seton will be beatified and become the first American-born saint.
Cologne has anti-Semitic riots December 24.
Saudi Arabia's Prince Faisal permits education for girls despite protests from some religious groups.
Virginia's Prince Edward County closes its public schools to avoid racial mixing. The schools have remained segregated since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, county officials have tried to get around the ruling, their action locks 1,700 black children out of educational opportunities, and although a few children will be sent to other counties and even other states, the schools will not reopen for 5 years.
The House of Intellect by Columbia University provost Jacques Barzun indicts the U.S. educational system for producing false intellectuals. Now 51, Barzun was named provost last year; he will help develop a 2-year course for reading great books and discussing them.
The first transistorized TV set is introduced by Sony Corp., which changed its name in January of last year from Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (see radio, 1955). Sold only in Japan, the portable TV8-301 black-and-white receiver is expensive and unreliable, but it will be followed next year by the first transistorized color set, employing a picture tube developed years ago by Ernest O. Lawrence of 1932 cyclotron fame, who played a leading role in developing the U.S. atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sony will found the Sony Corp. of America next year, Akio Morita will move to the United States to supervise its expansion, and in mid-June 1961 the company will become the first Japanese corporation to sell stock (American depository receipts) in the United States (see 1962).
India gets her first television; villagers travel for hundreds of miles to visit six community TV centers at New Delhi, where mounted police are required to keep the crowds away from the receivers. TV stations will be built at Bombay, Amritsar in Punjab, Srinigar in Kashmir, Madras in South India, and Calcutta in East India by 1966, but locally made receiving sets will cost $425 and the average per capita income is below $80 per year.
Color TV is introduced in Cuba.
South African authorities decide not to introduce any television. The decision will stand for 16 years.
Jerusalem Post founder (and city mayor) Gershon Agron dies at Jerusalem November 1 at age 66.
Press lord Roy H. Thomson acquires the Kemsley newspapers, including the Times of London and the Sunday Times, which the International Thomson Organization will run until 1981 despite mounting losses (see 1957; Murdoch, 1981).
The 138-year-old Manchester Guardian becomes simply the Guardian.
Chicago becomes a two-publisher city as Marshall Field's Sun-Times buys the Daily News from publisher John S. Knight, who acquired it in 1944, and the Tribune buys the Herald-American from Hearst. Economic problems and a decline in afternoon newspaper sales will force the closing of the Daily News in 1978.
New York journalist Marie Torre, 35, serves 10 days in the Hudson County Jail at Jersey City, N.J., after being convicted on contempt charges for refusing to divulge the identity of a "CBS executive" she quoted in a January 1957 TV column that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune and 49 other newspapers. According to Torre, the executive had said that Judy Garland was "known for a highly developed inferiority complex," "couldn't make up her mind," and was "terribly fat." Garland sued CBS for breach of contract and libel, demanding nearly $1.4 million, Torre told the court last year that to reveal the executive's name would be a betrayal of her entire profession, the sentencing judge has called her the "Joan of Arc of her profession," but Anthony Lewis of the New York Times says that if a reporter "hides behind the cloak of press freedom," then every "irresponsible gossip columnist would be encouraged to make up nasty little items themselves and then attribute them to unnamed sources."
France legalizes press censorship, adopting a new article in the constitution. Newspapers that disagree with the Gaullist government will be seized and closed down; papers will be impounded on frequent occasion until March 1965.
The Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute opens at Washington, D.C., to teach a system of high-speed reading developed by Utah-born remedial-reading teacher Wood (née Nielsen), 50, who by last year was teaching students at the University of Utah to read at a rate of several thousand words per minute with full comprehension, using the hand as a pacer to help the reader's eyes follow a quick, zigzag motion down each page. Wood and her husband will open centers in cities throughout the country, promising increased reading efficiency.
Nonfiction: "Two Concepts of Liberty" (essay) by Sir Isaiah Berlin; The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by molecular physicist and novelist C. P. Snow, now 55, who was knighted 2 years ago and has become scientific adviser to the Macmillan government. His book is based on his Rede lectures, in which he warned that the English educational system was creating an almost unbridgeable polarization between "literary" and "scientific" factions, with one side looking blank if asked about the second law of thermodynamics and the other having no appreciation of Dickens or Shakespeare; The Elements of Style by E. B. White, who has adapted a 1918 manual by the late William Strunk Jr., White's teacher at Cornell in 1919, who died in 1946; The Years with Ross by New Yorker magazine veteran James Thurber; The Soviet Union and the Middle East by Walter Laqueur; A History of Western Morals by Crane Brinton; The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills, who sees young radicals as potential agents of change in a social structure whose needs are not being met by the existing power structures; The Roots of Capitalism by John Chamberlain; Live and Let Live by economist Stuart Chase; This Is My God by novelist-playwright Herman Wouk, who dedicates the work to the memory of his late grandfather Mendel Leib Levine, a Minsk rabbi; Tolstoy or Dostoevsky by Paris-born U.S. literary critic George Steiner, 30; Apologies to the Iroquois by Edmund Wilson; The Road to Harper's Ferry: Facts and Follies of the War on Slavery by J. C. Furnas; Wildlife in America by New York-born naturalist-writer Peter Matthiessen, 32, chronicles the destruction of wildlife in North America; Nature and Man's Fate by Dallas-born University of California professor of human ecology Garrett (James) Hardin, 44, who contracted polio as a child and walks with crutches. He coins the term "competitive exclusion principle" in his popular account of Darwinian evolution; Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach, now 72, whose Paris bookstore was closed in 1941 by the Germans (they interned her for 7 months).
Journalist-author Edgar Guest dies at Detroit August 5 at age 77.
Fiction: The Poorhouse Fair by Pennsylvania-born novelist John (Hoyer) Updike, 27; Goodbye, Columbus (stories) by New Jersey-born author Philip (Milton) Roth, 26; The Little Disturbances of Man: Stories of Women and Men at Love by New York-born writer Grace Paley (née Goodside), 36; Advertisements for Myself by Norman Mailer; Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow; The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, whose "beat generation" book is published initially at Paris and hailed as the ultimate definition of "hip," although critics are not sure what that means (poet Alan Ginsberg has suggested the title; Dame Edith Sitwell denounces the novel as pyschopathological filth); Mrs. Bridge by Evan Connell; A Grave with No Name (Para una Tumba sin Nombre) by Juan Carlos Onetti; The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler; Malcolm by Ohio-born novelist James (Amos) Purdy, 36; The Mansion by William Faulkner; The War Lover by John Hersey; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; The Affair by C. P. Snow; Billiards at Half-Past Nine by Heinrich Böll; The Impossible Proof (Unmögliche Beweisaufnahme) by Hans Erich Nossack; Homo Faber by Max Frisch; The Last of the Just (Le Dernier des justes) by French novelist André Schwarz-Bart, 31, who records the martyrdom of a Holocaust victim (his own parents were also victims); Aimez-Vous Brahms? by Françoise Sagan; Our Age (Warera no jidai) by Kenzaburo Oe; Inter Ice Age 4 (Dayon kanhyoki) by Kobo Abe; Bobbin Up by Perth-born Australian novelist-poet Dorothy (Coade) Hewett, 36, is about a Sydney communist who tries to organize her fellow textile workers; The Devil's Advocate by Australian radio director-turned-novelist Morris L. (Langlo) West, 43; "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" (story) by Alan Sillitoe; The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Illinois-born New Yorker magazine writer Robert Lewis Taylor, 49; The Final Diagnosis by English-born Canadian novelist-playwright Arthur Hailey, 39, is based on his television play No Deadly Medicine; Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell; Advise and Consent by Houston-born journalist-turned-novelist Alan Drury, 41; Hawaii by James Michener; The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson; The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon; A Cage for Lovers by Dawn Powell; Dead Men Don't Ski by Dublin-born English mystery writer Patricia Moyes (née Pakenham-Walsh), 36, introduces Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett and his wife, Emmy; Emperor Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer; Goldfinger by Ian Fleming.
Mystery writer Raymond Chandler dies at La Jolla, Calif., March 26 at age 70; Sax Rohmer at London June 1 at age 75 (approximate).
A federal district court at New York July 21 lifts a U.S. Post Office ban on distributing the 1928 D. H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley's Lover despite protests that the book uses such words as fuck and cunt and is explicit in its descriptions of the sex act. Grove Press has distributed an unexpurgated version of the book; Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield has banned it from the mails; and Judge Frederick van Pelt Bryan, 55, rules in Grove's favor. His 30-page decision in Roth v. the United States says not only that the book is not obscene but also that the postmaster general is neither qualified nor authorized to judge the obscenity of material to be sent through the mails; he is empowered only to halt delivery of matter already judged obscene. Penguin Books, Ltd. will sell more than 3.5 million paperback copies of the Lawrence novel (see Supreme Court decisions, 1966).
Poetry: A Dream of Governors by Louis Simpson, who experiments with free verse; Ko; or, A Season on Earth by Kenneth Koch; A Form of Women by Robert Creeley; Heart's Needle by Pennsylvania-born poet W. D. (William De Witt) Snodgrass, 33; Valentines to the Wide World: Poems by Iowa-born poet Mona (Jane) Van Duyn, 38; With Eyes in the Back of Our Heads by Denise Levertov; Valentines to the Wide World by Iowa poet Mona (Jane) Van Duyn, 38; A Flower, A Fist, and Bestial Wail by German-born California writer (he does not call himself a poet) Charles Bukowski, 39; Riprap by San Francisco-born poet Gary (Sherman) Snyder, 29.
Poet-critic Edwin Muir dies at Cambridge January 3 at age 71; Alfonso Reyes at Mexico City December 27 at age 70.
Juvenile: Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss; Sammy, the Seal by Syd Hoff.
Painting: Numbers in Color and White Numbers by Jasper Johns; Canyon and Monogram by Robert Rauschenberg, whose Monogram is an assemblage that includes a stuffed Angora goat girded with an automobile tire but who now stops basing his work on actual objects and will begin using overlays of silk-screened photographs, an idea borrowed from Pittsburgh-born New York pop artist Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola), 31; Zinc Yellow by Franz Kline; Jill and Zambezi by Malden, Mass.-born Minimalist painter Frank Stella, 23; Virginia Site by Kenneth Noland; Acres by Helen Frankenthaler. George Grosz dies at Berlin July 6 at age 65, just 3 weeks after returning to Germany for a visit; critic Bernard Berenson dies at Settingnano, Italy, October 6 at age 94.
Sculpture: White on White and Dawn's Wedding Chapel II (wood) by Russian-born New York sculptor Louise Nevelson (née Leah Berliawsky), 59, who emigrated with her family to America in 1905. Germaine Richier returns to Paris in April for a large exhibition of her work but dies of cancer at Montpelier July 31 at age 54; Sir Jacob Epstein dies at London August 19 at age 78.
New York's Guggenheim Museum opens October 21 on Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th streets to house the collection of the late copper magnate Solomon R. Guggenheim, whose mentor, Hilla Rebay, induced him to buy dozens of canvases by the late abstractionist Wassily Kandinsky. The spiral structure has taken 3 years to complete and has cost more than twice the $950,000 projected by its architect, the late Frank Lloyd Wright; collector Peggy Guggenheim calls the new museum, "My uncle's garage, that Frank Lloyd Wright thing on Fifth Avenue."
The Nikon F 35-mm. single-lens reflex camera is introduced by Nippon Kogaku K.K. whose rangefinder cameras enabled LIFE magazine photographers to provide sharp coverage of the Korean conflict (see 1948).
Theater: A Taste of Honey by English playwright Shelagh Delaney, 20 (with help from Joan Littlewood), 2/10 at London's Wyndham Theatre, with Avis Bunnage, Frances Cuka, Nigel Davenport, Clifton Jones, 617 perfs.; A Majority of One by Hollywood screenwriter Leonard Spigelgass, 50, 2/16 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Gertrude Berg, Cedric Hardwicke, Ina Balin, 558 perfs.; Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams 3/10 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, 378 perfs.; Raisin in the Sun by Chicago-born New York playwright Lorraine (Vivian) Hansberry, 29, 3/11 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Brooklyn-born actor Louis Gossett Jr., 22, Claudia McNeil, 530 perfs. (Hansberry has taken her title from a Langston Hughes poem containing the line, "What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ Like a raisin in the sun?"), 530 perfs.; The Connection by Chicago-born playwright Jack Gelber, 27, 7/5 at New York's off-Broadway Living Theater, with Leonard Hicks, Ira Lewis is about drug addiction, 722 perfs.; The Zoo Story by Washington, D.C.-born playwright Edward (Franklin) Albee, 31, 9/28 at Berlin's Schillertheater Wehrstatt; The Gang's All Here by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee 10/1 at New York's Ambassador Theater, with Melvyn Douglas, Jean Dixon, Arthur Hill, E. G. Marshall, sets by Jo Mielziner, 132 perfs.; The Miracle Worker by William Gibson 10/19 at New York's Playhouse Theater, with New York-born actress Patty (originally Anna Maria) Duke, 12, as Helen Keller, Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan, Torin Thatcher in a stage version of the 1957 Playhouse 90 television drama, 702 perfs.; Serjeant Musgrave's Dance by English playwright John Arden, 29, 10/22 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with Ian Bannen, Frank Finlay, Richard Caldicott; The Blacks (Les nigres) by Jean Genet 10/28 at the Théâtre de Lutèce, Paris; The Tenth Man by Paddy Chayefsky 11/5 at New York's Booth Theater, with Minsk-born Yiddish Art Theater founder Jacob Ben-Ami, now nearly 69, Jack Gilford, Lou Jacobi, New York-born actor-director Gene Saks, 36, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, 623 perfs.; The Empire Builders (Les bâtissieres d'empire) by Boris Vian 12/22 at the Théâtre Racamier, Paris; TheAndersonville Trial by Hartford, Conn.-born playwright Saul Levitt, 46, 12/29 at Henry Miller's Theater, New York, with George C. Scott, Albert Dekker.
Playwright-novelist Laurence Housman dies at Glastonbury, Somerset, February 20 at age 93; Maxwell Anderson of a stroke at Stamford, Conn., February 28 at age 70; actress Olga Knipper-Chekhova at Moscow March 22 at age 89; Ashley Dukes at London May 4 at age 73; playwright-director Laurence Eyre at Bronx, N.Y., June 6 at age 77; Clarence Derwent at New York August 6 at age 75; actress Edna Wallace Hopper at New York December 14 at age 84.
Radio: The Szabo Family debuts in June on Hungary's state-owned Kossuth Radio. Scripted by writer Denes Liska, 32, the weekly drama features leading Hungarian actors and will continue for more than 38 years, becoming a national icon as it survives changes in government by keeping listeners entertained with its characters' divorces, household disputes, pregnancies, and whatnot.
Television: Rawhide 1/9 on CBS with San Francisco-born actor Clint Eastwood, 28 (to 1/4/1966); Bonanza 9/2 on NBC with Canadian actor Lorne Greene, 44, Queens, N.Y.,-born actor Michael Landon (Eugene Maurice Orwitz), 21, Dan Blocker (to 1/16/1973); Laramie 9/15 on NBC with John Smith, Robert Fuller, Hoagy Carmichael (to 9/16/1963); Quick-Draw McGraw in September on syndicated stations with Hanna-Barbera animation (to 9/1963); Dobie Gillis 9/29 on CBS with Dwayne Hickman, Warren Beatty, 21 (to 9/18/1963, 147 episodes); Rocky and His Friends (animated) 9/29 on ABC, with a crudely-drawn squirrel (Rocket J. Squirrel) clad in a goggled aviator cap and a wall-eyed, muddle-minded "French-Canadian" moose named Bullwinkle (named after California used-car dealer Clarence Bulwinkle) in a series created by Jay Ward and Bill Scott (who does the voice over for Bullwinkle, Duddly Do-Right, and Mr. Belfast). William Conrad and Edward Everett Horton do the voice-over narration, Paul Frees does the voices of Boris Badenov, Capt. Peter Peachfuzz, and Inspector Fenwick; June Foran the voices of Natasha Fatale and Nell Fenwick, (Boris and Natasha want to make Moosylvania the 51st state by disguising Butte, Mont., to resemble Washington, D.C.) (to 9/3/1961, becoming The Bullwinkle Show on NBC from 9/24/1961 to 9/5/1964, on ABC from 9/20/1964 to 9/2/1973, and on NBC from 9/12/1981 to 7/24/1982); The Twilight Zone 10/2 on CBS with Syracuse-born radio-TV scriptwriter Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling, now 34, as host-writer-producer of weekly stories written or adapted by Serling, who has written memorable scripts for the Kraft TV Theater (to 6/19/1964); Dennis the Menace 10/4 on CBS with Jay North as Dennis Mitchell, Gloria Henry as his mother, Herbert Anderson his father, Joseph Kearns as his next-door neighbor Mr. Wilson (to 9/22/1963) (see comic strip, 1951).
Films: Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder with James Stewart, Lee Remick; William Wyler's Ben Hur with Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Irish actor Stephen Boyd (William Millar), 31; François Truffaut's The 400 Blows with Jean-Pierre Leaud; Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest with Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason; Stanley Kramer's On the Beach with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire; Alexei Batalov's The Overcoat with Roland Bykov; Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, screenplay by I. A. L. Diamond. Also: Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus with Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn; Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless with Jean-Paul Belmondo, 25, Iowa-born actress Jean Seberg, 21; Frank Launder's The Bridal Path with Bill Travers, Bernadette O'Farrell; Richard Fleischer's Compulsion with Orson Welles, Diane Varsi, Dean Stockwell, now 23, San Francisco-born actor Bradford Dillman, 29; Claude Chabrol's The Cousins with Jean-Claude Brialy, Gerard Blain; Guy Hamilton's The Devil's Disciple with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier; George Stevens's The Diary of Anne Frank with Passaic, N.J.-born actress Millie Perkins, 21, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters; Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain with Eiji Funakoshi, Mantaro Ushio; Yasujiro Ozu's Floating Weeds with Ganjiro Nakamura, Machiko Kyo; John and Roy Boulting's I'm All Right, Jack with Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, satirizes Britain's worsening labor-management relations; Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life with Susan Kohner, Lana Turner, John Gavin, Sandra Dee; Louis Malle's The Lovers with Jeanne Moreau, 30; Jack Arnold's The Mouse That Roared with Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg; Fred Zinnemann's The Nun's Story with Audrey Hepburn, English actor Peter Finch (William Mitchell) 42, Dame Edith Evans; Blake Edwards's Operation Petticoat with Cary Grant, Tony Curtis; Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk with Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Tony Randall; Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo with John Wayne, Dean Martin; Michael Anderson's Shake Hands with the Devil with James Cagney; Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly Last Summer with Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift; Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu with Soumitra Chatterjee; Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions with Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Hope Lange, Barbara Rush, Maximilian Schell, Mae Britt.
Director Cecil B. DeMille dies of a heart attack at his Hollywood home January 21 at age 77; comedian Lou Costello of a heart attack at Hollywood March 3 at age 53; actor-playwright James Gleason at Woodland Hills, Calif., April 12 at age 72; director Irving Cummings of a heart attack at Hollywood April 18 at age 70; director Charles Vidor of a heart attack at Hollywood June 4 at age 59; Ethel Barrymore at Beverly Hills June 18 at age 79; director Giovanni Pastrone at Turin June 27 at age 75; director Preston Sturges of a heart attack at New York August 6 at age 60; Edmund Gwenn at Woodland Hills September 6 at age 84; Kay Kendall of leukemia at London September 6 at age 33; Paul Douglas of a heart attack at Hollywood September 4 at age 52; Errol Flynn of a heart attack at Vancouver, B.C., October 14 at age 50; Victor McLaglan of a heart attack at his Newport Beach, Calif., home November 7 at age 72; Gérard Philipe of a heart attack at Paris November 28 at age 36; London-born director Edmund Goulding commits suicide at Hollywood December 24 at age 68.
Stage musicals: Once Upon a Mattress 5/11 at New York's Phoenix Theater, with San Antonio-born comedienne Carol Burnett, 22, Jack Gilford, music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer, 458 perfs.; Gypsy 5/21 at New York's Broadway Theater, with Ethel Merman, Jack Klugman, Maria Karnilova, book by Arthur Laurents based on the life of stripteaser Gypsy Rose Lee, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, songs that include "Small World," "Together Wherever We Go," "Everything's Coming Up Roses," 702 perfs.; Lock Up Your Daughters 5/28 at London's new Mermaid Theatre, with Richard Wordsworthy as the corrupt Justice Squeezum, Hy Hazell as Mrs. Squeezum, Robin Wentworth as Staff, music by Laurie Johnson, lyrics by Lionel Bart (originally Lionel Begleiter), 28, book by Bernard Miles based on the 18th-century Henry Fielding work Rape upon Rape, 328 perfs. (it will be revived 8/16/1962 and have 885 perfs.); Take Me Along 10/22 at New York's Shubert Theater, with Jackie Gleason, Walter Pidgeon, Una Merkel, Eileen Herlie, Robert Morse, music and lyrics by Bob Merrill, 448 perfs.; The Sound of Music 11/16 at New York's Lunt-Fontanne Theater, with Mary Martin, Viennese-born actor Theodore Bikel, 35, Kurt Kaszner, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, songs that include "Climb Every Mountain," "Do-Re-Mi," "Edelweiss," "My Favorite Things," and the title song, 1,443 perfs.; Fiorello! 11/23 at New York's Broadhurst Theater, with Tom Bosley as the late Mayor La Guardia, Howard Da Silva, Ellen Hanley, choreography by Peter Gennaro, music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, songs that include "Politics and Poker," "The Name's La Guardia," "Little Tin Box," 796 perfs.
Veteran Broadway musical star Fred Stone dies at North Hollywood, Calif., March 6 at age 85; singer Sonnie Hale of myelofibrosis at his native London June 9 at age 57; comedian Lupino Lane at his native London November 10 at age 67.
Opera: Viennese soprano Leonie Rysanek, 32, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 2/5 in the Met's first production of the 1847 Verdi opera Macbeth. Erich Leinsdorf conducts, the audience has expected Maria Callas in the role of Lady Macbeth, but Rysanek's performance is a triumph; baritone Cornell MacNeil makes his La Scala debut 3/5 singing the role of Charles V in the 1844 Verdi opera Ernani and his Metropolitan Opera debut 3/21 in the 1851 Verdi opera Rigoletto; Elisabeth Söderström makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 10/30 as Susanna in the 1786 Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro; Wayne, Pa.-born soprano Anna Moffo, 26, her Metropolitan Opera debut 11/14 singing the role of Violetta in the 1853 Verdi opera La Traviata; German soprano Christa Ludwig, 31, her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/10 singing the role of Cherubino; Birgit Nilsson, now 41, her Metropolitan Opera debut 12/18 singing the role of Isolde in the 1865 Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde (she will be the leading Wagnerian soprano in the 1960s and '70s).
Opera singer Mario Lanza (Arnold Cocozza) dies of a heart attack at Rome October 15 at age 38, having made an estimated $50 million from his recordings, notably of the song "Be My Love" (the Metropolitan Opera has scorned him for his "commercialism").
Ballet: Teaneck, N.J.-born ballerina Patricia McBride, 18, makes her debut with the New York City Ballet; Alicia Alonso, now 37, becomes prima ballerina and director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.
First performances: Pittsburgh Symphony by Paul Hindemith 1/30 at Pittsburgh; Missa Brevis in D for treble voices and organ by Benjamin Britten 7/22 at Aldeburgh; Strophes (for soprano, speaker, and 10 instruments) by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, 25, 9/17 at a Warsaw festival of contemporary music; Concerto in E flat for Violoncello and Orchestra No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich 10/4 at Leningrad, with Mstislav Rostropovich as soloist.
Composer and inventor George Antheil dies at New York February 5 at age 77; music critic Ernest Newman (originally William Roberts) at Tadworth, Surrey, July 7 at age 90; composer Ernest Bloch at Portland, Ore., July 15 at age 78; harpsichordist Wanda Landowska at Lakeville, Conn., August 16 at age 80; composer Heitor Villa-Lobos at Rio de Janiero November 17 at age 72.
Popular songs: "Back in the U.S.A." and "Almost Grown" by Chuck Berry; "The Children's Marching Song" by M. Arnold (for the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness); "High Hopes" by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn (for the film A Hole in the Head); "Just a Lonely Boy" and "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" by Paul Anka; "Waterloo" by John Loudermilk and Marijohn Wilkin; Kind of Blue (album) by Miles Davis with Plainfield, N.J.-born jazz pianist Bill (William John) Evans, 30, and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane (included are the singles "So What," "Freddie Freeloader," and "Blue in Green"); North Carolina-born jazz pianist-singer Nina Simone (originally Eunice Waymon), 26, records "I Love You, Porgy" from the 1935 George Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" (she has studied at the Juilliard School of Music); My Gentleman Friend (album) by Blossom Dearie; Sarah Vaughan, now 35, records "Broken-Hearted Melody" and has her biggest success (see 1944); Eartha Kitt records "Somebody Bad Stole the Wedding Bell" and "Yellow Bird"; "Night Life" by Texas-born country singer-disk jockey Willie Nelson, 26; Kentucky-born country singer Skeeter Davis (Mary Frances Penick), 27, records "Set Him Free," becomes a Grand Ole Opry regular, and will continue for more than 40 years; Atlanta-born singer Brenda Lee (Brenda Mae Tarpley), 14, records "Sweet Nothin's"; Molly O'Day, now 36, records "Come Walk with Me."
New York-born folk singer Joan (Chandoz) Baez, 19, appears at the Newport Folk Festival and becomes an overnight sensation with what one critic calls her "achingly pure soprano" voice. In the next decade she will depart from her repertory of old English ballads to sing out against war, bigotry, and complacency.
Norfolk, Va.-born pop singer Wayne Newton, 17, drops out of high school and goes to Las Vegas with his older brother Jerry; the Fremont Hotel downtown books their act, the chubby young Wayne's three-octave voice wins over audiences preoccupied with slot machines, and he begins a career that will make him a recording star and a fixture on the Las Vegas strip.
Bronx, N.Y.-born songwriter-record producer Harvey Philip "Phil" Spector, 18, helps form a group called the Teddy Bears that appears on The American Bandstand October 29 and gains dazzling success with its recording of Spector's song "To Know Him Is to Love Him."
Texas-born rock 'n' roll barnstormer Buddy Holly (Charles Hardin Holley), 22, flies into a snowstorm February 2 after a concert at Clear Lake, Iowa, and dies in a crash that also kills 17-year-old California-born singer Ritchie Valens (Valenzuela) and others in the group. In his 18-month career Holly has written songs that include "Peggy Sue," "True Love Ways," and "That'll Be The Day"; jazz tenor saxophonist Lester "Prez" Young dies of a heart attack at New York March 15 at age 49; English pianist-composer Billy Mayerl of a heart attack at Beaconsfield March 25 at age 56; bandleader Hal McIntyre at Hollywood May 5 at age 42 from burns suffered after he fell asleep while smoking; jazz soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet of throat and stomach cancer outside Paris May 14 at age 68; singer Billie Holiday ("Lady Day") of lung congestion and a heart ailment at New York July 17 at age 44 after a long struggle to overcome a heroin addiction; songwriter Jack Norworth following a stroke at Laguna Beach, Calif., September 1 at age 80; shimmy dancer Gilda Gray is found dead in her Hollywood room December 22 at age 60 after a bout of food poisoning.
Legendary billiards player Willie Hoppe dies at Miami, Fla., February 1 at age 71, having been acknowledged in 1952 as the greatest player in the history of the game.
Swedish prizefighter Ingemar Johansson, 26, wins the world heavyweight crown June 26 by knocking out Floyd Patterson in the third round of a title match at New York.
Former heavyweight champion Max Baer dies at Hollywood, Calif., November 21 at age 50.
Alejandro "Alex" Olmedo, 23, (Peru) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Maria Bueno, 19, (Brazil) in women's singles; Neale Andrew Fraser, 25, (Australia) wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Bueno in women's singles.
Molla Bjurstedt Mallory dies in the United States November 22 at age 67.
South African golfer Gary (Jim) Player, 23, wins the British Open and will go on to win that tournament twice more, the Masters three times, the U.S. PGA twice, the U.S. Open once (in 1965), the South African Open 13 times, the Australian Open seven times, and the World Series of Golf three times (1965, 1968, 1972).
The Los Angeles Dodgers win the World Series, defeating the Chicago White Sox 4 games to 2 after the White Sox have taken their first pennant since the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919. Hank Greenberg and Bill Veeck have bought the Sox early in the year, but Greenberg will sell his baseball interests in 1961 and pursue a successful career in Wall Street.
The Wiffle Ball goes into production at a small, two-story Shelton, Conn., factory opened by inventor David N. Mullany, whose perforated polyethylene plastic sphere comes with a yellow plastic bat and will be used by generations of children to play simple baseball games in limited space. A cigar-leaf tobacco grower's son who pitched ball in industrial-league teams around New Haven in the 1930s, Mullany was struggling to survive 6 years ago when he saw his 12-year-old son David A. trying on an August evening to throw a curveball. He came up with the idea of a plastic ball, young David helped his father cut holes of various shapes in plastic orbs used to package cosmetics, they finally designed a 2/3-ounce ball with eight oblong slits that weighed less than a third as much as a regular baseball, the elder Mullany mortgaged his house to obtain start-up capital, he sold the 49¢ balls from the back of a station wagon and at a local diner, incorporated the company in 1954, hired a New York marketing agent, began selling Wiffle Balls on New York's Canal Street, and has received orders from Woolworth stores that have permitted him to start mass production.
New York's Jamaica Racetrack closes August 1 after 56 years of operation. Its facilities have deteriorated, and although the one-mile oval track is still well drained and very fast, other racetracks draw larger crowds.
Aqueduct Racetrack reopens September 14 with capacity for 80,000 racing fans. The New York Racing Association has spent $33 million to renovate the track and clubhouse, which is only 30 minutes from Times Square by express subway, and by next year the Big A will be America's leading track in terms of betting, with a daily handle of as much as $2.7 million.
Yale football legend Albie Booth dies of a heart attack at New York March 1 at age 51; Philadelphia Eagles founder Bert Bell of a heart attack October 11 at age 64 while watching an Eagles-Steelers game at Philadelphia's Franklin Field, having created the National Football League (NFL) amateur draft and said, "On any given Sunday, any team can beat any other team."
The American Football League awards franchises November 5 to eight cities, including New York. Founded by Dallas oilman Lamar Hunt and headed by sports announcer Harry Wismer, the new professional league names coaches December 18 (see 1960). The New York team is initially called the Titans.
The Baltimore Colts win the National Football League title at Yankee Stadium December 28, defeating the Giants 23 to 17 in overtime. Led by quarterback Chalrie Conerly, the Giants are ahead 27 to 14 with 7 seconds to go, Steve Myhra of the Colts kicks a field goal to tie the score, and Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas pushes his team downfield to enable Alan Ameche to score from the one-yard line. The Giants have played at the Stadium since 1956 and will continue to do so through 1973.
The Barbie doll introduced at a New York toy fair in March is allegedly based on dolls handed out to patrons of a West Berlin brothel. California entrepreneur Ruth Handler, 42, and her artist husband, Eliot, cofounded Mattel Creations in 1945, they have acquired rights to the German comic-strip character Lilli, and the busty doll with her endless wardrobe enriches the Handlers' toy firm, which will be renamed Mattel, Inc. (see 1997).
Spandex is introduced under the name Lycra by E. I. du Pont, whose product replaces heavy-duty rubber in girdles.
Pantyhose are introduced under the name Panti-Legs by Glen Raven Mills of Altamahaw, N.C., whose president Allen Gant has heard his wife, Ethel, complain about her problems with nylon stockings and garter belts, especially during pregnancy. Nylon sales have been flat of late while sales of stretch tights in opaque colors have been rising, so Gant has stitched a pair of seamed stockings to a big nylon crotch and put out the product in 10 sizes. The waist-high nylon hose require no garters, garter-belts, or corsets; stripper Sally Rand begs Gant to make seamless Panti-Legs, and he improves the product by making them much more elastic (and therefore easier to put on and remove) and offers them in more sizes (see 1967).
The 14-story Sahara Hotel completed at Las Vegas is the Nevada city's first skyscraper. Land has become too costly for sprawling, motel-like developments, and Los Angeles architect Martin Stern Jr., 42, has designed a structure whose "Googie-style" features he has used earlier for LA coffee shops. He will go on to design the Sahara's convention center in 1967, a 342-room high-rise addition in 1977 and a 625-room high-rise addition 2 years later, making top floors wider than lower floors to accommodate luxury suites.
Mafia capo Joseph Barbara Sr., suffers a stroke May 27 at his Endicott, N.Y., home and dies of a heart attack at Johnson City, N.Y., the night of June 16 at age 53. He has never revealed the purpose of the meeting at his Apalachin, N.Y., estate 2 years ago.
The cold-blooded murder of Holcomb, Kansas, wheat farmer Herbert Clutter and his family November 15 shatters illusions that America's rural areas are immune from the nation's growing crime incidence. Ex-convicts Dick Hickock and Perry Smith have been misinformed by a fellow inmate that Clutter's safe contained a large amount of cash, and the pair's victims include Clutter, his wife, Bonnie, and their two children, Kenyon and Nancy. Author Truman Capote reads about the case, travels to Kansas, and begins interviewing scores of people (see Nonfiction, 1965).
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright dies at Phoenix, Ariz., April 9 at age 89 and is buried in his native Wisconsin. His Guggenheim Museum at New York features a dramatic circular inner ramp employed by Wright earlier on a smaller scale.
New York's Seagram building is completed opposite the 41-year-old Racquet and Tennis Club on Park Avenue (see 1958). Designed by Mies van de Rohe and Philip Johnson, the bronze-clad, 40-story tower rises from a plaza landscaped with reflecting pools, fountains, and trees.
A housing bill passed by Congress September 23 authorizes expenditure of $1 billion over a 2-year period with $650 million earmarked for slum clearance.
Copenhagen's 21-story, 265-room SAS Royal Hotel opens across from the Tivoli Gardens. Designed by architect Arne Jacobsen, its rooms have wall-to-wall windows.
China suffers catastrophic crop failures (see 1958). Grain production falls below 1952 levels as the Great Leap Forward program of 1957 reduces harvests and produces starvation in the country that now has 100 million more mouths to feed than in 1952. The shortfalls are blamed on the weather but are attributable in large part to the collectivization of agriculture that has robbed farmers of their economic incentive to produce but in even larger part to the fact that Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) has ordered a doubling in the nation's steel production; 100 million farmers have been taken off the land and put to work in an effort that produces a negligible increase in steel output, only women, children, and old men are left to harvest the crops, and the resulting famine will take a toll that by some estimates will reach 30 million dead (see 1961).
A corn farmer must have at least 1,000 acres to be a viable producer, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but 1 million U.S. farms contain fewer than 50 acres. The country has 3.7 million farms, down from more than 6 million in 1940 when 2.2 million farms had fewer than 50 acres, and 136,000 farms have 1,000 acres or more, up from 100,000 in 1940.
Congress approves a 2-year extension of a program for foreign disposal of surplus U.S. farm commodities. Some $250 million worth of surplus food is to go to needy Americans through food stamps (see 1939; 1964).
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York replaces its "ideal" weight tables of 1942 with two new tables based on findings which show that the old "ideal" weights were not ideal: one table shows "average" weights for men and women according to height and age, the other shows "desirable" weights for men and women according to height and frame size. The desirable weights are much lower than the average weight and are also somewhat lower than the ideal weights given in 1942. A small-framed woman of five feet six inches, aged 25 or older, should desirably weigh from 114 pounds to 123, says the company; but the average woman of five foot six inches, aged 25 to 29, actually weighs 133—10 to 19 pounds above her desirable weight. Averages for men show an even greater discrepancy to their desirable weights.
Nutrition scientist Russell M. Wilder dies at Rochester, Minn., December 16 at age 74.
The FDA bans use of diethylstilbestrol (DES) for emasculating cocks and promoting the growth of capons. University of Iowa researchers have developed DES in the past few years for poultry raisers, but feminizing effects have been observed in a restaurant worker who has eaten chicken necks containing residues from pellet implants (cattle raisers will continue to use DES in feed).
The Food and Drug Administration seizes 0.25 percent of the U.S. cranberry crop and orders cranberries from Washington and Oregon off the market. Residues of the weed-killer aminotriazole have contaminated a tiny fraction of the crop, but the headlines alarm consumers and all cranberry-sauce sales drop sharply.
The National Cranberry Association changes its name to Ocean Spray, expands production and distribution of Cranberry Juice Cocktail, and introduces Dietetic Cranberries to overcome consumer resistance to cranberry sauce (see 1930). The association, which harvested its first million-barrel crop in 1953, adopts new promotion ideas that will boost consumption in years to come (see Cranapple, 1965).
Supermarkets account for 69 percent of all U.S. food-store sales even though they represent only 11 percent of food stores.
The flavor enhancer 5'-nucleotides marketed in Japan is 10 to 20 times stronger than monosodium glutamate (MSG) (see 1947). U.S. marketing will begin in 1962.
Kellogg introduces Concentrate breakfast food—9.9 percent sugar (see 1958; 1961).
Frosty O's sugar-coated breakfast food is introduced by General Mills (see 1958; 1961).
Soviet Premier Khrushchev and Vice President Nixon wind up drinking several bottles of Pepsi-Cola together. Pepsi receives exclusive rights to sell cola in the USSR, Coca-Cola instigates a Senate investigation, and it comes to light that Nixon was once offered the presidency of a foreign division of Pepsi and handled the Pepsi account for a New York law firm.
Royal Crown Cola Co. is created by a reorganization of Nehi Corp. (see Diet-Rite, 1962).
Minute Maid proves to the Florida Citrus Commission that frost-damaged oranges can be used successfully in concentrates (see 1949). After several years of wild fluctuations in profit and loss, the company uses earth-moving machines to build 10-foot walls round 7,000 acres of marsh to reclaim savannah land that has been under water 9 months of the year. It plants citrus trees from whose fruit it will make frozen juice concentrates and develops programs that permit growers to participate in the retail prices of concentrates, thus assuring a constant supply of fruit (see Coca-Cola, 1960).
Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream is introduced by Polish-born Bronx, N.Y., entrepreneur Reuben Mattus, 47, who since age 17 has been peddling his family's homemade ice cream to small candy stores and neighborhood restaurants, initially with a horse and wagon. Finding that most commercial ice cream has become cheaper, he puts more butterfat in his product than government standards require, uses less air filler, comes up with a Danish-sounding name (even though the umlaut does not exist in Danish), packs the ice cream in cartons adorned with maps of Scandinavia, creates a new category that will be called superpremium ice cream, and begins what will become a multimillion-dollar company (see Steve's, 1972; Ben & Jerry's, 1978).
Restaurant critic Duncan Hines dies at Bowling Green, Ky., March 15 at age 78.
New York's Four Seasons restaurant opens in July at 99 East 52nd Street in the new Seagram Building (375 Park Avenue) under the management of Restaurant Associates. It occupies 130,000 cubic feet of space, and its menu selections, plantings, flowers, banquette upholstery colors, table-linen colors, uniforms, graphics—even the colors of the typewriter ribbons—are changed four times per year.
The first Little Caesar's pizza parlor opens at Garden City, Mich. (see Pizza Hut, 1958). Founder Michael Ilitch, 30, is the son of poor Macedonian immigrants; he joins with his wife to start the pizza parlor, will add a second store in 1961, and—with the help of an advertising campaign ("Pizza! Pizza! Two great pizzas! One low price")—will build an enterprise that will grow by 1993 to have nearly 4,500 franchised take-out stores, 1,125 of them owned by Ilitch (see Domino's, 1960).
Puerto Rico receives an influx of some 23,000 Cubans following the accession of Fidel Castro to power. Thousands of other Cubans emigrate to Florida and other U.S. states.
The new state of Hawaii has a native population of 12,000, down from 37,000 in 1860.
Congress authorizes admission of some 57,000 additional immigrants without regard to quotas established by the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act. Preference is given to resident aliens and to relatives of U.S. citizens (see 1965).
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