Timeline 1953
Return to home
1953 Jan 1, Country singer Hank Williams Sr. (29) died of a drug and alcohol overdose while enroute to a concert date in Canton, Ohio. In 1998 Mercury Records released "The Complete Hank Williams," with 225 recordings.
(AP, 1/1/98)(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.W9A)
1953 Jan 3, Frances Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, became the first mother-son combination to serve at the same time in the United States Congress.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1953 Jan 5, In South Korea the Changgyeong ferry sank as it was cruising from Yeosu to Busan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_Korean_ferry_disasters)
1953 Jan 6, Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie threw a party for his wife Lorraine at Snookie’s in Manhattan. His trumpet’s bell was bent upward in an accident, but he liked the sound and had a special trumpet made with a raised bell.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, DB p.34)
1953 Jan 7, President Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.
(AP, 1/7/98)
1953 Jan 8, An FBI report prepared for the attorney general said that Ethel Rosenberg was "cognizant" of her husband’s activity, though "uncooperative." A 1997 revelation by a retired KGB officer stated that Julius helped to organize a spy ring but wasn’t directly involved in stealing atomic secrets and that his wife was not a spy.
(WSJ, 10/18/96, p.A15)(WSJ, 3/17/97, p.A1)
1953 Jan 14, In Washington DC the Pennsylvania Railroad's Federal, the overnight train from Boston, crashed into the Union Station. Remarkably, no one was killed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Station_%28Washington,_D.C.%29)
1953 Jan 14, Josip Broz Tito was elected president of Yugoslavia by the country’s Parliament.
(AP, 1/14/98)
1953 Jan 15, The First Asian Socialist Conference agreed on alliances with the West and land for the peasants.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1953 Jan 17, GM introduced the first American sports car, the two-seater Corvette at the annual NYC Motorama Show at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was not made available for sale to the public until June 30th.
(http://tinyurl.com/fdjur)(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)
1953 Jan 17, In Egypt all political parties were dissolved and banned. The ban continued to 1976.
(http://countrystudies.us/egypt/32.htm)(Econ, 12/17/11, p.86)
1953 Jan 20, In the US Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as president. He succeeded Harry S. Truman. TV coverage sent the event to 21 million sets.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(SFC, 1/17/03, p.E8)
1953 Jan 22, The Arthur Miller drama "The Crucible" opened on Broadway. It was about the 1692 Salem witch trials and dealt a blow to the McCarthy witch hunts.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(SFC, 8/1/97, p.C14)(AP, 1/22/98)
1953 Jan 24, [Karl R] Gerd von Rundstedt (77), gen-field marshal (Normandy), died.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1953 Jan 28, J. Fred Muggs (the chimp) joined NBC's "Today Show."
(MC, 1/28/02)
1953 Jan 30, President Dwight Eisenhower announced that he would pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1953 Jan 31-1953 Feb 1, A powerful storm breached sea dikes in the south of the Netherlands, killing more than 1,800 people and cementing a deep resolve among the Dutch that their ancient enemy, water, would never kill again. 307 people died in eastern England.
(SSFC, 3/25/01, p.C3)(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
1953 Jan, Pres. Eisenhower selected Charlie Wilson, the president of General Motors, as Secretary of Defense. During his confirmation hearing Wilson made his famous statement: “…what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa."
(SSFC, 1/7/07, p.E6)
1953 Jan, Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon left the Republican Party to protest its domination by conservatives. He continued to vote for a GOP majority leader to honor his election as a Republican.
(WSJ, 5/25/01, p.A14)
1953 Jan, In Russia leaders of the alleged Jewish "Doctor’s Plot" were arrested. They were accused of conspiring to murder the Soviet leadership. In 2003 Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov authored "Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors."
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A24)(Econ, 7/26/03, p.78)
1953 Feb 1, CBS-TV debuted "Private Secretary", starring Ann Sothern, on this day. Ann played Susie McNamera, private secretary to NY talent agent, Peter Sands (played by Don Porter). The show ran during the regular TV seasons on CBS, and last show was September 10, 1957. It ran on NBC-TV in the summers of 1953 and 1954.
(SFC, 2/21/97, p.A26)(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1953 Feb 1, "You Are There" with Walter Cronkite premiered on CBS television.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1953 Feb 3, J. Fred Muggs, a chimp, became a regular on NBC's Today Show.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1953 Feb 5, "Peter Pan" by Walt Disney opened at Roxy Theater, NYC. [see Feb 11]
(MC, 2/5/02)
1953 Feb 6, US controls on wages and some consumer goods were lifted.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1953 Feb 8, Mary Steenburgen, actress (Parenthood, Time After Time), was born in Newport, Ark.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1953 Feb 9, "Adventures of Superman" TV series premiered in syndication.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1953 Feb 9, General Walter Bedell Smith, USA, ended term as 4th director of CIA. Allen W. Dulles, became acting director of CIA and served to 1961.
(MC, 2/9/02)(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)
1953 Feb 9, The French destroyed six Viet Minh war factories hidden in the jungles of Vietnam.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1953 Feb 11, Walt Disney’s "Peter Pan" premiered. [See Feb 5]
(HN, 2/11/97)
1953 Feb 11, President Eisenhower refused a clemency appeal for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1953 Feb 12, An explosion at the Hercules Powder Co. near Pinole, Ca., killed 12 employees.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.E4)
1953 Feb 12, The Soviets broke off diplomatic relations with Israel after the bombing of Soviet legation.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1953 Feb 13, Pope Pius XII asked the U.S. to grant clemency to convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
(HN, 2/13/98)
1953 Feb 15, Tenley Albright (b. June 18, 1935) became the first American to win the women’s world figure skating championship at a competition in Davos, Switzerland.
(Internet)
1953 Feb 17, Baseball star and pilot Ted Williams was uninjured as his plane was shot down in Korea.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1953 Feb 18, "Bwana Devil," the movie that heralded the 3D fad of the 1950s, opened in New York City.
(AP, 2/18/98)
1953 Feb 19, William Inge's "Picnic," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1953 Feb 19, Georgia approved the 1st US literature censorship board.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1953 Feb 20, Riccardo Chailly, conductor (West Berlin Symph Orch), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1953 Feb 20, US Court of Appeals ruled that Organized Baseball is a sport & not a business, affirming the 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1953 Feb 24, Karl R.G. von Rundstedt (77), German general and field marshal at Ardennes, died.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1953 Feb 25, General de Gaulle condemned the European Defense Community.
(HN, 2/25/98)
1953 Feb 26, Allen W. Dulles was promoted from deputy to 5th director of CIA.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1953 Feb 27, F-84 Thunderjets raided North Korean base on Yalu River. A year after leaving West Point, Lt. Joe Kingston was en route to Korea, where he, like a lot of others, found himself retreating and advancing in a single day.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1953 Feb 28, Francis Crick (d.2004) and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA-molecule. Watson and Crick managed to describe the structure of DNA as a double helix consisting of two long strings coiled around one another. About 100,000 genes, short sections of DNA, tell the cells how to build proteins, the building blocks of life. Rosalind Franklin made the 1st x-ray image that revealed the double helix structure of DNA. In 2002 Brenda Maddox authored "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA." In 2003 Watson co-authored "DNA: The Secret of Life." [see Apr 25, Sep 20, 1953]
(V.D.-H.K.p.330)(TL, 1988, p.114)(Wired, 1/97, p.161)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.M2)(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.W8)(AP, 2/28/04)
1953 Feb 28, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia signed a 5-year defense pact in Ankara.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1953 Feb 28, Stalin met with Beria, Bulganin, Khrushchev and Malenkov.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1953 Mar 3, Canadian Comet crashed at Karachi, 11 killed.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1953 Mar 5, Russian Premier Joseph Stalin died at age 73 after 29 years in power. After his death the Chechens were allowed to return home. In 1973 Prof. Adam B. Ulam of Harvard Univ. authored "Stalin: The Man and His Era." In 2003 Simon Sebag Montefiore authored "Stalin : The court of the Red Tsar." In 2004 Robert Service authored “Stalin: A Biography."
(AP, 3/5/98)(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A26)(Econ, 7/26/03, p.78)(Econ, 1/8/05, p.74)
1953 Mar 5, Sergei Prokofiev (61), Russian composer (Peter and the wolf), died in Moscow.
(AP, 3/5/04)
1953 Mar 6, Georgi Malenkov (b.1902) took over as premier of the USSR. Leadership was actually in the hands of a collective presidium that included Lavrenti P. Beria (b.1899), Vyacheslav Molotov (b.1890), Nikolai A. Bulganin (b.1895) and Lazar M. Kaganovich (b.1893).
(HN, 3/6/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1684)
1953 Mar 8, Census indicated 239,000 farmers gave up farming in last 2 years.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1953 Mar 9, U.S. vs. Reynolds was a landmark ruling that formally established the government's "state secrets" privilege, a privilege that has enabled federal agencies to conceal conduct, withhold documents and block troublesome civil litigation, including suits by whistle-blowers and possible victims of discrimination. It provided a fundamental basis for much of the Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including the USA Patriot Act and the handling of terrorist suspects. [See Oct 6, 1948]
(LAT, 4/18/04)
1953 Mar 9, Josef Stalin was buried in Moscow.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1953 Mar 10, North Korean gunners at Wonsan fired on the USS Missouri, the ship responds by firing 998 rounds at the enemy position.
(HN, 3/10/99)
1953 Mar 10, Charles Gordon Curtis (92), inventor (Curtis-steam turbine), died.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1953 Mar 11, F.M. Adams became the 1st US commissioned woman army doctor.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1953 Mar 11, An American B-47 accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on South Carolina, however the bomb did not go off due to 6 safety catches.
(HN, 3/11/98)(MC, 3/11/02)
1953 Mar 18, Margaret L. Augustine, project manager for Biosphere 2, was born in Buffalo, NY.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1953 Mar 18, The Braves baseball team announced that they were moving from Boston to Milwaukee.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1953 Mar 19, Tennessee Williams' "Camino Real," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1953 Mar 19, The Academy Awards ceremony was televised for the first time; "The Greatest Show on Earth" was named best picture of 1952. Gary Cooper & Shirley Booth won for best actor and actress.
(AP, 3/19/99)
1953 Mar 20, In the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev became the head of a five-man group called the Secretariat, although for all intents and purposes, he is in a leadership role that will gradually push Malenkov aside. In September Khrushchev was officially given the title of First Secretary of the Communist Party.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2612)(WP, 3/21/53, p.3)
1953 Mar 23, Raoul Dufy, French fauve painter, died.
(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)(MC, 3/23/02)
1953 Mar 24, Mary (85), queen of Great Britain and North Ireland, died.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1953 Mar 25, The USS Missouri fired on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
(HN, 3/25/99)
1953 Mar 26, Eisenhower offered increased aid in Vietnam to France.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1953 Mar 26, Dr. Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh announced that a vaccine against polio had been successfully tested in a small group of adults and children. By April 1955, the vaccine had undergone further testing and gained federal approval for public use. Salk’s polio vaccine was so successful that by 1961 the incidence of polio had decreased by 95 percent. Dr. Joseph Melnick (d.2001 at 86) was among the first to have discovered that the polio virus belonged to the larger enterovirus group and were chiefly transmitted by fecal contamination.
(HNPD, 3/26/99)(SFC, 1/23/01, p.C2)
1953 Mar 27, Charles Bohlen was named the U.S. ambassador to the USSR
(HN, 3/27/98)
1953 Mar 28, In the 7th Tony Awards: Crucible and Wonderful Town won.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1953 Mar 28, Jim Thorpe (b.1887), native American decathlon athlete (Olympics-gold-1912), died in Lomita, California.
(AP, 3/28/02)(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Jim_Thorpe)
1953 Mar 30, Einstein announced a revised unified field theory.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1953 Mar 31, Department of Health, Education and Welfare was established.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1953 Mar 31, UN Security Council nominated Dag Hammarskjöld secretary-general.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1953 Mar, The US CIA’s Tehran station reported that an Iranian general had approached the US embassy for support in an army-led coup. Based on this information Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, approved $1 million to be used to help bring about the fall of Prime Minister Mossadegh.
(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)
1953 Apr 1, Barry Sonnenfeld, director (When Harry Met Sally, Big), was born.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1953 Apr 2, Jean Epstein (56), French director (Vive la Vie), died.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1953 Apr 3, Walter Annenberg of Philadelphia began a national TV Guide. His father had published Radio Guide and he bought TV Forecast in Chicago and local television guides in New York , Philadelphia and Washington to begin his operation. A picture of the first cover featured Lucy and Desi Arnaz’ baby (I Love Lucy).
(www.tvhistory.tv/tv_guide1.htm)(WSJ, 5/8/98, p.W10)(www.fiftiesweb.com/pop/tv-guide.htm)
1953 Apr 7, The U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) as Secretary-General of the UN.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 4/7/97)
1953 Apr 8, A Federal Grand Jury in SF indicted Hugh Bryson, pres. of the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, on charges that he falsely claimed that he was not a communist in a Taft-Hartley affidavit.
(SFC, 4/4/03, p.E6)
1953 Apr 8, Jomo Kenyatta (1891-1978), one of modern Africa's earliest nationalist leaders, was convicted by Kenya's British rulers for leading the Mau Mau Rebellion against the white settlers of his country. Along with five other Mau Mau leaders, he was subsequently sentenced to seven years' hard labor.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1953 Apr 10, The first 3-D horror movie "House of Wax," produced by Warner Bros. and starring Vincent Price, premiered in New York City. It was directed by Andre de Toth (d.2002 at 89).
(AP, 4/9/97)(HN, 4/10/98)(SFC, 11/1/02, p.A28)
1953 Apr 11, Oveta Culp Hobby became the first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had named her head of the Federal Security Agency, which, later that year, was elevated to a Cabinet position and renamed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, with Hobby becoming its first Secretary on April 11. She held the Cabinet position until 1955. Hobby had led the War Department's Women's Interest Section, served as Director of the Women's Army Corps during WWII and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
(AP, 4/11/97)(HNQ, 8/18/99)
1953 Apr 14, Viet Minh invaded Laos with 40,000 troops in their war against French colonial forces.
(HN, 4/14/01)
1953 Apr 17, Mickey Mantle hit a home run in Washington's Griffith Stadium off the Senator's Chuck Stobbs that was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as measuring 565 feet. The distance was later said to have been padded.
(WSJ, 7/9/03, p.A1)
1953 Apr 20, Operation Little Switch began in Korea, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war.
(HN, 4/20/99)
1953 Apr 24, British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
(AP, 4/24/97)(HN, 4/24/98)
1953 Apr 25, The magazine Nature published an article by biologists Francis Crick and James Watson, describing the "double helix" of DNA.
(HN, 4/25/01)
1953 Apr 26, In Korea two U.S. Air Force B-29s dropped leaflets behind enemy lines, offering a $50,000 reward and political asylum to any pilot delivering an intact MiG-15 to American forces for study.
(HNPD, 9/28/98)
1953 Apr 27, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450: Security Requirements for Government Employment. The order listed "sexual perversion" as a condition for firing a federal employee and for denying employment to potential applicants. Homosexuality, moral perversion, and communism were categorized as national security threats; the issue of homosexual federal workers had become a dire federal personnel policy concern.
(http://tinyurl.com/3bblwc)
1953 Apr 27, US General Mark W. Clark issued Operation Moolah to coincide with Operation Little Switch, an exchange of sick and wounded POWs between the Communist and UN forces in North and South Korea. The US set up Operation Moolah to award $100,000 to the first pilot to defect in a Russian made MiG.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Moolah)(Econ, 5/16/15, p.79)
1953 Apr 28, French troops evacuated northern Laos.
(HN, 4/28/98)
1953 Apr, In British Guyana Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan was elected chief minister.
(SFC, 3/7/97, p.A24)
1953 May 2, Prince Hussein became King Hussein (17) as he inherited the royal title from his father Talal.
(SFC, 1/23/99, p.A10)(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A13)
1953 May 4, Pulitzer prize was awarded to E. Hemingway (Old Man & The Sea).
(MC, 5/4/02)
1953 May 7, "Can Can" opened at Shubert Theater in NYC for 892 performances.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1953 May 11, An F5 tornado hit downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114 people with 597 injured. Damages were estimated at $200 million.
(SSFC, 5/11/03, Par p.11)(SFC, 5/11/09, p.D8)
1953 May 11, Winston Churchill criticized the domino theory of John Foster Dulles.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1953 May 16, Django Reinhardt (b.1910), Gypsy jazz guitarist, died in France. In 2004 Michael Dregni authored “Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt)(WSJ, 10/23/98, p.W12)
1953 May 18, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a North American F-86 Canadair over Rogers Dry Lake, Calif.
(AP, 5/18/97)
1953 May 23, Schools 1st used Cliff's Notes.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1953 May 25, Jane Priest, Prince Charles' lover, was born in Perth, Australia.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 25, Rich Alves, singer (Pirates of the Mississippi-Fred Jake), was born in Pleasanton, CA.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 25, 1st non-commercial educational television station began in Houston, TX.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 25, The first atomic cannon was fired at Frenchman Flat, Nevada.
(HN, 5/25/98)(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 28, Arto Lindsay, rocker, actor (Cookie, Desperately Seeking Susan), was born.
(www.nndb.com/people/787/000041664/)
1953 May 28, Premier of first animated 3-D cartoon in Technicolor, "Melody".
(HN, 5/28/98)
1953 May 29, Danny Elfman, composer (Simpson Show Theme), was born in Los Angeles, CA.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1953 May 29, Rick Henderson, singer (Mason Dixon-Karen Comes Around), was born in Beaumont, TX.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1953 May 29, Mount Everest was conquered as Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tensing Norgay, A Sherpa of Nepal, became the first climbers to reach the summit. The expedition was led by John Hunt (d.1998 at 88). Tenzing Norgay later authored the autobiography "Man of Everest."
(AP, 5/29/97)(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.T5)(HN, 5/29/98)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.A23)(WSJ, 6/4/01, p.A20)
1953 May 30, Jonas Zemaitis (b.1909), the last Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan commander, was captured and transported to Moscow to be interviewed by intelligence chief Lavrenti Beria. Beria was executed this year. Zemaitis was executed in 1954.
(www.lka.lt/index.php/en/194837/)
1953 May 31, V.I. Tatlin (b.1885), Ukrainian-born painter and sculptor, died in Moscow.
(www.artnet.com/library/08/0834/T083448.asp)
1953 Jun 2, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain was crowned in Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 6/2/97)
1953 Jun 4, An atomic bomb test explosion took place at Yucca Flats, Nevada, equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT. This was double the 1945 blast over Hiroshima.
(SFC, 5/30/03, p.E7)
1953 Jun 4, North Koreans accepted U.N. proposals in all major respects.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1953 Jun 7, Pres. Eisenhower announced that proposals for a Korean truce are acceptable to the US and appealed to South Korea to accept terms to stop the war.
(SFC, 6/6/03, p.E2)
1953 Jun 7, The 1st color network telecast in compatible color was in Boston, Mass.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1953 Jun 8, The Supreme Court ruled that restaurants in Washington, D.C. could not refuse to serve blacks.
(AP, 6/8/97)(HN, 6/8/98)
1953 Jun 8, A killer tornado hit Flint, Mich. It killed 116 people and injured more than 850 in Ohio and Michigan.
(SSFC, 5/11/03, Par p.A11)(Hartford Courant, 6/9/63, p.23A)
1953 Jun 9, About 100 people died when a tornado struck Worcester, Mass. The tornado from the Midwest roared into Massachusetts. By the time it left, 94 people were dead, and more than $58 million in property damage occurred. It was the worst tornado in New England history.
(AP, 6/9/97)(http://tinyurl.com/yg8dhcd)
1953 Jun 10, John R. Edwards, US Senator, was born Seneca, South Carolina. In 2004 he ran as a Democrat presidential candidate and then agreed to run for the vice-presidency under Sen. John Kerry.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.D2)(SFC, 7/7/04, p.A9)
1953 Jun 13, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1900-1975), a former army general, began serving president of Colombia and continued to 1957. Under his term the police were put under the charge of the defense ministry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Rojas_Pinilla)(Econ., 9/19/20, p.33)
1953 Jun 17, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stayed the executions of spies Julius & Ethel Rosenberg scheduled for next day, their 14th wedding anniversary. They were put to death June 19.
(MC, 6/17/02)(AP, 6/17/03)
1953 Jun 17, The East Germans threw stones at Russian tanks and were quickly subjugated. Eric Honecker threatened demonstrators with a "Peking Solution." Soviet tanks fought thousands of Berlin workers rioting against the East German government.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WSJ, 10/18/96, p.A13)(HN, 6/17/98)
1953 Jun 18, Egypt was declared a republic, and the monarchy was abolished, ending the rule of Muhammad Ali's dynasty. Naguib became the first president and also prime minister. Nasser became deputy prime minister and minister of interior.
(http://countrystudies.us/egypt/32.htm)
1953 Jun 19, Julius (b.5/12/1918) and Ethel Rosenberg (b.9/28/1915), convicted of passing U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. The Supreme Court had vacated a stay granted by Justice William O. Douglas and President Eisenhower refused to intervene, despite a massive worldwide campaign to free them. In 1983 Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton authored “The Rosenberg File." In 2001 Sam Roberts authored “The Brother," an account of David Greenglass, the younger brother of Ethel Rosenberg and star witness against her and Julius. In 2008 Morton Sobell (91), a former Soviet spy who had spent nearly 20 years in Alcatraz, fingered Julius Rosenberg as a fellow Soviet spy, but not Ethel.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(BEP, 1994)(WSJ, 10/1/01, p.A22)(WSJ, 9/25/08, p.A19)
1953 Jun 19, Egypt was proclaimed a republic. Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser became premier.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1953 Jun 24, John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier announced their engagement.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1953 Jun 24, The 6th annual World Trade Fair opened in San Francisco at the Palace Hotel with products imported from 21 nations.
(SFC, 6/20/03, p.E2)
1953 Jun 26, Lavrenti Beria, Russian vice-premier, interior minister, intelligence chief, was arrested. [see Jul 10]
(MC, 6/26/02)
1953 Jun 27, Alice McDermott, writer (That Night, At Weddings and Wakes), was born.
(HN, 6/27/01)
1953 Jun 30, The first Corvette rolled off the Chevrolet assembly line in Flint, MI. The brainchild of designer Harvey J. Earl sold for $3,250. GM made 300 Corvettes in 1953 and moved production to St. Louis for 1954.
(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)(WSJ, 7/12/02, p.W12)
1953 Jun, In response to Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy‘s tactics against alleged Communists and un-American activities, Republican President Eisenhower spoke out against "book burners" in June 1953 and "demagogues thirsty for personal power and public notice" in May 1954. Eisenhower also asserted the right of everybody to meet his "accuser face to face." [see Nov 23]
(HNQ, 6/18/98)(HNQ, 11/2/99)
1953 Jul 4, Imre Nagy succeeded Matyas Rkosi as premier of Hungary.
(Maggio)
1953 Jul 8, Anna Quindlen, novelist, was born.
(HN, 7/8/01)
1953 Jul 8, Neill Sheridan (31), a baseball player for the Pacific Coast League Sacramento Solons, hit a home run against the SF Seals at Sacramento’s Edmond’s Field. The ball reportedly flew a record 613.8 feet.
(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.B1)
1953 Jul 9, The 1st helicopter passenger service began in NYC.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1953 Jul 10, American forces withdrew from Pork Chop Hill in Korea after heavy fighting.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1953 Jul 10, In San Francisco The Chronicle newspaper began calling itself “The Voice of the West" on its editorial pages. It adopted the name for Page One on August 9, 1953.
(SSFC, 6/7/09, p.W3)
1953 Jul 10, Pravda reported that Lavrenti P. Beria, Stalin's ruthless chief of intelligence and member of the Soviet Presidium (1899-1953), had been ousted and arrested. [see Jun 26]
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(MC, 7/10/02)
1953 Jul 11, Leon Spinks, world heavyweight boxing champ (1978) , was born.
(PGA, 12/9/98)
1953 Jul 11, "Amos 'n Andy," TV Comedy, also radio from '29; last aired on CBS.
(MC, 7/11/02)
1953 Jul 13, The 1st Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, organized by Tom Patterson, opened with Alec Guiness in Richard III.
(WSJ, 7/18/02, p.D10)
1953 Jul 14, The freighter Jacob Luckenbach from SF rammed the Matson freighter Hawaiian Pilot near Point Montara, 17 miles from the Golden Gate. The Luckenbach sank while the Hawaiian Pilot limped to SF. Oil leaked from the Luckenback later killed numerous birds. In 2002 a $3.5 million plan for cleanup was begun. A $19 million cleanup ended in Sep.
(Ind, 3/31/01, 5A)(SFC, 2/5/02, p.A15)(SFC, 5/8/02, p.A22)(SFC, 10/1/02, p.A13)
1953 Jul 14, There was a Communist offensive in Korea.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1953 Jul 15, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, president of Haiti (1991, 1994-1995 ), was born.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1953 Jul 15, Eugenio Balzan (b.1874), Italian journalist, died in Lugano. In 1933 he moved to Switzerland, living in Zurich and Lugano, where he invested his fortune with success. He left a substantial inheritance to his daughter Angela Lina Balzan (1892–1956), who at the time was suffering an incurable disease. Before her death, she left instructions for a foundation, the Balzan Prize Foundation. Since then it has two headquarters, the Prize administered from Milan, the Fund from Zurich.
(AP, 9/6/10)(www.balzan.org/en/history_1698.html)
1953 Jul 16, Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc (82), author (Path to Rome), died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1953 Jul 17, Pres. Eisenhower proclaimed Captive Nations Week following US Senate resolution on July 6 and US House resolution on July 8. It aimed at raising public awareness of the oppression of nations under the control of Communist and other non-democratic governments. It became public law in 1959.
(www.jstor.org/pss/2195306)
1953 Jul 20, USSR and Israel recovered diplomatic relations.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1953 Jul 25, A truce ended the Korean War. S.L.A. Marshall later authored "The River and the Gauntlet," a description of the slaughter the war brought to both sides. Clay Blair later authored "Forgotten War," and Roy Appelman wrote "East of Chosin" and "Disaster in Korea."
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)(WSJ, 8/6/99, p.W7)
1953 Jul 25, NYC transit fare rose from 10 to 15 cents and 1st use of subway tokens began.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1953 Jul 26, A band of anti-Batistas revolted against Pres. Fulgencio Batista with an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada army barracks in eastern Cuba. Castro was among the moncadistas and ousted Batista six years later. Castro was arrested days after the attack and later imprisoned on the Isle of Pines after the attack at Moncada.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncada_Barracks)(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.5)(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.D8)
1953 Jul 27, An armistice ending fighting in the three-year Korean War was signed by representatives of the United Nations, Korea and China in Panmunjom. Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison represented the UN and Gen. Nam Il represented North Korea. General Mark Clark, commander of the UN forces, added his signature to the armistice agreement. Armistice negotiations had begun in July 1951, when the outlook for reunifying North and South Korea became bleak, and fighting continued. The cease-fire provided for an exchange of prisoners of war and established a 2 ½ mile wide demilitarized zone and a demarcation line at the 38th parallel. Not all aspects of the agreement, however, were finalized—the UN Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea was not suspended until 1977. N. Korea measures 46,540 sq. miles, its population in 1974 was ~15 million people. 33,651 Americans had died and 8,000 were still missing in 2000.
(NG, 8/74, p.255)(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WSJ, 6/24/96, C1)(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(HNPD, 7/27/98)(HN, 7/27/98)(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.T10)(SFEC, 6/25/00, Par p.5)(SFC, 7/25/03, p.E6)
1953 Jul 27, Vatican disallowed priests holiday work in factories.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1953 Jul 29, Ken Burns, epic documentary maker (Civil War, Baseball), was born.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1953 Jul 31, Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio (63), known as "Mr. Republican," died in New York. His successor was named by a Democratic governor.
(AP, 7/31/97)(WSJ, 5/25/01, p.A14)
1953 Jul, A US recession began triggered by demobilization after the Korean war. It continued to May of 1954.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1953)(Econ., 7/18/20, p.62)
1953 Aug 1, Fidel Castro was arrested in Cuba. [see Jul 26]
(MC, 8/1/02)
1953 Aug 3, Ian Bairnson, guitarist (Alan Parsons Project, Pilot), was born in Shetland Isles, Scotland.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1953 Aug 3, Pres. Eisenhower created the US Information Agency to communicate with foreign nations and counter Soviet propaganda. "The USIA explains and supports American foreign policy and promotes US national interests through a wide range of overseas information programs." Theodore Streibert served as its first director. The agency was dissolved in 1999. In 2008 Nicholas J. Cull authored “The Cold War and the United States Information Agency."
(WSJ, 7/23/08, p.A13)(http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/abtusia/commins.pdf)
1953 Aug 3, Frank Blair became the news anchor of the Today Show.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1953 Aug 4, Black families moved into the Trumbull Park housing project in Chicago.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1953 Aug 5, Operation "Big Switch" was under way as prisoners taken during the Korean conflict were exchanged at Panmunjom.
(AP, 8/5/03)
1953 Aug 7, Eastern Airlines entered the jet age with the Electra prop-jet.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1953 Aug 8, The song “Vaya con Dios" recorded by Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford reached number one on the Billboard magazine Best Seller Chart and stayed there for 9 weeks.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.D6)
1953 Aug 8, The United States and South Korea initialed a mutual security pact.
(AP, 8/8/99)
1953 Aug 8, In Russia Georgi Malenkov reported the possession of hydrogen bomb.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1953 Aug 10, American mountain climber Art Gilkey (b.1926) was swept away by an avalanche on Pakistan’s K2. In 1993 his remains were brought down by mountaineer Roger Payne (1956-2012).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_American_Karakoram_Expedition)(Econ, 7/21/12, p.82)
1953 Aug 12, Ann Davidson, the 1st woman to sail solo across Atlantic, arrived Miami.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1953 Aug 12, The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(AP, 8/12/97)
1953 Aug 13, 4-5 million French went on strike against economizations.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1953 Aug 15, In Iran a CIA plot to unseat PM Mossadeq failed. It was masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt. A 2nd attempt succeeded on August 19. In preparation for the coup the CIA “stockpiled enough arms and demolition material to support a 10,000-man guerrilla organization for six months," and paid out $5.3 million for bribes and other costs. An initial US State Dept. 1989 release, outlining the years surrounding the coup, whitewashed the US role.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.92)(AP, 6/12/20)
1953 Aug 16, Shah Pahlavi of Persia and princess Soraya fled to Baghdad and then Rome.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1953 Aug 17, Kevin Rowlands, rocker (Dexy's Midnight Runners-Come on Eileen), was born.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1953 Aug 19, Gen'l. Zahedi ousted PM Mossadegh and became the Premier of Iran in a bloody coup that left 300 dead. Britain and the US CIA under Allen Dulles planned a secret mission to overthrow the government. PM Mossadeq had sought to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. The US government made a formal apology for the coup in 2000. A 1954 CIA description of the coup was made public in 2000. In 1979 Kermit Roosevelt (d.2000) published “Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran," an account of his role in the coup. In 2010 Darioush Bayandor authored “Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mossadeq Revisited."
(SFC, 11/20/53, p.A1)(SFC, 11/15/99, p.E6)(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)(WSJ, 3/20/00, p.A1)(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.D6)(WSJ, 4/2/07, p.A6)(Econ, 5/15/10, p.91)
1953 Aug 20, Iran’s PM Mossadeq was arrested. He was soon tried for treason, and sentenced to three years in prison.
(www.associatepublisher.com/e/m/mo/mohammad_reza_pahlavi.htm)
1953 Aug 20, The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
(AP, 8/20/97)
1953 Aug 21, Joe Strummer [John Mellor], rocker (Clash-Rock the Casbah), was born.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1953 Aug 21, Marion Carl in Douglas Skyrocket reached a record 25,370 m.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1953 Aug 21, US CIA officials funneled $5 million to Iran to help the coup leaders consolidate power.
(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)
1953 Aug 22, France closed the penal colony on Devil's Island.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1953 Aug 22, Shah of Persia returned to Teheran.
(www.scribd.com/doc/20604794/Mohammad-Reza-Shah-Pahlavi)
1953 Aug 25, The government of India exercised its option to purchase a majority stake in Tata Airlines and Air India International Limited was born as one of the fruits of the Air Corporations Act that nationalized the air transportation industry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India#Early_years_.281932-1945.29)
1953 Aug 30, The first publicly announced experimental TV broadcast of a network program in compatible color was presented by NBC: St. George and the Dragon, starring Burr Tillstrom's Kukla, Fran and Ollie.
(http://kukla.tv/colortest.html)
1953 Aug, Canadian officials took 34 Inuit from Port Harrison (later known as Inukjuak) in Hudson Bay and put them on a boat north. One month and 1,390 miles later, the group was split in two and deposited on two remote islands, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord. The Inuit later said the government used them to assert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic at a time when Ottawa was worried about excessive US influence in the region.
(Reuters, 4/20/06)
1953 Sep 1, Henry Molaison (1926-2008) of Connecticut, suffering from severe epilepsy, underwent surgery in which most of his brain’s medial temporal lobes were removed. The procedure failed to cure him, but from that point on he was unable to form a new long-term memory. In 2016 Luke Dittrich authored “Patient H.M.: A Story of memory, Madness, and Family Secrets."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison)(Econ, 8/20/16, p.71)
1953 Sep 5, The 1st privately operated atomic reactor opened in Raleigh NC.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1953 Sep 5, US gave Persian premier Zahedi $45 million aid.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1953 Sep 6, The last American and Korean prisoners were exchanged in Operation Big Switch, the last official act of the Korean War.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1953 Sep 6, Adenauer's CDU won elections in German FR.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1953 Sep 12, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy (36) of Massachusetts married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (24).
(AP, 9/12/03)
1953 Sep 12, Nikita Khrushchev became the 1st Secretary of USSR Communist Party. His glass and marble Palace of Congresses obliterated the last vestiges of the 17th century palace of Tsarina Natalie Kirilovna Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the Great. [see Sep 13]
(MC, 9/12/01)(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.33)
1953 Sep 13, Nikita Khrushchev (b.1894) was elected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee. [see Sep 12]
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1953 Sep 15, Eric Mendelsohn (b.1887), German-born Jewish expressionist architect, died. From 1941 he lived in the US and established himself in San Francisco. The Russell at 3778 Washington St. in SF is the only house he designed in SF.
(SSFC, 3/8/09, p.B2)
1953 Sep 16, "The Robe," the first movie filmed in the widescreen process CinemaScope, had its world premiere at the Roxy Theater in New York.
(AP, 9/16/98)
1953 Sep 17, The 1st successful separation of Siamese twins was performed.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1953 Sep 20, Jimmy Stewart debuted in "The Six Shooter" on NBC.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1953 Sep 20, The "Loretta Young Show" (A Letter to Loretta) premiered on NBC TV and ran for 8 years.
(SFEC, 8/13/00, p.B10)
1953 Sep 21, North Korean pilot Lieutenant No Kum Sok defected and landed his aircraft at Kimpo airfield outside Seoul. He collected a reward while denying any knowledge of a bounty. American scientists were able to examine the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, powered by a jet engine superior to those then used in American fighter planes. It first saw combat in Korea during November 1950, where its performance shifted the balance of air power to Russian-backed North Korea.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Kum-sok)(HNPD, 9/28/98)
1953 Sep 22, An Islamic uprising took place in Atjeh, Indonesia.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1953 Sep 23, The 20th-Century Fox film "The Robe," the first movie filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen process, premiered in Hollywood, a week after opening in New York.
(AP, 9/23/03)
1953 Sep 26, US and Spain signed a defense treaty with 4 US bases to be set in Spain.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1953 Sep 26, Polish government fired and imprisoned Cardinal Wyszynski.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1953 Sep 27, A typhoon destroyed 1/3 of Nagoya, Japan.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1953 Sep 28, The "Bob & Ray Show," TV Variety, last aired on NBC.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1953 Sep 28, Edwin P. Hubble (b.1889), astronomer, died at age 63. He discovered that the more distant a galaxy seemed to be, the more its light was shifted toward the lower frequencies. This is know as the Doppler redshift, named after C.J. Doppler, an Austrian Physicist (1803-1853).
(WUB, 1995, p.426)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble)
1953 Sep 29, The family comedy "Make Room for Daddy," starring Danny Thomas, premiered on ABC.
(AP, 9/29/03)
1953 Sep 30, Robert Anderson's "Tea & Sympathy," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1953 Sep 30, Pres. Eisenhower named California Gov. Earl Warren (62) as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Lt. Gov. Goodwin J. Knight succeeded Warren.
(SFC, 9/26/03, p.E8)
1953 Sep 30, Auguste and Jacques Piccard dove with their bathosphere to a record 3150 m.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1953 Oct 2, Victor Borge (d.2000 at 91), musical humorist, opened his "Comedy in Music" at the Golden Theater on Broadway. It ran for 849 performances .
(SSFC, 12/24/00, p.B5)
1953 Oct 3, Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, British composer (Coronation March), died at 69.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1953 Oct 5, California Gov. Earl Warren (1891-1974) was sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M. Vinson. He was named by Pres. Eisenhower as chief justice of the US. Warren retired in 1969. In 2000 Lucas A. Powe, Jr., authored "The Warren Court and American Politics."
(SFEC, 6/8/97, BR p.1)(AP, 10/5/97)(www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/88/)
1953 Oct 5, South Africa’s Bantu Education Act, later renamed the Black Education Act, was passed to become effective Jan 1, 1954. It set out to ensure that whites received a better education than blacks. The segregation law legalized several aspects of the apartheid system.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_Education_Act,_1953)(Econ, 1/7/17, p.37)
1953 Oct 8, Birmingham, Alabama, barred Jackie Robinson's Negro-White All-Stars from playing there. Robinson gave in and dropped white players from his group.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1953 Oct 9, British troops in Guyana deposed Dr. Jagan and charged that he and his party "were under the complete control of a communist clique." Dr. Jagan responded with a civil disobedience campaign and was quickly jailed for 6 months. In 2011 declassified documents revealed that the UK under PM Winston Churchill overthrew the elected government of British Guiana, later Guyana, because he feared its left-wing leader, Cheddi Jagan, and his American wife, Janet Jagan, were leading the British colony into the arms of the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 3/7/96, p.A24)(AP, 8/25/11)
1953 Oct 9, Conrad Adenauer was elected West German chancellor.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1953 Oct 12, US and Greece signed a peace treaty that included US bases.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1953 Oct 13, A burglar alarm using ultrasonic or radio waves was patented by Samuel Bagno.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1953 Oct 14, Ike promised to fire as communists any federal workers taking the 5th amendment.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1953 Oct 14, Ariel Sharon, who had formed the elite Israeli commando unit "101" to fight Palestinian guerrillas, led it in a raid against the Jordanian village of Qibya killing some 70 civilians.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)(Econ, 12/16/06, p.85)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre)
1953 Oct 15, John Patrick's "Teahouse of the August Moon," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1953 Oct 16, Fidel Castro in Havana was sentenced to 15 years.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro)
1953 Oct 19, Singer Julius LaRosa, a regular on the CBS program "Arthur Godfrey Time," was fired on the air by Godfrey, who accused him of lacking humility.
(AP, 10/19/98)
1953 Oct 19, America's first ever non-stop transcontinental service began with flights by American Airlines using DC-7 aircraft.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
1953 Oct 20, Edward R. Murrow on his TV show “See It Now" brought public attention to the abuses of power in the era of Sen. McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade. Milo Radulovich (1926-2007), a US Air Force Reserve officer, had been stripped of his commission for refusing to denounce his family, which subscribed to several Serbian newspapers. His commission was later restored. Murrow took up the case and set the turning point to discredit McCarthyism.
(SFC, 11/26/07, p.D3)(Econ, 12/1/07, p.102)
1953 Oct 22, Laos gained full independence from France. [see Oct 23]
(MC, 10/22/01)
1953 Oct 23, France granted sovereignty to Laos. [see Oct 22]
(MC, 10/23/01)
1953 Oct 28, Red Barber resigned as Dodger sportscaster to join Yankees.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1953 Oct 29, Harry Clement Stubbs (d.2003), science fiction writer, authored "Mission of Gravity." It was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
(SFC, 11/1/03, p.A21)
1953 Oct 29, A British airliner with 11 passengers and 8 crew crashed into Kings Mountain, 10 miles west of Redwood City, Ca., and all aboard were killed. William Kapell (b.1922), genius pianist, died in the crash. He was returning from a tour in Australia when his airplane crashed into a mountain outside San Francisco. A set of his 1944-1953 recordings was released in 1998 by RCA. In 1999 BMG released "The William Kapell Edition," a nine-disk set.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.E10)(SFEC, 11/29/98, DB p.44)(WSJ, 2/1/99, p.A19)(WSJ, 5/24/08, p.W12)
1953 Oct 30, Gen. George C. Marshall (1880-1959) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Albert Schweitzer received his 1952 Peace Prize.
(AP, 10/30/97)
1953 Oct 31, Alice Eastwood (94), curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences in SF, died.
(SFC, 10/31/03, p.E2)
1953 Oct, In the US a landmark antitrust complaint, filed against Morgan Stanley and 16 other investment banking houses, was dismissed.
(WSJ, 10/9/97, p.A16)
1953 Oct, Universal Children’s Day was first observed in India. It was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1954. It became observed on different days in different ways in more than 120 nations. In India, Children’s Day is celebrated on 14th November, the birth anniversary of PM Jawaharlal Nehru.
(www.indianchild.com/childrens_day_india.htm)
1953 Nov 2, Pakistan became an Islamic republic.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1953 Nov 4, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (89), composer, died.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1953 Nov 8, Salazar's party won all parliament seats in Portugal.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1953 Nov 9, The Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that major league baseball did not come within the scope of federal antitrust laws. President Clinton later signed a bill overturning the labor relations aspect of the antitrust exemption.
(AP, 11/9/03)
1953 Nov 9, Welsh author-poet Dylan Thomas died in New York at age 39 during his poetry-reading blitz of the US. In 1955 John Malcolm Brinnin (d.1998 at 81), the man who brought Thomas to America, published "Dylan Thomas in America."
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T5)(AP, 11/9/97)(SFC, 6/29/98, p.A19)
1953 Nov 11, The Polio virus was identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1953 Nov 12, US district Judge Grim ruled the NFL can black out TV home games.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1953 Nov 12, David Ben-Gurion, resigned as premier of Israel.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1953 Nov 16, The US joined in the condemnation of Israel for its raid on Jordan.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1953 Nov 19, US Supreme Court rules (7-2) that baseball is a sport not a business.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1953 Nov 19, US VP Richard Nixon visited Hanoi in Vietnam.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1953 Nov 20, Scott Crossfield (1921-2006), test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), flew a D-558-II Skyrocket to a record speed of over 1,320 mph.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.B9)
1953 Nov 21, The "Piltdown Man," discovered in 1912, was proved to be a hoax. Paleontologist Kenneth Oakley and anatomists Joseph S. Weiner and Wilfred Le Gros Clark reexamined the bones from the 1912 Piltdown man and found unmistakable signs of forgery.
(MC, 11/21/01)(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.16)
1953 Nov 23, While receiving an award for his contributions to civil rights from the B’Nai Brith’s Anti-Defamation League, President Dwight Eisenhower spontaneously denounced the tactics of fellow Republican Joseph McCarthy, asserting the right of everyone to meet his "accuser face to face." A vehement anti-Communist, Senator McCarthy led a long series of secret and public hearings on the role of Communism in the American government and society, frequently making unsubstantiated charges against individual citizens.
(HNQ, 6/18/98)
1953 Nov 25, "Guys & Dolls" closed at 46th St Theater NYC after 1200 performances.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1953 Nov 27, Playwright Eugene O’Neill died in Boston at age 65. Prof. John H. Raleigh (d.2001 at 81) later authored "The Plays of Eugene O’Neill."
(AP, 11/27/97)(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A20)
1953 Nov 28, "Wish You Were Here" closed at Imperial Theater NYC after 597 performances.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1953 Nov 28, New York City began 11 days without newspapers when a strike of photoengravers shut down publication. Sales increased for magazines and paperback books.
(DT, 11/28/97)
1953 Nov 29, American Airlines began 1st regular commercial NY-LA air service.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1953 Nov 30, French parachutists under Col. De Castries attacked Dien Bien Phu. The French expeditionary force was under the direction of Gen. Henri Navarre. In 2004 martin windrow authored “The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam."
(Econ, 4/3/04, p.86)
1953 Nov, In Italy the Iso Isetta microcar was introduced in Turin. The car originated with the Italian firm of Iso SpA. In the early 1950s the company was building refrigerators, motor scooters and small three-wheeled trucks. Iso's owner, Renzo Rivolta, decided he would like to build a small car for mass distribution. By 1952 the engineers Ermenegildo Preti and Pierluigi Raggi had designed a small car that used the scooter engine and named it Isetta—an Italian diminutive meaning little ISO.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.102)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta)
1953 Dec 3, The musical "Kismet" opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theater for 583 performances.
(AP, 12/3/99)(MC, 12/3/01)
1953 Dec 3, Eisenhower criticized McCarthy for saying communists are in Republican party.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1953 Dec 5, Italy and Yugoslavia agreed to pull troops out of the disputed Trieste border.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1953 Dec 6, Thomas Hulce, actor (Amadeus, Equus, Echo Park), was born Plymouth, Mi.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1953 Dec 7, Audrey Hepburn was featured on the cover of Life Magazine.
(SFC, 11/8/96, p.C6)
1953 Dec 7, Israel's PM Ben-Gurion retired.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1953 Dec 8, Pres. Eisenhower delivered his "Atoms for Peace" address to the UN. He called on both the US and Soviet Union to abandon their nuclear arsenals. The "Atoms for Peace" program spread nuclear technology to nations that agreed not to use it for military purposes.
(SFC, 5/28/98, p.A9)(SFC, 12/9/03, p.A10)
1953 Dec 9, John Malkovich, actor and director (Killing Fields), was born in Christopher, Ill.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1953 Dec 9, General Electric announced all Communist employees would be fired.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1953 Dec 12, Chuck Yeager, test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), reached Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.B9)
1953 Dec 13, Ben Bernanke, later head of the US Federal Reserve (2006), was born in Augusta, Ga.
(SSFC, 1/29/06, p.J1)
1953 Dec 16, Pres. Eisenhower held the 1st White House Press Conference before 161 reporters.
(MC, 12/16/01)
1953 Dec 16, Charles E. Yeager flew 2,575 kph in Bell X-1A.
(MC, 12/16/01)
1953 Dec 17, FCC approved RCA's black & white-compatible color TV specifications. Temporary approval of the mechanical CBS color model was rescinded.
(MC, 12/17/01)(SFC, 3/18/04, p.E1)
1953 Dec 19, Robert A. Millikan (85), US physicist (Nobel 1923), died.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1953 Dec 23, Lavrenti P. Beria (1899-1953), Soviet minister of internal security, was executed.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(MC, 12/23/01)
1953 Dec 24, Pierre Salinger, SF Chronicle reporter, won the 1953 McQuade Memorial Award for his articles on poor conditions in California county jails. He had himself arrested under an alias in Bakersfield and Stockton for an inside look.
(SFC, 12/19/03, p.E3)
1953 Dec 24, 2 speeding express trains crashed head-on killing 103 in Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1953 Dec 26, U.S. was to withdraw two divisions from Korea.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1953 Dec 30, The first color TV sets went on sale. An Admiral color set was priced about $1,175 in 1953 dollars! Color TV sets did not become affordable to the masses until the late 1960s.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(MC, 12/30/01)
1953 Dec 30, Ramon Magsaysay (1907-1957) began serving as the seventh President of the Philippines. American CIA operative Edward Lansdale almost single-handedly steered Magsaysay into the presidency of the Philippines.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Magsaysay)(Econ., 10/3/20, p.72)
1953 Dec, Playboy Magazine, founded in Chicago by Hugh Hefner (1926-2017) and Eldon sellers, featured Marilyn Monroe as its first cover girl and nude centerfold in the premier issue. Hefner had hired freelance illustrator Art Paul (1925-20178) as Playboy Magazine's first employee. It was Paul who created Playboy's bunny head logo.
(www.playboy.com/worldofplayboy/faq/firstissue.html)(SFC, 11/7/96, p.E12)(SFC, 9/28/17, p.A5)(SFC, 5/2/18, p.D7)
1953 Dec, In 1996 it was revealed that the Pentagon knew that more than 900 American troops were alive but not released by the North Koreans.
(SFC, 9/17/96, p.A10)
1953 Dec, Swanson and Sons introduced the TV Dinner. The turkey, sweet potatoes and peas package was priced at 98 cents and could be cooked in 25 minutes. It was invented by Gerry Thomas (d.2005), a salesman for Nebraska based C.A. Swanson, following an oversupply of turkey from the 1953 Thanksgiving holiday season. Campbell Soup acquired control of Swanson’s in 1955.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.943,952)(WSJ, 1/7/04, p.B1)(SFC, 7/21/05, p.B7)
1953 Dec, Ornithologist E. Thomas Gilliard (d.1965 at age 52) and his wife, Margaret, arrived in New Guinea to study birds in the Viktor Emanuel Range. Police activities forced them to remake plans and they proceeded to survey the Sepik River and to photograph the Latmul and Sawos people who lived along its banks.
(NH, 10/98, p.92)
1953 George Braque created his painting “La Treille." In 2010 it sold for $10.2 million.
(Econ, 5/8/10, p.85)
1953 Ralph Fasanella, American artist, created his painting “Welcome Home Boys." In 1990 it was acquired by the city of Oakland, Ca., as a gift from union workers for $53,000.
(SFC, 3/4/11, p.C7)
1953 Don G. Kelley, the first editor of Pacific Discovery magazine, drew the sketch of the grizzly bear that was used for the California State flag.
(Pac. Disc., summer, ‘96, p.17)
1953 W. de Kooning (1904-1997) completed his "Woman V" painting. In 1974 it was acquired by the Austria National Gallery for $850,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/3rr4bw)
1953 Artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Peter Voulkos and others gathered at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Voulkos went on to become the "guru of clay." From 1954-1959 he headed the ceramics dept. at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. In 1959 he joined the faculty of UC Berkeley and taught until 1985. The colors in his wood-fired work derive from the fusion of wood ash and clay produced in an oxygen-reduction atmosphere after the heat has reached 2300’ F.
(WSJ, 5/10/96, p.A-8)
1953 Rene Magritte painted "Golconde,’ which depicted men raining from the sky in front of a 2-3 story row-house with crossed windows.
(WSJ, 8/4/00, p.W2)
1953 David Park painted his "Pet Pet."
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.E6)
1953 Robert Rauschenberg painted his 22-foot-long "Automobile Tire Print" in collaboration with John Cage. Cage drove a car with a wheel inked by Rauschenberg. He also did "Erased de Kooning Drawing" this year, based on a crayon-and-ink drawing by de Kooning.
(WSJ, 9/25/97, p.A20)(SFC, 8/20/98, p.E1)
1953 Ben Shahn painted his "Second Allegory" and "Bookshop."
(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)
1953 Folk artist Grandma Moses (1860-1961) achieved global fame for her paintings. Her real name was Anna Mary Robertson. Plates with her scenes were given out as gas station premiums in 4 limited editions: "Out for the Christmas Tree," "Checkered House," "Jack and Jill," and "Catching the Thanksgiving."
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(SFC, 3/26/97, Z1 p.7)
1953 Robert Duncan (d.1988), SF poet, and his partner Jess (Burgess Collins, d.2004) along with Harry Jacobus founded the King Ubu Gallery at 3119 Fillmore St. In 1954 a group of artists took it over and it became the Six Gallery.
(SFC, 5/26/96, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 1/7/04, p.A19)(SSFC, 3/14/04, p.F2)
1953 William Inge’s play, "Picnic," opened on Broadway. It won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a 1955 film. It was about a drifter who shakes up life in a small Kansas town.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.37)(WSJ, 4/14/00, p.W14)
1953 The play "Sabrina Fair" by Samuel Taylor featured Joseph Cotton and Margaret Sullivan. It was made into a 1954 film.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A26)
1953 Eric Ambler wrote his spy thriller "The Schirmer Inheritance."
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1953 Poul Anderson (d.2001 at 74), authored 2 science fiction novels: "Three Hearts and Three Lions" and "Brain Wave."
(SFC, 8/3/01, p.A24)
1953 Lars Valerian Ahlfors (1907-1996), mathematician, published his mathematics textbook "Complex Analysis. "
(SFC, 10/21/96, p.A17)
1953 The Associated Press Stylebook in English first came out. It became the gold standard of style reference books in the journalism industry.
(AP, 11/20/12)
1953 Michael Avallone (d.1999 at 74) published "The Tall Dolores," the first of 36 novels featuring detective Ed Moon.
(SFC, 3/2/99, p.A20)
1953 James Baldwin published his autobiographical novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain."
(SFC, 12/30/98, p.A2)
1953 Samuel Beckett translated his "En Attendant Godot" into English as "Waiting for Godot."
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A10)
1953 Sybille Bedford (b.1911), German-born English novelist, published her 1st book, “A Visit to Don Otavio," a travelogue of Mexico.
(WSJ, 5/12/05, p.D8)
1953 Saul Bellow authored his novel "The Adventures of Augie March," in which he defined the immigrant experience in US literature.
(SFC, 9/15/03, p.D1)
1953 Isaiah Berlin wrote his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox." He ruminated on the words of the Greek poet Archilochus who said: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.A28)
1953 Simone de Bouvier (Beauvoir) published a British edition of "America Day by Day," a journal of her travels in America from 1947. Her trip also began a relationship with Nelson Algren. In 1999 the book "A Transatlantic Love Affair" Letters to Nelson Algren" was published.
(WSJ, 1/18/98, p.A16)(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.4)
1953 Ray Bradbury wrote his novel "Fahrenheit 451." It was made into a film in 1967 and another version was planned in 1997.
(SFC, 1/31/97, p.D3)
1953 "Junkie" the first novel by William Burroughs was published. In it appeared the character Herbert who was the poet Herbert Huncke (1915-1996), who introduced Burroughs to heroin.
(SFC, 8/9/96, p.A19)
1953 Herb Caen, SF newspaper columnist, wrote his 4th book "Don’t Call It Frisco."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A13)
1953 Raymond Chandler wrote the detective novel "The Long Goodbye." He appears to have been the first writer to put into print the phrase "You can’t win them all."
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.B7)
1953 Arthur C. Clarke authored his sci-fi novel “"The Nine Billion Names of God."
(Econ, 10/24/15, p.65)
1953 Katherine Esau (1898-1997) published her classic "Plant Anatomy," a leading text on plant structure.
(SFC, 6/19/97, p.A22)
1953 British writer Ian Fleming published his first James Bond book, "Casino Royale."
(WSJ, 4/24/98, p.W1)
1953 Rev Billy Graham published "Peace With God," the first of his 18 books.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, Z1 p.3)
1953 Heinrich Harrer wrote his memoir "Seven Years in Tibet."
(SFEC,12/14/97, BR p.4)
1953 Robert Heilbroner (1919-2005) authored the 1st edition of his economics classic “Worldly Philosophers."
(WSJ, 1/11/05, p.A1)
1953 Joseph Heller began writing "Catch-22." The book was initially titled Catch 18 and contracted to Simon & Schuster in 1957. The agent, Candida Donadio, chose 22, her birthday was Oct 22, to avoid conflict with Mila 18, a novel by Leon Uris. Catch 22 was published in 1961. [see Louis Fallstein, 1951, "Face of a Hero."]
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A2)(SFC, 1/26/01, p.A21)
1953 Jack Kerouac wrote his book "The Subterraneans." Though set in San Francisco it was actually about characters from Fugazi’s Bar of Greenwich Village. Anton Rosenberg (d.1998 at 71), a hipster painter and musician, was portrayed as Julian Alexander. The book was not published until 1958.
(SFC, 2/23/98, p.A21)
1953 Alfred Kinsey published "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female," the 1st major US survey on women's sexual habits. He found that attitudes did not match behavior.
(NW, 6/30/03, p.44)
1953 "The Conservative Mind" by Russel Kirk, Michigan-born writer, was first published by Henry Regnery (1912-1996), the godfather of modern conservatism. "The book recovers a legacy of conservative ideas and also trumpets a conservative future." In the book is described an "inclination to cherish the permanent things in human existence." Kirk believed that "political problems are, at bottom, religious and moral problems." He lists six canons of conservatism the first of which is the conviction that "there exists a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. The book was re-issued in 1995 in a 40th anniversary ed. by Regnery Publ.
(WSJ, 9/28/95, p.A-16)(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A15)
1953 Wolf Mankowitz published "Wedgewood," the definitive handbook on the subject.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.D7)
1953 James Michener (d.1997 at 90) wrote his novel "The Bridges at Toko-Ri."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1953 Czeslaw Milosz, émigré Polish poet, published “The Captive Mind," in which he unpicked the mangling effects of communist thought.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.76)
1953 Iris Murdoch published "Sartre: Romantic Rationalist."
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)
1953 Robert Musil (d.1942), Austrian author, got published in short form in English his unfinished book "The Man Without Qualities" set in Vienna around 1913. A full 2 volume set ($60) was published in 1995.
(WSJ, 4/12/95, A-12)
1953 Eugene (b.1913) and Howard Odum published "Fundamentals of Ecology," the first textbook on the subject.
(NH, 10/98, p.8)
1953 Alain Robbe-Grillet authored "Les Gommes" (The Erasers), a novel about a detective investigating an apparent murder who ends up killing the victim. It was seen in France as the debut of the "new novel."
(AP, 2/18/08)
1953 Eleanor O’Leary (1916-2008) authored “The Prince of Players: the Life of Edwin Booth" (1833-1893). Edwin was the founder of the NYC club called The Player’s (1888) and the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Pres. Lincoln.
(SFC, 7/22/08, p.B5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players'_Club)
1953 Jim Thompson authored the classic noir thriller “The Killer Inside Me."
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.D7)
1953 Leon Uris (d.2003) authored the novel "Battle Cry."
(AP, 6/24/03)(SFC, 6/25/03, p.A25)
1953 UC Berkeley Prof. Harold F. Weaver authored “Statistical Astronomy."
(SSFC, 5/7/17, p.C10)
1953 John Werthan authored "Seduction of the Innocent," which linked comic books to juvenile delinquency. This led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. EC Comics withdrew "Tales From the crypt" and many other titles.
(SFC, 1/21/04, p.D2)
1953 Richard Wright (d.1960) authored the novel: "The Outsider."
(WSJ, 9/4/01, p.A20)
1953 Thomas Guinzburg, Donald Hall, Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014) and George Plimpton founded the Paris Review. William Styron (1925-2006) helped establish the Paris Review. Matthiessen later admitted that he was a CIA recruit and used his work with the Review as a cover.
(SFC, 9/27/03, p.A2)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.95)(SSFC, 4/6/14, p.A18)
1953 Speedy Gonzalez, a cartoon mouse with a Mexican accent, debuted in the US.
(AP, 6/30/05)
1953 Merce Cunningham, dance group leader, created the Septet. He set steps to the "Trois Morceaux en forme de poire" music of Eric Satie.
(WSJ, 4/10/96, p.A-14)
1953 The Broadway musical "Kismet" was produced. It starred Alfred Drake and featured the music of Russian composer Borodin. The songs "Stranger in Paradise" and "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" were written by George Forrest (d.1999 at 84) and Robert Wright.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.45)(SFEC, 4/6/97, DB p.7)(SFC, 10/13/99, p.C2)
1953 The Broadway play "The Teahouse of the August Moon" was directed by Robert Lewis.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)
1953 Bud Browne (1912-2008), completed his first surf film, “Hawaiian Surfing Movies," in Santa Monica, Ca. He was later considered the father of surf films.
(AP, 7/29/08)
1953 Peter Graves starred in the TV series "Stalag 17."
(SFC, 5/19/96, BR, p.30)
1953 The weekly "General Electric Theater" began on TV.
(SFC, 11/24/00, p.D11)
1953 "The Life of Riley" featured William Bendix and Marjorie Reynolds (1917-1997) as Peg Riley. It ran until 1958.
(SFC, 2/13/97, p.C4)
1953 Soupy Sales (1926-2009) began his “Soupy’s On" 5-day-a-week variety show in Detroit on WXYZ-TV. The theme song was Charlie Parker’s "Yardbird Suite." Many jazz giants played on his show but very little film footage survived. His “Lunch with Soupy Sales" went national in October 1959, on the ABC television network.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soupy_Sales)(DFP, 7/28/96, p.F1,8)(AP, 10/23/09)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A8)
1953 Vito Scotti (1918-1996) replaced J. Carrol Naish as the Italian immigrant Luigi Basco in the TV show "Life with Luigi."
(SFC, 6/12/96, p.C2)
1953 The Romper Room TV show for children began in Baltimore on station WBAL. It featured Nancy Claster (d.1997 at 82) as Miss Nancy who stayed on until 1964 when her daughter, Sally, took over for the next 16 years. Locally produced shows aired in 150 cities. Her "magic mirror" gave the names of children watching at home, names that parents had sent in.
(SFC, 4/26/97, p.A22)
1953 Steve Allen (d.2000) created and hosted the Tonight Show in NYC. It went national in 1954. Allen remained host until 1957.
(SFC, 11/1/00, p.A19)(SSFC, 5/2/04, Par. p.4)
1953 The CBS musical series “Summertime USA" was set in various resorts from Havana to Atlantic City. It featured Teresa Brewer and Mel Torme.
(SFC, 10/19/07, p.A11)
1953 The TV show "Winky Dink and You" premiered as the 1st interactive kids’ show.
(NW, 11/11/02, p.54)
1953 Jon Hendricks (1921-2017), Jazz singer and songwriter, began collaborating with fellow jazz singer Dave Lambert. They later joined with Annie Ross, a British-born jazz singer and in 1958 recorded the hit album “Sing a Song of Basie."
(SFC, 11/24/17, p.D3)
1953 Nat Hentoff became the NYC editor of Down Beat. Willie "the Lion" Smith, Harlem stride pianist, soon became his mentor.
(WSJ, 12/30/03, p.D8)
1953 Jimmy Boyd sang "Santa Got Stuck in the Chimney." It was written by Hy Heath and Fred Rose, who also wrote "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." It raised a ruckus in the 96-97 holiday season when another version was contested between a 51-year-old composer and 5-year-old singer.
(WSJ, 1/8/97, p.A6)
1953 Eddie Fisher (1928-2010), American singer, made a hit with the song “Oh, My Pa-Pa."
(SFC, 9/24/10, p.C6)(www.discogs.com/artist/Eddie+Fisher)
1953 Jimmy Forrest composed the jazz tune "Night Train."
(SI-WPC, 1997)
1953 James Myers (d.2001) and Max Freedman wrote the song "Rock Around the Clock." It was first recorded by Sunny Dae and His Knights. Bill Haley and the Comets recorded it in 1954. It became popular in 1955 following its use in the film "Blackboard Jungle."
(SSFC, 5/13/01, p.A27)
1953 The Platters singing group was formed with Joe Jefferson, Cornell Gunther, Alex Hodge and Herb Reed on lead vocals. The group went on to appear in 27 movies.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, DB p.67)
1953 In Los Angeles The Hi-Lo’s, a vocal quartet, formed with Gene Puerling (1929-2008) singing bass-baritone. The group became the most popular jazz-based vocal group of the period.
(SFC, 4/3/08, p.B5)
1953 The Wagner opera “Tristan und Isolde" was recorded for the 1st time on 33-rpm long-playing record. The performance was conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler with Kirsten Flagstad of Norway as Isolde. In 2005 a new recording was completed featuring Placido Domingo.
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.67)
1953 The Batsheva de Rothschild Foundation, founded by Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild (d.1999 at 84), sponsored a 2-week festival of American modern dance on Broadway.
(SFC, 4/23/99, p.D8)
1953 The Milwaukee County Baseball Stadium was built.
(SFC, 7/21/96, zone 1 p.6)
1953 J.F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier, a society girl turned reporter.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)
1953 Elizabeth Bottomley (1931-1996) married Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit chip and founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor. After her divorce in 1975, she donated millions of dollars to the Portland Museum of Art, Maine maritime Museum and the Univ. of Maine.
(SFC, 9/19/96, p.A17)
1953 The American Museum of Natural History created Discovery Tours, the first museum educational travel program in the US.
(AMNHDT, 5/98)
1953 John F. Kennedy was seeing Audrey Hepburn while dating Jackie Onassis. So it says in the 1996 book "Jack and Jackie" by Christopher Anderson
(USAT, 6/19/96, p.2D)
1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin opened City Lights Bookstore, the 1st all-paperback bookstore in the US, opened in San Francisco's North Beach. In 1993 it was designated a national literary landmark.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.C4)(SFC, 6/5/03, p.F11)
1953 Publishers Clearinghouse was founded by Harold and LuEsther Mertz and their daughter Joyce. In 1997 it received more than $100 million in annual sales.
(SFEC, 2/23/97, Par p.2)
1953 Toni Stone (1921-1996), female 2nd baseman for the Negro League Indianapolis Clowns, batted .243. She was one of the first women in professional baseball.
(SFC, 11/6/96, p.B3)
1953 Helenor Foerster (d.1998 at 103) was named "Woman of the Year for Science" by the Women’s National Press Club. She co-authored the "Atlas and Textbook of Ophthalmic Pathology," and discovered that toxoplasma was the cause of a widely spread eye disease that led to blindness.
(SFC, 9/23/98, p.C2)
1953 Pres. Eisenhower issued an executive order that required the dismissal of all homosexual employees in the government.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A2)
1953 Eisenhower appointed the staunch anti-Communist John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State.
(TL, 1988, p.114)
1953 Eisenhower appointed Ezra Taft Benson, a prominent Mormon from Idaho, as his agricultural sec.
(WSJ, 10/22/96, p.A20)
1953 Pres. Eisenhower suspended the security clearance of physicist Robert Oppenheimer.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.B2)
1953 Project Solarium was an American national-level exercise in strategy and foreign policy design convened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was intended to produce consensus among senior officials in the national security community on the most effective strategy for responding to Soviet expansionism in the wake of the early Cold War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Solarium)
1953 The Eisenhower administration established the Small Business Administration to work with private lenders to make loans for various entrepreneurial uses.
(WSJ, 11/29/04, p.R8)
1953 The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) held hearings in the Bay Area. Paul Sidney Chown (d.1997 at 80), a supporter of the old Independent Progressive Party, defied the committee and described its witnesses as "paid, professional, hopped-up informers."
(SFC, 6/23/97, p.A22)
1953 Federal regulators forced the Bank of America under S.H. Amacost into a cost cutting campaign that included the sale of the BofA headquarters, the closure of 187 branches and the company’s first layoffs.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)
1953 Congress formally ratified Ohio statehood. Congress had initially voted to accept Ohio’s borders and constitution on Feb 19, 1803.
(AP, 2/19/98)
1953 The first issue of the US CIA sponsored British magazine "Encounter" was published under Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender. It became the West's most important vehicle for highbrow anti-Marxist commentary. The funding source did not become known until 1966/7.
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A46)(Econ, 6/19/04, p.81)
1953 The US military opened the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, its largest medical facility outside the US, in Landstuhl, Germany.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A14)
1953 The Washington National Cathedral installed stained-glass windows that paid tribute to Gen. Stonewall Jackson and Gen. Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army. The Confederate flags depicted in the windows were scheduled for removal in 2016.
(SFC, 6/10/16, p.A10)
1953 The California Legislature rewrote a 1919 wage law to require overtime pay for women and minors who work extra days or hours.
(SFC, 5/10/17, p.D3)
1953 San Francisco’s used car salesman Edward Shapiro (1900-1976), aka Horsetrader Ed, was indicted and convicted of income tax evasion and sent to San Quentin prison for 8 months. His Kar Korral at Eddy and Van Ness was later taken over by former 49er player Ed Balatti, who also called himself Horsetrader Ed. In 1987 Balatti was convicted of fencing stolen merchandise and sentenced to 6 years in San Quentin.
(SFC, 9/28/13, p.C3)
1953 Leo Krikorian (1922-2004), artist and photographer, and fellow Black Mountain student Knute Stiles purchased a bar at 1546 Grant St. in North Beach they called The Place. It became a center for Beats and oddballs in SF until it closed in 1960.
(SFC, 1/18/05, p.B4)(SFC, 3/18/17, p.C1)
1953 In Colorado City, Arizona, a mass police raid against members of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS) led to the arrest of scores of men and the separation of children from their families. FLDS members were avowed polygamists.
(Econ, 10/15/05, p.33)
1953 Rev. T.J. Jemison organized a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was the 1st of its kind and became a model for the 1955 Martin Luther King rebellion in Montgomery, Ala.
(NW, 6/9/03, p/14)
1953 Augie Hiebert (1916-2007) opened Alaska’s first television station in Anchorage.
(WSJ, 9/22/07, p.A8)
1953 The Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co. became Colgate-Palmolive Co.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.G3)
1953 Dow Jones & Co. ceased the publication of its Saturday Wall Street Journal after the NYSE ended Saturday trading.
(WSJ, 8/1/07, p.B6)
1953 Leonard H. Goldenson (d.1999 at 94), chief executive of United Paramount Theaters, bought the near-bankrupt ABC broadcasting network. ABC had 14 stations and trailed behind CBS, NBC and DuMont Network. In 1986 Goldenson oversaw the ABC merger with Capital Cities Broadcasting, which was bought by Disney in 1996 for $19 billion.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.B3)
1953 General Foods acquired the Perkins Products Co. which included "Kool-Aid."
(SFC, 4/9/96, z1 p.5)
1953 The Hearst Corp. acquired Sports Afield magazine.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1953 Jim Beam began selling special decanters filled with Kentucky Straight Bourbon. Political bottles were produced from 1956 to 1988.
(SFC, 4/5/06, p.G8)
1953 John Mitchell (d.2007 at 89), his younger brother Larry, and brother-in-law Bob Davis turned an old liquor store in the SF Mission District into Mitchell’s Ice Cream parlor, which became a Bay Area tradition.
(SFC, 6/16/07, p.B6)
1953 Air conditioning units became widely available on American cars.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl.)
1953 Naugahyde, an imitation leather made from plastic, was sold by Uniroyal Technology to the auto industry for upholstery. It soon came to be used for office seating units and for some residential furniture.
(SFC, 3/5/08, p.G4)
1953 Industry experts in 1996 picked the 1953 Studebaker Starlight as the number 4 favorite car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1953 Howard Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Chevy Chase, Md. The sale of Hughes Aircraft to General Motors in 1985 added $5 billion to the coffers of the institute.
(WSJ, 9/22/06, p.B1)
1953 Thomas Watson Jr., the son of IBM chief Thomas Watson, threatened to cancel plans for plants in Kentucky and North Carolina if they could not be fully racially integrated. State governors backed down and the plants opened 3 years later.
(Econ, 6/11/11, p.66)
1953 John von Neumann and a band of engineers at Princeton Univ. created a computer that simulated nuclear explosions by day and modeled artificial life forms, the creations of Nils Barricelli (1912-1993), by night. Barricelli, a Norwegian-Italian mathematician, was wealthy and held an unpaid residency at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton, NJ, in 1953, 1954. and 1956. His early computer-assisted experiments in symbiogenesis and evolution are considered pioneering in artificial life research.
(Econ, 3/10/12, p.97)
1953 Remington-Rand developed the 1st high-speed printer for use on the Univac mainframe computer.
(SFC, 7/26/04, p.F4)
1953 Thompson Products developed the first automotive ball joint suspension systems.
(F, 10/7/96, p.69)
1953 WD-40 was created by three technicians at the San Diego Rocket Chemical Company. The company sold the product to coat missiles and prevent rust. Consumers later discovered its use as a lubricant. In 1969 John Barry (1925-2000) became head of the company and soon renamed the firm after the product.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40)(SFC, 7/14/99, p.8)(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D5)
1953 Doctors attributed lung cancer for the first time to cigarette smoking.
(TL, 1988, p.114)
1953 The first human transplant, a kidney from mother to son, was performed in Paris.
(TL, 1988, p.114)
1953 Dr. Maurice M. Black (1918-1996) predicted that "the use of ultra-radical surgical attempts to cure breast cancer are not consistent with the biology of the disease."
(SFC, 9/16/96, p.A15)
1953 Donald Ewen Cameron (1901-1967), professor of neurology and psychology at Albany State Medical School, developed what he called "psychic driving". He developed the theory that mental patients could be cured by treatment that erased existing memories and by rebuilding the psyche completely.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcameronDE.htm)
1953 At the Univ. of Chicago Nathaniel Kleitman and his students at the world’s first sleep laboratory first observed and studied rapid eye movement, aka REM.
(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.2)
1953 Robert F. Borkenstein (d.2002) invented a Breathalyzer to test drivers for alcohol content. It stemmed from his work with Dr. R.N. Harger of the Indiana School of Medicine to make the Drunkometer.
(SFC, 8/19/02, p.B6)
1953 While researching silicon for its possible applications in electronics, Gerald Pearson, an empirical physicist at Bell Laboratories, inadvertently made a solar cell that was far more efficient than solar cells made from selenium. Two other Bell scientists, Daryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller, refined Pearson's discovery came up with the first solar cell capable of converting enough of the sun's energy into power to run everyday electrical equipment.
(www.californiasolarcenter.org/history_pv.html)
1953 Dr. Daniel Fox, a chemist at GE, invented Lexan polycarbonate resin, a hard plastic.
(WSJ, 1/10/07, p.B2)
1953 Stanley L. Miller (1930-2007), a chemist at the Univ. of Chicago, conducted an experiment that showed a whole range of organic compounds synthesized when an electric spark was passed through a mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor. These compounds combined to produce urea and several amino-acids. His resulting paper was titled “Production of amino acids under possible primitive Earth conditions."
(Econ, 2/18/06, p.75)(Econ, 6/2/07, p.95)
1953 A chemist working for J.R. Simplot, Idaho potato mogul, perfected a technique of freezing chipped potatoes. By the late 1960s Jack Simplot was the largest supplier of French fries to McDonald’s.
(Econ, 6/14/08, p.105)
1953 Meta Neumann (1896-1996), neuropathologist, established that Alzheimer’s disease is a metabolic disorder rather than a function of old age. In the mid 1960s she uncovered the rare degenerative brain condition known as Neumann’s disease.
(SFC, 12/2/96, p.D2)
1953 McGeorge Bundy at 34 became the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard.
(SFC, 9/17/96, p.A22)
1953 This was the peak year for accordion imports to the US. 200,000 instruments were imported from Italy, and another 200,000 come in from Germany.
(WWofA, Baldoni)
1953 Mt. Everest was climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norkay, a Sherpa.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(TMC, 1994, p.1953)
1953 The first attempt to scale K2, the world’s 2nd tallest mountain, was made by 7 Americans led by Charles Houston and Robert Bates. The mountain straddled China and Pakistan. In 1954 they authored “K2: The Savage Mountain.
(WSJ, 4/28/07, p.P8)
1953 In Pakistan Nanga Parbat, an 8,126-meter (26,660-foot) peak in the Himalayas, was scaled for the first time. It was nicknamed Killer Mountain" because thirty climbers had died trying to scale it prior to this.
(AP, 7/1/17)
1953 Revitalized grasslands of the US western plains were transferred to various federal and state agencies.
(NH, 5/96, p.64)
1953 In California Roberts Regional Recreation Area opened in the Oakland Hills.
(SFC, 6/1/07, p.B9)
1953 The Khapra beetle, one of the world's most tenacious and destructive stored-produce pests, first invaded California. It originated in South Asia. The California infestation was not eradicated until 1966, at a cost of $15 million.
(http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/urban/beetles/khapra_beetle.htm)
1953 W.W. Dixon (b.1883), storybook home architect, died. Most of his homes were built in the East Bay of the SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 8/20/05, p.F1)
1953 Florida Gov. Daniel McCarty died while in office.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.C14)
1953 Project MKUltra, sometimes referred to as the CIA's mind control program, was officially sanctioned. The code name given to an illegal program of experiments on human subjects, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had begun in the early 1950s. Project MKUltra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee of the US Congress, and a Gerald Ford commission to investigate CIA activities within the United States. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed in 1973. South Boston gangster James Bulgar was among prison inmates who had time shaved off their sentences in exchange for LSD injections in MKUltra.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra)(Boston Globe, 2/26/16, p.A12)
1953 Frank Olson, US Army chemist, jumped to his death from a hotel window while under the influence of LSD. He was an unwitting subject in the CIA MKULTRA mind-control project. In 1976 Congress approved a $760,000 payment to his widow.
(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.A4)
1953 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (b.1896), author of “The Yearling," died. In 2005 Rodger L. Tarr edited a collection of her letters to her husband, Norton S. Baskin: “The Private Marjorie."
(WSJ, 2/25/05, p.W8)
1953 Jim Thorpe, star athlete, died. He was the first president of the National Football League.
(HT, 4/97, p.18)(SFC, 7/11/98, p.B3)
1953 Bolivia’s agrarian reform of 1953, born of the1952 revolution, was adversely affected by corruption and pressure groups. By 1996, 55 million hectares had been handed over to large landholders, and 45 million hectares to small farmers.
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32429)
1953 In Brazil Darcy Ribeiro, anthropologist (1923-1997), founded the Museum of the Indian in Rio de Janeiro.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A20)
1953 Brazil’s Petrobras was founded under the slogan “o petroleo e nosso" (the oil is ours) as the country produced 2,700 barrels of oil per day and consumed 137,000 per day. In 2006 Brazil became independent from foreign oil.
(AP, 4/22/06)(Econ, 2/14/15, p.33)
1953 In Brazil JBS Friboi began as a butchers founded by Jose Sobrinho in Anapolis, Goias state. By 2011 it was the world’s largest meat producer.
(Econ, 9/24/11, SR p.22)
1953 Volkswagen began manufacturing cars in Brazil.
(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.6)
1953 The British comedy film “Trouble in Store" starred comedian Norman Wisdom (d.2010 at 95) and was directed by John Paddy Carstairs.
(Econ, 10/16/10, p.105)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0046464/)
1953 In Britain the Royal Yacht Britannia was put into service. The yacht was retired in 1997.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.B6)
1953 Britain signed the European convention, which set out a range of individual rights.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A13)
1953 Poppit beads, small plastic ball-and-socket units, were first created in England. They were later sold under the names Poppit, Snapit or Lockit and sold as beads for necklaces.
(SFC, 4/16/08, p.G3)
1953 Greece was among 22 countries that agreed to halve Germany's foreign debt at a conference in London.
(AP, 3/22/15)
1953 Canada established the village of Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic by transplanting Inuit families from the Hudson Bay area.
(NG, 6/1988, 762)
1953 Marilyn Monroe stayed at the Tekarra Lodge in Jasper, Alberta, Canada, while filming “River of No Return" (1954). She had been asked to leave the Jasper Park Lodge for dressing inappropriately.
(SSFC, 5/19/13, p.N7)
1953 King Norodom Sihanouk gained independence for Cambodia from France. Pol Pot helped set up the Communist Party.
(SFC, 6/14/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.A17)
1953 China’s first 5-year plan, formulated with Soviet help, called for the manufacture of 6 million tons of cement, 5m tons of pig iron, and 4.12m tons of steel. All of these targets were surpassed by 1957.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_China)
1953 In Colombia a domestic spy agency was created during the government of Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. In 1960 it reconstructed as the DAS by President Alberto Lleras Camargo.
(AP, 9/18/09)
1953 In Costa Rica Jose Figueres Ferrer gained power.
(WSJ, 12/12/97, p.A19)
1953 Ibrahim Ferrer Planas (d.2005), singer, joined a group called Los Bocucos, led by vocalist Pacho Alonso in Santiago, Cuba. In 1996 he recorded with Ry Cooder for the "Buena Vista Social Club" which was followed by his own solo album.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, DB p.37)(SFEM, 10/3/99, p.31)
1953 Klement Gottwald (b.1896), leader of the Czech Communist Party, died. His embalmed body was placed in a mausoleum in Prague until 1962, when it was buried.
(SFC, 9/10/08, p.A5)
1953 Yasser Arafat (d.2004), as a student in Egypt, authored “Don’t Forget Palestine."
(Econ, 11/13/04, p.95)
1953 In West Germany a restitution law included compensation for seized life, illness and retirement policies of Jewish Holocaust victims.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.A13)
1953 In West Germany Werner Hoefer (d.1997 at 84) began his TV roundtable discussion "Der Internationale Freuschoppen." He led the show until 1987. Revelations of his work as a Nazi forced the end of his career as the show’s host.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B8)
1953 In Greenland Inuit inhabitants were forcibly relocated for the American Thule air base. 650 later sued and won a $71,400 settlement.
(SFC, 11/3/01, p.C1)
1953 In Haiti Felix Morisseau-Leroy (d.1998 at 86) premiered his play "Antigone" in Port-au-Prince. It was the first serious play in the native Creole language.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1953 The last 21 residents of Ireland’s Great Blasket Island were repatriated to the mainland.
(SSFC, 3/11/12, p.F5)
1953 In Israel Shimon Peres (b.1923) became the youngest ever Director General of the Ministry of Defense. He was involved in arms purchases and establishing strategic alliances that were important for the State of Israel.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres)
1953 Israeli forces demolished Kufr Birim, a Maronite village just south of the Lebanese border, five years after persuading hundreds of residents to leave with the promise of a speedy return that never materialized.
(AP, 5/28/14)
1953 Italy founded ENIPower, a state attempt to break the oligopoly of the “Seven Sister," the major oil companies of the day.
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.53)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.64)
1953 In Japan a Leprosy Prevention Law banished lepers to small islands and remote areas. It was repealed in 1996.
(SFC, 5/24/01, p.C3)(WSJ, 5/24/01, p.A1)
1953 The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) was founded as the world’s first sovereign wealth fund. In 2008 its assets were estimated at $200 billion.
(WSJ, 1/16/08, p.A10)(Econ, 1/19/08, p.80)
1953 Mexico allowed women the right to vote.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.C6)
1953 A group of 1,200 North Korean orphans arrived at the small, forested village of Plakowice, where they lived in a former hospital building for six years under the care of Polish teachers. In 2018 the documentary film "The Children Gone to Poland" premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
1953 Hizb ut-Tahir was founded in Jerusalem by Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, an Islamic scholar and appeals court judge from the Palestinian village of Ijzim. It seeks the return of the caliphate, based on Islamic sharia law, by political means. By 2012 it had members and sympathizers in more than 50 countries.
(AP, 3/10/12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hizb_ut-Tahrir)
1953 Sarao Motors was begun in the Philippines and later became popular for the manufacture of the popular jeepney passenger vehicles.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarao_Motors) (SFC, 11/22/00, p.A18)
1953 The Polish government, under pressure from the Soviet Union, renounced any claim to reparations from East Germany.
(Econ, 8/19/17, p.44)
1953 In Poland Brig. Gen. August Emil Fieldorf, a top clandestine Home Army commander who once served as emissary to the country's government-in-exile, was accused of ordering killings of Soviet soldiers and hanged. Poland's communist authorities later admitted the charges were fabricated.
(AP, 8/30/12)
1953 Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967), Russian writer won the Stalin Peace Prize. He was the Paris correspondent for Izvestia at the outset of Stalin’s purges in 1932. His books include: "The Ninth Wave" (1951), "The Thaw," and "People, Years and Life," his memoirs that began coming out it Novy Mir in 1960. Joshua Rubenstein wrote his biography in 1996 titled: "Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Rubenstein."
(WSJ, 4/2/96, p.A-12)
1953 In Russia Nikita Khrushchev came to power. His glass and marble Palace of Congresses obliterated the last vestiges of the 17th century palace of Tsarina Natalie Kirilovna Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the Great.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.33)
1953 USSR Lt. Gen’l. Pavel Sudoplatov, spy, was arrested after the death of Stalin and sent to the Gulag.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A21)
1953 South Korea passed a law against abortion to counter a Confucian preference for sons, but it was rarely enforced.
(Econ, 5/23/15, p.32)
1953 King Abdul Aziz died. He was the founder of modern Saudi Arabia and fathered a total of 44 sons before his death. Aziz was succeeded by King Saud who ruled from 1953-1964.
(WSJ, 1/9/96, p.A-10)(WSJ, 10/22/01, p.A18)
1953 A freedom charter in the struggle against apartheid was framed in Soweto, South Africa.
(AFP, 5/20/06)
1953 The Spanish film “Bienvenido Mister Marshall!" was directed by Luis Garcia Berlanga.
(Econ, 8/10/13, p.71)
1953-1954 When G. David Schine, assistant to Joseph McCarthy, was drafted into the Army, their lawyer, Roy Cohn, tried to get special privileges to stay out and threatened the Army with an investigation. This prompted an independent investigation and the Army-McCarthy hearings. The Wisconsin Republican’s abuse of Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens during the hearings prompted McCarthy’s condemnation by the Senate.
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1953-1954 Members of the Estonian Forest Brothers resistance movement were killed by Stalin's NKVD secret police.
(SFC, 4/3/04, p.A10)
1953-1955 Bolivia’s President Paz Estenssoro established universal suffrage. The government reduced the size and budget of the armed forces. The three major tin companies were nationalized, to be run by the Mining Corporation of Bolivia (Comibol). Strongly influenced by peasants, the government enacted sweeping agrarian reform. Miners organized the Bolivian Labor Federation (COB).
(http://tinyurl.com/s7dzd)
1953-1955 Fidel Castro, a prospective major league baseball player, was jailed in Cuba.
(EnRoute, 11/’95, p.111)
1953-1956 Gen’l. Alfred M. Gruenther took over a Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. He succeeded Gen’l. Ridgeway.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)
1953-1956 Sir Roger Makins (1904-1996) served as the British ambassador to the US. His wife, Alice Davis, was the daughter of Dwight Davis, for whom the tennis Davis Cup was named.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A26)
1953-1958 The Stanley Brothers, Ralph and Carter, recorded some of their best songs on the Mercury label.
(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A16)
1953-1958 In Kenya 1,090 Kikuyu were hanged by British authorities due to the Mau Mau rebellion.
(Econ, 1/1/05, p.66)
1953-1958 Sir Garfield Todd (d.2002) served as prime minister of Southern Rhodesia.
(AP, 10/13/02)
1953-1961 Dwight D. Eisenhower (b.1890) was the 34th President of the US.
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)
1953-1961 Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden served as the Secretary-General of the UN.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A1)
1953-1970 Albert Gore Sr. (d.1998 at 90) served as US Senator from Tennessee. He opposed the war in Vietnam while his son served there as an Army journalist.
(SFEC, 12/6/98, p.C14)
1953-1971 "The Danny Thomas Show" ran on TV.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.C10)
1953-1971 Nathan Marsh Pusey (1907-2001), served as president of Harvard Univ.
(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)
1953-1986 Markus Wolf was the head of East Germany’s int’l. spy network. He planted some 4,000 agents in the West during the Cold War and managed to steal NATO secrets for the Soviet bloc. In 1997 he published "Man Without a Face," an account of his experiences.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 6/02/97, p.A20)
Return to home
1953 Jan 1, Country singer Hank Williams Sr. (29) died of a drug and alcohol overdose while enroute to a concert date in Canton, Ohio. In 1998 Mercury Records released "The Complete Hank Williams," with 225 recordings.
(AP, 1/1/98)(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.W9A)
1953 Jan 3, Frances Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, became the first mother-son combination to serve at the same time in the United States Congress.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1953 Jan 5, In South Korea the Changgyeong ferry sank as it was cruising from Yeosu to Busan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_Korean_ferry_disasters)
1953 Jan 6, Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie threw a party for his wife Lorraine at Snookie’s in Manhattan. His trumpet’s bell was bent upward in an accident, but he liked the sound and had a special trumpet made with a raised bell.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, DB p.34)
1953 Jan 7, President Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.
(AP, 1/7/98)
1953 Jan 8, An FBI report prepared for the attorney general said that Ethel Rosenberg was "cognizant" of her husband’s activity, though "uncooperative." A 1997 revelation by a retired KGB officer stated that Julius helped to organize a spy ring but wasn’t directly involved in stealing atomic secrets and that his wife was not a spy.
(WSJ, 10/18/96, p.A15)(WSJ, 3/17/97, p.A1)
1953 Jan 14, In Washington DC the Pennsylvania Railroad's Federal, the overnight train from Boston, crashed into the Union Station. Remarkably, no one was killed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Station_%28Washington,_D.C.%29)
1953 Jan 14, Josip Broz Tito was elected president of Yugoslavia by the country’s Parliament.
(AP, 1/14/98)
1953 Jan 15, The First Asian Socialist Conference agreed on alliances with the West and land for the peasants.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1953 Jan 17, GM introduced the first American sports car, the two-seater Corvette at the annual NYC Motorama Show at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was not made available for sale to the public until June 30th.
(http://tinyurl.com/fdjur)(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)
1953 Jan 17, In Egypt all political parties were dissolved and banned. The ban continued to 1976.
(http://countrystudies.us/egypt/32.htm)(Econ, 12/17/11, p.86)
1953 Jan 20, In the US Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as president. He succeeded Harry S. Truman. TV coverage sent the event to 21 million sets.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(SFC, 1/17/03, p.E8)
1953 Jan 22, The Arthur Miller drama "The Crucible" opened on Broadway. It was about the 1692 Salem witch trials and dealt a blow to the McCarthy witch hunts.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(SFC, 8/1/97, p.C14)(AP, 1/22/98)
1953 Jan 24, [Karl R] Gerd von Rundstedt (77), gen-field marshal (Normandy), died.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1953 Jan 28, J. Fred Muggs (the chimp) joined NBC's "Today Show."
(MC, 1/28/02)
1953 Jan 30, President Dwight Eisenhower announced that he would pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1953 Jan 31-1953 Feb 1, A powerful storm breached sea dikes in the south of the Netherlands, killing more than 1,800 people and cementing a deep resolve among the Dutch that their ancient enemy, water, would never kill again. 307 people died in eastern England.
(SSFC, 3/25/01, p.C3)(www.metoffice.com/education/secondary/students/flood.html)
1953 Jan, Pres. Eisenhower selected Charlie Wilson, the president of General Motors, as Secretary of Defense. During his confirmation hearing Wilson made his famous statement: “…what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa."
(SSFC, 1/7/07, p.E6)
1953 Jan, Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon left the Republican Party to protest its domination by conservatives. He continued to vote for a GOP majority leader to honor his election as a Republican.
(WSJ, 5/25/01, p.A14)
1953 Jan, In Russia leaders of the alleged Jewish "Doctor’s Plot" were arrested. They were accused of conspiring to murder the Soviet leadership. In 2003 Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov authored "Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors."
(WSJ, 5/8/01, p.A24)(Econ, 7/26/03, p.78)
1953 Feb 1, CBS-TV debuted "Private Secretary", starring Ann Sothern, on this day. Ann played Susie McNamera, private secretary to NY talent agent, Peter Sands (played by Don Porter). The show ran during the regular TV seasons on CBS, and last show was September 10, 1957. It ran on NBC-TV in the summers of 1953 and 1954.
(SFC, 2/21/97, p.A26)(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1953 Feb 1, "You Are There" with Walter Cronkite premiered on CBS television.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1953 Feb 3, J. Fred Muggs, a chimp, became a regular on NBC's Today Show.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1953 Feb 5, "Peter Pan" by Walt Disney opened at Roxy Theater, NYC. [see Feb 11]
(MC, 2/5/02)
1953 Feb 6, US controls on wages and some consumer goods were lifted.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1953 Feb 8, Mary Steenburgen, actress (Parenthood, Time After Time), was born in Newport, Ark.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1953 Feb 9, "Adventures of Superman" TV series premiered in syndication.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1953 Feb 9, General Walter Bedell Smith, USA, ended term as 4th director of CIA. Allen W. Dulles, became acting director of CIA and served to 1961.
(MC, 2/9/02)(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)
1953 Feb 9, The French destroyed six Viet Minh war factories hidden in the jungles of Vietnam.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1953 Feb 11, Walt Disney’s "Peter Pan" premiered. [See Feb 5]
(HN, 2/11/97)
1953 Feb 11, President Eisenhower refused a clemency appeal for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1953 Feb 12, An explosion at the Hercules Powder Co. near Pinole, Ca., killed 12 employees.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.E4)
1953 Feb 12, The Soviets broke off diplomatic relations with Israel after the bombing of Soviet legation.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1953 Feb 13, Pope Pius XII asked the U.S. to grant clemency to convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
(HN, 2/13/98)
1953 Feb 15, Tenley Albright (b. June 18, 1935) became the first American to win the women’s world figure skating championship at a competition in Davos, Switzerland.
(Internet)
1953 Feb 17, Baseball star and pilot Ted Williams was uninjured as his plane was shot down in Korea.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1953 Feb 18, "Bwana Devil," the movie that heralded the 3D fad of the 1950s, opened in New York City.
(AP, 2/18/98)
1953 Feb 19, William Inge's "Picnic," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1953 Feb 19, Georgia approved the 1st US literature censorship board.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1953 Feb 20, Riccardo Chailly, conductor (West Berlin Symph Orch), was born in Milan, Italy.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1953 Feb 20, US Court of Appeals ruled that Organized Baseball is a sport & not a business, affirming the 25-year-old Supreme Court ruling.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1953 Feb 24, Karl R.G. von Rundstedt (77), German general and field marshal at Ardennes, died.
(MC, 2/24/02)
1953 Feb 25, General de Gaulle condemned the European Defense Community.
(HN, 2/25/98)
1953 Feb 26, Allen W. Dulles was promoted from deputy to 5th director of CIA.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1953 Feb 27, F-84 Thunderjets raided North Korean base on Yalu River. A year after leaving West Point, Lt. Joe Kingston was en route to Korea, where he, like a lot of others, found himself retreating and advancing in a single day.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1953 Feb 28, Francis Crick (d.2004) and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA-molecule. Watson and Crick managed to describe the structure of DNA as a double helix consisting of two long strings coiled around one another. About 100,000 genes, short sections of DNA, tell the cells how to build proteins, the building blocks of life. Rosalind Franklin made the 1st x-ray image that revealed the double helix structure of DNA. In 2002 Brenda Maddox authored "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA." In 2003 Watson co-authored "DNA: The Secret of Life." [see Apr 25, Sep 20, 1953]
(V.D.-H.K.p.330)(TL, 1988, p.114)(Wired, 1/97, p.161)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.M2)(WSJ, 3/28/03, p.W8)(AP, 2/28/04)
1953 Feb 28, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia signed a 5-year defense pact in Ankara.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1953 Feb 28, Stalin met with Beria, Bulganin, Khrushchev and Malenkov.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1953 Mar 3, Canadian Comet crashed at Karachi, 11 killed.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1953 Mar 5, Russian Premier Joseph Stalin died at age 73 after 29 years in power. After his death the Chechens were allowed to return home. In 1973 Prof. Adam B. Ulam of Harvard Univ. authored "Stalin: The Man and His Era." In 2003 Simon Sebag Montefiore authored "Stalin : The court of the Red Tsar." In 2004 Robert Service authored “Stalin: A Biography."
(AP, 3/5/98)(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A26)(Econ, 7/26/03, p.78)(Econ, 1/8/05, p.74)
1953 Mar 5, Sergei Prokofiev (61), Russian composer (Peter and the wolf), died in Moscow.
(AP, 3/5/04)
1953 Mar 6, Georgi Malenkov (b.1902) took over as premier of the USSR. Leadership was actually in the hands of a collective presidium that included Lavrenti P. Beria (b.1899), Vyacheslav Molotov (b.1890), Nikolai A. Bulganin (b.1895) and Lazar M. Kaganovich (b.1893).
(HN, 3/6/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1684)
1953 Mar 8, Census indicated 239,000 farmers gave up farming in last 2 years.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1953 Mar 9, U.S. vs. Reynolds was a landmark ruling that formally established the government's "state secrets" privilege, a privilege that has enabled federal agencies to conceal conduct, withhold documents and block troublesome civil litigation, including suits by whistle-blowers and possible victims of discrimination. It provided a fundamental basis for much of the Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including the USA Patriot Act and the handling of terrorist suspects. [See Oct 6, 1948]
(LAT, 4/18/04)
1953 Mar 9, Josef Stalin was buried in Moscow.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1953 Mar 10, North Korean gunners at Wonsan fired on the USS Missouri, the ship responds by firing 998 rounds at the enemy position.
(HN, 3/10/99)
1953 Mar 10, Charles Gordon Curtis (92), inventor (Curtis-steam turbine), died.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1953 Mar 11, F.M. Adams became the 1st US commissioned woman army doctor.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1953 Mar 11, An American B-47 accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on South Carolina, however the bomb did not go off due to 6 safety catches.
(HN, 3/11/98)(MC, 3/11/02)
1953 Mar 18, Margaret L. Augustine, project manager for Biosphere 2, was born in Buffalo, NY.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1953 Mar 18, The Braves baseball team announced that they were moving from Boston to Milwaukee.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1953 Mar 19, Tennessee Williams' "Camino Real," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1953 Mar 19, The Academy Awards ceremony was televised for the first time; "The Greatest Show on Earth" was named best picture of 1952. Gary Cooper & Shirley Booth won for best actor and actress.
(AP, 3/19/99)
1953 Mar 20, In the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev became the head of a five-man group called the Secretariat, although for all intents and purposes, he is in a leadership role that will gradually push Malenkov aside. In September Khrushchev was officially given the title of First Secretary of the Communist Party.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=2612)(WP, 3/21/53, p.3)
1953 Mar 23, Raoul Dufy, French fauve painter, died.
(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)(MC, 3/23/02)
1953 Mar 24, Mary (85), queen of Great Britain and North Ireland, died.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1953 Mar 25, The USS Missouri fired on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
(HN, 3/25/99)
1953 Mar 26, Eisenhower offered increased aid in Vietnam to France.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1953 Mar 26, Dr. Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh announced that a vaccine against polio had been successfully tested in a small group of adults and children. By April 1955, the vaccine had undergone further testing and gained federal approval for public use. Salk’s polio vaccine was so successful that by 1961 the incidence of polio had decreased by 95 percent. Dr. Joseph Melnick (d.2001 at 86) was among the first to have discovered that the polio virus belonged to the larger enterovirus group and were chiefly transmitted by fecal contamination.
(HNPD, 3/26/99)(SFC, 1/23/01, p.C2)
1953 Mar 27, Charles Bohlen was named the U.S. ambassador to the USSR
(HN, 3/27/98)
1953 Mar 28, In the 7th Tony Awards: Crucible and Wonderful Town won.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1953 Mar 28, Jim Thorpe (b.1887), native American decathlon athlete (Olympics-gold-1912), died in Lomita, California.
(AP, 3/28/02)(www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Jim_Thorpe)
1953 Mar 30, Einstein announced a revised unified field theory.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1953 Mar 31, Department of Health, Education and Welfare was established.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1953 Mar 31, UN Security Council nominated Dag Hammarskjöld secretary-general.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1953 Mar, The US CIA’s Tehran station reported that an Iranian general had approached the US embassy for support in an army-led coup. Based on this information Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, approved $1 million to be used to help bring about the fall of Prime Minister Mossadegh.
(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)
1953 Apr 1, Barry Sonnenfeld, director (When Harry Met Sally, Big), was born.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1953 Apr 2, Jean Epstein (56), French director (Vive la Vie), died.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1953 Apr 3, Walter Annenberg of Philadelphia began a national TV Guide. His father had published Radio Guide and he bought TV Forecast in Chicago and local television guides in New York , Philadelphia and Washington to begin his operation. A picture of the first cover featured Lucy and Desi Arnaz’ baby (I Love Lucy).
(www.tvhistory.tv/tv_guide1.htm)(WSJ, 5/8/98, p.W10)(www.fiftiesweb.com/pop/tv-guide.htm)
1953 Apr 7, The U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) as Secretary-General of the UN.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 4/7/97)
1953 Apr 8, A Federal Grand Jury in SF indicted Hugh Bryson, pres. of the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, on charges that he falsely claimed that he was not a communist in a Taft-Hartley affidavit.
(SFC, 4/4/03, p.E6)
1953 Apr 8, Jomo Kenyatta (1891-1978), one of modern Africa's earliest nationalist leaders, was convicted by Kenya's British rulers for leading the Mau Mau Rebellion against the white settlers of his country. Along with five other Mau Mau leaders, he was subsequently sentenced to seven years' hard labor.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1953 Apr 10, The first 3-D horror movie "House of Wax," produced by Warner Bros. and starring Vincent Price, premiered in New York City. It was directed by Andre de Toth (d.2002 at 89).
(AP, 4/9/97)(HN, 4/10/98)(SFC, 11/1/02, p.A28)
1953 Apr 11, Oveta Culp Hobby became the first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had named her head of the Federal Security Agency, which, later that year, was elevated to a Cabinet position and renamed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, with Hobby becoming its first Secretary on April 11. She held the Cabinet position until 1955. Hobby had led the War Department's Women's Interest Section, served as Director of the Women's Army Corps during WWII and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
(AP, 4/11/97)(HNQ, 8/18/99)
1953 Apr 14, Viet Minh invaded Laos with 40,000 troops in their war against French colonial forces.
(HN, 4/14/01)
1953 Apr 17, Mickey Mantle hit a home run in Washington's Griffith Stadium off the Senator's Chuck Stobbs that was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as measuring 565 feet. The distance was later said to have been padded.
(WSJ, 7/9/03, p.A1)
1953 Apr 20, Operation Little Switch began in Korea, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war.
(HN, 4/20/99)
1953 Apr 24, British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
(AP, 4/24/97)(HN, 4/24/98)
1953 Apr 25, The magazine Nature published an article by biologists Francis Crick and James Watson, describing the "double helix" of DNA.
(HN, 4/25/01)
1953 Apr 26, In Korea two U.S. Air Force B-29s dropped leaflets behind enemy lines, offering a $50,000 reward and political asylum to any pilot delivering an intact MiG-15 to American forces for study.
(HNPD, 9/28/98)
1953 Apr 27, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450: Security Requirements for Government Employment. The order listed "sexual perversion" as a condition for firing a federal employee and for denying employment to potential applicants. Homosexuality, moral perversion, and communism were categorized as national security threats; the issue of homosexual federal workers had become a dire federal personnel policy concern.
(http://tinyurl.com/3bblwc)
1953 Apr 27, US General Mark W. Clark issued Operation Moolah to coincide with Operation Little Switch, an exchange of sick and wounded POWs between the Communist and UN forces in North and South Korea. The US set up Operation Moolah to award $100,000 to the first pilot to defect in a Russian made MiG.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Moolah)(Econ, 5/16/15, p.79)
1953 Apr 28, French troops evacuated northern Laos.
(HN, 4/28/98)
1953 Apr, In British Guyana Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan was elected chief minister.
(SFC, 3/7/97, p.A24)
1953 May 2, Prince Hussein became King Hussein (17) as he inherited the royal title from his father Talal.
(SFC, 1/23/99, p.A10)(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A13)
1953 May 4, Pulitzer prize was awarded to E. Hemingway (Old Man & The Sea).
(MC, 5/4/02)
1953 May 7, "Can Can" opened at Shubert Theater in NYC for 892 performances.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1953 May 11, An F5 tornado hit downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114 people with 597 injured. Damages were estimated at $200 million.
(SSFC, 5/11/03, Par p.11)(SFC, 5/11/09, p.D8)
1953 May 11, Winston Churchill criticized the domino theory of John Foster Dulles.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1953 May 16, Django Reinhardt (b.1910), Gypsy jazz guitarist, died in France. In 2004 Michael Dregni authored “Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt)(WSJ, 10/23/98, p.W12)
1953 May 18, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a North American F-86 Canadair over Rogers Dry Lake, Calif.
(AP, 5/18/97)
1953 May 23, Schools 1st used Cliff's Notes.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1953 May 25, Jane Priest, Prince Charles' lover, was born in Perth, Australia.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 25, Rich Alves, singer (Pirates of the Mississippi-Fred Jake), was born in Pleasanton, CA.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 25, 1st non-commercial educational television station began in Houston, TX.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 25, The first atomic cannon was fired at Frenchman Flat, Nevada.
(HN, 5/25/98)(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 28, Arto Lindsay, rocker, actor (Cookie, Desperately Seeking Susan), was born.
(www.nndb.com/people/787/000041664/)
1953 May 28, Premier of first animated 3-D cartoon in Technicolor, "Melody".
(HN, 5/28/98)
1953 May 29, Danny Elfman, composer (Simpson Show Theme), was born in Los Angeles, CA.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1953 May 29, Rick Henderson, singer (Mason Dixon-Karen Comes Around), was born in Beaumont, TX.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1953 May 29, Mount Everest was conquered as Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tensing Norgay, A Sherpa of Nepal, became the first climbers to reach the summit. The expedition was led by John Hunt (d.1998 at 88). Tenzing Norgay later authored the autobiography "Man of Everest."
(AP, 5/29/97)(SFEC, 6/1/97, p.T5)(HN, 5/29/98)(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.A23)(WSJ, 6/4/01, p.A20)
1953 May 30, Jonas Zemaitis (b.1909), the last Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan commander, was captured and transported to Moscow to be interviewed by intelligence chief Lavrenti Beria. Beria was executed this year. Zemaitis was executed in 1954.
(www.lka.lt/index.php/en/194837/)
1953 May 31, V.I. Tatlin (b.1885), Ukrainian-born painter and sculptor, died in Moscow.
(www.artnet.com/library/08/0834/T083448.asp)
1953 Jun 2, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain was crowned in Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(AP, 6/2/97)
1953 Jun 4, An atomic bomb test explosion took place at Yucca Flats, Nevada, equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT. This was double the 1945 blast over Hiroshima.
(SFC, 5/30/03, p.E7)
1953 Jun 4, North Koreans accepted U.N. proposals in all major respects.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1953 Jun 7, Pres. Eisenhower announced that proposals for a Korean truce are acceptable to the US and appealed to South Korea to accept terms to stop the war.
(SFC, 6/6/03, p.E2)
1953 Jun 7, The 1st color network telecast in compatible color was in Boston, Mass.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1953 Jun 8, The Supreme Court ruled that restaurants in Washington, D.C. could not refuse to serve blacks.
(AP, 6/8/97)(HN, 6/8/98)
1953 Jun 8, A killer tornado hit Flint, Mich. It killed 116 people and injured more than 850 in Ohio and Michigan.
(SSFC, 5/11/03, Par p.A11)(Hartford Courant, 6/9/63, p.23A)
1953 Jun 9, About 100 people died when a tornado struck Worcester, Mass. The tornado from the Midwest roared into Massachusetts. By the time it left, 94 people were dead, and more than $58 million in property damage occurred. It was the worst tornado in New England history.
(AP, 6/9/97)(http://tinyurl.com/yg8dhcd)
1953 Jun 10, John R. Edwards, US Senator, was born Seneca, South Carolina. In 2004 he ran as a Democrat presidential candidate and then agreed to run for the vice-presidency under Sen. John Kerry.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.D2)(SFC, 7/7/04, p.A9)
1953 Jun 13, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1900-1975), a former army general, began serving president of Colombia and continued to 1957. Under his term the police were put under the charge of the defense ministry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_Rojas_Pinilla)(Econ., 9/19/20, p.33)
1953 Jun 17, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stayed the executions of spies Julius & Ethel Rosenberg scheduled for next day, their 14th wedding anniversary. They were put to death June 19.
(MC, 6/17/02)(AP, 6/17/03)
1953 Jun 17, The East Germans threw stones at Russian tanks and were quickly subjugated. Eric Honecker threatened demonstrators with a "Peking Solution." Soviet tanks fought thousands of Berlin workers rioting against the East German government.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WSJ, 10/18/96, p.A13)(HN, 6/17/98)
1953 Jun 18, Egypt was declared a republic, and the monarchy was abolished, ending the rule of Muhammad Ali's dynasty. Naguib became the first president and also prime minister. Nasser became deputy prime minister and minister of interior.
(http://countrystudies.us/egypt/32.htm)
1953 Jun 19, Julius (b.5/12/1918) and Ethel Rosenberg (b.9/28/1915), convicted of passing U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. The Supreme Court had vacated a stay granted by Justice William O. Douglas and President Eisenhower refused to intervene, despite a massive worldwide campaign to free them. In 1983 Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton authored “The Rosenberg File." In 2001 Sam Roberts authored “The Brother," an account of David Greenglass, the younger brother of Ethel Rosenberg and star witness against her and Julius. In 2008 Morton Sobell (91), a former Soviet spy who had spent nearly 20 years in Alcatraz, fingered Julius Rosenberg as a fellow Soviet spy, but not Ethel.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(BEP, 1994)(WSJ, 10/1/01, p.A22)(WSJ, 9/25/08, p.A19)
1953 Jun 19, Egypt was proclaimed a republic. Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser became premier.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1953 Jun 24, John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier announced their engagement.
(HN, 6/24/98)
1953 Jun 24, The 6th annual World Trade Fair opened in San Francisco at the Palace Hotel with products imported from 21 nations.
(SFC, 6/20/03, p.E2)
1953 Jun 26, Lavrenti Beria, Russian vice-premier, interior minister, intelligence chief, was arrested. [see Jul 10]
(MC, 6/26/02)
1953 Jun 27, Alice McDermott, writer (That Night, At Weddings and Wakes), was born.
(HN, 6/27/01)
1953 Jun 30, The first Corvette rolled off the Chevrolet assembly line in Flint, MI. The brainchild of designer Harvey J. Earl sold for $3,250. GM made 300 Corvettes in 1953 and moved production to St. Louis for 1954.
(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)(WSJ, 7/12/02, p.W12)
1953 Jun, In response to Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy‘s tactics against alleged Communists and un-American activities, Republican President Eisenhower spoke out against "book burners" in June 1953 and "demagogues thirsty for personal power and public notice" in May 1954. Eisenhower also asserted the right of everybody to meet his "accuser face to face." [see Nov 23]
(HNQ, 6/18/98)(HNQ, 11/2/99)
1953 Jul 4, Imre Nagy succeeded Matyas Rkosi as premier of Hungary.
(Maggio)
1953 Jul 8, Anna Quindlen, novelist, was born.
(HN, 7/8/01)
1953 Jul 8, Neill Sheridan (31), a baseball player for the Pacific Coast League Sacramento Solons, hit a home run against the SF Seals at Sacramento’s Edmond’s Field. The ball reportedly flew a record 613.8 feet.
(SSFC, 1/26/14, p.B1)
1953 Jul 9, The 1st helicopter passenger service began in NYC.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1953 Jul 10, American forces withdrew from Pork Chop Hill in Korea after heavy fighting.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1953 Jul 10, In San Francisco The Chronicle newspaper began calling itself “The Voice of the West" on its editorial pages. It adopted the name for Page One on August 9, 1953.
(SSFC, 6/7/09, p.W3)
1953 Jul 10, Pravda reported that Lavrenti P. Beria, Stalin's ruthless chief of intelligence and member of the Soviet Presidium (1899-1953), had been ousted and arrested. [see Jun 26]
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(MC, 7/10/02)
1953 Jul 11, Leon Spinks, world heavyweight boxing champ (1978) , was born.
(PGA, 12/9/98)
1953 Jul 11, "Amos 'n Andy," TV Comedy, also radio from '29; last aired on CBS.
(MC, 7/11/02)
1953 Jul 13, The 1st Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, organized by Tom Patterson, opened with Alec Guiness in Richard III.
(WSJ, 7/18/02, p.D10)
1953 Jul 14, The freighter Jacob Luckenbach from SF rammed the Matson freighter Hawaiian Pilot near Point Montara, 17 miles from the Golden Gate. The Luckenbach sank while the Hawaiian Pilot limped to SF. Oil leaked from the Luckenback later killed numerous birds. In 2002 a $3.5 million plan for cleanup was begun. A $19 million cleanup ended in Sep.
(Ind, 3/31/01, 5A)(SFC, 2/5/02, p.A15)(SFC, 5/8/02, p.A22)(SFC, 10/1/02, p.A13)
1953 Jul 14, There was a Communist offensive in Korea.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1953 Jul 15, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, president of Haiti (1991, 1994-1995 ), was born.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1953 Jul 15, Eugenio Balzan (b.1874), Italian journalist, died in Lugano. In 1933 he moved to Switzerland, living in Zurich and Lugano, where he invested his fortune with success. He left a substantial inheritance to his daughter Angela Lina Balzan (1892–1956), who at the time was suffering an incurable disease. Before her death, she left instructions for a foundation, the Balzan Prize Foundation. Since then it has two headquarters, the Prize administered from Milan, the Fund from Zurich.
(AP, 9/6/10)(www.balzan.org/en/history_1698.html)
1953 Jul 16, Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc (82), author (Path to Rome), died.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1953 Jul 17, Pres. Eisenhower proclaimed Captive Nations Week following US Senate resolution on July 6 and US House resolution on July 8. It aimed at raising public awareness of the oppression of nations under the control of Communist and other non-democratic governments. It became public law in 1959.
(www.jstor.org/pss/2195306)
1953 Jul 20, USSR and Israel recovered diplomatic relations.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1953 Jul 25, A truce ended the Korean War. S.L.A. Marshall later authored "The River and the Gauntlet," a description of the slaughter the war brought to both sides. Clay Blair later authored "Forgotten War," and Roy Appelman wrote "East of Chosin" and "Disaster in Korea."
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)(WSJ, 8/6/99, p.W7)
1953 Jul 25, NYC transit fare rose from 10 to 15 cents and 1st use of subway tokens began.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1953 Jul 26, A band of anti-Batistas revolted against Pres. Fulgencio Batista with an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada army barracks in eastern Cuba. Castro was among the moncadistas and ousted Batista six years later. Castro was arrested days after the attack and later imprisoned on the Isle of Pines after the attack at Moncada.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncada_Barracks)(SFEC, 8/23/98, BR p.5)(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.D8)
1953 Jul 27, An armistice ending fighting in the three-year Korean War was signed by representatives of the United Nations, Korea and China in Panmunjom. Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison represented the UN and Gen. Nam Il represented North Korea. General Mark Clark, commander of the UN forces, added his signature to the armistice agreement. Armistice negotiations had begun in July 1951, when the outlook for reunifying North and South Korea became bleak, and fighting continued. The cease-fire provided for an exchange of prisoners of war and established a 2 ½ mile wide demilitarized zone and a demarcation line at the 38th parallel. Not all aspects of the agreement, however, were finalized—the UN Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea was not suspended until 1977. N. Korea measures 46,540 sq. miles, its population in 1974 was ~15 million people. 33,651 Americans had died and 8,000 were still missing in 2000.
(NG, 8/74, p.255)(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(WSJ, 6/24/96, C1)(WUD, 1994, p.1685)(HNPD, 7/27/98)(HN, 7/27/98)(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.T10)(SFEC, 6/25/00, Par p.5)(SFC, 7/25/03, p.E6)
1953 Jul 27, Vatican disallowed priests holiday work in factories.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1953 Jul 29, Ken Burns, epic documentary maker (Civil War, Baseball), was born.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1953 Jul 31, Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio (63), known as "Mr. Republican," died in New York. His successor was named by a Democratic governor.
(AP, 7/31/97)(WSJ, 5/25/01, p.A14)
1953 Jul, A US recession began triggered by demobilization after the Korean war. It continued to May of 1954.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1953)(Econ., 7/18/20, p.62)
1953 Aug 1, Fidel Castro was arrested in Cuba. [see Jul 26]
(MC, 8/1/02)
1953 Aug 3, Ian Bairnson, guitarist (Alan Parsons Project, Pilot), was born in Shetland Isles, Scotland.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1953 Aug 3, Pres. Eisenhower created the US Information Agency to communicate with foreign nations and counter Soviet propaganda. "The USIA explains and supports American foreign policy and promotes US national interests through a wide range of overseas information programs." Theodore Streibert served as its first director. The agency was dissolved in 1999. In 2008 Nicholas J. Cull authored “The Cold War and the United States Information Agency."
(WSJ, 7/23/08, p.A13)(http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/abtusia/commins.pdf)
1953 Aug 3, Frank Blair became the news anchor of the Today Show.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1953 Aug 4, Black families moved into the Trumbull Park housing project in Chicago.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1953 Aug 5, Operation "Big Switch" was under way as prisoners taken during the Korean conflict were exchanged at Panmunjom.
(AP, 8/5/03)
1953 Aug 7, Eastern Airlines entered the jet age with the Electra prop-jet.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1953 Aug 8, The song “Vaya con Dios" recorded by Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford reached number one on the Billboard magazine Best Seller Chart and stayed there for 9 weeks.
(SFC, 8/14/09, p.D6)
1953 Aug 8, The United States and South Korea initialed a mutual security pact.
(AP, 8/8/99)
1953 Aug 8, In Russia Georgi Malenkov reported the possession of hydrogen bomb.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1953 Aug 10, American mountain climber Art Gilkey (b.1926) was swept away by an avalanche on Pakistan’s K2. In 1993 his remains were brought down by mountaineer Roger Payne (1956-2012).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_American_Karakoram_Expedition)(Econ, 7/21/12, p.82)
1953 Aug 12, Ann Davidson, the 1st woman to sail solo across Atlantic, arrived Miami.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1953 Aug 12, The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(AP, 8/12/97)
1953 Aug 13, 4-5 million French went on strike against economizations.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1953 Aug 15, In Iran a CIA plot to unseat PM Mossadeq failed. It was masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt. A 2nd attempt succeeded on August 19. In preparation for the coup the CIA “stockpiled enough arms and demolition material to support a 10,000-man guerrilla organization for six months," and paid out $5.3 million for bribes and other costs. An initial US State Dept. 1989 release, outlining the years surrounding the coup, whitewashed the US role.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.92)(AP, 6/12/20)
1953 Aug 16, Shah Pahlavi of Persia and princess Soraya fled to Baghdad and then Rome.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1953 Aug 17, Kevin Rowlands, rocker (Dexy's Midnight Runners-Come on Eileen), was born.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1953 Aug 19, Gen'l. Zahedi ousted PM Mossadegh and became the Premier of Iran in a bloody coup that left 300 dead. Britain and the US CIA under Allen Dulles planned a secret mission to overthrow the government. PM Mossadeq had sought to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. The US government made a formal apology for the coup in 2000. A 1954 CIA description of the coup was made public in 2000. In 1979 Kermit Roosevelt (d.2000) published “Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran," an account of his role in the coup. In 2010 Darioush Bayandor authored “Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mossadeq Revisited."
(SFC, 11/20/53, p.A1)(SFC, 11/15/99, p.E6)(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)(WSJ, 3/20/00, p.A1)(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)(SFEC, 6/11/00, p.D6)(WSJ, 4/2/07, p.A6)(Econ, 5/15/10, p.91)
1953 Aug 20, Iran’s PM Mossadeq was arrested. He was soon tried for treason, and sentenced to three years in prison.
(www.associatepublisher.com/e/m/mo/mohammad_reza_pahlavi.htm)
1953 Aug 20, The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
(AP, 8/20/97)
1953 Aug 21, Joe Strummer [John Mellor], rocker (Clash-Rock the Casbah), was born.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1953 Aug 21, Marion Carl in Douglas Skyrocket reached a record 25,370 m.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1953 Aug 21, US CIA officials funneled $5 million to Iran to help the coup leaders consolidate power.
(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)
1953 Aug 22, France closed the penal colony on Devil's Island.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1953 Aug 22, Shah of Persia returned to Teheran.
(www.scribd.com/doc/20604794/Mohammad-Reza-Shah-Pahlavi)
1953 Aug 25, The government of India exercised its option to purchase a majority stake in Tata Airlines and Air India International Limited was born as one of the fruits of the Air Corporations Act that nationalized the air transportation industry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India#Early_years_.281932-1945.29)
1953 Aug 30, The first publicly announced experimental TV broadcast of a network program in compatible color was presented by NBC: St. George and the Dragon, starring Burr Tillstrom's Kukla, Fran and Ollie.
(http://kukla.tv/colortest.html)
1953 Aug, Canadian officials took 34 Inuit from Port Harrison (later known as Inukjuak) in Hudson Bay and put them on a boat north. One month and 1,390 miles later, the group was split in two and deposited on two remote islands, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord. The Inuit later said the government used them to assert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic at a time when Ottawa was worried about excessive US influence in the region.
(Reuters, 4/20/06)
1953 Sep 1, Henry Molaison (1926-2008) of Connecticut, suffering from severe epilepsy, underwent surgery in which most of his brain’s medial temporal lobes were removed. The procedure failed to cure him, but from that point on he was unable to form a new long-term memory. In 2016 Luke Dittrich authored “Patient H.M.: A Story of memory, Madness, and Family Secrets."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison)(Econ, 8/20/16, p.71)
1953 Sep 5, The 1st privately operated atomic reactor opened in Raleigh NC.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1953 Sep 5, US gave Persian premier Zahedi $45 million aid.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1953 Sep 6, The last American and Korean prisoners were exchanged in Operation Big Switch, the last official act of the Korean War.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1953 Sep 6, Adenauer's CDU won elections in German FR.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1953 Sep 12, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy (36) of Massachusetts married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (24).
(AP, 9/12/03)
1953 Sep 12, Nikita Khrushchev became the 1st Secretary of USSR Communist Party. His glass and marble Palace of Congresses obliterated the last vestiges of the 17th century palace of Tsarina Natalie Kirilovna Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the Great. [see Sep 13]
(MC, 9/12/01)(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.33)
1953 Sep 13, Nikita Khrushchev (b.1894) was elected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee. [see Sep 12]
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1953 Sep 15, Eric Mendelsohn (b.1887), German-born Jewish expressionist architect, died. From 1941 he lived in the US and established himself in San Francisco. The Russell at 3778 Washington St. in SF is the only house he designed in SF.
(SSFC, 3/8/09, p.B2)
1953 Sep 16, "The Robe," the first movie filmed in the widescreen process CinemaScope, had its world premiere at the Roxy Theater in New York.
(AP, 9/16/98)
1953 Sep 17, The 1st successful separation of Siamese twins was performed.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1953 Sep 20, Jimmy Stewart debuted in "The Six Shooter" on NBC.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1953 Sep 20, The "Loretta Young Show" (A Letter to Loretta) premiered on NBC TV and ran for 8 years.
(SFEC, 8/13/00, p.B10)
1953 Sep 21, North Korean pilot Lieutenant No Kum Sok defected and landed his aircraft at Kimpo airfield outside Seoul. He collected a reward while denying any knowledge of a bounty. American scientists were able to examine the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, powered by a jet engine superior to those then used in American fighter planes. It first saw combat in Korea during November 1950, where its performance shifted the balance of air power to Russian-backed North Korea.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Kum-sok)(HNPD, 9/28/98)
1953 Sep 22, An Islamic uprising took place in Atjeh, Indonesia.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1953 Sep 23, The 20th-Century Fox film "The Robe," the first movie filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen process, premiered in Hollywood, a week after opening in New York.
(AP, 9/23/03)
1953 Sep 26, US and Spain signed a defense treaty with 4 US bases to be set in Spain.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1953 Sep 26, Polish government fired and imprisoned Cardinal Wyszynski.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1953 Sep 27, A typhoon destroyed 1/3 of Nagoya, Japan.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1953 Sep 28, The "Bob & Ray Show," TV Variety, last aired on NBC.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1953 Sep 28, Edwin P. Hubble (b.1889), astronomer, died at age 63. He discovered that the more distant a galaxy seemed to be, the more its light was shifted toward the lower frequencies. This is know as the Doppler redshift, named after C.J. Doppler, an Austrian Physicist (1803-1853).
(WUB, 1995, p.426)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble)
1953 Sep 29, The family comedy "Make Room for Daddy," starring Danny Thomas, premiered on ABC.
(AP, 9/29/03)
1953 Sep 30, Robert Anderson's "Tea & Sympathy," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1953 Sep 30, Pres. Eisenhower named California Gov. Earl Warren (62) as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Lt. Gov. Goodwin J. Knight succeeded Warren.
(SFC, 9/26/03, p.E8)
1953 Sep 30, Auguste and Jacques Piccard dove with their bathosphere to a record 3150 m.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1953 Oct 2, Victor Borge (d.2000 at 91), musical humorist, opened his "Comedy in Music" at the Golden Theater on Broadway. It ran for 849 performances .
(SSFC, 12/24/00, p.B5)
1953 Oct 3, Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, British composer (Coronation March), died at 69.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1953 Oct 5, California Gov. Earl Warren (1891-1974) was sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M. Vinson. He was named by Pres. Eisenhower as chief justice of the US. Warren retired in 1969. In 2000 Lucas A. Powe, Jr., authored "The Warren Court and American Politics."
(SFEC, 6/8/97, BR p.1)(AP, 10/5/97)(www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/88/)
1953 Oct 5, South Africa’s Bantu Education Act, later renamed the Black Education Act, was passed to become effective Jan 1, 1954. It set out to ensure that whites received a better education than blacks. The segregation law legalized several aspects of the apartheid system.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_Education_Act,_1953)(Econ, 1/7/17, p.37)
1953 Oct 8, Birmingham, Alabama, barred Jackie Robinson's Negro-White All-Stars from playing there. Robinson gave in and dropped white players from his group.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1953 Oct 9, British troops in Guyana deposed Dr. Jagan and charged that he and his party "were under the complete control of a communist clique." Dr. Jagan responded with a civil disobedience campaign and was quickly jailed for 6 months. In 2011 declassified documents revealed that the UK under PM Winston Churchill overthrew the elected government of British Guiana, later Guyana, because he feared its left-wing leader, Cheddi Jagan, and his American wife, Janet Jagan, were leading the British colony into the arms of the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 3/7/96, p.A24)(AP, 8/25/11)
1953 Oct 9, Conrad Adenauer was elected West German chancellor.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1953 Oct 12, US and Greece signed a peace treaty that included US bases.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1953 Oct 13, A burglar alarm using ultrasonic or radio waves was patented by Samuel Bagno.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1953 Oct 14, Ike promised to fire as communists any federal workers taking the 5th amendment.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1953 Oct 14, Ariel Sharon, who had formed the elite Israeli commando unit "101" to fight Palestinian guerrillas, led it in a raid against the Jordanian village of Qibya killing some 70 civilians.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)(Econ, 12/16/06, p.85)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre)
1953 Oct 15, John Patrick's "Teahouse of the August Moon," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1953 Oct 16, Fidel Castro in Havana was sentenced to 15 years.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro)
1953 Oct 19, Singer Julius LaRosa, a regular on the CBS program "Arthur Godfrey Time," was fired on the air by Godfrey, who accused him of lacking humility.
(AP, 10/19/98)
1953 Oct 19, America's first ever non-stop transcontinental service began with flights by American Airlines using DC-7 aircraft.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
1953 Oct 20, Edward R. Murrow on his TV show “See It Now" brought public attention to the abuses of power in the era of Sen. McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade. Milo Radulovich (1926-2007), a US Air Force Reserve officer, had been stripped of his commission for refusing to denounce his family, which subscribed to several Serbian newspapers. His commission was later restored. Murrow took up the case and set the turning point to discredit McCarthyism.
(SFC, 11/26/07, p.D3)(Econ, 12/1/07, p.102)
1953 Oct 22, Laos gained full independence from France. [see Oct 23]
(MC, 10/22/01)
1953 Oct 23, France granted sovereignty to Laos. [see Oct 22]
(MC, 10/23/01)
1953 Oct 28, Red Barber resigned as Dodger sportscaster to join Yankees.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1953 Oct 29, Harry Clement Stubbs (d.2003), science fiction writer, authored "Mission of Gravity." It was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
(SFC, 11/1/03, p.A21)
1953 Oct 29, A British airliner with 11 passengers and 8 crew crashed into Kings Mountain, 10 miles west of Redwood City, Ca., and all aboard were killed. William Kapell (b.1922), genius pianist, died in the crash. He was returning from a tour in Australia when his airplane crashed into a mountain outside San Francisco. A set of his 1944-1953 recordings was released in 1998 by RCA. In 1999 BMG released "The William Kapell Edition," a nine-disk set.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.E10)(SFEC, 11/29/98, DB p.44)(WSJ, 2/1/99, p.A19)(WSJ, 5/24/08, p.W12)
1953 Oct 30, Gen. George C. Marshall (1880-1959) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Albert Schweitzer received his 1952 Peace Prize.
(AP, 10/30/97)
1953 Oct 31, Alice Eastwood (94), curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences in SF, died.
(SFC, 10/31/03, p.E2)
1953 Oct, In the US a landmark antitrust complaint, filed against Morgan Stanley and 16 other investment banking houses, was dismissed.
(WSJ, 10/9/97, p.A16)
1953 Oct, Universal Children’s Day was first observed in India. It was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1954. It became observed on different days in different ways in more than 120 nations. In India, Children’s Day is celebrated on 14th November, the birth anniversary of PM Jawaharlal Nehru.
(www.indianchild.com/childrens_day_india.htm)
1953 Nov 2, Pakistan became an Islamic republic.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1953 Nov 4, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (89), composer, died.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1953 Nov 8, Salazar's party won all parliament seats in Portugal.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1953 Nov 9, The Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that major league baseball did not come within the scope of federal antitrust laws. President Clinton later signed a bill overturning the labor relations aspect of the antitrust exemption.
(AP, 11/9/03)
1953 Nov 9, Welsh author-poet Dylan Thomas died in New York at age 39 during his poetry-reading blitz of the US. In 1955 John Malcolm Brinnin (d.1998 at 81), the man who brought Thomas to America, published "Dylan Thomas in America."
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T5)(AP, 11/9/97)(SFC, 6/29/98, p.A19)
1953 Nov 11, The Polio virus was identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1953 Nov 12, US district Judge Grim ruled the NFL can black out TV home games.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1953 Nov 12, David Ben-Gurion, resigned as premier of Israel.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1953 Nov 16, The US joined in the condemnation of Israel for its raid on Jordan.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1953 Nov 19, US Supreme Court rules (7-2) that baseball is a sport not a business.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1953 Nov 19, US VP Richard Nixon visited Hanoi in Vietnam.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1953 Nov 20, Scott Crossfield (1921-2006), test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), flew a D-558-II Skyrocket to a record speed of over 1,320 mph.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.B9)
1953 Nov 21, The "Piltdown Man," discovered in 1912, was proved to be a hoax. Paleontologist Kenneth Oakley and anatomists Joseph S. Weiner and Wilfred Le Gros Clark reexamined the bones from the 1912 Piltdown man and found unmistakable signs of forgery.
(MC, 11/21/01)(PacDisc. Spring/’96, p.16)
1953 Nov 23, While receiving an award for his contributions to civil rights from the B’Nai Brith’s Anti-Defamation League, President Dwight Eisenhower spontaneously denounced the tactics of fellow Republican Joseph McCarthy, asserting the right of everyone to meet his "accuser face to face." A vehement anti-Communist, Senator McCarthy led a long series of secret and public hearings on the role of Communism in the American government and society, frequently making unsubstantiated charges against individual citizens.
(HNQ, 6/18/98)
1953 Nov 25, "Guys & Dolls" closed at 46th St Theater NYC after 1200 performances.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1953 Nov 27, Playwright Eugene O’Neill died in Boston at age 65. Prof. John H. Raleigh (d.2001 at 81) later authored "The Plays of Eugene O’Neill."
(AP, 11/27/97)(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A20)
1953 Nov 28, "Wish You Were Here" closed at Imperial Theater NYC after 597 performances.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1953 Nov 28, New York City began 11 days without newspapers when a strike of photoengravers shut down publication. Sales increased for magazines and paperback books.
(DT, 11/28/97)
1953 Nov 29, American Airlines began 1st regular commercial NY-LA air service.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1953 Nov 30, French parachutists under Col. De Castries attacked Dien Bien Phu. The French expeditionary force was under the direction of Gen. Henri Navarre. In 2004 martin windrow authored “The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam."
(Econ, 4/3/04, p.86)
1953 Nov, In Italy the Iso Isetta microcar was introduced in Turin. The car originated with the Italian firm of Iso SpA. In the early 1950s the company was building refrigerators, motor scooters and small three-wheeled trucks. Iso's owner, Renzo Rivolta, decided he would like to build a small car for mass distribution. By 1952 the engineers Ermenegildo Preti and Pierluigi Raggi had designed a small car that used the scooter engine and named it Isetta—an Italian diminutive meaning little ISO.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.102)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta)
1953 Dec 3, The musical "Kismet" opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theater for 583 performances.
(AP, 12/3/99)(MC, 12/3/01)
1953 Dec 3, Eisenhower criticized McCarthy for saying communists are in Republican party.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1953 Dec 5, Italy and Yugoslavia agreed to pull troops out of the disputed Trieste border.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1953 Dec 6, Thomas Hulce, actor (Amadeus, Equus, Echo Park), was born Plymouth, Mi.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1953 Dec 7, Audrey Hepburn was featured on the cover of Life Magazine.
(SFC, 11/8/96, p.C6)
1953 Dec 7, Israel's PM Ben-Gurion retired.
(MC, 12/7/01)
1953 Dec 8, Pres. Eisenhower delivered his "Atoms for Peace" address to the UN. He called on both the US and Soviet Union to abandon their nuclear arsenals. The "Atoms for Peace" program spread nuclear technology to nations that agreed not to use it for military purposes.
(SFC, 5/28/98, p.A9)(SFC, 12/9/03, p.A10)
1953 Dec 9, John Malkovich, actor and director (Killing Fields), was born in Christopher, Ill.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1953 Dec 9, General Electric announced all Communist employees would be fired.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1953 Dec 12, Chuck Yeager, test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), reached Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.B9)
1953 Dec 13, Ben Bernanke, later head of the US Federal Reserve (2006), was born in Augusta, Ga.
(SSFC, 1/29/06, p.J1)
1953 Dec 16, Pres. Eisenhower held the 1st White House Press Conference before 161 reporters.
(MC, 12/16/01)
1953 Dec 16, Charles E. Yeager flew 2,575 kph in Bell X-1A.
(MC, 12/16/01)
1953 Dec 17, FCC approved RCA's black & white-compatible color TV specifications. Temporary approval of the mechanical CBS color model was rescinded.
(MC, 12/17/01)(SFC, 3/18/04, p.E1)
1953 Dec 19, Robert A. Millikan (85), US physicist (Nobel 1923), died.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1953 Dec 23, Lavrenti P. Beria (1899-1953), Soviet minister of internal security, was executed.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(MC, 12/23/01)
1953 Dec 24, Pierre Salinger, SF Chronicle reporter, won the 1953 McQuade Memorial Award for his articles on poor conditions in California county jails. He had himself arrested under an alias in Bakersfield and Stockton for an inside look.
(SFC, 12/19/03, p.E3)
1953 Dec 24, 2 speeding express trains crashed head-on killing 103 in Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1953 Dec 26, U.S. was to withdraw two divisions from Korea.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1953 Dec 30, The first color TV sets went on sale. An Admiral color set was priced about $1,175 in 1953 dollars! Color TV sets did not become affordable to the masses until the late 1960s.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(MC, 12/30/01)
1953 Dec 30, Ramon Magsaysay (1907-1957) began serving as the seventh President of the Philippines. American CIA operative Edward Lansdale almost single-handedly steered Magsaysay into the presidency of the Philippines.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Magsaysay)(Econ., 10/3/20, p.72)
1953 Dec, Playboy Magazine, founded in Chicago by Hugh Hefner (1926-2017) and Eldon sellers, featured Marilyn Monroe as its first cover girl and nude centerfold in the premier issue. Hefner had hired freelance illustrator Art Paul (1925-20178) as Playboy Magazine's first employee. It was Paul who created Playboy's bunny head logo.
(www.playboy.com/worldofplayboy/faq/firstissue.html)(SFC, 11/7/96, p.E12)(SFC, 9/28/17, p.A5)(SFC, 5/2/18, p.D7)
1953 Dec, In 1996 it was revealed that the Pentagon knew that more than 900 American troops were alive but not released by the North Koreans.
(SFC, 9/17/96, p.A10)
1953 Dec, Swanson and Sons introduced the TV Dinner. The turkey, sweet potatoes and peas package was priced at 98 cents and could be cooked in 25 minutes. It was invented by Gerry Thomas (d.2005), a salesman for Nebraska based C.A. Swanson, following an oversupply of turkey from the 1953 Thanksgiving holiday season. Campbell Soup acquired control of Swanson’s in 1955.
(PC, 1992 ed, p.943,952)(WSJ, 1/7/04, p.B1)(SFC, 7/21/05, p.B7)
1953 Dec, Ornithologist E. Thomas Gilliard (d.1965 at age 52) and his wife, Margaret, arrived in New Guinea to study birds in the Viktor Emanuel Range. Police activities forced them to remake plans and they proceeded to survey the Sepik River and to photograph the Latmul and Sawos people who lived along its banks.
(NH, 10/98, p.92)
1953 George Braque created his painting “La Treille." In 2010 it sold for $10.2 million.
(Econ, 5/8/10, p.85)
1953 Ralph Fasanella, American artist, created his painting “Welcome Home Boys." In 1990 it was acquired by the city of Oakland, Ca., as a gift from union workers for $53,000.
(SFC, 3/4/11, p.C7)
1953 Don G. Kelley, the first editor of Pacific Discovery magazine, drew the sketch of the grizzly bear that was used for the California State flag.
(Pac. Disc., summer, ‘96, p.17)
1953 W. de Kooning (1904-1997) completed his "Woman V" painting. In 1974 it was acquired by the Austria National Gallery for $850,000.
(http://tinyurl.com/3rr4bw)
1953 Artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Peter Voulkos and others gathered at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Voulkos went on to become the "guru of clay." From 1954-1959 he headed the ceramics dept. at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. In 1959 he joined the faculty of UC Berkeley and taught until 1985. The colors in his wood-fired work derive from the fusion of wood ash and clay produced in an oxygen-reduction atmosphere after the heat has reached 2300’ F.
(WSJ, 5/10/96, p.A-8)
1953 Rene Magritte painted "Golconde,’ which depicted men raining from the sky in front of a 2-3 story row-house with crossed windows.
(WSJ, 8/4/00, p.W2)
1953 David Park painted his "Pet Pet."
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.E6)
1953 Robert Rauschenberg painted his 22-foot-long "Automobile Tire Print" in collaboration with John Cage. Cage drove a car with a wheel inked by Rauschenberg. He also did "Erased de Kooning Drawing" this year, based on a crayon-and-ink drawing by de Kooning.
(WSJ, 9/25/97, p.A20)(SFC, 8/20/98, p.E1)
1953 Ben Shahn painted his "Second Allegory" and "Bookshop."
(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)
1953 Folk artist Grandma Moses (1860-1961) achieved global fame for her paintings. Her real name was Anna Mary Robertson. Plates with her scenes were given out as gas station premiums in 4 limited editions: "Out for the Christmas Tree," "Checkered House," "Jack and Jill," and "Catching the Thanksgiving."
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)(SFC, 3/26/97, Z1 p.7)
1953 Robert Duncan (d.1988), SF poet, and his partner Jess (Burgess Collins, d.2004) along with Harry Jacobus founded the King Ubu Gallery at 3119 Fillmore St. In 1954 a group of artists took it over and it became the Six Gallery.
(SFC, 5/26/96, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 1/7/04, p.A19)(SSFC, 3/14/04, p.F2)
1953 William Inge’s play, "Picnic," opened on Broadway. It won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a 1955 film. It was about a drifter who shakes up life in a small Kansas town.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.37)(WSJ, 4/14/00, p.W14)
1953 The play "Sabrina Fair" by Samuel Taylor featured Joseph Cotton and Margaret Sullivan. It was made into a 1954 film.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A26)
1953 Eric Ambler wrote his spy thriller "The Schirmer Inheritance."
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1953 Poul Anderson (d.2001 at 74), authored 2 science fiction novels: "Three Hearts and Three Lions" and "Brain Wave."
(SFC, 8/3/01, p.A24)
1953 Lars Valerian Ahlfors (1907-1996), mathematician, published his mathematics textbook "Complex Analysis. "
(SFC, 10/21/96, p.A17)
1953 The Associated Press Stylebook in English first came out. It became the gold standard of style reference books in the journalism industry.
(AP, 11/20/12)
1953 Michael Avallone (d.1999 at 74) published "The Tall Dolores," the first of 36 novels featuring detective Ed Moon.
(SFC, 3/2/99, p.A20)
1953 James Baldwin published his autobiographical novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain."
(SFC, 12/30/98, p.A2)
1953 Samuel Beckett translated his "En Attendant Godot" into English as "Waiting for Godot."
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A10)
1953 Sybille Bedford (b.1911), German-born English novelist, published her 1st book, “A Visit to Don Otavio," a travelogue of Mexico.
(WSJ, 5/12/05, p.D8)
1953 Saul Bellow authored his novel "The Adventures of Augie March," in which he defined the immigrant experience in US literature.
(SFC, 9/15/03, p.D1)
1953 Isaiah Berlin wrote his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox." He ruminated on the words of the Greek poet Archilochus who said: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.A28)
1953 Simone de Bouvier (Beauvoir) published a British edition of "America Day by Day," a journal of her travels in America from 1947. Her trip also began a relationship with Nelson Algren. In 1999 the book "A Transatlantic Love Affair" Letters to Nelson Algren" was published.
(WSJ, 1/18/98, p.A16)(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.4)
1953 Ray Bradbury wrote his novel "Fahrenheit 451." It was made into a film in 1967 and another version was planned in 1997.
(SFC, 1/31/97, p.D3)
1953 "Junkie" the first novel by William Burroughs was published. In it appeared the character Herbert who was the poet Herbert Huncke (1915-1996), who introduced Burroughs to heroin.
(SFC, 8/9/96, p.A19)
1953 Herb Caen, SF newspaper columnist, wrote his 4th book "Don’t Call It Frisco."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A13)
1953 Raymond Chandler wrote the detective novel "The Long Goodbye." He appears to have been the first writer to put into print the phrase "You can’t win them all."
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.B7)
1953 Arthur C. Clarke authored his sci-fi novel “"The Nine Billion Names of God."
(Econ, 10/24/15, p.65)
1953 Katherine Esau (1898-1997) published her classic "Plant Anatomy," a leading text on plant structure.
(SFC, 6/19/97, p.A22)
1953 British writer Ian Fleming published his first James Bond book, "Casino Royale."
(WSJ, 4/24/98, p.W1)
1953 Rev Billy Graham published "Peace With God," the first of his 18 books.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, Z1 p.3)
1953 Heinrich Harrer wrote his memoir "Seven Years in Tibet."
(SFEC,12/14/97, BR p.4)
1953 Robert Heilbroner (1919-2005) authored the 1st edition of his economics classic “Worldly Philosophers."
(WSJ, 1/11/05, p.A1)
1953 Joseph Heller began writing "Catch-22." The book was initially titled Catch 18 and contracted to Simon & Schuster in 1957. The agent, Candida Donadio, chose 22, her birthday was Oct 22, to avoid conflict with Mila 18, a novel by Leon Uris. Catch 22 was published in 1961. [see Louis Fallstein, 1951, "Face of a Hero."]
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A2)(SFC, 1/26/01, p.A21)
1953 Jack Kerouac wrote his book "The Subterraneans." Though set in San Francisco it was actually about characters from Fugazi’s Bar of Greenwich Village. Anton Rosenberg (d.1998 at 71), a hipster painter and musician, was portrayed as Julian Alexander. The book was not published until 1958.
(SFC, 2/23/98, p.A21)
1953 Alfred Kinsey published "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female," the 1st major US survey on women's sexual habits. He found that attitudes did not match behavior.
(NW, 6/30/03, p.44)
1953 "The Conservative Mind" by Russel Kirk, Michigan-born writer, was first published by Henry Regnery (1912-1996), the godfather of modern conservatism. "The book recovers a legacy of conservative ideas and also trumpets a conservative future." In the book is described an "inclination to cherish the permanent things in human existence." Kirk believed that "political problems are, at bottom, religious and moral problems." He lists six canons of conservatism the first of which is the conviction that "there exists a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. The book was re-issued in 1995 in a 40th anniversary ed. by Regnery Publ.
(WSJ, 9/28/95, p.A-16)(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A15)
1953 Wolf Mankowitz published "Wedgewood," the definitive handbook on the subject.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.D7)
1953 James Michener (d.1997 at 90) wrote his novel "The Bridges at Toko-Ri."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1953 Czeslaw Milosz, émigré Polish poet, published “The Captive Mind," in which he unpicked the mangling effects of communist thought.
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.76)
1953 Iris Murdoch published "Sartre: Romantic Rationalist."
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)
1953 Robert Musil (d.1942), Austrian author, got published in short form in English his unfinished book "The Man Without Qualities" set in Vienna around 1913. A full 2 volume set ($60) was published in 1995.
(WSJ, 4/12/95, A-12)
1953 Eugene (b.1913) and Howard Odum published "Fundamentals of Ecology," the first textbook on the subject.
(NH, 10/98, p.8)
1953 Alain Robbe-Grillet authored "Les Gommes" (The Erasers), a novel about a detective investigating an apparent murder who ends up killing the victim. It was seen in France as the debut of the "new novel."
(AP, 2/18/08)
1953 Eleanor O’Leary (1916-2008) authored “The Prince of Players: the Life of Edwin Booth" (1833-1893). Edwin was the founder of the NYC club called The Player’s (1888) and the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Pres. Lincoln.
(SFC, 7/22/08, p.B5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players'_Club)
1953 Jim Thompson authored the classic noir thriller “The Killer Inside Me."
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.D7)
1953 Leon Uris (d.2003) authored the novel "Battle Cry."
(AP, 6/24/03)(SFC, 6/25/03, p.A25)
1953 UC Berkeley Prof. Harold F. Weaver authored “Statistical Astronomy."
(SSFC, 5/7/17, p.C10)
1953 John Werthan authored "Seduction of the Innocent," which linked comic books to juvenile delinquency. This led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. EC Comics withdrew "Tales From the crypt" and many other titles.
(SFC, 1/21/04, p.D2)
1953 Richard Wright (d.1960) authored the novel: "The Outsider."
(WSJ, 9/4/01, p.A20)
1953 Thomas Guinzburg, Donald Hall, Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014) and George Plimpton founded the Paris Review. William Styron (1925-2006) helped establish the Paris Review. Matthiessen later admitted that he was a CIA recruit and used his work with the Review as a cover.
(SFC, 9/27/03, p.A2)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.95)(SSFC, 4/6/14, p.A18)
1953 Speedy Gonzalez, a cartoon mouse with a Mexican accent, debuted in the US.
(AP, 6/30/05)
1953 Merce Cunningham, dance group leader, created the Septet. He set steps to the "Trois Morceaux en forme de poire" music of Eric Satie.
(WSJ, 4/10/96, p.A-14)
1953 The Broadway musical "Kismet" was produced. It starred Alfred Drake and featured the music of Russian composer Borodin. The songs "Stranger in Paradise" and "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" were written by George Forrest (d.1999 at 84) and Robert Wright.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.45)(SFEC, 4/6/97, DB p.7)(SFC, 10/13/99, p.C2)
1953 The Broadway play "The Teahouse of the August Moon" was directed by Robert Lewis.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)
1953 Bud Browne (1912-2008), completed his first surf film, “Hawaiian Surfing Movies," in Santa Monica, Ca. He was later considered the father of surf films.
(AP, 7/29/08)
1953 Peter Graves starred in the TV series "Stalag 17."
(SFC, 5/19/96, BR, p.30)
1953 The weekly "General Electric Theater" began on TV.
(SFC, 11/24/00, p.D11)
1953 "The Life of Riley" featured William Bendix and Marjorie Reynolds (1917-1997) as Peg Riley. It ran until 1958.
(SFC, 2/13/97, p.C4)
1953 Soupy Sales (1926-2009) began his “Soupy’s On" 5-day-a-week variety show in Detroit on WXYZ-TV. The theme song was Charlie Parker’s "Yardbird Suite." Many jazz giants played on his show but very little film footage survived. His “Lunch with Soupy Sales" went national in October 1959, on the ABC television network.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soupy_Sales)(DFP, 7/28/96, p.F1,8)(AP, 10/23/09)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A8)
1953 Vito Scotti (1918-1996) replaced J. Carrol Naish as the Italian immigrant Luigi Basco in the TV show "Life with Luigi."
(SFC, 6/12/96, p.C2)
1953 The Romper Room TV show for children began in Baltimore on station WBAL. It featured Nancy Claster (d.1997 at 82) as Miss Nancy who stayed on until 1964 when her daughter, Sally, took over for the next 16 years. Locally produced shows aired in 150 cities. Her "magic mirror" gave the names of children watching at home, names that parents had sent in.
(SFC, 4/26/97, p.A22)
1953 Steve Allen (d.2000) created and hosted the Tonight Show in NYC. It went national in 1954. Allen remained host until 1957.
(SFC, 11/1/00, p.A19)(SSFC, 5/2/04, Par. p.4)
1953 The CBS musical series “Summertime USA" was set in various resorts from Havana to Atlantic City. It featured Teresa Brewer and Mel Torme.
(SFC, 10/19/07, p.A11)
1953 The TV show "Winky Dink and You" premiered as the 1st interactive kids’ show.
(NW, 11/11/02, p.54)
1953 Jon Hendricks (1921-2017), Jazz singer and songwriter, began collaborating with fellow jazz singer Dave Lambert. They later joined with Annie Ross, a British-born jazz singer and in 1958 recorded the hit album “Sing a Song of Basie."
(SFC, 11/24/17, p.D3)
1953 Nat Hentoff became the NYC editor of Down Beat. Willie "the Lion" Smith, Harlem stride pianist, soon became his mentor.
(WSJ, 12/30/03, p.D8)
1953 Jimmy Boyd sang "Santa Got Stuck in the Chimney." It was written by Hy Heath and Fred Rose, who also wrote "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." It raised a ruckus in the 96-97 holiday season when another version was contested between a 51-year-old composer and 5-year-old singer.
(WSJ, 1/8/97, p.A6)
1953 Eddie Fisher (1928-2010), American singer, made a hit with the song “Oh, My Pa-Pa."
(SFC, 9/24/10, p.C6)(www.discogs.com/artist/Eddie+Fisher)
1953 Jimmy Forrest composed the jazz tune "Night Train."
(SI-WPC, 1997)
1953 James Myers (d.2001) and Max Freedman wrote the song "Rock Around the Clock." It was first recorded by Sunny Dae and His Knights. Bill Haley and the Comets recorded it in 1954. It became popular in 1955 following its use in the film "Blackboard Jungle."
(SSFC, 5/13/01, p.A27)
1953 The Platters singing group was formed with Joe Jefferson, Cornell Gunther, Alex Hodge and Herb Reed on lead vocals. The group went on to appear in 27 movies.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, DB p.67)
1953 In Los Angeles The Hi-Lo’s, a vocal quartet, formed with Gene Puerling (1929-2008) singing bass-baritone. The group became the most popular jazz-based vocal group of the period.
(SFC, 4/3/08, p.B5)
1953 The Wagner opera “Tristan und Isolde" was recorded for the 1st time on 33-rpm long-playing record. The performance was conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler with Kirsten Flagstad of Norway as Isolde. In 2005 a new recording was completed featuring Placido Domingo.
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.67)
1953 The Batsheva de Rothschild Foundation, founded by Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild (d.1999 at 84), sponsored a 2-week festival of American modern dance on Broadway.
(SFC, 4/23/99, p.D8)
1953 The Milwaukee County Baseball Stadium was built.
(SFC, 7/21/96, zone 1 p.6)
1953 J.F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier, a society girl turned reporter.
(TMC, 1994, p.1953)
1953 Elizabeth Bottomley (1931-1996) married Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit chip and founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor. After her divorce in 1975, she donated millions of dollars to the Portland Museum of Art, Maine maritime Museum and the Univ. of Maine.
(SFC, 9/19/96, p.A17)
1953 The American Museum of Natural History created Discovery Tours, the first museum educational travel program in the US.
(AMNHDT, 5/98)
1953 John F. Kennedy was seeing Audrey Hepburn while dating Jackie Onassis. So it says in the 1996 book "Jack and Jackie" by Christopher Anderson
(USAT, 6/19/96, p.2D)
1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin opened City Lights Bookstore, the 1st all-paperback bookstore in the US, opened in San Francisco's North Beach. In 1993 it was designated a national literary landmark.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.C4)(SFC, 6/5/03, p.F11)
1953 Publishers Clearinghouse was founded by Harold and LuEsther Mertz and their daughter Joyce. In 1997 it received more than $100 million in annual sales.
(SFEC, 2/23/97, Par p.2)
1953 Toni Stone (1921-1996), female 2nd baseman for the Negro League Indianapolis Clowns, batted .243. She was one of the first women in professional baseball.
(SFC, 11/6/96, p.B3)
1953 Helenor Foerster (d.1998 at 103) was named "Woman of the Year for Science" by the Women’s National Press Club. She co-authored the "Atlas and Textbook of Ophthalmic Pathology," and discovered that toxoplasma was the cause of a widely spread eye disease that led to blindness.
(SFC, 9/23/98, p.C2)
1953 Pres. Eisenhower issued an executive order that required the dismissal of all homosexual employees in the government.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A2)
1953 Eisenhower appointed the staunch anti-Communist John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State.
(TL, 1988, p.114)
1953 Eisenhower appointed Ezra Taft Benson, a prominent Mormon from Idaho, as his agricultural sec.
(WSJ, 10/22/96, p.A20)
1953 Pres. Eisenhower suspended the security clearance of physicist Robert Oppenheimer.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.B2)
1953 Project Solarium was an American national-level exercise in strategy and foreign policy design convened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was intended to produce consensus among senior officials in the national security community on the most effective strategy for responding to Soviet expansionism in the wake of the early Cold War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Solarium)
1953 The Eisenhower administration established the Small Business Administration to work with private lenders to make loans for various entrepreneurial uses.
(WSJ, 11/29/04, p.R8)
1953 The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) held hearings in the Bay Area. Paul Sidney Chown (d.1997 at 80), a supporter of the old Independent Progressive Party, defied the committee and described its witnesses as "paid, professional, hopped-up informers."
(SFC, 6/23/97, p.A22)
1953 Federal regulators forced the Bank of America under S.H. Amacost into a cost cutting campaign that included the sale of the BofA headquarters, the closure of 187 branches and the company’s first layoffs.
(SFC, 4/14/98, p.B4)
1953 Congress formally ratified Ohio statehood. Congress had initially voted to accept Ohio’s borders and constitution on Feb 19, 1803.
(AP, 2/19/98)
1953 The first issue of the US CIA sponsored British magazine "Encounter" was published under Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender. It became the West's most important vehicle for highbrow anti-Marxist commentary. The funding source did not become known until 1966/7.
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A46)(Econ, 6/19/04, p.81)
1953 The US military opened the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, its largest medical facility outside the US, in Landstuhl, Germany.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A14)
1953 The Washington National Cathedral installed stained-glass windows that paid tribute to Gen. Stonewall Jackson and Gen. Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army. The Confederate flags depicted in the windows were scheduled for removal in 2016.
(SFC, 6/10/16, p.A10)
1953 The California Legislature rewrote a 1919 wage law to require overtime pay for women and minors who work extra days or hours.
(SFC, 5/10/17, p.D3)
1953 San Francisco’s used car salesman Edward Shapiro (1900-1976), aka Horsetrader Ed, was indicted and convicted of income tax evasion and sent to San Quentin prison for 8 months. His Kar Korral at Eddy and Van Ness was later taken over by former 49er player Ed Balatti, who also called himself Horsetrader Ed. In 1987 Balatti was convicted of fencing stolen merchandise and sentenced to 6 years in San Quentin.
(SFC, 9/28/13, p.C3)
1953 Leo Krikorian (1922-2004), artist and photographer, and fellow Black Mountain student Knute Stiles purchased a bar at 1546 Grant St. in North Beach they called The Place. It became a center for Beats and oddballs in SF until it closed in 1960.
(SFC, 1/18/05, p.B4)(SFC, 3/18/17, p.C1)
1953 In Colorado City, Arizona, a mass police raid against members of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS) led to the arrest of scores of men and the separation of children from their families. FLDS members were avowed polygamists.
(Econ, 10/15/05, p.33)
1953 Rev. T.J. Jemison organized a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was the 1st of its kind and became a model for the 1955 Martin Luther King rebellion in Montgomery, Ala.
(NW, 6/9/03, p/14)
1953 Augie Hiebert (1916-2007) opened Alaska’s first television station in Anchorage.
(WSJ, 9/22/07, p.A8)
1953 The Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co. became Colgate-Palmolive Co.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.G3)
1953 Dow Jones & Co. ceased the publication of its Saturday Wall Street Journal after the NYSE ended Saturday trading.
(WSJ, 8/1/07, p.B6)
1953 Leonard H. Goldenson (d.1999 at 94), chief executive of United Paramount Theaters, bought the near-bankrupt ABC broadcasting network. ABC had 14 stations and trailed behind CBS, NBC and DuMont Network. In 1986 Goldenson oversaw the ABC merger with Capital Cities Broadcasting, which was bought by Disney in 1996 for $19 billion.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.B3)
1953 General Foods acquired the Perkins Products Co. which included "Kool-Aid."
(SFC, 4/9/96, z1 p.5)
1953 The Hearst Corp. acquired Sports Afield magazine.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1953 Jim Beam began selling special decanters filled with Kentucky Straight Bourbon. Political bottles were produced from 1956 to 1988.
(SFC, 4/5/06, p.G8)
1953 John Mitchell (d.2007 at 89), his younger brother Larry, and brother-in-law Bob Davis turned an old liquor store in the SF Mission District into Mitchell’s Ice Cream parlor, which became a Bay Area tradition.
(SFC, 6/16/07, p.B6)
1953 Air conditioning units became widely available on American cars.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl.)
1953 Naugahyde, an imitation leather made from plastic, was sold by Uniroyal Technology to the auto industry for upholstery. It soon came to be used for office seating units and for some residential furniture.
(SFC, 3/5/08, p.G4)
1953 Industry experts in 1996 picked the 1953 Studebaker Starlight as the number 4 favorite car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1953 Howard Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Chevy Chase, Md. The sale of Hughes Aircraft to General Motors in 1985 added $5 billion to the coffers of the institute.
(WSJ, 9/22/06, p.B1)
1953 Thomas Watson Jr., the son of IBM chief Thomas Watson, threatened to cancel plans for plants in Kentucky and North Carolina if they could not be fully racially integrated. State governors backed down and the plants opened 3 years later.
(Econ, 6/11/11, p.66)
1953 John von Neumann and a band of engineers at Princeton Univ. created a computer that simulated nuclear explosions by day and modeled artificial life forms, the creations of Nils Barricelli (1912-1993), by night. Barricelli, a Norwegian-Italian mathematician, was wealthy and held an unpaid residency at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton, NJ, in 1953, 1954. and 1956. His early computer-assisted experiments in symbiogenesis and evolution are considered pioneering in artificial life research.
(Econ, 3/10/12, p.97)
1953 Remington-Rand developed the 1st high-speed printer for use on the Univac mainframe computer.
(SFC, 7/26/04, p.F4)
1953 Thompson Products developed the first automotive ball joint suspension systems.
(F, 10/7/96, p.69)
1953 WD-40 was created by three technicians at the San Diego Rocket Chemical Company. The company sold the product to coat missiles and prevent rust. Consumers later discovered its use as a lubricant. In 1969 John Barry (1925-2000) became head of the company and soon renamed the firm after the product.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40)(SFC, 7/14/99, p.8)(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D5)
1953 Doctors attributed lung cancer for the first time to cigarette smoking.
(TL, 1988, p.114)
1953 The first human transplant, a kidney from mother to son, was performed in Paris.
(TL, 1988, p.114)
1953 Dr. Maurice M. Black (1918-1996) predicted that "the use of ultra-radical surgical attempts to cure breast cancer are not consistent with the biology of the disease."
(SFC, 9/16/96, p.A15)
1953 Donald Ewen Cameron (1901-1967), professor of neurology and psychology at Albany State Medical School, developed what he called "psychic driving". He developed the theory that mental patients could be cured by treatment that erased existing memories and by rebuilding the psyche completely.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcameronDE.htm)
1953 At the Univ. of Chicago Nathaniel Kleitman and his students at the world’s first sleep laboratory first observed and studied rapid eye movement, aka REM.
(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.2)
1953 Robert F. Borkenstein (d.2002) invented a Breathalyzer to test drivers for alcohol content. It stemmed from his work with Dr. R.N. Harger of the Indiana School of Medicine to make the Drunkometer.
(SFC, 8/19/02, p.B6)
1953 While researching silicon for its possible applications in electronics, Gerald Pearson, an empirical physicist at Bell Laboratories, inadvertently made a solar cell that was far more efficient than solar cells made from selenium. Two other Bell scientists, Daryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller, refined Pearson's discovery came up with the first solar cell capable of converting enough of the sun's energy into power to run everyday electrical equipment.
(www.californiasolarcenter.org/history_pv.html)
1953 Dr. Daniel Fox, a chemist at GE, invented Lexan polycarbonate resin, a hard plastic.
(WSJ, 1/10/07, p.B2)
1953 Stanley L. Miller (1930-2007), a chemist at the Univ. of Chicago, conducted an experiment that showed a whole range of organic compounds synthesized when an electric spark was passed through a mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor. These compounds combined to produce urea and several amino-acids. His resulting paper was titled “Production of amino acids under possible primitive Earth conditions."
(Econ, 2/18/06, p.75)(Econ, 6/2/07, p.95)
1953 A chemist working for J.R. Simplot, Idaho potato mogul, perfected a technique of freezing chipped potatoes. By the late 1960s Jack Simplot was the largest supplier of French fries to McDonald’s.
(Econ, 6/14/08, p.105)
1953 Meta Neumann (1896-1996), neuropathologist, established that Alzheimer’s disease is a metabolic disorder rather than a function of old age. In the mid 1960s she uncovered the rare degenerative brain condition known as Neumann’s disease.
(SFC, 12/2/96, p.D2)
1953 McGeorge Bundy at 34 became the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard.
(SFC, 9/17/96, p.A22)
1953 This was the peak year for accordion imports to the US. 200,000 instruments were imported from Italy, and another 200,000 come in from Germany.
(WWofA, Baldoni)
1953 Mt. Everest was climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norkay, a Sherpa.
(TL, 1988, p.114)(TMC, 1994, p.1953)
1953 The first attempt to scale K2, the world’s 2nd tallest mountain, was made by 7 Americans led by Charles Houston and Robert Bates. The mountain straddled China and Pakistan. In 1954 they authored “K2: The Savage Mountain.
(WSJ, 4/28/07, p.P8)
1953 In Pakistan Nanga Parbat, an 8,126-meter (26,660-foot) peak in the Himalayas, was scaled for the first time. It was nicknamed Killer Mountain" because thirty climbers had died trying to scale it prior to this.
(AP, 7/1/17)
1953 Revitalized grasslands of the US western plains were transferred to various federal and state agencies.
(NH, 5/96, p.64)
1953 In California Roberts Regional Recreation Area opened in the Oakland Hills.
(SFC, 6/1/07, p.B9)
1953 The Khapra beetle, one of the world's most tenacious and destructive stored-produce pests, first invaded California. It originated in South Asia. The California infestation was not eradicated until 1966, at a cost of $15 million.
(http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/urban/beetles/khapra_beetle.htm)
1953 W.W. Dixon (b.1883), storybook home architect, died. Most of his homes were built in the East Bay of the SF Bay Area.
(SFC, 8/20/05, p.F1)
1953 Florida Gov. Daniel McCarty died while in office.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.C14)
1953 Project MKUltra, sometimes referred to as the CIA's mind control program, was officially sanctioned. The code name given to an illegal program of experiments on human subjects, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had begun in the early 1950s. Project MKUltra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee of the US Congress, and a Gerald Ford commission to investigate CIA activities within the United States. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed in 1973. South Boston gangster James Bulgar was among prison inmates who had time shaved off their sentences in exchange for LSD injections in MKUltra.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra)(Boston Globe, 2/26/16, p.A12)
1953 Frank Olson, US Army chemist, jumped to his death from a hotel window while under the influence of LSD. He was an unwitting subject in the CIA MKULTRA mind-control project. In 1976 Congress approved a $760,000 payment to his widow.
(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.A4)
1953 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (b.1896), author of “The Yearling," died. In 2005 Rodger L. Tarr edited a collection of her letters to her husband, Norton S. Baskin: “The Private Marjorie."
(WSJ, 2/25/05, p.W8)
1953 Jim Thorpe, star athlete, died. He was the first president of the National Football League.
(HT, 4/97, p.18)(SFC, 7/11/98, p.B3)
1953 Bolivia’s agrarian reform of 1953, born of the1952 revolution, was adversely affected by corruption and pressure groups. By 1996, 55 million hectares had been handed over to large landholders, and 45 million hectares to small farmers.
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32429)
1953 In Brazil Darcy Ribeiro, anthropologist (1923-1997), founded the Museum of the Indian in Rio de Janeiro.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A20)
1953 Brazil’s Petrobras was founded under the slogan “o petroleo e nosso" (the oil is ours) as the country produced 2,700 barrels of oil per day and consumed 137,000 per day. In 2006 Brazil became independent from foreign oil.
(AP, 4/22/06)(Econ, 2/14/15, p.33)
1953 In Brazil JBS Friboi began as a butchers founded by Jose Sobrinho in Anapolis, Goias state. By 2011 it was the world’s largest meat producer.
(Econ, 9/24/11, SR p.22)
1953 Volkswagen began manufacturing cars in Brazil.
(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.6)
1953 The British comedy film “Trouble in Store" starred comedian Norman Wisdom (d.2010 at 95) and was directed by John Paddy Carstairs.
(Econ, 10/16/10, p.105)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0046464/)
1953 In Britain the Royal Yacht Britannia was put into service. The yacht was retired in 1997.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.B6)
1953 Britain signed the European convention, which set out a range of individual rights.
(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A13)
1953 Poppit beads, small plastic ball-and-socket units, were first created in England. They were later sold under the names Poppit, Snapit or Lockit and sold as beads for necklaces.
(SFC, 4/16/08, p.G3)
1953 Greece was among 22 countries that agreed to halve Germany's foreign debt at a conference in London.
(AP, 3/22/15)
1953 Canada established the village of Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic by transplanting Inuit families from the Hudson Bay area.
(NG, 6/1988, 762)
1953 Marilyn Monroe stayed at the Tekarra Lodge in Jasper, Alberta, Canada, while filming “River of No Return" (1954). She had been asked to leave the Jasper Park Lodge for dressing inappropriately.
(SSFC, 5/19/13, p.N7)
1953 King Norodom Sihanouk gained independence for Cambodia from France. Pol Pot helped set up the Communist Party.
(SFC, 6/14/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.A17)
1953 China’s first 5-year plan, formulated with Soviet help, called for the manufacture of 6 million tons of cement, 5m tons of pig iron, and 4.12m tons of steel. All of these targets were surpassed by 1957.
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.88)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_China)
1953 In Colombia a domestic spy agency was created during the government of Gen. Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. In 1960 it reconstructed as the DAS by President Alberto Lleras Camargo.
(AP, 9/18/09)
1953 In Costa Rica Jose Figueres Ferrer gained power.
(WSJ, 12/12/97, p.A19)
1953 Ibrahim Ferrer Planas (d.2005), singer, joined a group called Los Bocucos, led by vocalist Pacho Alonso in Santiago, Cuba. In 1996 he recorded with Ry Cooder for the "Buena Vista Social Club" which was followed by his own solo album.
(SFEC, 9/19/99, DB p.37)(SFEM, 10/3/99, p.31)
1953 Klement Gottwald (b.1896), leader of the Czech Communist Party, died. His embalmed body was placed in a mausoleum in Prague until 1962, when it was buried.
(SFC, 9/10/08, p.A5)
1953 Yasser Arafat (d.2004), as a student in Egypt, authored “Don’t Forget Palestine."
(Econ, 11/13/04, p.95)
1953 In West Germany a restitution law included compensation for seized life, illness and retirement policies of Jewish Holocaust victims.
(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.A13)
1953 In West Germany Werner Hoefer (d.1997 at 84) began his TV roundtable discussion "Der Internationale Freuschoppen." He led the show until 1987. Revelations of his work as a Nazi forced the end of his career as the show’s host.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B8)
1953 In Greenland Inuit inhabitants were forcibly relocated for the American Thule air base. 650 later sued and won a $71,400 settlement.
(SFC, 11/3/01, p.C1)
1953 In Haiti Felix Morisseau-Leroy (d.1998 at 86) premiered his play "Antigone" in Port-au-Prince. It was the first serious play in the native Creole language.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1953 The last 21 residents of Ireland’s Great Blasket Island were repatriated to the mainland.
(SSFC, 3/11/12, p.F5)
1953 In Israel Shimon Peres (b.1923) became the youngest ever Director General of the Ministry of Defense. He was involved in arms purchases and establishing strategic alliances that were important for the State of Israel.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres)
1953 Israeli forces demolished Kufr Birim, a Maronite village just south of the Lebanese border, five years after persuading hundreds of residents to leave with the promise of a speedy return that never materialized.
(AP, 5/28/14)
1953 Italy founded ENIPower, a state attempt to break the oligopoly of the “Seven Sister," the major oil companies of the day.
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.53)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.64)
1953 In Japan a Leprosy Prevention Law banished lepers to small islands and remote areas. It was repealed in 1996.
(SFC, 5/24/01, p.C3)(WSJ, 5/24/01, p.A1)
1953 The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) was founded as the world’s first sovereign wealth fund. In 2008 its assets were estimated at $200 billion.
(WSJ, 1/16/08, p.A10)(Econ, 1/19/08, p.80)
1953 Mexico allowed women the right to vote.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.C6)
1953 A group of 1,200 North Korean orphans arrived at the small, forested village of Plakowice, where they lived in a former hospital building for six years under the care of Polish teachers. In 2018 the documentary film "The Children Gone to Poland" premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.
(AFP, 10/6/18)
1953 Hizb ut-Tahir was founded in Jerusalem by Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, an Islamic scholar and appeals court judge from the Palestinian village of Ijzim. It seeks the return of the caliphate, based on Islamic sharia law, by political means. By 2012 it had members and sympathizers in more than 50 countries.
(AP, 3/10/12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hizb_ut-Tahrir)
1953 Sarao Motors was begun in the Philippines and later became popular for the manufacture of the popular jeepney passenger vehicles.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarao_Motors) (SFC, 11/22/00, p.A18)
1953 The Polish government, under pressure from the Soviet Union, renounced any claim to reparations from East Germany.
(Econ, 8/19/17, p.44)
1953 In Poland Brig. Gen. August Emil Fieldorf, a top clandestine Home Army commander who once served as emissary to the country's government-in-exile, was accused of ordering killings of Soviet soldiers and hanged. Poland's communist authorities later admitted the charges were fabricated.
(AP, 8/30/12)
1953 Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967), Russian writer won the Stalin Peace Prize. He was the Paris correspondent for Izvestia at the outset of Stalin’s purges in 1932. His books include: "The Ninth Wave" (1951), "The Thaw," and "People, Years and Life," his memoirs that began coming out it Novy Mir in 1960. Joshua Rubenstein wrote his biography in 1996 titled: "Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Rubenstein."
(WSJ, 4/2/96, p.A-12)
1953 In Russia Nikita Khrushchev came to power. His glass and marble Palace of Congresses obliterated the last vestiges of the 17th century palace of Tsarina Natalie Kirilovna Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the Great.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.33)
1953 USSR Lt. Gen’l. Pavel Sudoplatov, spy, was arrested after the death of Stalin and sent to the Gulag.
(SFC, 9/28/96, p.A21)
1953 South Korea passed a law against abortion to counter a Confucian preference for sons, but it was rarely enforced.
(Econ, 5/23/15, p.32)
1953 King Abdul Aziz died. He was the founder of modern Saudi Arabia and fathered a total of 44 sons before his death. Aziz was succeeded by King Saud who ruled from 1953-1964.
(WSJ, 1/9/96, p.A-10)(WSJ, 10/22/01, p.A18)
1953 A freedom charter in the struggle against apartheid was framed in Soweto, South Africa.
(AFP, 5/20/06)
1953 The Spanish film “Bienvenido Mister Marshall!" was directed by Luis Garcia Berlanga.
(Econ, 8/10/13, p.71)
1953-1954 When G. David Schine, assistant to Joseph McCarthy, was drafted into the Army, their lawyer, Roy Cohn, tried to get special privileges to stay out and threatened the Army with an investigation. This prompted an independent investigation and the Army-McCarthy hearings. The Wisconsin Republican’s abuse of Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens during the hearings prompted McCarthy’s condemnation by the Senate.
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1953-1954 Members of the Estonian Forest Brothers resistance movement were killed by Stalin's NKVD secret police.
(SFC, 4/3/04, p.A10)
1953-1955 Bolivia’s President Paz Estenssoro established universal suffrage. The government reduced the size and budget of the armed forces. The three major tin companies were nationalized, to be run by the Mining Corporation of Bolivia (Comibol). Strongly influenced by peasants, the government enacted sweeping agrarian reform. Miners organized the Bolivian Labor Federation (COB).
(http://tinyurl.com/s7dzd)
1953-1955 Fidel Castro, a prospective major league baseball player, was jailed in Cuba.
(EnRoute, 11/’95, p.111)
1953-1956 Gen’l. Alfred M. Gruenther took over a Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. He succeeded Gen’l. Ridgeway.
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)
1953-1956 Sir Roger Makins (1904-1996) served as the British ambassador to the US. His wife, Alice Davis, was the daughter of Dwight Davis, for whom the tennis Davis Cup was named.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A26)
1953-1958 The Stanley Brothers, Ralph and Carter, recorded some of their best songs on the Mercury label.
(WSJ, 10/8/98, p.A16)
1953-1958 In Kenya 1,090 Kikuyu were hanged by British authorities due to the Mau Mau rebellion.
(Econ, 1/1/05, p.66)
1953-1958 Sir Garfield Todd (d.2002) served as prime minister of Southern Rhodesia.
(AP, 10/13/02)
1953-1961 Dwight D. Eisenhower (b.1890) was the 34th President of the US.
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)
1953-1961 Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden served as the Secretary-General of the UN.
(SFC, 12/14/96, p.A1)
1953-1970 Albert Gore Sr. (d.1998 at 90) served as US Senator from Tennessee. He opposed the war in Vietnam while his son served there as an Army journalist.
(SFEC, 12/6/98, p.C14)
1953-1971 "The Danny Thomas Show" ran on TV.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, p.C10)
1953-1971 Nathan Marsh Pusey (1907-2001), served as president of Harvard Univ.
(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)
1953-1986 Markus Wolf was the head of East Germany’s int’l. spy network. He planted some 4,000 agents in the West during the Cold War and managed to steal NATO secrets for the Soviet bloc. In 1997 he published "Man Without a Face," an account of his experiences.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 6/02/97, p.A20)
