1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
France appeals for U.S. aid to relieve her troops surrounded at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina (see 1953). President Eisenhower declares that defeat of communist aggression in Southeast Asia is vitally important to the United States but declines to deploy U.S. airpower to relieve the siege. Ike outlines the "domino theory" at a press conference April 7; allegedly first voiced by newspaper columnist Joseph Alsop, 43, it says, "You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last is that it will go over very quickly." But the president resists "hawkish" suggestions by Vice President Nixon, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Chicago-born Joint Chiefs of Staff head Admiral Arthur W. Radford, 58; Eisenhower refuses to send U.S. forces to Vietnam, and the 8-week siege of Dien Bien Phu ends May 7 with the surrender of the garrison to Viet Minh forces under the command of Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.
A Geneva Conference of world powers meeting from April 26 to July 21 divides Vietnam at the 17th parallel into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. France, Britain, the United States, China, and the Soviet Union sign the Geneva Accords that effectively end French rule in Indochina.
Ho Chi Minh takes power as president of the communist "Democratic Republic" of North Vietnam after 9 years of leading anti-French guerrilla forces as head of the communist-led Viet Minh. Now 64, Ho gives Viet Minh apparatchik Le Duan, 46, responsibility for establishing an underground Communist Party organization in South Vietnam.
South Vietnam gains "complete independence" in "free association" with France under terms of a treaty signed June 4 by France's Premier Joseph Laniel and South Vietnam's Prince Bau Loa (see 1953). Bau Loa is succeeded June 14 by former interior minister Ngo Dinh Diem, now 53, who has returned from exile at the request of acting prime minister Bao Dai, beaten Bao Dai in a government-controlled referendum, and heads a new U.S.-backed regime as prime minister; Bao Dai goes into exile once again (see 1955).
Cambodia gains full independence from France under the leadership of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who will abdicate next year in favor of his parents but remain head of state (see 1953; Khmer Rouge, 1967).
Filipino Hukbalahap Army of Liberation leader Luis Taruc comes out of the jungle and surrenders to authorities, effectively ending the Huk Rebellion that began in 1946. Now 41, Turac goes on trial for revolt and terrorism and will be given a 12-year prison sentence (but see 1968).
A nuclear-fusion (hydrogen) "device" exploded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission March 1 at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific is hundreds of times more powerful than the atom bomb (see 1956; Eniwetok, 1952).
Japanese mothers begin collecting signatures for an anti-nuclear petition, starting a movement that will attract delegates from dozens of countries in August of next year to the first international conference at Tokyo.
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) established at Manila September 8 joins Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, France, Britain, and the United States in an anti-communist pact (see 1951). The treaty will come into force in February of next year with the avowed purpose of defending against subversive activities and cooperating in steps designed to promote economic and social progress, but Pakistan will withdraw in 1968, France will suspend financial support in 1975, and SEATO will go out of existence at the end of June 1977.
Japanese democratic politician Yukio Ozaki dies at Zushi, Kanagawa prefecture, October 6 at age 95 and is remembered as the nation's "father of parliamentary politics." Prime minister Shigeru Yoshida resigns in December at age 76, having formed five different cabinets since 1946. He has been forced to vacate his leadership by Ichiro Hatoyama, now 71, who was removed from the Allied purge list in 1951 and allowed to take his seat in the Diet in April 1952. Hatoyama has merged the two conservative parties (the Liberals and Democrats) into the Liberal-Democratic Party that will hold power for decades.
Laos gains full sovereignty December 29 by agreement with Paris.
Rome objects January 29 that U.S. Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce is interfering in Italian domestic affairs, but she will continue in the post until 1957.
Moscow grants East Germany full sovereignty March 26 but rejects German unification in a meeting at Berlin of British, French, U.S., and Soviet foreign ministers. France, Britain, and the United States sign Paris pacts October 23 setting an end to occupation of West Germany.
Former German Army chief of staff and blitzkrieg theorist Heinz W. Guderian dies at Fuessen in Bavaria May 15 at age 65; former Italian prime minister Alcide De Gasperi of a heart attack at Sella di Valsugana August 19 at age 73; Soviet UN delegate Andrei Vishinsky of an acute stenocardiac attack at New York November 22 at age 70 while working on a speech that he is to give at the UN General Assembly's atoms-for-peace debate.
The French government falls June 12; Premier Laniel is succeeded by Radical-Socialist Party leader Pierre Mendès-France, 47, who favors greater self-rule by Tunisia and Morocco and French withdrawal from Indochina. Mendès-France escaped from a Nazi prison camp during World War II and joined Gen. de Gaulle's Free-French forces.
The Algerian National Movement (Mouvement National Algérian) founded by nationalist leader Ahmed Messali Hadj, now 56, agitates for independence from French colonial rule (see 1946), but it is soon eclipsed by the rival National Liberation Front (Front de Liberation National, or FLN), whose members begin a revolt October 31 (see 1957).
The Soviet Union vetoes a Security Council resolution January 22, blocking Israel from building a Jordan River power project; it is the first of several Soviet vetoes in behalf of Arab nations.
Egypt's military government ousts Gen. Muhammad Naguib (see 1953). Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, 36, takes over as premier April 17. Britain agrees July 27 to a timetable for withdrawing all troops from the Suez, and Nasser signs a treaty with Britain October 19 providing for British withdrawal from the Suez Canal Zone within 20 months. Britain is to give up her rights to the base at Suez, but the Egyptians agree to keep it in combat readiness and permit British entry in the event of an attack on Turkey or any Arab state by an outside power. Nasser seizes full control of the Egyptian government November 14 following a coup by young army officers; he declares himself a pan-Arabist and socialist, allying himself with Moscow (see 1956).
Guatemala's president Jacobo Arbenz (Guzmán) charges January 29 that Nicaragua is planning to invade his country with support from several other Latin American states and tacit U.S. consent (see 1951); he has forced the United Fruit Co. to sell his government much of its land, resettled 100,000 peasants on that land, and provoked the anger of the company's chairman Samuel Zemurray, who has enlisted the support of the CIA (headed by former United Fruit Co. board member Allen Dulles), the U.S. State Department (headed by former United Fruit Co. lawyer John Foster Dulles), and New York public relations man Edward L. Bernays (who orchestrates a campaign to make the world believe that Arbenz is a communist). Guatemala dissents from a resolution approved in March by the Tenth Inter-American Conference meeting at Caracas to bar communism from the Western Hemisphere. The State Department reports a major shipment of communist-made arms to Guatemala March 17; her foreign minister declares May 21 that a U.S. boycott has left his country defenseless, forcing her to buy arms from communist sources; the CIA organizes a pathetic rebel force to overthrow the Arbenz government, it fails, but Arbenz realizes that he has no chance against the U.S. Government and steps down June 27 under pressure from U.S. Ambassador John Emil Peurifoy, 47; Arbenz takes refuge in Uruguay (he will later move to Cuba), and the CIA installs Col. Carlos Castillo Armas, 39, as president; Armas will soon reverse most of the reforms instituted by Arbenz, offering generous concessions to foreign investors (see 1957). The coup convinces communist Che Guevara that Washington will always oppose progressive leftist governments; he leaves for Mexico, where he meets the Cuban exile Fidel Castro (see 1953; 1956).
"Free Puerto Rico!" cries Lolita Lebron, 28, March 1 from the gallery of the House of Representatives, and she fires the first of eight shots that injure five congressmen (see constitution, 1952). The divorcée and her three confederates have pulled out concealed weapons to stage their demonstration; each will serve at least 23 years in prison, rejecting parole offers lest he or she appear repentant or acceptive of U.S. law.
Paraguay's president Federico Chávez tries to strengthen his regime by arming the national police (see 1949). His efforts to build a managed economy by further nationalizing industry and controlling production, trade, wages, and prices have antagonized the right wing of the Colorado Party, as have his moves toward establishing closer ties with Argentina. Army commander-in-chief Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, 41, deposes the septuagenarian Chávez in a coup d'état May 5, voters in a one-party election choose Stroessner to serve as president until February 1958, but Stroessner will rig elections to remain in power until 1989, heading a military dictatorship that will provide refuge to Nazi war criminals.
Brazil's president Getulio Vargas resigns under pressure from the military August 23 after a government scandal. A failed attempt August 5 on the life of right-wing newspaper editor Carlos Lacerda has killed an Air Force major, Vargas's son Lutero had been competing with Lacerda for a seat in the legislature, an investigation has linked the killer to the head of Vargas's personal guard, and demands for the president's impeachment have grown. After spending a sleepless night, Vargas commits suicide in his bedroom early the next morning at age 71, shooting himself in the heart after typing an eloquent note. Vargas is succeeded by his vice president João Cafe Filho (see 1955).
A charter signed December 15 makes the Netherlands Antilles (Aruba, Curaçao, Saba, St. Eustatius, Saint Martin) an autonomous part of the Netherlands, whose colonial forces have held the Caribbean islands since the 1630s. Secessionists will urge a break with the mother country, but the Dutch will increase the islanders' political autonomy and all five islands will vote in the mid-1990s to remain Dutch.
Lockheed Missile Systems Division is created January 1 by Lockheed Aircraft Corp. with temporary offices at Burbank, Calif. (see 1938). The company has profited from military contracts during the Korean War, which increased sales to $802 million and employment to 51,500; its new division starts with just 65 employees, but it has inherited some engineers and a contract for an X-plane from the parent corporation, and by year's end it has produced $24 million in sales, its payroll has grown to 2,800 (including 800 in research and engineering), it relocates to Van Nuys, and by 1961 it will account for more than half of Lockheed's total business (see 1958; Lockheed Martin, 1994).
Ottawa and Washington agree to build a "DEW" lane (Distant Early Warning Line) of radar stations across northern Canada to alert authorities to the approach of aircraft or missiles over the Arctic.
Sen. McCarthy conducts hearings from April 22 to June 17 as chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee and charges that a communist spy ring is operating at the U.S. Army Signal Corps installation at Fort Monmouth, N.J. (see 1951). The Senate voted earlier in the year to finance Sen. McCarthy's anticommunist investigations, with only Sen. J. William Fulbright (D. Mo.) expressing opposition. The hearings are televised across the country, McCarthy accuses the secretary of the army of concealing evidence, and the secretary retains Boston lawyer Joseph Nye Welch, 63, to represent him. When McCarthy makes a vicious, homophobic charge against one of his assistants June 9, Welch says, "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or recklessness . . . Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
The Atomic Energy Commission revokes J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance June 29, President Eisenhower follows suit, the AEC appoints a board to investigate, it clears Oppenheimer of disloyalty charges but votes 2 to 1 that Oppenheimer's imprudent associations have made him a security risk and upholds revocation of the physicist's security clearance (see 1953). Loyola University chemistry professor Ward Vincent Evans, 71, casts the dissenting vote, and Oppenheimer will receive the AEC's Fermi Award in 1963 after the anticommunist frenzy stirred up by Sen. McCarthy has abated.
The C-130 Hercules transport plane makes its maiden flight August 23 from Burbank, Calif., to Edwards Air Force Base. Kansas City-born Lockheed Aircraft designer Willis Hawkins, 48, has designed the four-engine turbo-prop cargo and personnel carrier with the internal dimensions of a railroad boxcar. A four-man crew can operate the aircraft; Lockheed will begin delivery in December 1956, and it will be deployed worldwide as Air Force and National Guard units employ the flying boxcar to convey paratroopers, heavy equipment, and humanitarian supplies.
Right-wing senator Patrick A. "Pat" McCarran dies at Hawthorne, Nev., September 28 at age 78, having helped lead the fight against alleged "communist subversives"; longtime Memphis political boss Edward H. "Boss" Crump dies at Memphis October 16 at age 80, having lost power 6 years ago after nearly 40 years of controlling Tennessee politics.
Sen. Everett M. (McKinley) Dirksen, 58 (R. Ill)., withdraws his support from Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and the Senate votes 65 to 22 December 2 to condemn McCarthy for misconduct. Sen. J. William Fulbright has helped to draft the bill of particulars attached to the censure motion.
The U.S.S. Forrestal launched December 12 is the world's largest aircraft carrier. The 80,000-ton ship is 1,050 feet in length, has cost nearly $198 million, and can attain a speed of 40 knots.
The Supreme Court rules 9 to 0 May 17 in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional (see Gaines, 1938; Henderson, 1949). The decision cites work by Panama Canal Zone-born New York psychologist Kenneth B. (Bancroft) Clark, 39, who has shown that black children in America grow up with a sense of inferiority. Persuaded by the arguments of Baltimore-born NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, now 45, in a case that combines lower-court rulings that upheld segregation in Kansas, Virginia, and elsewhere, the court finally overturns the "separate but equal" doctrine laid down in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson; "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," says Chief Justice Earl Warren, and he orders the states to proceed "with all deliberate speed" to integrate educational facilities, but Topeka, Kan., requests time to formulate a plan for racial balance. It was at Topeka that Oliver Brown filed suit in 1951 action after his daughter, Linda Carol, then 8, had been denied admission to the all-white Sumner School, obliging her to travel an hour and 20 minutes each day and cross a hazardous railyard to reach her bus stop. Topeka will repeat its request for more time for the next 20 years. Novelist Zora Neale Hurston criticizes the landmark decision on the grounds that pressure to integrate will be harmful to thriving black institutions. Warren calls for "cool heads, calm study, and sound judgment," and he promises to consult with leaders of both races, but Sen. Harry F. Byrd (D. Va.) says the decision "will bring implications and dangers of the greatest consequence"; now 66, he vows June 26 to use all legal means to continue segregation in Virginia's schools (see Moton High School strike, 1951), and other white Southerners form Citizens' Councils to oppose integration in the name of states' rights and "racial integrity" (see Little Rock, 1957; 1958).
Civil rights leader Mary Church Terrell dies at Annapolis, Md., July 24 at age 90.
India outlaws bigamy September 17.
The Ford Foundation gives away $67.8 million (see 1950). Some $34 million goes to education, $18 million to international programs, the rest to programs in economics, public affairs, and the behavioral sciences (see 1956).
U.S. taxes come down by $5 billion January 1: the excess profits tax expires, and personal tax rates come down. Excise and federal luxury taxes are reduced by 50 percent March 10, but a taxpayer with an income of $100,000 may now pay more than $67,000 in taxes, up from $16,000 or less in 1929, and the individual tax exemption is $600, down from $1,500 in 1929. Income taxes will be reduced slightly next year, but the average tax rate, including surtax, is just above 20 percent and taxpayers in top brackets pay 87 percent. Only 154 Americans have incomes of $1 million or more, down from 513 in 1929, when the real value of $1 was much higher.
The London gold market reopens March 22 for the first time since 1939.
The Federal Reserve Board cuts the discount rate in February and April, and in June it reduces the reserve requirements of member banks.
Former E. I. du Pont de Nemours (and General Motors) president Pierre S. du Pont dies of a ruptured aorta at his native Wilmington, Del., April 5 at age 84.
Some 63.4 million Americans are gainfully employed by September; unemployment falls to its lowest level since the close of World War II as the recession that began in July of last year comes to an end.
The 24-year-old magazine Fortune issues its first Fortune "500" listings of the biggest U.S. companies; two-thirds of the companies will either have disappeared by 1994 or be too small to make the list.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average finally passes the 381.17 high of 1929 November 23 and closes December 31 at 404.39, up from 280.9 at the end of 1953, but the price of RCA stock will not reach its April 1929 high of 570 until 1964, and many companies whose stocks traded at high prices in 1929 have long since gone out of business.
Detroit's Northland shopping mall opens March 22 with 53 stores—the world's largest shopping center and a monument to the American exodus from the inner city (see Seattle, 1950). Designed by Victor Gruen Associates, the $30-million project includes a J. L. Hudson branch that is the largest department store erected since the 1920s. The mall has parking for 10,500 cars and will eventually grow to have 125 stores (see Southdale, 1957).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Federal Power Commission (FPC) price regulation of natural gas piped interstate. In a 5-to-3 decision handed down June 7 in Phillips Petroleum v. United States, the Court rules that Phillips is a natural gas company within the meaning of the Natural Gas Act of 1938, the FPC freezes the well-head price of natural gas, 106 companies say the commission has gone beyond the court decision and that the price freeze is illegal and unworkable, Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson, now 45, (D. Tex.) says he will urge congressional action to solve problems raised by the court decision, the Supreme Court refuses to reverse its ruling in the Phillips case, the FPC chairman denies that his commission seeks to socialize the industry, saying it will set rates high enough to provide profits necessary for risking capital to explore and develop new natural gas reserves. The industry will work for decades to have wellhead prices deregulated, meanwhile promoting wasteful uses of natural gas including its use as a boiler fuel to generate electricity.
The world's first nuclear power station begins producing electricity for Soviet industry and agriculture June 27. The station 55 miles from Moscow at Obninsk has an effective capacity of 5,000 kilowatts.
Participation of U.S. private industry in the production of nuclear power gains congressional approval August 30 in amendments to the McMahon Atomic Energy Act of 1946. Duquesne Light Co. responds to public complaints that another coal-fired power plant would worsen Pittsburgh's air pollution and builds the first U.S. commercial nuclear-power reactor at Shippingport, Pa.
The Dixon-Yates contract signed by President Eisenhower November 11 permits private companies to supply energy to the Tennessee Valley Authority, but the propriety of the contract comes under attack and the president will cancel it.
Physicist Enrico Fermi receives the first prize (it will later be called the Fermi Prize) awarded by the Atomic Energy Commission, pocketing $25,000, but dies of cancer at Chicago November 28 at age 53.
The UN votes unanimously December 4 to approve a November 15 U.S. move to donate more than 200 pounds of fissionable material, implementing President Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace plan.
A solar battery developed by Bell Laboratories makes it possible to convert sunlight directly to electric power, but solar power is far too costly to compete with other forms.
British Petroleum (BP) is created by a renaming of Anglo-Iranian, founded in 1908 as Anglo-Persian.
U.S. gasoline prices average 29¢ per gallon in October, up from 21¢ in 1944.
Petroleum cracking pioneer William M. Burton dies at Miami, Fla., December 29 at age 89.
The steam locomotive Carter Braxton leaves Union Station at Washington, D.C., January 3 and travels to Richmond, Va., pulling the last steam passenger train from the station.
Chesapeake & Ohio chairman Robert Young resigns in January in order to comply with Interstate Commerce Commission rules against interlocking directorates (he has gained control of other roads) and becomes chairman of the New York Central in mid-year after winning a proxy fight by sending agents door to door to solicit stockholders' votes (see 1946). The Central has reported a deficit of $2.5 million, and Young has demanded a seat on the board. Now 56, he names Alfred Edward Perlman, 51, of the Denver & Rio Grande Western chief executive officer of the Central, and Perlman, who received his degree from MIT at age 20, cuts the Central's workforce by some 15,000, bringing a new ruthlessness to management by skimping on car maintenance and ignoring commuters' complaints. The railroad claims to be losing $25 million per year on Grand Central Terminal. Young announces in September that he will tear down the terminal and replace it with an 80-story office tower (see 1958; real estate, 1957).
Canada's first subway line opens March 30 at Toronto, and although it runs only from Eglinton Avenue to Union Station it carries 250,000 passengers its first day. Built by Portuguese workers at a cost of $66 million, it has taken 5½ years, its 100 cars serve 12 stations, and it will grow in 50 years to have 636 cars serving 69 stations.
The first section of the 427-mile New York State Thruway (a 115-mile stretch between Utica and Rochester) opens to traffic June 24 (see 1956). President Eisenhower hails the Thruway as a defense asset and economic boost; he makes a speech at New York July 12 proposing an interstate highway system for general use (and atomic defense). Toll revenue from the road between New York and Buffalo is projected to reach $68 million by 1975 and its vehicular traffic to reach 108 million trips by that time, but revenues will exceed the projections by 1963 and traffic by 1965.
New York makes Seventh Avenue one-way southbound and Eighth Avenue one-way northbound (see 1951). Although traffic flow is speeded by 25 to 40 percent, the Fifth Avenue Coach Co. complains that it has lost customers on its Seventh and Eighth Avenue routes and the Transport Workers Union opposes further one-way avenues (but see Broadway, 1956).
American Motors Corp. (AMC) is created by a merger of Hudson Motor Car and Nash-Kelvinator (see 1922; Hudson, 1909; Nash, 1916; Rambler, 1959).
Studebaker-Packard Corp. is created by a merger (see 1964).
Braniff Airways founder Thomas E. Braniff dies at Shreveport, La., January 10 at age 70 after a hunting trip with some business associates when the pilot of his private plane hits a power line while trying to land in bad weather (his brother Paul dies later in the year of bone cancer at age 57, having left the company in 1936); aeronautical engineer Hugo Eckener dies at Friedrichshafen August 14 at age 86, having seen the age of rigid airships (dirigibles) come and go.
The IL-14 introduced in Soviet Russia replaces the IL-12 plane that has been the Soviet DC-3 (see 1948; 1962).
Texas Instruments introduces the first practical silicon transistors (see Shockley, 1947). Far cheaper than germanium transistors, they will sharply increase use of solid-state electronic components, booming sales for TI, whose Brooklyn, N.Y.-born president John Erik Jonsson, 53, has brought the price of germanium transistors down from $16 to $2.50 for use in portable radios.
The new IBM 740 computer uses an operating system developed by engineer Gene Amdahl.
Wang Laboratories is founded at Lowell, Mass., by Chinese-born U.S. computer engineer An Wang, 34, to make small business calculators. Wang has done pioneering work on magnetic core memory that will be the basis for modern computer technology until it is succeeded by silicon-chip memory (see word processing, 1976).
A small Detroit steel mill installs the first U.S. oxygen steelmaking furnace (see Linde, 1901). Perfected in 1950 by a tiny Austrian company, the furnace is the first major technological breakthrough at the ingot level for steelmaking since the 19th century. West German and Japanese steelmakers are using it to modernize their production facilities, but McLouth Steel has less than 1 percent of U.S. steel ingot capacity. Jones & Laughlin will not adopt the oxygen furnace until 1957, Bethlehem and United States Steel not until 1964.
Columbia University graduate student (James) Gordon Gould, 37, tells a physics seminar April 8 that he has built a contraption containing a generator called a klystron that emits radiation in microwave frequencies, exciting a beam of ammonia molecules; the excited molecules relax the emitted microwaves at a specific, identical frequency. Gould coins the term laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). South Carolina-born physicist Charles H. (Hard) Townes, 37, conducts the seminar, having worked for Bell Laboratories from 1939 to 1948; he joins with his 34-year-old brother-in-law Arthur Schawlow of Bell Labs in designing an "optical maser"—a new version of Gould's device that amplifies light rather than microwaves, using a very narrow beam of a single frequency—and they will apply for a patent before publishing their findings in scientific journals. Gould has his notebook showing the basic laser concept notarized and will try to interest defense officials in his potential "death ray," but he was involved in some left-wing political activities in the early 1940s, the Defense Department will classify his patent application secret, deny him security clearance, and confiscate his notebooks (he will eventually obtain patents on ways to pump molecules into a highly energized state, but it will take 30 years for him to receive any royalties) (see Maiman, 1960).
Pittsburgh-born physicist Clifford G. (Glenwood) Shull, 38, and Alberta-born physicist Bertram N. (Neville) Brockhouse, 36, of Canada's Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory separately develop neutron-scattering techniques that facilitate efforts by solid-state physicists to explore the atomic structure of matter.
Mathematician Alan M. Turing commits suicide at Wilmslow, Cheshire, June 7 at age 41 while undergoing treatment to "cure" him of his homosexuality in lieu of going to prison. He became deputy director 6 years ago of the Computing Laboratory at the University of Manchester, whose Manchester Automatic Digital Machine (MADAM) had the largest computer memory capacity thus far; his theoretical study of morphogenesis (the development of pattern and form in living organisms) remains incomplete, but Turing's work has laid the foundation of research on what will be called "artificial intelligence."
Pittsburgh schoolchildren receive the first mass poliomyelitis immunization shots February 23 (see 1952). Warm weather is only a few weeks away in some parts of the country, epidemics have come each spring, and Jonas Salk persuades Basil O'Connor of the National Foundation/March of Dimes to fund a large-scale field test of the killed-virus vaccine (influenza vaccine pioneer Thomas Francis Jr., now 53, joins the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan and directs the test). Polish-born U.S. virologist Albert B. (Bruce) Sabin, 48, tests a live-virus oral vaccine that will subsequently prove superior to Salk's killed-virus vaccine, and he opposes the field test, raising questions about how long the Salk vaccine will be effective, and whether it might not make people susceptible to worse effects in the future, but the Foundation borrows $7 million for the project. Some 20,000 physicians administer the shots with help from 40,000 nurses and 200,000 volunteers, children receive lollipops after their shots, but some of the shots are placebos (see 1955; Sabin, 1960).
Canadian children receive vaccinations against poliomyelitis under the 6-year-old National Health Program. Canada's minister of health and welfare Paul Martin has ordered vast quantities of the Salk vaccine to make sure that supplies would be available as soon as it was approved for distribution.
Berlin-born Montreal psychiatrist Heinz Lehmann, 43, and his colleague Gorman Hanrahan report success in treating psychotic patients with the drug chlorpromazine obtained from Rhone-Poulenc in France (see 1952). Smith Kline & French researchers have found chlorpromazine useful in preventing vomiting and the firm will introduce it under the brand name Thorazine. It will effect a large-scale reduction in the hospitalization of mental patients by dramatically increasing recovery from schizophrenia, but although it will be hailed as a psychological panacea it will produce neurological side effects such as facial tics, memory loss, and body-stiffening Parkinsonism in 40 percent of patients (the Food and Drug Administration will require a warning label, but not until 1985).
The tranquilizer drugs Miltown and Equanil are introduced by Wallace Laboratories, Wyeth Laboratories, respectively (see 1950; Librium, 1960).
President Eisenhower proposes a federal "reinsurance" plan that would encourage private initiative to strengthen U.S. health services. A survey of medical costs reveals that 16 percent of U.S. families go into debt each year to pay for treatment (see Medicare, Medicaid, 1964).
St. Louis-born U.S. Navy physician Thomas A. (Anthony) Dooley, 27, volunteers for duty in the U.S. effort to evacuate refugees from North to South Vietnam following the end of French rule in the country. Beginning in September he institutes a rigorous public-health program and by May of next year will have organized the processing of more than 600,000 Vietnamese. Dooley will use the proceeds of U.S. lecture tours and books to establish a small jungle hospital at Nam Tha in northern Laos and will help found the Medical International Corporation (Medico) to provide medical teams and hospital facilities in eight developing countries, most of them in Southeast Asia.
Italian neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, 45, helps discover nerve-growth factor, a previously unknown biological mechanism that stimulates the growth of hair cells.
British women increasingly have their babies delivered in hospitals: 54 percent of infants are born in hospitals, up from 15 percent in 1927. In the United States the rate is even higher.
Dramatic evidence emerges that smoking is hazardous to health (see Wynder, 1953). Baltimore-born epidemiologist E. (Edward) Cuyler Hammond, 42, and his colleague Daniel Horn, 38, report on a 2-year study sponsored by the American Cancer Society of 187,783 U.S. men aged 50 to 69 of whom 11,870 have died; of the deceased, 7,316 were smokers, and 11,870 is 2,265 greater statistically than the number would have been had none of the men smoked. More than half the deaths have been from coronary heart disease, 14 percent from lung cancer, another 14 percent from all other forms of cancer (including carcinomas of the esophagus and larynx). Horn gives up smoking (see Burney, 1957).
Physician and clinical cardiologist James B. Herrick dies at Chicago March 7 at age 92, having been the first to describe sickle-cell anemia and the clinical features of coronary thrombosis (see Lillehei, 1955); pioneer bacteriologist Anna W. Williams dies of heart failure at Westwood, N.J., November 20 at age 92.
Milford, Mass.-born Harvard surgeon Joseph E. Murray, 35, performs the world's first successful kidney transplant December 23 at Boston's Peter Brent Brigham Hospital (see Medawar, 1953). His patient Richard Herrick survives the 5½-hour procedure and will live for 7 years with a kidney from his identical twin brother before dying of heart failure (see Scribner's dialysis treatment, 1960).
The Church of Scientology founded at Los Angeles February 18 by followers of pulp and science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard is based on Hubbard's 1950 nonfiction book Dianetics—The Modern Science of Mental Health, which remains a bestseller and is earning him a fortune with its "applied religious philosophy." Man is essentially a free and immortal spirit who can achieve his true nature only by freeing himself from the emotional encumbrances of his past through counseling (or "auditing"), says Hubbard, now 42, but many will question whether his "church" is really a religious institution (see 1963).
The Unification Church is founded by Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon, 34, who claims to have received a vision on a hillside in Korea at age 16 that gave him the "key to righteousness and restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth." Moon will develop a theology based on platitudes, rabid anticommunism, and pop history supported by bits of numerology, astrology, and Scientology. Moon's supporters will claim that the Bible is written in code and that only Moon has broken the code.
A bill signed into law by President Eisenhower June 14 (Flag Day) modifies the pledge of allegiance, inserting "one nation, under God, indivisible" to replace the words "one nation, indivisible" (see 1943; education, 1892). Glasgow-born Rev. George M. Doherty, 43, of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church invited the president in January to sit in the pew once occupied by President Lincoln, told his congregation February 7 that he grew up singing "God Save Our King," and sermonized that adding the words "under God" would not violate the First Amendment, saying it was intended to maintain separation of church and state but "not a separation of religion and life." He has urged Eisenhower to have Congress add the religious reference to the pledge. Rep. Charles G. Oakman (R. Mich.) has introduced the measure in the House, Sen. Homer Ferguson (R. Mich.) has done so in the Senate, saying, "I believe this modification . . . is important because it highlights one of the real fundamental differences between the free world and the Communist world, namely belief in God." No one in either chamber of Congress speaks in opposition, and Eisenhower says, "From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our people to the Almighty" (see 2002).
The U.S. Air Force Academy created by act of Congress will move into permanent quarters north of Colorado Springs in 1958. The first class of 306 cadets will be sworn in July 11 of next year at Lowry Air Force Base, Denver.
Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo KK (Totsuko, later Sony Corp.) creates the first Japanese-made transistors and sells them at the equivalent of $11.11 each (see tape recorder, 1950; technology [Shockley], 1947; Sony, 1950). Totsuko's Masaru Ibuka returned last year from his first visit to America with a license from AT&T's Western Electric division, whose engineers told him that 95 of 100 transistors coming off production lines are defective and must be discarded and that to make a profit it would be necessary to charge $6 for a transistor alone when vacuum-tube radios sell for as little as $6.95 complete. Ibuka has improved the technology of transistor production, cut the reject rate from 95 percent to 2 percent, and reduced the cost from $6 to a fraction of one dollar (see radio, 1955).
FM radio inventor Major Edwin H. Armstrong takes his own life at age 63 February 1 when he jumps out of his 13th-floor New York apartment.
The CBS television program See It Now March 5 exposes the demagogy of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose charges of communism within the U.S. government have been tearing the country apart. Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly use their own money to advertise the program in newspapers, omitting the CBS logo (CBS chairman William S. Paley has objected to airing the show, whose sponsor, Alcoa, cancels at the end of the season. Like Paley, many question Morrow's mixing advocacy with news reporting). Morrow tells viewers that dissent is not disloyalty, saying, "This is not the time for those who oppose Sen. McCarthy's methods to keep silent—or for those who approve. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibility." He quotes Shakespeare's 1600 play Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/ But in ourselves." The powerful documentary will be credited with having a major influence in turning Americans against the junior senator from Wisconsin.
RCA introduces the first U.S. television receivers that can show both color and black-and-white (see CBS, 1951). They have 12-inch screens, sell for less than $1,000, and go into mass production beginning March 25, but color reception is unreliable at best. No other company will enter the color-TV market on a sustained basis until 1959, when the courts will settle patent suits brought against RCA by Zenith and others (see 1962; Zenith, 1963).
U.S. black and white TV sets with 19-inch screens retail at $187.
The world has 94 million telephones, 52 million of them in the United States.
The Washington Post buys out the Washington Times-Herald March 17 for $8.5 million, stifling its only morning competition (see 1933; Newsweek, 1961).
Sports Illustrated begins publication at New York August 16. The new Time-Life weekly will lose $26 million before it becomes profitable in 1964.
British press lord William E. Berry, Viscount Camrose, dies at Southampton June 15 at age 74; cartoonist Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher of "Mutt and Jeff" fame at New York September 7 at age 69 (Fisher moved to New York in 1909. Ghost artist Albert Schmidt, now 52, has drawn most of the strips since 1932 and continues); cartoonist George McManus of "Bringing Up Father" fame dies at Santa Monica, Calif., October 22 at age 70.
Gale Group has its beginnings in the Detroit publishing firm Gale Research Co. founded by Akron, Ohio-born entrepreneur Frederick G. (Gale) Ruffner Jr., 28, who will head the outfit until 1987, building up an enterprise that will produce the multi-volume Contemporary Authors series and other reference works for libraries (see Thomson, 1985). Publisher H. W. Wilson of Reader's Guide fame dies at Yorktown Heights, N.Y., March 1 at age 75.
Nonfiction: "Historical Inevitability" (essay) by Isaiah Berlin; Formation of the Soviet Union by Polish-born Harvard historian Richard (Edgar) Pipes, 31; McCarthy and His Enemies by William F. Buckley Jr. recognizes the Wisconsin senator's excesses but supports his campaign against alleged U.S. communists; A Program for Conservatives by Russell Kirk; Seduction of the Innocent by German-born psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, 59, who condemns comic books as a cause of juvenile delinquency. American youths bought comic books at the rate of about 63 million per month last year, Wertham claims (with little or no evidence) that the books are responsible in part for hubcap stealing, gang membership, and the like, excerpts of his work appear in Reader's Digest, congressional hearings frighten comic-book publishers into adopting a code of standards deemphasizing crime and horror, 24 out of 29 comic-book publishers will go out of business in the next few years, the more lurid publications will tone down their content, but Wertham does not endorse the code and will later recant much of his polemic; But We Were Born Free by CBS newsman and former OWI director Elmer Davis, now 64; A History of the Crusades (third of three volumes) by English historian Steven (originally James Cochran Stevenson) Runciman, 51; The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization by London-born Cambridge ethnographer J. (John) Eric S. (Sidney) Thompson, 55, who has found that early Mayan glyphs contain historical as well as religious and ritualistic records (see Landa, 1566); The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson.
Author Frederick Lewis Allen dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at New York February 13 at age 63. He retired as editor of Harper's magazine last year; anthropologist-author Earnest A. Hooton dies of a vascular accident at Cambridge, Mass., May 3 at age 66; author-screenwriter James Agee of heart disease at New York May 16 at age 45.
Fiction: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien; Lucky Jim by English novelist Kingsley Amis, 32; Lord of the Flies by English novelist William Golding, 43; Under the Net by Oxford philosophy don-novelist Iris Murdoch, 34, who writes, "What is urgent is not urgent forever but only ephemerally. All work and all love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, life itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onwards with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and the future"; The Thaw (Ottepel) by Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg, now 63, supplies the name for a new trend in Soviet literature and refers for the first time to the iniquities of the Stalin regime; Felix Krull (Die Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull) by Thomas Mann; The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir; Bonjour Tristesse by French novelist Françoise Sagan, 19; The Story of O (Histoire d'O) by Pauline Réage (nom de plume for French novelist-translator Dominique Aury, 47), whose erotic work, written in the form of a love letter to a prominent critic (Jean Paulhan), is published by the 1-year-old Olympia Press at Paris and becomes a bestseller despite a ban on its publicity (it will be translated into at least 20 languages); The Green Pope by Miguel Asturias; The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata; People of the City by Nigerian (Ibo) novelist Cyprian Ekwenski, 33; The Radiance of the King (Le Regard du Roi) by Camara Laye, who describes a white man's journey through the African jungle in quest of an audience with a native king; Leaven of Malice and Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies; A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing; The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty; The Bride of Innisfallen (stories) by Welty; Pictures from an Institution by poet Randall Jarrell; The Desperate Hours by Indianapolis-born novelist Joseph Hayes, 36 (see Theater, 1955); The View from Pompey's Head by Hamilton Basso; The Blackboard Jungle by New York novelist Evan Hunter (originally Salvatore Lombino), 28, who graduated from high school at age 16, served in the navy, and has taught at Bronx Vocational High School; The Tunnel of Love by Peter De Vries; The New Men by C. P. Snow; Brain Wave and The Broken Sword by Pennsylvania-born California science-fiction novelist Poul Anderson, 27; Star Bearer by Robert A. Heinlein; Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming.
Novelist Joseph Hergesheimer dies at Sea Isle City, N.J., April 25 at age 74; writer (Sidonie Gabrielle) Colette at Paris August 3 at age 81; James Hilton of liver cancer at Long Beach, Calif., December 20 at age 54, having written 14 novels and some screenplays.
Poetry: The Waking by Theodore Roethke; A Summoning of Stones by New York-born per Anthony (Evan) Hecht, 31; The Desert Music by William Carlos Williams; A Few Late Chyrsanthemums by John Betjeman, now 48; Another Animal by Logan, Utah-born poet May Swenson, 35; An Almanac for Amorists by Modesto, Calif.-born San Francisco poet James (Richard) Broughton, 40; And Autumn Came by Oakland, Calif.-born poet-singer-composer Rod (Marvin) McKuen, 21, who worked as a disk jockey before serving in Korea (his book about his experiences, Elephants in the Rice Paddies, is so critical of the army that it receives no U.S. distribution, and he will not be discharged until next year).
Poet-ladies' man Maxwell Bodenheim is shot to death February 6 at age 61 in the room of a New York flophouse at 97 Third Avenue that he has shared with two other alcoholics, one of them his wife, Ruth (née Fagan), who is killed with a knife by their companion, a former mental patient (the man will be committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane).
Juvenile: Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss; Yew Hall and The Children of Green Knowe by Lancashire-born author Lucy Boston (née Lucy Maria Wood), 61, who has been working with her son Peter to restore the 12th-century manor house that she bought at the outbreak of World War II near Cambridge; The Eagle of the Ninth by English historical fiction author Rosemary Sutcliff, 33, who has been crippled by arthritis since childhood; A Little House of Your Own by Indiana-born New York author Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, 41, illustrations by Irene Haas.
Painting: Les Vagabonds by Jean Dubuffet; Dominion of Light by René Magritte; Acrobat and Horse, La Grande Parade, and La Partie de Champagne by Fernand Léger; Colonial Cubism by Stuart Davis; Red Interior, Yoicks (sewn from fabric strips), and Collection and Charlene by Robert Rauschenberg; Painting by Philip Guston; White Light by Jackson Pollock; Iris by Baltimore-born painter Morris Louis (originally M. L. Bernstein), 42; Maimonides by Ben Shahn; Grand Street Brides by Grace Hartigan; Blue Spot, Shattered Light (both collages) by Lee Krasner; Breakfast in Maine by Fairfield Porter; Girl at the Mirror by Norman Rockwell (cover illustration, Saturday Evening Post, March 6). Reginald Marsh dies of a heart attack outside Bennington, Vt., July 3 at age 56; Frida Kahlo of cancer at Coyoacan, Mexico, July 13 at age 44 (her coffin, draped in the Soviet flag, lies in state in the rotunda of the National Institute of Fine Arts, guarded by notables including former president Cárdenas); André Derain dies at Chambourcy, France, September 8 of injuries suffered in an automobile accident at age 74; Henri Matisse dies at Nice November 3 at age 84, having gained critical acclaim equal to that of Pablo Picasso.
Push Pin Studios is founded at New York by Bronx-born graphic artist and designer Seymour Chwast, 23, New York-born artist Milton Glaser, 25, and Bronx-born cartoonist Edward Sorel (originally Schwartz), 25, who all received diplomas 3 years ago from Cooper Union.
Sculpture: The Caliph of Baghdad by Joseph Cornell; Sitting Printer by David Smith.
The Iwo Jima Memorial Monument dedicated alongside Arlington National Cemetery November 10 honors the U.S. Marine Corps dead of all wars. Based on the picture taken in February 1945 by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, the 100-ton statue by sculptor Felix de Weldon rises to a height of 110 feet and has six bronze figures, each about 32 feet high.
Tri-X film is introduced by Eastman Kodak, whose high-speed (200 ASA) black and white roll film permits photography in dim light (it can be rated at more than 1,000 ASA and pushed in the darkroom). Eastman also introduces Tri-X motion picture film and Royal Pan sheet film.
The Asahiflex II introduced by Asahi Optical revolutionizes single-lens reflex cameras with a quick-return mirror system that permits a photographer to view the subject immediately before the picture is taken without making a separate adjustment to clear the viewfinder (see 1952). A pentaprism viewing system introduced in 1957 will further the concept of eye-level viewfinding and be the basis of the brand name Pentax in America.
A Vietnam land mine kills Hungarian-born photographer Robert Capa (André Friedmann) May 25 at age 42 (approximate) while he covers the war for LIFE magazine.
Theater: The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial by Herman Wouk (who has adapted his 1951 novel) 1/20 at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Lloyd Nolan as Lieut. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, Henry Fonda, John Hodiak, Charles Nolte, 415 perfs.; King of Hearts by Jean Kerr and Eleanor Brooke 4/1 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Des Moines-born actress Cloris Leachman, 27, Donald Cook, Jackie Cooper, 69 perfs.; Anniversary Waltz by Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields 4/7 at New York's Broadhurst Theater (to Booth Theater 12/6), with Macdonald Carey, Kitty Carlisle, 611 perfs.; The Reluctant Debutante by English playwright William Heatherton, 30, 8/24 at London's Cambridge Theatre, with Anna Massey, 17, Celia Johnson, Wilfred Hyde-White, 752 perfs.; Separate Tables (Table by the Window and Table Number Seven) by Terence Rattigan 9/22 at the St. James's Theatre, London, with Eric Portman, 726 perfs.; The Tender Trap by New York-born CBS continuity writer Robert Paul Smith, 39, and Max Shulman, now 35, 10/13 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Robert Preston, 101 perfs.; Ladies of the Corridor by Dorothy Parker and Arnaud d'Usseau 10/21 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Betty Field, June Walker, Edna Best, Vera Allen, New York-born actor Walter Matthau (originally Matuschanskyayasky), 34, Shepperd Strudwick, 45 perfs.; The Traveling Lady by Horton Foote 10/27 at the Playhouse Theater, New York, with Kim Stanley, Larry Chapman, Jack Lord, 30 perfs.; The Rainmaker by N. Richard Nash 10/28 at New York's Cort Theater, with Missouri-born actress Geraldine Page, 29, Richard Coogan, Darren McGavin, 125 perfs.; The Quare Fellow by Irish playwright Brendan Behan, 31, 11/19 at Dublin's Pike Theatre, with Maxwell Shaw; The Bad Seed by Maxwell Anderson (from the novel by William March) 12/8 at New York's 46th Street Theater, with Patty McCormack, Nancy Kelly, Eileen Heckart, 332 perfs.; Irene, or The Treasure (Irene, o El tesoro) by Antonio Buero Vallejo 12/14 at Madrid's Teatro Nacional Maria Guerrero.
Actress Moya Nugent dies at London January 26 at age 52 after collapsing at a rehearsal; playwright-librettist Frederick Lonsdale dies at London April 4 at age 73; playwright Lynn Riggs of cancer at New York June 30 at age 54; Nobel playwright Jacinto Benavente y Martínez at his native Madrid July 14 at age 87; actress Effie Shannon at Bay Shore, N.Y., July 24 at age 77; actor Bert Lytell at New York September 28 at age 69.
Onetime radio entertainer Uncle Don (Carney) dies of heart disease at Miami January 14 at age 57.
Television: Davy Crockett Goes to Congress 1/26 on ABC's Walt Disney show with Fess Parker, Davy Crockett at the Alamo 2/23, Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race 11/16, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates 12/15 (see 1953) (licensees rush to market fake coonskin hats and other items related to the Davy Crockett fad); The Mother by Paddy Chayefsky 4/4 on NBC's Philco Playhouse, with Cathleen Nesbitt, Maureen Stapleton; Middle of the Night by Chayefsky 8/9 on NBC's Philco Playhouse, with E. G. Marshall, Newark, N.J.-born actress Eva Marie Saint, 30; The General Electric Theater on CBS with former Hollywood B-film star Ronald Reagan, now 43, as host. Reagan also gives speeches to GE groups and earns more than $125,000 per year, enabling him to revitalize his faltering financial situation (to 1962); Tonight with Steve Allen 9/27 on NBC with New York-born host-songwriter Steve (originally Stephen Valentine Patrick William) Allen, 32, who goes on the air live at 11:30 and continues until 1 o'clock in the morning with regulars who include bandleader Skitch Henderson, comedian Gene Rayburn, Steve Lawrence, Edie Gormé (to 1957; see Paar, 1957); The George Gobel Show 10/2 on NBC with crew-cut, low-key, Chicago-born comedian Gobel, 34 (later to CBS, to 6/5/1960); December Bride 10/4 on CBS with Spring Byington (as elderly widow Lily Ruskin), Harry Morgan (to 9/24/59, 146 30-minute episodes); Disneyland/Walt Disney 10/27 on ABC (later on NBC, CBS; to 2/15/1983); Catch My Son by Paddy Chayefsky 12/12 on NBC's Philco Playhouse, with Sylvia Sidney.
Films: Edward Dmytryk's The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson; Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still with Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal; Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden; Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window with James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Massachusetts-born actor Wendell Corey, 40; Jules Dassin's Rififi with Jean Servais, Carl Mohner; Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff with Kinuyo Tanaka, Kisho Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa; Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai with Toshiro Mifume; Federico Fellini's La Strada (The Road) with Anthony Quinn, Giulia Anna "Giulietta" Masina, 33 (who married Fellini in 1943), Richard Basehart; Richard Fleischer's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea with Kirk Douglas, James Mason. Also: John Sturges's Bad Day at Black Rock with Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Connecticut-born actor Ernest Borgnine (Ermes Borgnino), 37; Mark Robson's The Bridges at Toko-Ri with William Holden, Grace Kelly; Edward Dmytryk's Broken Lance with Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner, 24, Jean Peters, Richard Widmark, screenplay by Philip Yordan; Kenji Mizoguchi's Chikamatsu Monogatori (The Crucified Lovers) with Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa; Michael Anderson's The Dam Busters with Richard Todd, Michael Redgrave; Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique with Clouzot's wife, Vera, Simone Signoret; Ralph Thomas's Doctor in the House with Dirk Bogarde; Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell with Machiko Kyo, Kazuo Hasegawa; Henry Cornelius's Genevieve with Kay Kendall (Justine McCarthy), 28, Kenneth More, 40; William A. Wellman's The High and the Mighty with John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Robert Stack; Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar with Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, screenplay by Philip Yordan; Marcel Pagnol's Letters from My Windmill with Rellys; Kinyo Tanaka's Moon Rising (Tsuki Wa Nohorinu); Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali with Karuna and Subir Banerji; Billy Wilder's Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden; Henri Verneuil's The Sheep Has Five Legs with Fernandel and Françoise Arnoul (Françoise Glautch), 22; Lewis Allen's Suddenly with Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden; Gordon Douglas's Them! with James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn; Keisuke Kinoshita's 24 Eyes with Hideko Takamine.
Sydney Greenstreet dies of Bright's disease complicated by diabetes at Hollywood January 18 at age 74; film censor William H. Hays of a heart ailment at Sullivan, Ind., March 7 at age 74; film pioneer Auguste Lumière at Lyons April 10 at age 91; director-producer Gabriel Pascal at New York June 6 at age 60; actor Eugene Pallette of cancer at Los Angeles September 3 at age 65; Lionel Barrymore of a heart attack (after years of disabling arthritis) at Van Nuys, Calif., November 5 at age 76.
Hollywood musicals: Stanley Donen's Seven Brides For Seven Brothers with Howard Keel, Portland, Ore.-born actress-singer-dancer Jane Powell (Suzanne Bruce), 25, music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and Gene Paul, choreography by Michael Kidd; George Cukor's A Star Is Born with Judy Garland, James Mason, music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ira Gershwin.
Stage musicals: The Boy Friend 1/14 at Wyndham's Theatre, London, with Bob Hargreaves, music and lyrics by English songwriter Sandy (Alexander Galbraith) Wilson, 29, songs that include "I Could Be Happy with You," 2,084 perfs.; The Golden Apple 4/20 at New York's Alvin Theater, with Kaye Ballard, Jack Whiting, Jerry Stiller, Bibi Osterwald, book and lyrics by John La Touche, music by Jerome Moross, 125 perfs.; The Pajama Game 5/13 at New York's St. James Theater, with John Raitt, Janis Paige, Carol Haney, Peter Gennaro, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, book by Richard Bissell and George Abbott based on Bissell's 1953 novel 7½ Cents, songs that include "Hey, There," "There Once Was a Man," "7½ Cents," "Hernando's Hideaway," 1,063 perfs.; Salad Days 8/5 at London's Vaudeville Theatre, with Dorothy Reynolds, music by London-born composer Julian (Penkivil) Slade, 24, book and lyrics by Slade and Reynolds, songs that include "The Things That Are Done by a Don," "Find Yourself Something to Do," "I Sit in the Sun," "We Said We Wouldn't Look Back," 2,283 perfs.; Peter Pan 10/20 at New York's Winter Garden Theater, with Mary Martin, Cyril Ritchard, Margalo Gilmore, music by Mark Charlap with additional music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bronx, N.Y.-born writer Carolyn Leigh, 27, additional lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, songs that include "I'm Flying," "Never Never Land," "Tender Shepherd," "I Won't Grow Up," "I've Gotta Crow," 152 perf.; Fanny 11/4 at New York's Majestic Theater, with Ezio Pinza, William Tabbert, Walter Slezak, book by S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan based on sketches by Marcel Pagnol, music and lyrics by Harold Rome, 888 perfs.; House of Flowers 12/30 at the Alvin Theater, with Pearl Bailey, Bronx, N.Y.-born actress Diahann Carroll (Carol Diahann Johnson), 19, Juanita Hall, music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Arlen and Truman Capote, 165 perfs.
Producer John Murray Anderson dies of a heart attack at New York January 30 at age 67; composer Noel Gay at London March 4 at age 55; Fritzi Scheff at New York April 8 at age 74; comedian Joe Laurie Jr. of a heart ailment at New York April 29 at age 62; former London music-hall comedian Sir George Robey at Saltdean, Sussex, November 29 at age 85 (he retired at age 80 and was knighted early this year).
Opera: The Threepenny Opera 3/10 at New York's off-Broadway Theater de Lys, with Kurt Weill's widow, Lotte Lenya, now 55, who created the role of Jenny in the original 1928 Berlin production. Marc Blitzstein has written the new English language version; The Tender Land 4/1 at New York's City Center, with music by Aaron Copland, libretto by Copland's Los Angeles-born friend Erik Johns (originally Horace Eugene Johnston), 26, based on the James Agee-Walker Evans book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men of 1941; The Turn of the Screw 9/14 at Venice's Teatro la Fenice, with Peter Pears as Quint, Joan Cross, now 54, as Mrs. Grose, music by Benjamin Britten, libretto by art critic Myfanwy Piper (née Mary Myfanwy Evans), 43, from the Henry James story; Troilus and Cressida 12/3 at London's Covent Garden, with music by William Walton, libretto from the Chaucer poetry of the late 14th century; Ancona-born tenor Franco Corelli, 33, makes his La Scala debut at Milan 12/7 in a performance of the 1807 Gasparo Spontini opera La Vestale opposite Maria Callas; The Saint of Bleeker Street 12/27 at New York's Broadway Theater, with music by Gian-Carlo Menotti. Italian soprano Renata Scotto, 21, makes her debut at La Scala in Milan.
Composer Oscar Straus dies at Bad Ischl, Austria January 11 at age 83, having returned to his native Austria 5 years ago after 8 years in New York and Hollywood.
Impresario Carol Fox, 28, launches the Lyric Opera of Chicago, whose 3-week season includes the U.S. debut of Maria Callas in the 1831 Bellini opera Norma. Fox will assume full control in 1956, rename her company the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and begin to make it a leading opera company with a 3-month season of eight productions.
Ballet: The Legend of the Stone Flower 2/12 at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, with music by the late Sergei Prokofiev.
Oratorios: Moses and Aaron by the late Arnold Schoenberg 3/12 at Hamburg's Musikhalle; Prayers of Kierkegaard by Samuel Barber 12/3 at Boston's Symphony Hall.
Cantata: Hodie by Ralph Vaughan Williams 9/8 at Worcester Cathedral.
First performances: De Profundis for Mixed Chorus a capella by the late Arnold Schoenberg 1/29 at Cologne; Washington's Birthday by Charles Ives 2/21 in a CBS radio broadcast of chamber music; Concerto No. 4 for Piano and Orchestra by Darius Milhaud 4/30 at Haifa, Israel; The Odyssey of a Race (Odisseia de uma raca) by Heitor Villa-Lobos 5/30 at Haifa; String Quartet No. 2 by Roger Sessions 5/31 at Haifa; Concerto in F minor for Bass Tuba and Orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams, now 82, 6/13 at London; Quartet No. 4 for Strings by Ernest Bloch 7/28 at Lenox, Mass.; In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, Dirge, Canons, and Song by Igor Stravinsky 9/20 at Los Angeles.
Composer Charles Ives dies at West Redding, Conn., May 19 at age 79; conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler at Baden-Baden November 30 at age 68.
Popular songs: "Fly Me to the Moon" (originally "In Other Words") by Burlington, Iowa-born New York songwriter Bart Howard (originally Howard Joseph Gustafson), 39, whose song will not gain popularity until the early 1960s; "Three Coins in the Fountain" by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn (title song for Jean Negulesco's film); "Mister Sandman" by U.S. songwriter Francis Drake "Pat" Ballard, 55; "If I Give My Heart to You" by Jimmie Greene, Al Jacobs, and Jimmy Brewster; "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane" by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett; "Little Things Mean a Lot" by Edith Lindeman and Carl Stutz; "Cross Over the Bridge" by Bennie Benjamin and George Weiss; "Sh-Boom" by James Keyes, Claude Feaster, Carl Feaster, Floyd F. McRae, and James Edwards of the Crew-Cuts; "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" by Charles Calhoun; "Hoochie Coochie Man" and "I'm Ready" by Muddy Waters. Oklahoma-born California folk singer/songwriter Wanda Jackson, 17, records her duet "You Can't Have My Love" with Billy Grey and embarks on a career that will make her a "rockabilly" queen; Jo Stafford records "Make Love to Me."
Elvis Presley makes his first commercial recording July 5 in the Nashville, Tenn., studio of Sun Records and achieves some success with the blues song "That's All Right, Mama" by Arthur Crudup and an up-tempo version of Bill Monroe's 1947 song "Blue Moon of Kentucky." Florence, Ala.-born Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, 31, has scratched out a living with gigs recording funerals and weddings ("We record anything, anywhere, anytime"); he provides a bassist and guitarist to back up Tupelo, Miss.-born guitarist-vocalist Elvis Aaron Presley, 19, who has worked as a truck driver but will sign an agreement next year with RCA-Victor, whose publicists will promote "Elvis the Pelvis" with TV appearances. He will begin a motion picture career in 1956 and become a major factor in the new music style as Phillips goes on to record "rockabilly" (Phillips calls it "rock 'n' roll") artists such as Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, Billy Lee Riley, and Sonny Burgess.
New York radio station WINS hires Cleveland disk jockey Alan Freed to play rock 'n' roll records on the air (see Freed, 1951). The station's ratings soar (see television, 1957).
The Stratocaster electric guitar introduced by Leo Fender has three magnetic pickups for a range of tones, a vibrato tailpiece, and other features that will make it a favorite of Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and other rock 'n' roll pioneers (see 1948).
The Cha-cha is introduced to U.S. dance floors; based on the classic Cuban Danzon, it will be a standard Latin dance step.
Jazz trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page dies of a heart attack at New York November 5 at age 46; musician-actor J. Rosamond Johnson at New York November 11 at age 81; songwriter Raymond Hubbell following a stroke at Miami December 13 at age 75.
English track star Roger Bannister, M.D., 25, runs the mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds May 6 on a rain-soaked hard cinder track at Oxford, breaking the 4-minute barrier for the first time. Having run five half-hour sessions per week while taking exams in the period leading up to the event, he has eaten roast pork and potatoes before the race.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) ends its fifth season with game attendance falling sharply. Star George Mikan has retired, the league that had 17 teams 5 years ago now has just nine, and interest has dwindled as teams deliberately slow down in the final period to protect leads, passing the ball around for as much as 5 minutes without taking a shot (the final score of one game was 19 to 18). Sicilian-born Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone, 46, paid $1,000 to get his franchise in 1946, and sees a way to speed up the game; he calculates that NBA teams average 60 shots per game, which comes out to 24 seconds per shot, so he invents a 24-second clock, invites the other owners to Syracuse in August, brings them into the hot, humid gym of Vocational High School (his alma mater), and has some local players compete in the first game in which a team has to shoot within 24 seconds or lose possession of the ball. The league institutes Biasone's 24-second rule in the fall.
Jaroslav Drobny, 22, (Czech) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Maureen Connolly in women's singles; Vic Seixas wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Doris Hart in women's singles.
Golfer Sam Snead wins his third Masters Tournament title. Melbourne-born golfer Peter (William) Thomson, 24, becomes the first Australian to win the British Open that he will win four more times.
Sportswriter Grantland Rice dies of a stroke at New York July 13 at age 73. Obituaries quote his immortal verse, "When the Great Scorer comes/ To mark against your name,/ He'll write not 'won' or 'lost,'/ But how you played the game"; veteran football coach Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner dies at Palo Alto, Calif., September 7 at age 83, having devised the double-wing formation with a seven-man line to outflank defensive tackles.
The St. Louis Browns become the Baltimore Orioles.
Hank Aaron joins the Milwaukee Braves to begin a baseball career that will span 2 decades. Mobile, Ala.-born Henry Louis Aaron, 20, will surpass Babe Ruth's lifetime home-run record (see 1974).
The New York Giants win the World Series, defeating the Cleveland Indians 4 games to 0. Former Detroit Tigers star Hank Greenberg has assembled the Indians team, it has won a record 111 games, and Greenberg becomes the first Jewish player to be elected to baseball's Hall of Fame.
West Germany wins the World Cup in football (soccer), upsetting a heavily favored Hungarian team 3 to 2 at Bern's Wanddorf Stadium.
Walter E. "Death Valley Scotty" Scott dies at his Death Valley castle January 5 at age 81 (see real estate, 1924). His claim to have discovered a gold mine was an invention (he was actually financed by the late Albert Mussey Johnson, a onetime railroad worker who became chairman of Chicago's National Life Insurance Company and died in 1948 after explaining his hobby of paying Scott's bills by saying, "He paid me back in laughs").
Marilyn Monroe is married at San Francisco January 14 to former New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio, a notorious womanizer with a record of infidelity. The couple goes to Japan for a honeymoon, Monroe travels alone to Korea to entertain GIs there, she returns to the couple's Tokyo hotel suite and says, "Joe, you never heard such cheering." He replies, "Yes, I have." The marriage lasts only 9 months.
Quebec City's first Winter Carnival opens in February. Local businessmen have organized the 10-day event to attract visitors with street dances, costume balls, ice-sculpture championships, a canoe race across the ice-clogged St. Lawrence River, speed skating, barrel-jumping, skiing, and snow-shoeing contests, and other attractions.
Paris shoe designer Roger Vivier improves on the three-inch-high stiletto heel introduced 3 years ago by Charles Jourdan. Now 46 and employed by Christian Dior, Vivier has given a comma shape to the heel for custom-made shoes that will be popularized by Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and others (see 1955).
Slide fastener pioneer and Talon, Inc., vice president Gideon Sundback dies at Meadville, Pa., June 20 at age 74.
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel shows her first collection since before the war. Now 71, she lived with a Nazi officer at the Paris Ritz during the war, responding to critics, "When a woman is over 50 and a man wants to sleep with her she does not ask to see his passport." The company that owns the rights to her Chanel No. 5 perfume has financed her design house as a means of promoting its product.
Hubert de Givenchy becomes the first designer to present a luxury collection of ready-to-wear garments (see 1952). He will introduce the bag dress next year, the funneled-collar coat in 1958, and enveloped dresses in 1966, sometimes using textiles inspired by Matisse, Miró, and other artists.
Couturier Jacques Fath shows his first ready-to-wear collection but dies at Paris November 13 at age 42.
Mississippi-born Chicago cosmetics laboratory technician George E. Johnson, 27, borrows $250 to fund development of a new product for straightening black men's hair that will be safer than methods that involve use of lye and heated metal combs that sometimes burn the scalp. Johnson and his wife, Joan, sell the product from the back of their station wagon to barber shops and hairdressers in the area. Johnson will develop a similar product for women's hair in 1961, and when Johnson Products goes public in 1971 it will be the first black-controlled company to have its shares traded on a U.S. exchange. Sales will be close to $40 million per year by 1975, and the company will dominate both the hair salon and consumer hair-relaxer markets.
Veterans Day becomes a U.S. national holiday to replace Armistice Day, a legal holiday celebrated each November 11 since 1928 under terms of a 1926 resolution of Congress to commemorate the end of World War I (see Uniform Monday Holiday Act, 1968).
R. J. Reynolds introduces filter-tipped Winston cigarettes in a red package, promotes them on television with the ungrammatical slogan, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should," and in just 9 months makes them the nation's top-selling brand (see 1955).
Wackenhut Corp. has its beginnings in a Miami detective agency founded by Philadelphia-born 3-year FBI veteran George R. (Russell) Wackenhut, 34, and two other former agents of the bureau. They will soon start providing private security guards to companies and communities, Wackenhut will buy out his partners, he will dress his guards in helmets and paratrooper boots, recruit CIA, FBI, and elite military unit veterans for management positions, and obtain contracts through his political connections to provide security at public facilities, including airports, nuclear power plants, and prisons. Within 50 years Wackenhut Corp. will be managing 40,000 prison inmates, most of them in the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand; its personnel will be supplementing municipal fire and emergency medical staffs in small communities and even patrolling a few U.S. embassies.
Suburban Cleveland housewife Marilyn Sheppard (née Reese) is found bludgeoned to death at her lakeside home in Bay Village July 4 at age 31. Her osteopath-neurosurgeon husband, Sam, 30, tells police of having grappled with an intruder while their 7-year-old son slept, they arrest him July 30 on a murder charge, he is examined for more than 5 hours in a 3-day, televised interview without counsel before an audience of several hundred spectators and indicted August 17, his trial begins October 18 amidst great publicity, and he is convicted December 21 after reports of his having had an extra-marital affair (see 1966).
Geodesics, Inc., and Synergetics, Inc., are established in a reorganization of Dymaxion Dwelling Machines, founded in 1944 to produce seven-room circular aluminum Dymaxion houses and geodesic domes designed by Buckminster Fuller (see 1927).
The Fontainebleau Hotel opens at Miami Beach, Fla., with 900 rooms. New York-raised architect Morris Lapidus, 51, has designed the $13 million 14-story resort hotel, whose exuberant baroque ornamentation laid atop jazzed-up modernist design begin a trend to grand lobbies and curving "stairs that go nowhere" that lend themselves to an evening-gowned, white-dinner-jacketed splendor that will be echoed in other Lapidus creations. The son of Russian immigrants, Lapidus studied architecture at Columbia, revolutionized retail-store design in the 1930s and '40s by introducing bold color, sweeping curves, and arresting storefronts for A. S. Beck shoes, Bond clothing, Kay Jewelers, Barton candies, and others, creating store windows that drew in passersby; he revamped another architect's hotel design to produce the Sans Souci that opened at Miami Beach 5 years ago, and has been improving the interiors of other Miami Beach hotels, notably the Delano (see Americana, 1957).
Ramada Inns are founded by U.S. entrepreneur Marion William Isbell, 49, who got the idea in 1929, while motoring across the country with his wife. He begins acquiring motels to launch a chain that will grow to rival Holiday Inns, with 500 motels across the United States and Canada (plus some in Mexico, Brazil, and other foreign countries) by the time Isbell dies in 1988.
Clouds of radioactive coral dust rain down on the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Tiger following the U.S. explosion of a hydrogen device at Bikini Atoll; the dust falls subsequently on small Micronesian islands downwind. People exposed to the fallout will be observed in the next 2 decades to suffer from thyroid gland nodules and cancerous tumors, loss of thyroid function in some cases, and leukemia as a result of exposure to radioactive iodine 131 isotopes.
China's Chang Jiang (Yangtze) River floods its banks, killing 34,000. Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) resolves to redouble water-control efforts.
An International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea with Oil addresses problems of water contamination.
Britain's wild rabbits near extinction, with the myxomatosis virus affecting some 90 percent of burrows in southern England alone (see 1953). Farmers say the rabbits have been destroying £50 million worth of food crops each year and that the virus is of vital importance for pest control, but scientists warn that if left unchecked the epidemic will badly damage the balance of nature.
A University of Idaho professor driving from Boise to Moscow stops for gas at a small town on the Payette River and finds two rush skeletonweed plants, native to Europe. By 1964 the noxious weeds will have spread to 40 acres, and by the end of the century they will have taken over 4 million acres and begun invading Oregon, almost totally replacing native vegetation and forming a monoculture that reduces the land's ability to sustain wildlife diversity and livestock grazing. Absent any natural disease or insect controls to slow their growth, other such weeds (leafy spurge in North Dakota, spotted knapweed in Montana, purple loosestrife in Colorado wetlands) will take over vast tracts of lands in the West, doing far more long-lasting damage than the fires that the federal government will spend far more money fighting.
An earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter scale strikes Orleansville, Algeria, September 9 and leaves 1,540 dead.
Lake Erie produces 75 million pounds of commercial fish and remains relatively unpolluted.
President Eisenhower speaks out against agricultural price supports January 11, blaming them for overproduction and resultant surplus problems. He urges that the current carry-over be set aside as an emergency reserve, that a modern parity system be instituted beginning in 1956, and that acreage and marketing quotas be continued.
The average weight of a U.S. broiler rises to nearly 3.1 pounds, up from 2.8 in 1934, and total U.S. broiler production reaches nearly 2.362 billion pounds ready to cook (up from 1.381 billion in 1950). Butterball turkeys are introduced by Swift-Eckrich Co., whose engineers have developed a device called a bar strap to obviate the need for skewers or trussing.
A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference at Washington, D.C., ends March 21 with a statement that the long-range answer to farm surpluses lies in increased consumption, not production cuts. "Free-market prices might not be an adequate instrument for regulating supply and demand, particularly for those commodities which do not respond much to price changes. Serious hardships to all sections of the economy and social problems could be caused if farm incomes were left solely to the free play of market forces."
Congress acts to relieve world hunger and put a prop under U.S. farm prices. The Agricultural Trade and Development Act (Public Law 480) signed into law by President Eisenhower July 10 empowers the Department of Agriculture to buy surplus wheat, butter, cheese, dry skim milk, vegetable oils, and other surplus foods for donation abroad, barter, or to sell for native currency. P.L. 480 protects U.S. farmers from world market collapse.
The Department of Agriculture fires its attaché at Tokyo because he does not meet "security requirements." Russian-born agricultural economist Wolf Isaac Ladejinsky, 55, had charge of Japanese land reform under Gen. MacArthur, his only interest in revolution is in a green one, the government will admit its error, and Ladejinsky will work on land reform in South Vietnam at the urging of President Eisenhower.
A breakthrough in wheat genetics achieved by University of Missouri plant geneticist Ernest (Robert) Sears, 44, does for wheat genetics what Russia's Dmitri Mendeléev did for chemistry in 1870. Sears shows that specific chromosomes in wheat can be substituted to achieve desired changes, raising hopes for new hybrid wheat strains that will raise yields and increase resistance to disease and drought.
Tiny cobs of corn dating to 5,000 B.C. turn up in the valley of Tehuacan southeast of Mexico City—the first wild corn ever discovered that can seed itself.
Nikita Khrushchev orders large-scale planting of new hybrid grain varieties in the Soviet Union, overriding Lysenkoite objections (see 1953).
A test program using 150,000 sterilized males per week wipes out screwworm flies on the Caribbean island of Curaçao within 3 months (see Knipling, 1951). The Dutch government has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture for help in coping with its screwworm plague, full-scale eradication programs are put in place in Florida and the Southwestern United States, and screwworms will be virtually eliminated from Texas ranches within the next 10 years, making it unnecessary to hire cowboys to round up and treat infected cattle. The sterilization technique will also be used successfully against other insect pests, including the Mediterranean fruit fly and the tsetse fly that carries sleeping sickness in Africa.
The Watershed and Flood Prevention Act signed into law by President Eisenhower August 4 protects farmland from water erosion.
Botanist and agricultural explorer David G. Fairchild dies at Coconut Grove, Fla., August 6 at age 85; hybrid corn pioneer George Harrison Shull at Princeton, N.J., September 28 at age 80; Cornell University agriculture professor emeritus Liberty Hyde Bailey at Ithaca, N.Y., December 25 at age 96. He has worked to establish extension courses in agriculture for farm men and women.
Britain finally ends all food rationing after 5 years of gradual decontrol. Meat is the last item to come off rationing.
Molybdenum is identified as an important nutritional trace element. The mineral is contained in the human enzyme xanthine oxidase needed to convert purines into uric acid.
Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit by California nutrition evangelist (Daisy) Adelle Davis, 50, declares that fertile eggs are superior to infertile, opposes pasteurization of milk, opposes fluoridation of community water supplies, and recommends dangerously high daily doses of vitamins A, D, and E (her fellow students at Purdue University in 1922 called her "Vitamin Davis" because of her obsession with the subject). Her various books are full of factual errors (she is by no means a qualified nutritionist, and many of the sources she cites will prove to have been misquoted or taken out of context), but they will enjoy huge sales (mostly in paperback), contributing to the phenomenal growth of the health-food movement, which thrives on stories of pesticide residues and food additives, and of the diet-supplement industry, which thrives on the lack of nutrition education in medical schools plus the fact that so many Americans are unable to afford proper medical advice and turn to self-help books of dubious merit.
A Pesticide Amendment to the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act signed into law by President Eisenhower July 22 requires that pesticide makers show their data to the Food and Drug Administration as well as to the Department of Agriculture (see 1947).
A British group established by the Minister of Agriculture and the Ministries of Fisheries, Health, and Food reports no direct evidence of human illness arising from pesticide residues in foods but recommends appointment of an advisory committee to keep the situation under scrutiny in light of the fact that new and possibly dangerous compounds are being introduced at a growing rate.
Britain permits antibiotic feed supplements after tests confirm their value and show no undesirable effects. U.S. livestock producers use $50 million worth of the supplements per year.
Trix breakfast food, introduced by General Mills, is 46.6 percent sugar (see 1941; 1958).
The Food and Drug Administration approves use of the synthetic antioxidant butyrated hydroxyanisole (BHT) in U.S. foods. The additive will be widely employed to avoid rancidity and the breakdown of fatty acids and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in many food products. It is just as effective as BHA, introduced in 1947, but is much cheaper.
U.S. October food prices: round steak 92¢/lb, up from 45¢ in 1944; sugar 52¢ (per five-pound bag), up from 34¢; bread 17¢ per one-pound loaf, up from 9¢; coffee $1.10/lb, up from 30¢; eggs 60¢/doz., down from 64¢; milk 45¢ per half gallon, up from 29¢; butter 72¢/lb., up from 50¢; lettuce 19¢/head, up from 12¢ (see 1964).
McDonald's begins the proliferation that will make it the world's largest food-service company (see 1948). Chicago-born milkshake-machine salesman Ray A. Kroc, 52, receives such a large order from the California hamburger chain that he flies out to investigate, persuades Richard and Maurice McDonald to sell him franchise rights, and will soon have hamburger stands with golden arches opening everywhere. Son of an unsuccessful real-estate man whose family came from Bohemia, Kroc spent 17 years with the Lily Tulip Co. and became sales manager for the Middle West before becoming a salesman for milkshake machines (see 1955).
The first Burger King hamburger stand opens at 3090 NW 36th Street, Miami, Fla., selling burgers and milkshakes at 18¢ each. Founders James McLamore and David Edgerton have had extensive restaurant experience and decided, jointly, to offer reasonably priced food, clean and attractive surroundings, and fast service. McLamore tells his people, "There are only two things our customers have, time and money—and they don't like spending either of them, so we better sell them their hamburgers quickly." Franchisees will build Burger King into a worldwide chain with more outlets than any competitor except McDonald's.
J. Lyons & Co. unveils Britain's first Wimpy hamburger bar at the Ideal Home Exhibition in London, using a name derived from a cartoon character in the 29-year-old comic strip "Popeye" who gets his strength from hamburgers the way Popeye gets his from spinach. The U.S. owner of a small Wimpy chain has sold Lyons on the possibilities of the idea in London, it meets with such success at the exhibition that Lyons opens one in its Oxford Corner House, and by 1972 there will be 573 franchised Wimpy Bars in the United Kingdom, plus 321 more in 29 European and African countries.
Margaret Sanger addresses the Japanese Diet April 15 (she is the first woman to do so), urging birth control.
China's National People's Congress hears its first public call for birth control September 18; Shao Lizi was a birth-control advocate before 1949 and makes the plea. Mao Zedong's (Mao Tse-tung's) second in command Liu Shaoqi convenes a symposium at Beijing (Peking) in December to discuss "the problem of birth control" (see 1956).
An oral contraceptive pill developed by Gregory G. Pincus, Hudson Hoagland, and Min-Cheh Chang, 45, at the Worcester Foundation employs the synthetic progesterone hormone norethisterone (called norethindrone in the United States), developed by steroid chemist Carl Djerassi of Syntex, S.A. (see 1943; Sanger, 1951). Much cheaper than natural progesterone obtained from animals, Djerassi's norethisterone is also six to eight times more powerful (see 1955).
U.S. births will remain above 4 million per year for the next decade.
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