Timeline 1957
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1957 Jan 1, The state of Saarland, established in 1920 in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, joined the Federal Republic of West Germany. The Nazis had called the area "Westmark." After World War II the Saarland had come under French administration.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.45)(http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Saarland)
1957 Jan 2, The SF Stock Exchange merged with the Los Angeles Stock Exchange and formed the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.B1)
1957 Jan 3, The Hamilton Watch Company was the first to introduce an electric watch in Lancaster, Pa.
(http://rondeau.net/history.html)
1957 Jan 5, President Eisenhower, in an address to Congress, proposed offering military assistance to Middle Eastern countries so they could resist Communist aggression; this became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. Under this doctrine a Middle Eastern country could request American economic assistance or aid from US military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of US forces "to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism". The phrase "international communism" made the doctrine much broader than simply responding to Soviet military action. A danger that could be linked to communists of any nation could conceivably invoke the doctrine.
(AP, 1/5/07)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Doctrine)
1957 Jan 6, Elvis Presley made another appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1957 Jan 7, Katie Couric, [Katherine], TV news host (Today), was born in Arlington, VA.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1957 Jan 9, British PM Anthony Eden resigned in the wake of the Suez crises.
(AP, 1/9/99)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.23)
1957 Jan 10, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to fight facial segregation by means of nonviolent protests. In 1986 David J. Garrow authored “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference." King met with about 60 black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. Their goal was to form an organization to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. In addition to King, Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, C.K. Steele, Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, Joseph Lowery of Mobile, and Ralph Abernathy of Montgomery, all played key roles in this meeting which led to the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Christian_Leadership_Conference)(ON, 4/2011, p.4,5)
1957 Jan 10, Harold Macmillan became prime minister of Britain, following the resignation of Anthony Eden.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1957 Jan 12, Harry Belafonte recorded "The Banana Boat Song."
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.D18)
1957 Jan 13, The Wham-O Company produced the 1st Frisbee. It was initially called the Pluto Platter.
(SFC, 7/1/02, p.B5)(MC, 1/13/02)
1957 Jan 14, Humphrey Bogart (57), actor, died in Los Angeles of cancer of the esophagus. His many films included “Casablanca" and “Caine Mutiny."
(SFEC, 5/18/97, Par p.6)(AP, 1/14/07)
1957 Jan 16, Three B-52's (accompanied at first by two spare aircraft) took off from Castle Air Force Base in California on the first nonstop, round-the-world flight by jet planes, which lasted 45 hours and 19 minutes.
(AP, 1/16/07)
1957 Jan 16, Arturo Toscanini (b.1867), Italian-US conductor (NBC), died in NYC. He led the NBC Symphony from 1937-1954. In 1978 Harvey Sachs wrote a biography of Toscanini. In 2002 Sachs edited "The Letters of Arturo Toscanini," his correspondence with Ada Mainardi. In 2017 Sachs authored a 2nd biography “Toscanini."
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9073009/Arturo-Toscanini)(HN, 3/25/01)(WSJ, 4/30/02, p.D7)(Econ 6/24/17, p.75)
1957 Jan 17, A 9-county commission recommended the creation of BART, the SF Bay Area Rapid Transport system.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1957 Jan 18, A trio of B-52's completed the first nonstop, round-the-world flight by jet planes, landing at March Air Force Base in California after more than 45 hours aloft.
(AP, 1/18/07)
1957 Jan 19, Pat Boone sang at President Eisenhower's inaugural ball.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1957 Jan 20, President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon were sworn in for their second terms of office in a private Sunday ceremony. A public ceremony was held the next day.
(AP, 1/20/07)
1957 Jan 21, US Pres. Eisenhower was inaugurated.
(EWH, 1968, p.1210)
1957 Jan 22, The “Truth or Consequences" TV show with Bob Barker became the first program to be recorded on videotape for subsequent airing in all time zones.
(SFC, 12/23/16, p.E3)
1957 Jan 22, Suspected "Mad Bomber" George P. Metesky, accused of planting more than 30 explosive devices in the New York City area, was arrested in Waterbury, Conn. He was later found mentally ill and committed to a mental hospital; he was released in 1973, and died in 1994 at age 90.
(AP, 1/22/98)(AP, 1/22/04)
1957 Jan 22, Israel completed its evacuation of Egyptian territory, excepting the Gaza Strip and the area of Aqaba.
(EWH, 1968, p.1242)
1957 Jan 23, Princess Caroline of Monaco, was born.
(HN, 1/23/99)
1957 Jan 23, Willie Edwards (25), US black, was murdered by KKK.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1957 Jan 31, In Japan Nobosuke Kishi was voted in as acting prime minister following the resignation of the ailing Tanzan Ishibashi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi)
1957 Jan, France began sending troops to Algeria to crush the rebel movement in what came to be called "The Battle for Algiers."
(SFC, 5/11/01, p.D4)
1957 Feb 1, Friedrich von Paulus (66), German field marshal (Stalingrad), died.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1957 Feb 5, Joseph Benson Hardaway (b.1895), animation director and voice actor, died. Nicknamed "Bugs," he was instrumental in naming the character "Bugs Bunny" when, while working on the film short "Hare-um, Scare-um," an animator handed him a model sheet of the rabbit character.
(www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?page=pr&FSctf=170)
1957 Feb 10, Laura Ingalls Wilder (b.1867) died in Mansfield, Missouri. She is known for writing the “Little House on the Prairie" series of children’s books released from 1932 to 1943 that focused on a settler and pioneer family and were drawn from the author’s childhood experiences.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder)
1957 Feb 12, Researchers announced the development of Borazan, a substance harder than diamonds.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1957 Feb 14, The Georgia Senate approved Sen Leon Butts' bill barring blacks from playing baseball with whites.
(HN, 2/14/98)(MC, 2/14/02)
1957 Feb 14, The “Southern Leadership Conference" was formed in New Orleans, Louisiana. Officers were elected which included: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Florida as Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Secretary, and Attorney I. M. Augustine of New Orleans, Louisiana as General Counsel. In August the name was changed to "Southern Christian Leadership Conference" at its first convention in Montgomery, Alabama.
(http://sclcnational.org/net/content/item.aspx?s=25461.0.12.2607)
1957 Feb 15, Andrei Gromyko replaced Dmitri T. Shepilov as the Soviet Foreign Minister.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1957 Feb 16, LeVar Burton, (Roots, Star Trek Next Generation), was born in Landstuhl, Germany.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1957 Feb 16, A US flag flew over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica. Wilkes Land is named after Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (later a Rear Admiral), the American explorer who commanded the 1838–42 United States Exploring Expedition.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land)(HN, 2/16/98)
1957 Feb 17, Suez Canal reopened.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1957 Feb 18, Robert Mitchum recorded "Robert Mitchum Calypso - Is Like So," with Mitchum singing a kind of pidgin English.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.D18)
1957 Feb 22, A skull was found by a crew digging a trench for an air conditioning system in downtown LA. The site was later planned to be used for a new Roman Catholic cathedral. An anthropologist identified the skull onsite as characteristic of native Americans prior to the Spanish arrival. Native Indian groups later contended the site a possible ancient burial ground and held up the construction plans. In 1997 the skull was reported lost.
(SFC, 10/27/97, p.C2)
1957 Feb 25, Buddy Holly and the Crickets recorded "That'll Be the Day."
(MC, 2/25/02)
1957 Feb 25, The US Supreme Court, in Butler v. Michigan, overturned a Michigan statute making it a misdemeanor to sell books containing obscene language that would tend to corrupt "the morals of youth."
(AP, 2/25/07)
1957 Feb 25, Supreme Court decided 6-3 that baseball is the only antitrust exempt pro sport.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1957 Feb 25, Nobosuke Kishi (1896-1987) began serving as prime minister of Japan. He continued for 2 terms to Jul 19, 1960. It was later reported that Kakuei Tanaka won his first cabinet job by handing Kishi a small backpack filled with ¥3 million.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.37)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.41)
1957 Feb 27, Mao made his speech "On Correct Handling of Contradictions Among People."
(MC, 2/27/02)
1957 Feb, Brazil began work began on its new capital, Brasilia. This was led by urban planner Lucio Costa, architect Oscar Niemeyer and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juscelino_Kubitschek)
1957 Feb, Basil Hirschowitz (b.1925), South Africa born gastroenterologist, introduced the first prototype “fiberscope." He had begun work using glass fibers to transmit light in 1954 while at the Univ. of Michigan. Fiber optics later revolutionized telecommunications and surgery.
(www.case.edu/artsci/dittrick/site2/museum/artifacts/group-d/fiberscope.htm)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.92)
1957 Mar 1, "Ziegfeld Follies of 1957" opened at Winter Garden NYC for 123 performances.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1957 Mar 1, Kokomo the Chimp became the Today Show animal editor.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1957 Mar 2, Boxer Carlos Ortiz won a technical knockout against Lou Filippo (1925-2009). Filippo was originally awarded a victory in the 1st bout against Ortiz after being hit after the bell, but a Times reporter questioned a member of the California State Athletic Commission about that ruling, and the no-contest decision was invoked. Filippo lost the next fight to Ortiz about a month later, and retired at 23-9-3 with 8 knockouts and one no-contest. Both were later named to the Boxing Hall of Fame. Filippo went on to play a role in all five of the “Rocky" movies.
(www.badlefthook.com/2009/11/5/1117708/lou-filippo-1925-2009)(SFC, 11/6/09, p.C5)
1957 Mar 3, Corry Brokken won Eurovision Song festival with "Just as then."
(SC, 3/3/02)
1957 Mar 5, Britain adopted a plan to triple nuclear energy production by 1965.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1957 Mar 5, Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fail-party won election in Ireland. DeValera (1882-1975) was elected Taoiseach (prime minister) and served his 3rd term as PM.
(MC, 3/5/02)(www.apostles.com/devalera.html)(ON, 9/04, p.7)
1957 Mar 6, The former British African colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana to independence from Britain. US VP Nixon and Martin Luther King attended the independence ceremony.
(SFC, 12/6/96, p.B1)(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.15)(SSFC, 2/11/07, p.C1)
1957 Mar 8, Israeli troops left Egypt. Suez Canal re-opened for minor ships.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1957 Mar 9, An 8.1 earthquake shook the Andreanof Islands, Alaska.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1957 Mar 9, Egyptian leader Nasser barred U.N. plans to share the tolls for the use of the Suez Canal.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1957 Mar 10, Thousands of soccer fans rioted in Italy.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1957 Mar 11, Charles Van Doren's 14-week run on the rigged NBC game show "Twenty-One" ended as he was "defeated" by attorney Vivienne Nearing; Van Doren's take was $129,000.
(AP, 3/11/07)
1957 Mar 11, American explorer Richard E. Byrd died in Boston at age 68.
(AP, 3/11/07)
1957 Mar 12, German DR accepted 22 Russian armed divisions.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1957 Mar 12, In Israel Rudolf Kasztner, hailed by admirers as a Holocaust hero for saving thousands of Jews, was assassinated by Jewish extremists. Critics had reviled him as a collaborator who "sold his soul." Kasztner, a Zionist leader in Hungary during World War II, headed the Relief and Rescue Committee, a small Jewish group that negotiated with Nazi officials to rescue Hungarian Jews in exchange for money, goods and military equipment.
(AP, 7/23/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Kastner)
1957 Mar 13, The FBI arrested Jimmy Hoffa on bribery charges.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1957 Mar 13, Bloody battles followed an anti-Batista demonstration in Havana, Cuba.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1957 Mar 15, Burton Abbot was executed for the 1955 abduction and killing of 14-year-old Stephanie Bryan.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.C17)
1957 Mar 16, Constantin Brancusi (b.1876), Romanian-born French sculptor, died. He willed his studio and work to France.
(WSJ, 3/30/00, p.A28)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi)
1957 Mar 17, In the Philippines a plane crash on Mt. Manunggal in Cebu killed Pres. Ramon Magsaysay (b.1907). 25 of the 26 passengers and crew aboard were killed.
(AP, 8/2/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Magsaysay)
1957 Mar 19, Pete Seibert (1924-2002) climbed to a summit in the Colorado Rockies with Earl Eaton, a uranium prospector, and beheld the area that he later turned into the Vail ski resort.
(SFC, 7/29/02, p.B5)
1957 Mar 20, Shelton 'Spike' Lee, film director (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X), was born.
(HN, 3/20/01)
1957 Mar 20, In Washington state the Dalles Dam pushed back the Columbia River to reap the benefits of hydroelectric power. In six hours the islands of Celilo Falls were gone forever beneath a mockingly tranquil reservoir pool.
(AP, 3/3/07)
1957 Mar 20, Britain accepted a NATO offer to mediate in Cyprus, but Greece rejected it.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1957 Mar 21, Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1957 Mar 21, US President Eisenhower and British PM Harold Macmillan began a four-day conference in Bermuda.
(AP, 3/21/07)
1957 Mar 21, Vice President Nixon returned to the U.S. after spending three weeks on a tour of Africa.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1957 Mar 22, An earthquake, centered in Daly City, Ca., hit the SF Bay Area and caused extensive damage to Mary’s Help Hospital.
(Ind, 8/11/01, 5A)(CW, Winter 04, p.45)(DCFD, Centennial, 2007)
1957 Mar 23, US army sold its last homing pigeons.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1957 Mar 23, Algerian independence fighter Ali Boumendjel (b.1919) was tortured and killed by French soldiers. In 2021 French President Emmanuel Macron met with four grandchildren of Boumendjel to inform them of the truth.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Boumendjel)(AP, 3/3/21)
1957 Mar 25, US Police and customs agents seized copies of “Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. In May Ferlinghetti was arrested along with City Lights manager Shigeyoshi Murao (d.1999) on obscenity charges. The defending attorneys were J.W. Ehrlich and Albert Bendich (1929-2015). By the Fall Judge Clayton Horn found the poem of "redeeming social importance." Shig later managed City Lights and authored the occasional "Shig's Review." In 2006 Bill Morgan and Nancy J. Peters edited “Howl On Trial: The Battle for Free Expression."
(SFEC, 11/28/99, BR p.10)(www.citylights.com/His/CLhowlhist.html)(SSFC, 11/5/06, p.M3)(SFC, 1/14/15, p.D3)
1957 Mar 25, The Treaties establishing the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community were signed in Rome by six member countries. The Treaty of Rome enabled people, goods, services and money to move unchecked throughout the Union. The Council of Ministers represents the governments of the members. Major decisions are made by the Council of Foreign Ministers. A 20-member Commission composed of appointed representatives of each member state serves as the administrative arm and members represent the Union. The Commission proposes and executes laws and policies. A European Parliament is composed of 626 members elected by the electorates of the member states and they sit in party groups. The Commission proposes, the Parliament advises, and the Council decides. The goal was to create a common market for all products but especially coal and steel.
(http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/eec.htm)(AP, 3/25/97)(HN, 3/24/98)
1957 Mar 25, The Euratom Treaty established the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom). The international organization was founded with the purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, developing nuclear energy and distributing it to its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Atomic_Energy_Community)
1957 Mar 27, In the 29th Academy Awards "Around the World in 80 Days" won the Academy Award for best picture; Yul Brynner won best actor for "The King and I," Ingrid Bergman was awarded best actress for "Anastasia" and George Stevens received best director for "Giant."
(AP, 3/27/07)
1957 Mar 29, Joyce A.L. Cary (68), English writer (Horse's Mouth), died.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1957 Mar 30, Tunisia and Morocco signed a friendship treaty in Rabat.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1957 Mar 31, The original version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," starring Julie Andrews, aired live in color on CBS. The show drew an estimated record TV audience of 107 million. Kaye Ballard and Alice Ghostley played the step-sisters.
(AP, 3/31/07)(SFC, 1/25/19, p.C4)
1957 Apr 3, Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," premiered in London.
(V.D.-H.K.p.369)(MC, 4/3/02)
1957 Apr 4, Heitor Villa-Lobos' 10th Symphony, premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1957 Apr 6, NYC ended trolley car service.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1957 Apr 7, The last of New York City’s electric trolleys completed its final run from the city’s borough of Queens to Manhattan.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1957 Apr 10, John Osborne’s play “The Entertainer," starring Laurence Olivier, opened in London.
(AP, 4/10/07)
1957 Apr 10, Egypt reopened the Suez Canal to all shipping traffic. The canal had been closed due to wreckage resulting from the Suez Crisis.
(AP, 4/10/08)\
1957 Apr 11, The Ryan X-13 Vertijet became the 1st jet to take-off and land vertically.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1957 Apr 13, The jury-deliberation movie drama "12 Angry Men," starring Henry Fonda, opened in New York.
(AP, 4/13/07)
1957 Apr 13, Due to lack of funds, Saturday mail delivery in US was temporarily halted.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1957 Apr 15, Saturday mail delivery was restored after Congress gave the PO $41 million.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1957 Apr 19, Charles Funk (76), Encyclopedist (Funk & Wagnall’s), died.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1957 Apr 21, In the 11th Tony Awards: Long Day's Journey into Night and My Fair Lady won. Edie Adams won a Tony award for supporting actress as Daisy Mae in “Li’l Abner."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Tony_Awards)(SFC, 10/17/08, p.A2)
1957 Apr 25, The 1st experimental sodium nuclear reactor operated.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1957 Apr 26, Jamestown, Va., 350th Anniversary Festival opened.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1957 Apr 27, Mario A. Gianini, creator of the maraschino cherry, died.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1957 Apr 29, The 1st military nuclear power plant was dedicated at Fort Belvoir, Va.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1957 Apr, Ricky Nelson sang his version of “I’m Walkin" by Fats Domino on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" TV show.
(SSFC, 1/15/06, p.C1)
1957 Apr, Mao experimented under the slogan: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend." Alarmed at the resulting barrage of criticism, he reversed course and some 300,000 of intellectuals were jailed or sent to the countryside to do manual labor.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A14)(http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/9-8-82.shtml)
1957 Apr, Jordan's Western-allied King Hussein suspended parliament for four years after an attempted leftist coup.
(AP, 1/23/13)
1957 May 2, Crime boss Frank Costello narrowly survived an attempt on his life in New York; the alleged gunman, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, was acquitted at trial after Costello refused to identify him as the shooter.
(AP, 5/2/07)
1957 May 2, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (48), the controversial Republican from Wisconsin, died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. McCarthy drank himself to death.
(AP, 5/2/97)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.A26)
1957 May 3, A low flying Navy bomber, while practicing evasion maneuvers, sheared two high-voltage lines in the East Bay of San Francisco causing a power outage in SF and the Peninsula.
(SFC, 5/4/09, p.B2)
1957 May 4, It was reported that NATO has warned the Soviet Union that it would meet any attack with all available meads including nuclear weapons.
(SFC, 5/4/09, p.B2)
1957 May 4, The Anne Frank Foundation formed in Amsterdam.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1957 May 6, Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey into Night" won the Pulitzer Prize for drama; John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" won the Pulitzer for biography or autobiography.
(AP, 5/6/07)
1957 May 6, Last broadcast of "I Love Lucy" on CBS-TV. [see Jun 24]
(MC, 5/6/02)
1957 May 9, Ezio F. Pinza, Italian bass (La Scala of Milan, NY Met Opera, Broadway musicals), died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1957 May 9, Heinrich Campendonk (b.1889), German-born Dutch artist and a member of the Der Blaue Reiter group (1911-1912), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Campendonk)
1957 May 10, Sid Vicious, [John Simon Ritchie], bassist (Sex Pistols), was born in England.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1957 May 10, Gabriel París Gordillo (1910-2008) began serving as President of Colombia and as Chairman of the Colombian Military Junta Government following the 1957 Coup d'état. He was succeeded in August, 1958, by Alberto Lleras Camargo.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Par%C3%ADs_Gordillo)
1957 May 12, Erich von Stroheim (b.1885), Austrian-US actor and director, died of cancer in Paris. His films included "Grand Illusion," "The Merry Widow," and "Greed." In 2000 Arthur Lennig published the biography "Stroheim."
(WSJ, 2/23/00, p.A20)(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002233/)
1957 May 13, Jean Peters (d.2000 at 73), actress, married Howard Hughes (51) in Tonopah, Nev.
(SFC, 10/21/00, p.A24)
1957 May 15, The 1st British hydrogen bomb was detonated on Christmas Island in South Pacific. The 200 - 300 kilotons yield was less than expected.
(www.atomicarchive.com/Timeline/Time1950.shtml)
1957 May 16, Pope Pius XII published his encyclical Invicti Athletae.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1957 May 18, In the 83rd Preakness: Eddie Arcaro aboard Bold Ruler won in 1:56.2.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1957 May 22, South Africa government approved race separation in universities.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1957 May 24, Anti-American rioting broke out in Taipei, Taiwan.
(AP, 5/24/07)
1957 May 25, "Shinbone Alley" closed at Broadway Theater in NYC after 49 performances.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1957 May 28, The National League approved the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants baseball teams to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
(AP, 5/28/97)
1957 May 29, British-born Hollywood director James Whale ("Frankenstein") was found dead in his swimming pool, a suicide; he was 67.
(AP, 5/29/07)
1957 May 29, Algerian rebels killed 336 collaborators.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1957 May 29, Laos Government of prince Suvanna Phuma resigned.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1957 May 29, George Bacovia [Vasiliu] Romanian poet, composer (Plumb), died at 75.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1957 May 30, In California Santa’s Village, a Christmas theme park, opened in Scotts Valley. It filed for bankruptcy in 1977 and finally closed in 1979.
(SFC, 5/31/08, p.B2)(www.santasvillage.net/santas.village.scotts.valley.html)
1957 May, Frank Lloyd Wright (89) traveled to Iraq to design an opera house for Baghdad. His multi-building scheme was never built.
(WSJ, 8/20/03, p.D12)
1957 May, Two US fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) over the English countryside. This was only made public on Oct 20, 2008, when Britain made public secret files on UFOs.
(Reuters, 10/20/08)
1957 Jun 7, Mrs. Elizabeth S. Kingsley, double-Crostic puzzle creator, died.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1957 Jun 8, Mao ordered an "anti-rightist" witch hunt and Deng Xiaoping executed it.
(www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1959/05/chinawilt.htm)
1957 Jun 10, John Diefenbaker, Progressive Conservative Party, was elected PM of Canada. He served until 1963.
(CFA, '96, p.81)(HN, 9/18/98)(MC, 6/10/02)
1957 Jun 10, Harold MacMillan became British PM.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1957 Jun 11, 12 died in a train crash in Vroman, Colo.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1957 Jun 12, Bandleader Jimmy Dorsey (53) died in New York.
(AP, 6/12/07)
1957 Jun 13, The Mayflower 2, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620, arrived at Plymouth, Mass., after a nearly two-month journey from England. Britain had built the vessel and sailed it to the US as a gift of friendship. In 2017 it went into drydock for a $7.5 million makeover in time for 2020 festivities marking the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim landing.
(AP, 6/13/07)(SFC, 11/24/17, p.A10)
1957 Jun 16, There was a French offensive in Algeria.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1957 Jun 17, The Tuskegee boycott began as Blacks boycotted city stores.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1957 Jun 17, Mob underboss Frank Scalice was shot to death at a produce market in the Bronx, N.Y.
(AP, 6/17/07)
1957 Jun 19, Walt Disney’s movie "Johnny Tremain" was released in movie theaters.
(DT, 6/19/97)
1957 Jun 24, "I Love Lucy," last aired on CBS-TV. [see May 6]
(MC, 6/24/02)
1957 Jun 24, A 37-kiloton nuclear fission bomb, code-named Priscilla, was exploded in the Nevada desert at Frenchman Flat. The security of a bank vault was tested in the experiment. At this time the US was manufacturing 10 nuclear bombs a day.
(SSFC, 8/22/04, p.E1)
1957 Jun 26, Marin County, Ca., selected Frank Lloyd Wright (88) as architect for its new civic center.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.L11)
1957 Jun 26, Hurricane Audrey hit Louisiana earlier than expected. It left at least 390 people dead with 192 missing in Louisiana and Texas.
(SFC, 6/26/09, p.D10)
1957 Jun 27, More than 500 people were killed after Hurricane Audrey slammed through coastal Louisiana and Texas.
(AP, 6/27/97)
1957 Jun 27, Malcolm Lowry (b.1909), English novelist, died in Sussex, England. He is best known for his novel “Under the Volcano" (1947). In 2007 Michael Hofmann edited “The Voyage That Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry in His Own Words."
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mlowry.htm)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.E2)
1957 Jun 30, The American occupation headquarters in Japan was dissolved.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1957 Jul 1, The International Geophysical Year, an 18-month global scientific study, began. 12 nations established over 60 stations in Antarctica. The beginning of international cooperation in Antarctica and the start of the process by which Antarctica becomes "non-national."
(AP, 7/1/07)(http://tinyurl.com/337joj)
1957 Jul 2, Mike Anger, rocker (The Blow Monkeys-Wicked Ways), was born.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1957 Jul 2, The Seawolf, the 1st submarine powered by liquid metal cooled reactor, was completed.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1957 Jul 2, Grayback, the 1st submarine designed to fire guided missiles, was launched.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1957 Jul 4, In Italy the new 13 horsepower Fiat 500 (Cinquecento) was launched in Turin. In 1965 Fiat introduced the 500 F model. The car could get 58 mpg from its 4.25-gallon tank.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.69)(SSFC, 5/1/11, p.J1)(SFC, 4/13/12, p.F1)
1957 Jul 6, Althea Gibson (1927-2003) became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title, defeating fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.
(AP, 7/6/97)(SFC, 9/29/03, p.A1)
1957 Jul 8, Irish premier Eamon de Valera arrested Sinn-Fein leaders.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1957 Jul 8, William Cadbury (89), chocolate maker, died.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1957 Jul 12, The U.S. surgeon general, Leroy E. Burney (d.1998 at 91), reported that there is a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. Dr. John Altshuler (1931-2004) co-researched the "Joint Report of Study Group on Smoking and Health," published by the US Public Health Service.
(HN, 7/12/98)(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A17)(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A20)
1957 Jul 12, Santa Susana in Los Angeles County began receiving the nation’s first commercial electricity from a small, civilian-owned, nuclear reactor. It was shut down in 1964 and scientists later reported that the plant might be responsible hundreds of cancer cases. PG&E had teamed with General Electric to establish the Vallecitos atomic energy plant, the world’s 1st privately owned and operated nuclear facility.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A5)(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1957 Jul 14, Soviet steamer "Eshghbad" sank in Caspian Sea and 270 drowned.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1957 Jul 15, James M. Cox (b.1870), 3-time Ohio governor and founder of Cox Enterprises, died. Cox was defeated in the 1920 Presidential Election by fellow Ohioan Senator Warren G. Harding of Marion, Ohio. He left his family a business that included broadcast properties and a string of newspapers.
(WSJ, 6/2/07, p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cox)
1957 Jul 16, Marine Maj. John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record when he flew a jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1957 Jul 17, Leona Gage (1939-2010) of Maryland won the Miss USA title as part of the Miss Universe Pageant in Long Beach, Ca. Officials soon stripped her of the title after learning that she was a mother of two and had lied about her age.
(SFC, 10/13/10, p.C5)(www.oocities.com/televisioncity/9699/mc57.htm)
1957 Jul 17, Lila Bliss found her daughter, Juliette Hampton Morgan (b.1914), dead next to an empty bottle of sleeping pills. In 1936 Juliette had signed a pledge with other women in Montgomery, Alabama, to no longer remain silent in the face of crime done in their name. In 2007 Mary Stanton authored “Journey Toward Justice," a biography of Juliette Hampton Morgan.
(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P13)
1957 Jul 22, Walter "Fred" Morrison applied for a patent for a "flying toy" which became known as the Frisbee.
(AP, 7/22/07)
1957 Jul 22, In El Segundo, Ca., 2 police officers were shot and killed after pulling over a car for running a red light. Gerald Mason (68) was arrested in 2003 following fingerprint ID from a new FBI database.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A5)
1957 Jul 23, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (b.1896), Sicilian aristocrat and writer, died in Rome. His classic novel “Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard), was published in 1958. It was about Sicilian blue bloods struggling to adopt to the changes ushered in by Italian unification in the 1860s and included the line: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." David Gilmour later authored the biography “The Last Leopard" (1991). In 1963 the film "Leopard" starred Burt Lancaster as the prince who makes the ceremonial cut into the timballo. It was directed Luchino Visconti and based on the novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
(WSJ, 12/9/06, p.P24)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.61)(SFC, 10/2/96, zz1 p.8)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.56)
1957 Jul 25, The monarchy in Tunisia was abolished in favor of a republic. Habib Bourguiba (1903-2000) began serving as president and continued to 1987.
(AP, 7/25/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habib_Bourguiba)
1957 Jul 26, Pres. Carlos Castillo Armas of Guatemala was assassinated.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1957 Jul 26, USSR launched the 1st intercontinental multistage ballistic missile.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1957 Jul 28, The Situationist International (SI) was formed at a meeting in the Italian village of Cosio d'Arroscia with the fusion of several extremely small avant-garde artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an off-shoot of COBRA), and the London Psychogeographical Association. The groups came together intending to reawaken the radical political potential of surrealism. The group also later drew ideas from the left communist group Socialisme ou Barbarie.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International)
1957 Jul 28, The 6th World Youth Festival opened in Moscow with the motto “For Peace and Friendship." Some 34,000 participated from 131 countries. The 1st such conference was held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1947. This festival also marked the international debut of the song "Moscow Nights", which subsequently went on to become perhaps the most widely recognized Russian song in the world.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_World_Festival_of_Youth_and_Students)
1957 Jul 29, The International Atomic Energy Agency was established.
(AP, 7/29/97)
1957 Jul 29, Jack Paar made his debut as host of NBC’s late-night TV show "Tonight" and stayed on till 1962.
(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.A16)(SFC, 5/7/97, p.E1)(AP, 7/29/97)
1957 Jul 31, The Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.
(AP, 7/31/07)
1957 Jul, Buddy Holly and the Crickets of Lubbock, Texas, recorded "Peggy Sue" in Clovis, New Mexico. The song was initially named Cindy Lou after Holly's niece, but band member Jerry Allison got Buddy to change the name in order to impress Peggy Sue. In 2008 Peggy Sue Gerron (1940-2018) released her autobiography "Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?" A 1986 movie called "Peggy Sue Got Married" featured Kathleen Turner as a character named Peggy Sue.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Sue)(SFC, 10/3/18, p.C5)
1957 Jul, Two "unarmed" nuclear bombs were dropped off Cape May, N.J., by a cargo plane that developed engine trouble. They were never found.
(SFEC, 11/22/98, Par p.22)
1957 Jul, Work began on San Francisco’s Central Freeway with construction costs at $7.8 million. It opened in 1959.
(SFC, 8/21/96, p.A16)(SFC, 1/3/07, p.B1)
1957 Aug 1, The United States and Canada reached agreement to create the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).
(AP, 8/1/97)
1957 Aug 1, Lewis Hill (b.1919) committed suicide in Duncan Mills, Sonoma County, Ca. He had helped found Pacifica Radio (KPFA).
(SFC, 7/22/99, p.E5)(www.ringnebula.com/folio/Issue-12/Conversation_Joy_Hill.htm)
1957 Aug 5, "American Bandstand," a teenage dance show hosted by Dick Clark (1929-2012) in Philadelphia, made its network debut on ABC-TV.
(WSJ, 3/24/97, p.B1)(SFC, 11/10/99, p.E3)(AP, 8/5/07)(SFC, 4/19/12, p.C5)
1957 Aug 6, The Japanese Nikkei Index pulled ahead of the Dow Jones Index. The Nikkei peaked at 38,915 on Dec 31, 1989.
(WSJ, 9/5/01, p.C1)
1957 Aug 7, Oliver Hardy (65), the heavier half of the Laurel and Hardy comedy team, died in North Hollywood, Calif.
(AP, 8/7/07)
1957 Aug 11, Paul Hindemith's opera "Harmonie der Welt," premiered in Munich.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1957 Aug 15, The musical "West Side Story," composed by Leonard Bernstein and based on a concept by Jerome Robbins, first opened in Washington D.C. The story was by Arthur Laurents and the lyrics were by Stephen Sondheim.
(SFEM, 5/23/99, p.18)
1957 Aug 19, The first balloon flight to exceed 100,000 feet took off from Crosby, Minnesota. US Major David Simons reached 30,933 m. in a balloon.
(HN, 8/19/00)(MC, 8/19/02)
1957 Aug 21, Kim Sledge, vocalist (Sister Sledge-We are Family), was born in Phila.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1957 Aug 25, Prince Suvanna Phuma formed a government in LAOS with the Pathet Lao.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1957 Aug 26, Ford Motor Company revealed the Edsel, its latest luxury car.
(HN, 8/26/99)
1957 Aug 26, The Soviet Union announced it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile.
(AP, 8/26/97)
1957 Aug 28, Sen Thurmond began a 24-hr filibuster against civil rights bill.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1957 Aug 29, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond (then a Democrat) ended a filibuster against a civil rights bill after talking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Arnold Aronson (d.1998 at 86) help to lobby for the bill.
(AP, 8/29/97)(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)(SSFC, 12/17/00, Par p.15)
1957 Aug 31, The Federation of Malaya (Malaysia) gained independence from Britain (National Day). Malaysia established itself as a constitutional monarchy. Article 11 in the constitution gave every person “the right to profess and practice his religion." Pro-bumiputra (sons of the soil) discrimination was laid down in the constitution to ease Malays’ fears of being marginalized by Chinese and Indian migrants. A 1988 amendment denied the regular courts all jurisdiction over matters dealt with by the Muslim sharia courts.
(YN, 8/31/99)(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)(AP, 8/31/07)(Econ, 9/1/07, p.11)
1957 Sep 1, Gloria Estefan, singer (Miami Sound Machine-Conga, 1-2-3), was born in Cuba.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1957 Sep 2, Pres. Eisenhower signed the Price-Anderson Act, which limited firms’ liability in commercial nuclear disasters. The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, a United States federal law, has since been renewed several times since its passage.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act)(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1957 Sep 2, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock. Pres. Eisenhower soon responded with Federal troops to enforce federal law for integration. The nine students, mentored by Daisy Gatson (d.1999 at 84) went on to lead very productive lives as detailed in a 1997 retrospective.
(www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=89)(SFC, 4/28/00, p.A11)
1957 Sep 4, Arkansas National guardsmen turned away Black students from Central High School in Little Rock. 9 students made it into the school on September 24 under the protection of federal troops sent by Pres. Eisenhower. In 2007 Elizabeth Jacoway authored “Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crises That Shocked the Nation."
(AH, 10/07, p.61)
1957 Sep 4, Ford Motor Co. introduced the 1958 Edsel. It was designed by Roy Brown and sold only 173,000 units through 1960.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, p.D12)(AP, 9/4/97)
1957 Sep 5, Viking Press first published "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. Kerouac typed out the manuscript in 20 days on a single roll of teletype paper. The book focused on a 1949 road trip in a new Hudson with Neal and Luanne Cassidy and Al Hinkle (1926-2018) with wife Helen Argee. In 1997 his book of notes from the early 1950s: "Some of the Dharma" was published.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, BR p.8)(SSFC, 1/30/05, p.A19)(AP, 9/5/07)(SSFC, 12/30/18, p.C2)
1957 Sep 5, Cuban dictator Batista bombed the Cienfuegos uprising.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1957 Sep 7, The original version of the animated NBC peacock logo, used to denote programs "brought to you in living color," made its debut at the beginning of "Your Hit Parade."
(AP, 9/7/07)
1957 Sep 8, Pope Pius XII posted his encyclical On motion pictures, radio, TV.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1957 Sep 9, President Eisenhower signed into law the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction.
(AP, 9/9/97)
1957 Sep 9, Nashville's new Hattie Cotton Elementary School was dynamited.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1957 Sep 12, James Vicary (b.1915), a market researcher, announced that he had invented a new way to get people to buy things, whether they wanted them or not. He called it subliminal advertising and said that he had tested the process at a New Jersey movie theater. In 1962 he admitted that his results were fabricated in order to drum up business for his market research firm. A subliminal projector called a tachistoscope had been used during World War II in training soldiers to recognize enemy aircraft. A book published in 1898 (The New Psychology by E.W. Scripture) laid out most of the principles of subliminal response.
(WSJ, 11/5/07, p.B1)(www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_187.html)
1957 Sep 12, Detroit Mayor Albert Cobo died of a heart attack, just months before his last term in office would have ended.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Cobo)
1957 Sep 12, Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus visited the US.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1957 Sep 14, Pres. Eisenhower met with Arkansas Gov. Faubus in Rhode Island. Gov. Faubus agree to cooperate with the president’s decisions regarding the high schools of Little Rock.
(http://tinyurl.com/2vggdj)
1957 Sep 16, Qi Baishi (b.1864), Chinese artist, died in Beijing. In 2011 one of his ink paintings was auctioned for $65 million.
(Econ, 10/22/11, p.82)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_Baishi)
1957 Sep 17, Two male attorneys "stood in" as actress Sophia Loren and producer Carlo Ponti were married by proxy in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Legal issues later forced an annulment; the couple wed in Sevres, France, in 1966.
(AP, 9/17/07)
1957 Sep 17, The Thai army seized power in Bangkok.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1957 Sep 18, "Wagon Train" premiered.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1957 Sep 19, The United States conducted its first underground nuclear test, code-named "Rainier," in the Nevada desert.
(AP, 9/19/07)
1957 Sep 19, Eight engineers, who had recently left Shockley Semiconductor, signed papers to form Fairchild Semiconductor in Santa Clara County. Jean A. Hoerni (1925-1997) was one of the "Fairchild Eight." He was credited with building the bridge from the transistor to the integrated circuit. Eugene Kleiner (d.2003), another co-founder, helped found the Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers venture capital firm in 1972. The other engineers included Julius Blank (1925-2011), Jay Last (1929-2021), Victor Grinich (d.2000 at 75), Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts. NYC bankers Arthur Rock and Bud Coyle helped the engineers start Fairchild Semiconductor.
(SFC, 11/11/00, p.A26)(SFC, 11/26/03, p.D1)(SSFC, 9/30/07, p.F1)(SFC, 9/24/11, p.C3)(SFC, 11/23/21, p.C4)
1957 Sep 20, "M Squad," starring Lee Marvin, premiered on NBC-TV.
(AP, 9/20/07)
1957 Sep 20, Jean Julius Christian Sibelius (b.1865), Finnish composer (Finlandia), died. He had published no music for the last three decades of his life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Sibelius)(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.20)
1957 Sep 21, "Perry Mason," starring Raymond Burr, premiered on CBS-TV. The show ran to 1966 and returned in 1985. Barbara Hale (1922-2017) played Della Street, Perry Mason’s loyal secretary.
(AP, 9/21/97)(SFC, 8/20/99, p.D6)(SSFC, 1/29/17, p.A10)
1957 Sep 21, Norway's King Haakon VII died in Oslo at age 85.
(AP, 9/21/07)
1957 Sep 22, The TV series "Maverick" premiered on ABC. It starred James Garner as Maverick and Jack Kelly as brother Bart Maverick.
(AP, 9/22/07)(AP, 7/20/14)
1957 Sep 22, In Haiti Francois Duvalier (1907-1971) won the election for the presidency. He spent 14 years in office. His reign of terror exceeded the ruthless American occupation (1915-1934).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Duvalier)(Econ, 2/18/12, p.85)
1957 Sep 23, "That'll Be Day" by Buddy Holly & Crickets reached #1.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1957 Sep 23, Nine black students who had entered Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas were forced to withdraw because of a white mob outside. Pres. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10730 to send Federal troops to maintain order and peace while the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, AR, took place.
(AP, 9/23/97)(www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=89)
1957 Sep 24, The Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-to-0.
(AP, 9/24/97)
1957 Sep 24, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine black students entering its newly integrated high school.
(HN, 9/24/98)
1957 Sep 25, With 300 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division standing guard, nine black children forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., because of unruly white crowds, were escorted to class. Vice principle Elizabeth Huckaby (d.1999 at 93) escorted the children and in 1980 published "Crisis at Central High."
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.D5)(AP, 9/25/07)
1957 Sep 26, The musical "West Side Story" by Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins opened on Broadway and ran for 732 performances. The loose adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" produced several hit songs, including "Maria" and "Tonight". The story was by Arthur Laurents.
(AP, 9/26/97)(www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=2639)
1957 Sep 26, Dag Hammarskjold was re-elected secretary-general of UN.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1957 Sep 29, The New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds, losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-to-1. The Giants moved to San Francisco.
(AP, 9/29/97)
1957 Sep 29, The Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game before moving to Los Angeles, losing to the Phillies 2-1 in Philadelphia.
(AP, 9/29/07)
1957 Sep 29, In Montgomery, West Pakistan (later renamed to Sahiwal, Pakistan), an express train collided with stationary oil train and 250 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1957 Sep 29, The USSR’s Mayak nuclear plant in the Chelyabinsk region saw one of the world's worst nuclear accidents when a waste tank exploded. 20 million curies of deadly strontium and cesium were released. This was about 40% of the amount later released at Chernobyl. Some 23,000 sq. km. (9,200 sq. miles) were contaminated and prompted authorities to evacuate 10,000 residents from neighboring regions.
(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A8)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.E1)(AP, 12/7/17)
1957 Oct 1, The motto "In God We Trust" began appearing on US paper currency.
(AP, 10/1/07)
1957 Oct 1, B-52 bombers began full-time flying alert in case of USSR attack.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1957 Oct 2, The World War II drama "The Bridge on the River Kwai," directed by David Lean, premiered in Britain. The film opened in the United States the following December.
(AP, 10/2/07)
1957 Oct 3, The comedy series "The Real McCoys" premiered on ABC-TV. Richard Crenna began playing the married Luke on "The Real McCoys." The 6-year series starred Walter Brennan as head of a West Virginia clan that moves to the LA San Fernando Valley.
(SFC, 1/20/03, p.B4)(AP, 10/3/07)
1957 Oct 3, Willy Brandt was elected mayor of West Berlin.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1957 Oct 4, The television series "Leave It to Beaver" premiered on CBS. It ended in 1963 after 6 season. Joe Connelly (d.2003 at 85), writer-producer, co-created the show. It featured Jerry Mathers (9) as Beaver, Tony Dow (12) as his older brother Wally, Hugh Beaumont as the father and Barbara Billingsley (1915-2010) as the mother. Frank Bank (1942-2013) played Lumpy, a foil to Beaver and Wally. Ken Osmond played Wally’s friend Eddie Haskell.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A25)(SSFC, 10/17/10, p.C9)(SFC, 4/18/13, p.D5)
1957 Oct 4, The TV series “Trackdown" featured Robert Culp (1930-2010). It was based in part on files of the Texas Rangers. The series continued to 1959.
(SFC, 3/25/10, p.C3)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0050071/)
1957 Oct 4, Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters Union.
(AP, 10/4/07)
1957 Oct 4, The Space Age and "space race" began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (traveler), the first man-made space satellite. The satellite, built by Valentin Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik, developed under the chief scientist Sergei Korolyov, orbited the earth every 96 minutes at a maximum height of 584 miles. The event was timed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1958, it reentered the earth's atmosphere and burned up. It was followed by 9 other Sputnik spacecraft.
(WSJ, 10/7/96, p.B4)(SFC, 8/2/97, p.A12)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/3/97, p.A8)(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(AP, 10/1/07)
1957 Oct 7, The Danny Thomas Show made its debut on the CBS Television Network at 9:00 P.M inheriting the time slot vacated by I Love Lucy.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Danny_Thomas_Show)
1957 Oct 7, A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield) north of Liverpool, England, spread radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk. At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were subsequently linked to the accident. PM Harold Macmillan ordered the disaster hushed up.
(HN, 10/7/00)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.76)(Econ, 10/13/07, p.63)
1957 Oct 8, The Brooklyn Baseball Club announced it was accepting an offer to move the Dodgers from New York to Los Angeles.
(AP, 10/8/07)
1957 Oct 8, Jack Soble, confessed Soviet spy, was sentenced in NYC to 7 years for espionage.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1957 Oct 10, President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologized to Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, the finance minister of Ghana, after the official had been refused service in a Dover, Del., restaurant.
(AP, 10/10/97)
1957 Oct 10, The Milwaukee Braves won the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees in Game 7, 5-0.
(AP, 10/10/07)
1957 Oct 10, The TV series "Zorro," starring Guy Williams as the masked hero, debuted on ABC.
(AP, 10/10/07)
1957 Oct 13, CBS-TV broadcast "The Edsel Show," a one-hour live special starring Bing Crosby designed to promote the new, ill-fated Ford automobile. It was the first special to use videotape technology to delay the broadcast to the West Coast.
(AP, 10/13/07)
1957 Oct 14, Lester Bowles Pearson (1897-1972, former president of the UN General Assembly (1952-1953) and later Canadian PM (1963-1968) won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in defusing the Suez crisis.
(www.un.org/depts/dhl/deplib/un_milestones.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/ojxcz)
1957 Oct 16, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip began a visit to the United States with a stopover at the site of the Jamestown settlement in Virginia.
(AP, 10/16/07)
1957 Oct 17, The movie "Jailhouse Rock," starring Elvis Presley, had its world premiere in Memphis, Tenn.
(AP, 10/17/07)
1957 Oct 17, French author Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
(WUD, 1994, p.524)(AP, 10/17/97)
1957 Oct 17, Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited the White House.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1957 Oct 19, "Damn Yankees" closed at 46th St. Theater NYC after 1,022 performances.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1957 Oct 20, Walter Cronkite began hosting his weekly documentary: “The Twentieth Century." In 1967 the title was changed to “The Twenty-First Century" and it ran through 1970.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0050072/)
1957 Oct 21, The film "Jailhouse Rock" starring Elvis Presley opened.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1957 Oct 22, Conrad Adenauer was re-elected chancellor of West-Germany.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1957 Oct 23, Paul Kagame was born to a Tutsi family in southern Rwanda.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kagame)
1957 Oct 24, Christian Dior (52), French fashion magnate and inventor of the postwar "New Look," died in Italy. He was succeeded by his favorite assistant, Yves Saint Laurent.
(SFC, 1/9/97, p.E7)(SFC, 6/9/98, p.D3)(MC, 10/24/01)
1957 Oct 25, The movie musical "Pal Joey," starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, was released.
(AP, 10/25/07)
1957 Oct 25, Mob boss Albert Anastasia, the "Lord High Executioner" of "Murder Inc.," was shot to death in a barber shop inside the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York.
(AP, 10/25/07)
1957 Oct 26, The Russian government announced that Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the nation’s most prominent military hero, had been relieved of his duties as Minister of Defense. Khrushchev accused Zhukov of promoting his own "cult of personality" and saw him as a threat to his own popularity.
(AP, 10/26/97)(HN, 10/26/98)
1957 Oct 26, Nicos Kazantzakis (b.1885), writer (The Last Temptation of Christ), died.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1957 Oct 29, Louis B. Mayer (b.1885), Belarus born MGM producer, died. In 2005 Scott Eyman authored “Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer."
(www.answers.com/topic/louis-b-mayer)
1957 Oct 29, Hand grenade exploded in Israel's Knesset (Parliament).
(MC, 10/29/01)
1957 Oct 31, Jamaica, a musical, opened on Broadway at Imperial Theater. The book was by Yip Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Harold Arlen. Lena Horne (1917-2010) starred in the musical. It continued for 558 performances.
(Econ, 5/22/10, p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_%28musical%29)
1957 Oct, Pres. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to return to their armories, which effectively removed them from the control of Gov. Faubus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Faubus)
1957 Nov 1, World longest suspension bridge opened in Mackinac Straits, Mich.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1957 Nov 2, The 1st titanium mill opened in Toronto, Ohio.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1957 Nov 3, Canada fired up the National Research Universal (NRU) nuclear reactor near Ottawa. The 200 MWt reactor began producing medical and industrial radioisotopes, including molybdenum-99, a critical isotope used for medical diagnoses.
(Econ, 6/20/09, p.38)(www.aecl.ca/Science/RR/History.htm)
1957 Nov 3, The Soviet Union launched into orbit Sputnik Two, the second manmade satellite; a dog on board named Laika, the first animal in space, was sacrificed in the experiment. Sputnik 2 remained in orbit another 162 days before burning up. Safe reentry process had not yet been developed.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)(AP, 11/3/97)(HN, 11/3/98)
1957 Nov 3, Wilhelm Reich (b.1897), Austria-born psychoanalyst, died in the US. His work was based on the sexual energy in people that he called "Orgone." In 1999 Farrar, Straus & Giroux published: "American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940-1947."
(WUD, 1994, p.1209)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich)
1957 Nov 8, Romance of the Skies, a Pan Am luxury airliner enroute to Hawaii from San Francisco, crashed in the Pacific Ocean. Only a handful of bodies and some wreckage were found. A crew of 6 and 38 passengers had been booked on the flight.
(SSFC, 11/4/07, p.A1)
1957 Nov 15, US sentenced Soviet spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel to 30 years and $3,000 fine.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1957 Nov 15, Soviet Premier Khrushchev asserted Soviet superiority in missiles, challenging the U.S. to a rocket-range shooting match.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1957 Nov 16, Edward Gein butchered his last victim. Gein, a handyman in Plainfield, Wis., liked to dig up fresh graves, cut the skin off corpses, wear the skin on his own body and dance in the moonlight. He was picked up in this year and evidence showed that he’d been collecting body parts for years. He had skulls on bedposts, a human heart in a saucepan, and a lady out in his barn dressed like a deer. The 1974 film "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was based on his story.
(SFC, 5/18/96, p.E-4)(MC, 11/16/01)
1957 Nov 18, Antonin Novotny (1904-1975) was appointed president of Czechoslovakia and served to 1968.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%C3%ADn_Novotn%C3%BD)
1957 Nov 21, A student strike began at the Central Univ. of Venezuela (UCV) against the electoral fraud of the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez. This soon led his downfall.
(WSJ, 11/24/07, p.A12)(www.handsoffvenezuela.org/students_march_referendum.htm)
1957 Nov 25, President Eisenhower suffered a slight stroke. [see Nov 26]
(AP, 11/25/97)
1957 Nov 26, President Eisenhower suffers a minor stroke. [see Nov 25]
(HN, 11//99)
1957 Nov 27, Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg, attorney, JFK & Jackie's daughter, was born.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1957 Nov 27, Army withdrew from Little Rock, Ark., after Central HS integration.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1957 Nov 28, "Look Homeward, Angel" with Anthony Perkins premiered in NYC.
(DT, 11/28/97)
1957 Nov 29, John Coltrane and the Thelonius Monk quartet performed together for a show at Carnegie Hall. Tapes of the performance, recorded by Voice of America, were mislabeled and lost until 2005.
(SFC, 10/4/05, p.E8)
1957 Nov 29, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (60), Austrian-US composer (Kathrin, sound tracks for Captain Blood, Don Juan), died.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1957 Nov 29, Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, born in the US in 1918, was shot to death in Vilnius for partisan activities in southern Lithuania.
(LHC, 3/6/03)
1957 Nov 30, An assassination attempt on Indonesian Pres. Sukarno killed 8.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1957 Nov, Gordon Gould (d.2005), a Columbia Univ. doctoral student under Dr. Townes, came up with a process for concentrating visible light as opposed to microwaves of a maser. He was the 1st to use the term laser.
(Econ, 6/11/05, TQ p.28)
1957 Nov, William E. Schirmer (b.1891), SF Bay Area architect, died in a car crash along with his wife when a drunk driver crossed a center line.
(SFC, 8/2/08, p.F6)
1957 Nov, Communist bosses gathered in Moscow. Mao Zedong predicted that between a third and a half of the world’s population might be killed in a nuclear conflagration, but that most survivors would be living in the socialist block and “imperialism would be razed to the ground."
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/quemoy_matsu-2.htm)(Econ, 11/27/10, p.65)
1957 Dec 2, The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first full-scale commercial nuclear facility to generate electricity in the US, went critical. [see July 12] It was taken out of service in 1982.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)(AP, 12/2/07)
1957 Dec 3, Maria Ridulph (7) disappeared while playing in Sycamore, Illinois. In April, 1958, two people foraging for mushrooms found her remains. In 2011 prosecutors in Sycamore charged Jack Daniel McCullough (71), a former police officer, in the abduction of Ridulph after an ex-girlfriend's discovery of an unused train ticket blew a hole in his alibi. At the time, McCullough's name was John Tessier. On Sep 14, 2012, McCullough was convicted of the murder. On Dec 9 McCullough was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 7/3/11)(AP, 9/14/12)(AP, 12/11/12)
1957 Dec 5, The William Inge play, “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," opened at New York's Music Box Theatre and ran for a total of 468 performances, closing on January 17, 1959. It was directed by Elia Kazan. The drama was reworked by Inge from his earlier play, Farther Off from Heaven, first staged in 1947 at Margo Jones' Theatre '47 in Dallas, Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_at_the_Top_of_the_Stairs)
1957 Dec 5, NYC became the 1st city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market with its Fair Housing Practices Law.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1957 Dec 6, AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The union had been expelled because of racketeering by its executives, including union president Dave Beck and vice president James R. Hoffa. The criminal activity was disclosed during a special Senate committee investigation of racketeering and organized crime in labor-management relations. The Teamsters were readmitted in Oct, 1987, but disaffiliated themselves from the AFL-CIO in 2005.
(HNQ, 1/8/99)(AP, 12/6/07)
1957 Dec 6, America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed as Vanguard TV3 rose only about four feet off a Cape Canaveral, Fla., launch pad before crashing back down and exploding.
(AP, 12/6/08)
1957 Dec 9, Japan [announced?] its 1st ambassador to Israel.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1957 Dec 11, The movie "Peyton Place," based on the novel by Grace Metalious, starred Lana Turner and had its world premiere in Camden, Maine, where most of it had been filmed.
(AP, 12/11/07)(SFC, 8/13/14, p.E8)
1957 Dec 17, The United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.
(AP, 12/17/97)
1957 Dec 18, Alex Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins starred in the film "Bridge on the River Kwai." It premiered at the RKO Palace Theater in New York City and later won multiple Oscars.
(WSJ, 2/27/96, p.A19)(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB p.8)(AP, 12/18/97)
1957 Dec 18, The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line [see July 12].
(AP, 12/18/07)
1957 Dec 19, The musical play "The Music Man," starring Robert Preston, with book and songs by Meredith Willson, opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theater for 1,375 performances. Mason City, Iowa, Willson's home town, unveiled Music Man Square in 2002
(AP, 12/19/97)(MC, 12/19/01)(SSFC, 3/14/04, p.D12)
1957 Dec 20, Elvis Presley was given a draft notice to join US Army for National Service.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1957 Dec 25, Frederick Law Olmsted (87), US architect (Central Park, NYC), died.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1957 Dec 25, Ramdane Abane (b.1920), Algerian Berber revolutionary leader, was assassinated in Morocco.
(www.amazighworld.org/history/personalities/ramdane_abane.php)(SFC, 6/28/08, p.E2)
1957 Dec 26, The Ingmar Bergman film "Wild Strawberries," starring Victor Sjostrom, opened in Sweden.
(AP, 12/26/07)
1957 Dec 29, Singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were married in Las Vegas.
(AP, 12/29/97)
1957 Dec, The 1st Beijing Int’l. Airport opened.
(Hem, 8/02, p.34)
1957 AndreÏ Makine, writer, was born in Siberia. He emigrated to Paris in 1987 where he authored "Dreams of My Russian Summers" (1994), "The Crime of Olga Arbyelina" (1998) and "Music of a Life" (2002).
(SSFC, 8/18/02, p.M3)
1957 Francis Bacon painted his "Study for Portrait of Van Gogh, V."
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.29)
1957 Alexander Calder (1898-1976) made his black standing piece "Seven-Foot Beastie."
(SFC,11/15/97, p.C1)
1957 Roy De Forest painted the racially charged "It’s a Long Way to Alabama."
(SFEC, 9/29/96, DB p.44)
1957 Don Martin (d.2000 at 68), one of Mad's maddest cartoonists, began working for Mad. Martin left Mad in 1987 and published his Don Martin cartoon magazine in 1994.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A20)
1957 Alberto Giacometti made a bronze portrait bust of his brother Diego.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A17)
1957 Jasper Johns painted "Drawer" and "Book."
(SFEC, 11/24/96, C15)
1957 David Park painted his classic "Canoe."
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.E6)
1957 Picasso created a suit of 45 pictures based on Velasquez’s "Las Meninas" over a 4-month period.
(WSJ, 7/17/01, p.A16)
1957 Ted Hughes (1930-1998), British poet, published his first book of poetry "Hawk in the Rain." It re-defined the shape of post-war English poetry.
(SFC, 10/30/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/8/03, p.83)
1957 John Osborne wrote his play "The Entertainer."
(WSJ, 11/27/96, p.A10)
1957 Gary Becker (b.1930), Nobel prize winning economist (1992), authored “The Economics of Discrimination."
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.92)
1957 Rolf Blomberg published "Buried Treasure and the Anacondas," an account of the search for Inca treasure in the Llanganati Mountains of Ecuador.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, p.A10)
1957 Herb Caen, SF newspaper columnist, wrote his 5th book "Caen’s Guide to San Francisco."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A13)
1957 Italo Calvino, Italian writer, authored his novel “Il Barone Rampante" (The Baron in the Trees). It tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baron_in_the_Trees)
1957 Noam Chomsky (b.1928), American linguist, authored “Syntactic structures."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.96)
1957 Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), expatriate British writer, authored “Justine," the first volume his 4-part Alexandria Quartet (1957-1960).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Durrell)
1957 Lawrence Durrell authored “Bitter Lemons." The autobiographical work described the three years (1953–1956) he spent on the island of Cyprus.
(Econ, 6/30/12, p.74)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lemons)
1957 Leon Festinger authored “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance." The basic idea behind cognitive dissonance theory is that people do not like to have dissonant cognitions. As a result, when someone does experience two or more dissonant cognitions (or conflicting thoughts), they will attempt to do away with the dissonance.
(WSJ, 12/4/06, p.B1)
1957 Ian Fleming (1908-1964), English author best known for his James Bond novels, authored “From Russia With Love."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming)
1957 John Fleming (d.1997 at 77), an int’l. legal scholar, wrote "The Law of Torts," a classic work on personal injury law.
(SFC, 9/27/97, p.C2)
1957 E. Franklin Frazier published his work: "Black Bourgeoisie."
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 37)
1957 Arthur Frommer self-published his first travel book "Europe on $5 a Day." It had begun as a guidebook for GI’s.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T2)(SSFC, 5/6/07, p.G3)
1957 Harold Gilliam authored “San Francisco Bay."
(SFC, 12/27/14, p.C2)
1957 Stanford Prof. Edward Gintzton (d.1998 at 82) wrote his textbook "Microwave Measurement." He was a pioneer in the development of medical linear accelerators for the treatment of cancer and co-founded Varian Associates (1948).
(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A18)
1957 Martin Luther King wrote his autobiography "Stride Toward Freedom."
(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.14)
1957 "The Copernican Revolution" by Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1923-1996) was published.
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1957 Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) wrote "The Cat in the Hat" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
(SFC, 3/28/97, p.D2)(WSJ, 12/24/98, p.B1)
1957 William Gibson published "The Miracle Worker," the story of Helen Keller.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, BR p.3)
1957 Richard Hoggart (b.1918), British academic, authored “The Uses of Literacy," a pioneering work of cultural criticism and look at the English working class after WWII.
(WSJ, 9/20/08, p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hoggart)
1957 Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), Swiss-born psychoanalyst, authored “The Undiscovered Self."
(SFC, 6/5/11, p.G7)(www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Carl-Jung.htm)
1957 Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), Swiss-born psychoanalyst, published his work “Memories, Dreams, Reflections."
(SFC, 6/5/11, p.G7)(http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2002/jungtimeline.htm)
1957 Janos Kornai (b.1928), Hungarian economist, authored “Overcentralization." This was the 1st book by an economist behind the Iron Curtain to examine the command of “actual socialism" and to criticize central planning.
(WSJ, 1/30/07, p.B15)
1957 C.Y. Lee authored his novel "The Flower Drum Song," a story of San Francisco’s Chinatown. It inspired a Rogers and Hammerstein musical and was made into a film in 1961.
(SFC, 9/18/02, p.A1)
1957 Max Lerner authored "America as a Civilization."
(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)
1957 Art Linkletter (1912-2010), radio and TV talk-show pioneer, authored “Kids Say the Darndest Things" (1957).
(SFC, 5/27/10, p.C4)
1957 Norman Mailer published his essay "The White Negro" in Dissent.
(WSJ, 2/24/97, p.A20)
1957 James Michener (d.1997 at 90) wrote his novel "The Bridge at Andau," and co-authored "Rascals in Paradise." He also published his "Selected Writings."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1957 The book “The Sultan in Oman" by Jan Morris (b.1926), British travel writer, was published. It was set in 1955 and described the Sultan’s traveling party after a brief war.
(www.hku.hk/english/courses2000/2045/morris.htm)
1957 Wright Morris won the National Book Award for his epic novel "The Field of Vision."
(SFC, 5/1/98, p.D7)
1957 Vladimir Nabokov authored his novel “Pnin," the story of a master failer.
(WSJ, 2/16/08, p.W10)
1957 Vance Packard (1914-1996) wrote "Hidden Persuaders," a critique of advertising and the consumer society. Packard revealed physiological techniques used by advertisers, including subliminal messages.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B6)(Econ, 12/20/08, p.107)
1957 Darcy Ribeiro, anthropologist (1923-1997), wrote "Indigenous Language and Cultures in Brazil."
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A20)
1957 Ayn Rand (1905-1982) wrote her novel "Atlas Shrugged."
(SFEC, 7/26/98, BR p.3)
1957 Martin Russ authored "The Last Parallel," an memoir of combat in the Korean War.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Par p.18)
1957 Ian Pierre Watt (d.1999 at 82), professor at Stanford, authored "The Rise of the Novel." His work also included "Myths of Modern Individualism" and "Essays on Conrad." A collection of his essays, "Critical History: The Career of Ian Watt," was published after his death.
(SFC, 12/16/99, p.A33)
1957 Evelyn Waugh authored "The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold." "He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and Jazz—everything in fact that had happened in his lifetime."
(WSJ, 1/4/02, p.A11)
1957 In East Germany Ruth Werner (d.2000), Communist spy in Britain during WW II, authored a novel of her early years: "An Unusual Girl."
(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A23)
1957 Herbert Yardley, American cryptographer, authored “The Education of a Poker Player."
(Econ, 12/19/15, p.41)
1957 "The Bald Singer" began running at the La Huchette theater in Paris. It was still being performed in 1996.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, T9)
1957 The first Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival in the US was held.
(Dr, 7/96, V1#1, p.5)
1957 The ballet "Sonate a trois" by Maurice Bejart was based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s play "No Exit." The music was from the "Sonata for Piano and Percussion" by Bela Bartok.
(SFC, 11/8/96, p.C5)
1957 The ballet "Agon" with music by Stravinsky was produced by George Balanchine.
(WSJ, 6/19/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 10/10/00, p.A24)
1957 Benjamin Britten wrote his ballet "The Prince of the Pagoda's."
(SFEC, 1/17/99, DB p.29)
1957 The Broadway show "Square Root of Wonderful" by Carson McCullers featured the debut of Mark Lenard (1918-1996), later Sarek of Vulcan, the father of Mr. Spock.
(SFC, 11/27/96, p.B2)
1957 The Broadway musical "Jamaica" with Lena Horne was directed by Robert Lewis.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)
1957 Capital Records put out a 12-inch album titled “Birth of the Cool." It included recordings from 1949-1950 singles by a NYC nonet under Miles Davis.
(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.W12)
1957 Jonel Perlea (1900-1970), Romania-born composer, became the principal conductor of the Connecticut Symphony and continued there for ten years.
(http://soundfountain.org/rem/remperlea.html)
1957 The jazz opera "Shinbone Alley" opened on Broadway. It was written by Joe Darion with music by George Kleinsinger.
(SFC, 6/22/01, p.D4)
1957 The Broadway show "Time Remembered" starred Richard Burton, Helen Hayes and Susan Strasberg. It was based on the play "Leucadia" by Jean Anouilh.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.A22)
1957 "Eugenia" with Tallulah Bankhead was produced on Broadway by Randolph Carter.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1957 Marvin Mirisch (d.2002 at 84) and his brothers, Walter and Harold (d.1968), launched a film production outfit that led to 68 movies over the next 17 years.
(SFC, 11/21/02, p.A25)
1957 "Half Gun, Will Travel" began to run on TV and continued for 6 years.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.E5)
1957 John Hart (1917-2009) starred as Hawkeye in the TV series “Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans." Lon Chaney Jr. played Chingachgook.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.D5)
1957 MGM closed its cartoon studio in a panic over diminishing audiences due to television. William Hanna and Joe Barbera (1911-2006) formed their own company and began making cartoons for TV. The Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon program "Ruff & Reddy" began.
(SFC, 6/3/97, p.B4)(WSJ, 12/21/06, p.D8)
1957 Terrytoons produced the "Tom Terrific" cartoons series until 1959. Lionel Wilson (d.2003 at 79) was the voice. It ran on Captain Kangaroo.
(SFC, 5/31/03, p.A20)
1957 Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges (d.1998) began as a TV series. It ran to 1961. It was mostly filmed at the Marineland of the Pacific in LA.
(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A4)
1957 Elvis Presley appeared a 2nd time on the Ed Sullivan TV Show.
(SFC,1/22/97, p.A20)
1957 Lawrence Harvey Zeigler, later known as Larry King, began sweeping floors for at a radio station in Miami.
(WT-NWA, 7/01, p.43)
1957 Stripper Tempest Storm, born as Annie Banks in Eastman, Georgia, signed a $100,000 contract in SF to tour the burlesque circuit. In 1987 she published her autobiography: "The Lady Is a Vamp."
(SFC, 7/15/99, p.B7)
1957 Barney Wilen, French saxophonist, sat in with Miles Davis on a session for "Ascenser pour l’Echafaud" (Elevator for the Scaffold), a classic film by Louis Malle.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A15)
1957 Harry Belafonte sang his "Banana Boat Song."
(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB p.64)
1957 The Coasters sang "Down in Mexico."
(SFC, 11/20/02, p.A21)
1957 Sammy Cooke made a hit with "You Send Me." He had just switched from gospel music to pop. Clifton White (d.1998 at 76), guitarist and band leader, led the band behind Cooke’s music.
(SFC, 4/798, p.A21)
1957 Jerry Lee Lewis made a hit with his recording of “Great Balls of Fire," written by Earl Burroughs (1925-2016) and Otis Blackwell.
(SFC, 4/14/16, p.D5)
1957 Johnny Heartsman recorded "Johnny’s House Party," a top 20 R&B hit.
(SFC, 1/1/97 p.C2)
1957 Bobby Helms recorded "Jingle Bell Rock."
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.C8)
1957 The Kingston Trio singing group formed in and around Palo Alto, Calif.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.52)
1957 Buddy Knox had a hit with his song "Party Doll."
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.D1)
1957 John Lennon met Paul McCartney and invited him to join his Quarrymen. McCartney soon introduced Lennon to George Harrison.
(SFC, 12/1/01, p.D1)
1957 Thelonious Monk recorded alone on Round Midnight. A CD was later released titled Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Himself (Riverside Original Jazz Classics). Monk also wrote "Crepuscule with Nellie," a ballad to his wife (d.2002).
(WSJ, 10/14/95, p.A-12)(SFC, 6/28/02, p.A26)
1957 Frank Sinatra sang "All the Way."
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)
1957 Don Stover (1928-1996), blue grass banjo player, recorded "Knee Deep in Bluegrass," with Bill Monroe. His bands included the Coal River Valley Boys, the Lilly Brothers Band and the White Oak Mountain Boys with whom he recorded "Things in Life."
(SFC, 11/13/96, p.C3)
1957 Richard Berry recorded "Louie, Louie" with the Pharaohs on Flip Records. It was intended as the B-side of "You Are My Sunshine." It sold about 130,000 copies.
(SFC, 1/25/97, p.A19)(SFC, 4/11/98, p.C5)
1957 Margaret Hillis (d.1998 at 76) founded the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.21)
1957 The Santa Fe Opera opened with its first season.
(WSJ, 8/15/96, p.A10)
1957 Martin Stone (d.1998 at 83) founded WVIP Radio in Mount Kisco, N.Y. He produced "Howdy Doody" at NBC in the late 40s and early 50s and "Author Meets the Critics."
(SFC, 6/19/98, p.B6)
1957 In Toledo, Ohio the Craig Memorial Bridge, a drawbridge over the Maumee River, became a major link for trucks between Ohio and Michigan.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.20A)
1957 Canyon Dam, 30 miles NE of San Antonio, Tx., was completed.
(SFC, 7/5/02, p.A4)
1957 In San Francisco abstract painter Dmitri Grachis (1932-2021) opened his Spatsa Gallery on Filbert Street at Fillmore. Over the next four years it served as a gathering place for Beat artists. In 1990 the Natsoulas Gallery published "The Spatsa Gallery 1958-1961".
(https://tinyurl.com/y3bfgemj)(SFC, 1/27/21, p.B1)
1957 In the SF Bay Area Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds and David Guard formed the Kingston Trio folk group.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.C6)
1957 In northern California the Almaden Air Force Station was established on Mount Umumhum, a 44-acre site just south of Los Gatos. The site had played a role in the creation story of the local Amah Mutsun Indians. The base was decommissioned in 1979. In 2010 a cleanup of toxic paint and asbestos began under a $3.2 million federal grant.
(SFC, 7/10/10, p.A1)
1957 San Francisco Attorney Bill Evers (1927-2017) Jim McClatchey, publisher of the Sacramento Bee, formed the Tahoe Improvement and Conservation Association. It later became the League to Save Lake Tahoe.
(SFC, 7/7/17, p.D7)
1957 Eichler Homes in California began to offer an atrium as a sales booster.
(SFEM, 11/3/96, p.14)
1957 In California the first American plastic home was exhibited in Disneyland's Tomorrowland.
(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W10)
1957 On the West Coast the Beat Generation wore beards and sandals and experimented with Zen and pot with Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road" (1956) as their Bible. The character Elmo Hassel was Herbert Huncke, beat poet and addict.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)(SFC, 8/9/96, p.D1)
1957 In San Francisco Herb Lee (1933-2017) became the city’s first Chinese American police officer.
(SSFC, 11/12/17, p.C10)
1957 California state prison guards formed the California Correctional Officers Association, mainly as a social organization. The group became politically active in the 1970s and in 1982 formally organized as a labor union.
(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.A7)
1957 In San Francisco the Franciscan Crab Restaurant was built at Pier 43½. The front design by Hewitt C. Wells featured a prow-like shape.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, p.C2)
1957 Mrs. Leonard "Etya" Gechtoff, owner of the East and West Gallery in SF coined the term "beatnik" following the launch of Sputnik. For the self-labeled Beat Movement of the 1950s and '60s, "beat" originally meant "exhausted." It was later sometimes interpreted as "beatific" and also derisively as "beatnik." Centered in the Bohemian artist communities in California and New York, the movement was social and literary with adherents adopting a style of seedy dress and the "hip" vocabulary of jazz musicians. Major figures of the movement were novelist Jack Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg.
(SFC,11/11/97, p.D3)(www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/conner74.htm)
1957 Newspaper columnist Herb Caen picked up the term "beatnik" to describe the Beat poets of San Francisco.
(www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/conner74.htm)
1957 In San Francisco Cyril Magnin, mercantile family head, and George Killion, chief executive of American President Lines, founded the World Trade Club. In 2006 the club dissolved due to declining membership and financial losses.
(SFC, 10/24/06, p.B3)
1957 The C.A. Thayer, a 3-masted wooden schooner, made its last voyage to SF from Puget Sound under the command of Adrian F. Raynaud (d.1997 at 102). The ship was berthed at the SF Maritime National Historic Park. It was built as a lumber schooner in Eureka, Ca., in 1895 and made its last commercial voyage as a cod fishing boat in 1950. In 2007 it was re-christened at the Hyde Street Pier following a $14 million rebuild in Alameda.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A24)(SFEC, 7/12/98, DB p.31)(SFC, 4/13/07, p.B1)
1957 The United Church of Christ was formed as a combination of the Congregational-Christian Church, the Evangelical Church and the Reformed Church. These were outgrowths of the German Reformed Church (1793) and the German Evangelical Synod of North America (1872).
(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A11)
1957 Rev. Billy Graham led a New York Crusade at Madison Square Garden that was televised coast-to-coast.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, Z1 p.3)
1957 Martin Luther King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
(WSJ, 11/3/97, p.A20)
1957 Carlo Gambino (d.1976) became head of the Gambino crime family and was later the model for Don Corleone in the film "The Godfather."
(SSFC, 8/11/02, Par p.4)
1957 Andrew Eliot Rice (d.2010 at 87) helped form the Society for Int’l. Development, an organization for fostering development programs around the world.
(SFC, 6/12/10, p.D8)
1957 Billy Barty (d.2000 at 76) founded Little People of America, an advocacy group for dwarfs.
(SSFC, 12/24/00, p.B5)
1957 Leo Castelli (d.1999 at 91) opened his art gallery on East 77th Street in NYC. He became the arbiter of a new movement, Neo-Dada, that quickly transformed to the Pop Art scene.
(WSJ, 8/25/99, p.A16)
1957 GQ, a men's fashion magazine was founded.
(SFC, 6/12/03, p.A25)
1957 Life magazine printed R. Gordon Wasson’s “Seeking the Magic Mushroom" detailing his experiences at a religious ritual in Mexico. Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, experienced the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushroom during a trip to Mexico in 1955.
(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.B10)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
1957 National Geographic Magazine published a picture of flamingos that inspired Donald Featherstone of Leominster, Mass., to start a business making plastic models for yard ornaments. The plastic flamingo was designed at Union Products in Mass. In 1958.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, zone 1 p.2)(SFC, 7/14/99, p.8)
1957 Tatyana (d.1982) and Maurice Grosman set up the Universal Limited Art Editions lithography workshop (ULAE) in a Long Island carriage house.
(SFC, 3/31/97, p.E6)
1957 Commercial jet travel began to grow.
(SFEC,12/797, p.T3)
1957 Tang, a dry breakfast beverage in crystal form, was introduced.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, DB p.27)
1957 Ben Eisenstadt, founder of Cumberland Packaging Corp., with his son Marvin and chemist Paul Kracauer developed a saccharine-based sweetener that was initially geared toward diabetics. It later became known as Sweet’N Low, which became a registered trademark of Cumberland Packaging Corp. in 1970. In 2006 Rich Cohen authored “Sweet and Low: A Family History."
(SSFC, 4/23/06, p.M6)(Econ, 1/30/10, p.77)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Eisenstadt)
1957 Boxer Middleweight Sugar Ray Robinson lost, won and lost his title.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)
1957 Reporters William Lambert (d.1998 at 78) and Wallace Turner won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for their series on Dave Beck, the president of the Int’l. Brotherhood of Teamsters. They exposed that Teamsters and racketeers had combined forces to take over the Portland City government. The articles in the Oregonian were later used by Robert Kennedy for his probe on the Teamsters.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.A22)
1957 The 29th Academy Awards were held at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Ingrid Bergman won for her role in Anastasia.
(SFC, 3/15/02, p.D1)
1957 Mr. Magoo, a near-sighted cartoon character, won his 2nd academy award.
(WSJ, 7/31/97, p.A1)
1957 A group of scientists and supporters from around the world gathered in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to call attention to the risks of nuclear war. In 1995 scientists in London had issued a manifesto declaring that researchers must take responsibility for their creations, such as the atomic bomb. The manifesto served as the philosophical origin for the Pugwash Conference.
(WSJ, 10/16/95, p. A-15)(SFC, 9/2/05, p.B5)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower named Elbridge Durbrow (d.1997 at 93) as ambassador to South Vietnam, the newly divided southern portion of Indochina. He served there until 1961.
(SFC, 5/24/97, p.A20)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower gave authority to senior military commanders to retaliate with nuclear weapons if the president could not be reached or was unable to respond to a nuclear attack against the US in a policy known as "pre-delegation authority." A memo to this effect was dated Dec 19, 1958.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A2)(SFC, 9/2/98, p.A5)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.
(AP, 7/29/08)
1957 Vice-president Richard Nixon was stoned in Caracas.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower appointed Dr. Katherine B. Oettinger (d.1997 at 94) chief of the Children’s Bureau in the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). The bureau was abolished in 1967 under Pres. Johnson.
(SFC,10/20/97, p.A19)
1957 Herbert Brownell, US attorney general, resigned. He was replaced by William P. Rogers (d.2000 at 87). Rogers later served as sec. of state under Pres. Nixon (1969-1973).
(SFC, 1/4/01, p.C3)
1957 The US began its Corona project, a secret attempt to put a reconnaissance satellite into orbit. Pres. Eisenhower put it on fast track in 1959. The first 12 launch attempts failed. In 1960 a successful flight photographed a large part of the Soviet Union. In 1998 2 books were published on the project: "Eye in the Sky" a collection of essays edited by 3 experts and "The Corona Project" by Curtis Peebles. Details on corona were declassified in 1995.
(WSJ, 7/6/98, p.A13)(SFC, 8/15/12, p.C8)
1957 The US FDA approved the drug Propoxyphene. It was marketed as the pain killer under the name Darvon and Darvocet. In 2009 an FDA advisory committee voted 14-12 against continued marketing following safety concerns which linked the drug to sometimes serious and fatal heart rhythm abnormalities. In 2010 US drug makers agreed to stop marketing the drug.
(SFC, 11/20/10, p.A7)
1957 The US Mail Special Delivery increased to $.30 for the guaranteed immediate delivery.
(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A6)
1957 The US Senate investigated the Teamsters and leaders Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)
1957 William Proxmire (1915-2005), Wisconsin Democrat, won a special election to fill the seat of US Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. Proxmire served until 1989.
(SFC, 12/16/05, p.A4)
1957 The legal term "informed consent" was first used by attorney Paul Gebhard (d.1997 at 69) in a court proceeding of Salgo vs. Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. The ruling in the case defined the term "full disclosure."
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A22)
1957 The FBI closed its investigation on Jay Lovestone (d.1999), a former Communist turned CIA informer, after 6 years of wiretaps. Lovestone worked as an executive secretary for the AFL's Free Trade Union Committee which was primarily supported by CIA funds.
(WSJ, 5/19/99, p.A20)
1957 In the US Arkansas Gov. Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent school integration at Little Rock High School and Eisenhower responded with Federal troops to enforce federal law for integration.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)(SFC, 5/19/95, C-15)
1957 In California’s Napa County the farming town of Monticello, founded in 1866, was drowned as the Putah River was dammed to create lake Berryessa.
(SSFC, 12/6/15, p.C1)
1957 Mississippi created the Sovereignty Commission to fight against the Civil Rights movement. It informed the police about planned marches and encouraged police harassment of African-Americans who cooperated with civil rights groups.
(WSJ, 6/11/99, p.A8)
1957 Bill and Daisy Myers became the first Black couple to buy a house in Levittown (Willingboro), Pa. State police were required to protect them. They lived there until 1961. In 1999 Daisy was given a reception and an apology from the Bristol Township Mayor Sam Fenton. Levittown was created by William Levitt, who kept costs down by bringing in ready made walls and buying appliances directly from manufacturers. In 2009 David Kushner authored “Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb."
(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A6)(Econ, 5/31/08, p.28)(WSJ, 2/5/08, p.A11)
1957 Hondo Oil Co., led by Robert O. Anderson (1917-2007), discovered the quarter-billion-barrel Empire-Abo oilfield in southeast New Mexico.
(WSJ, 12/8/07, p.A7)
1957 The founders of Insta Burger King in Miami changed its name to Burger King and introduced the broiled Whopper.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.A20)
1957 Chrysler pioneered a Highway Hi-Fi system that actually played records.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1957 In the US the first coupon clearing house was created. The first consumer coupon was an offer for a free glass of Coca-Cola issued in the mid 1890s.
(WSJ, 2/16/08, p.A12)
1957 Ford introduced the Edsel. It was the first car designed using market research. Americans rejected the car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1957 Fritz Wankel brought out his rotary engine.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)
1957 Jackie Robinson, baseball star, became vice president of Chock Full O’Nuts. In 1996 his widow, Rachel, co-wrote with Lee Daniels: "Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait." In 1997 Arnold Rampersad published Jackie Robinson, A Biography."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR p.10)(SFEC,10/19/97, BR p.1)
1957 AT&T introduced its Touchtone phones.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.E5)
1957 Seymour Cray (1925-1996) co-founded Control Data Corp. where he built the first computer to use radio transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
(SFC, 9/24/96, p.A6)
1957 Eight engineers left Shockley Semiconductor to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Jean A. Hoerni (1925-1997) was one of the "Fairchild Eight," founders of the Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. He was credited with building the bridge from the transistor to the integrated circuit. Victor Grinich (d.2000 at 75) helped form Fairchild. Eugene Kleiner (d.2003), another co-founder, helped found the Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers venture capital firm in 1972. Others included Jay Last, C. Sheldon Roberts and Julius Blank.
(SFC, 2/5/97, p.A20)(SFC, 11/11/00, p.A26)(SFC, 11/26/03, p.D1)
1957 Hoover produced its best selling model, the Convertible (Model 65), an upright vacuum cleaner that could be converted with a hose for above the floor cleaning.
(SFC, 7/19/08, p.F2)
1957 Ken Olson, a former MIT engineer, received $70,000 from American Research & Development (ARD) to develop Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) in return for a 70% stake.
(WSJ, 5/21/08, p.A17)
1957 The Hewlett-Packard Corp. went public and began operating its new site at Stanford Research Park.
(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)
1957 A Monsanto sponsored all-plastic House of the Future became part of Disney’s Tomorrowland.
(SFC, 7/14/96, p.T3)
1957 Joseph F. Cullman III (d.2004) took over as head of Philip Morris until 1978. Under his leadership Marlboro Country advertising was adopted and profits led to 1st place ranking.
(SFC, 5/4/04, p.B7)
1957 The first Toys R US store opened. The company was founded by Charles Lazarus, who opened Children's Bargain Town, a baby furniture store, in Washington, DC. It became a public company in 1978. In 2017 the company filed for bankruptcy and in 2018 filed a plan to close or sell its 740 stores in the US.
(SFC, 3/16/18, p.C3)
1957 The birth control pill developed by Dr. Djerassi in 1951 was approved in the US for treating menstrual problems.
(SJSVB, 4/8/96, p.8)
1957 Dr. Hilary Koprowski of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia developed an oral polio vaccine and tested it in Africa (Congo). The Wister polio vaccine was given to some 300,000 people in the Belgian Congo from 1957-1960. A later theory held that reuse of needles during the immunization program caused AIDS via “serial passage" that transformed the SIV virus into HIV. In 1999 Edward Hooper authored “The River," a detailed hypothesis for the origin of AIDS in Africa. Hooper suspected that the Wister polio vaccine, produced from monkey kidney cells, contained SIV virus. In 2000 a computerized study indicated that the AIDS virus was introduced to humans about 1930.
(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 1/15/01, p.A11)(SFC, 4/13/05, p.A5)
1957 Thalidomide was officially introduced to the market. It was discovered by Chemie Gruenethal, a German pharmaceutical firm, and marketed as a sedative with no side effects. It was later linked to severe birth defects. In 2001 Trent Stephens and Rock Brynner authored "Dark Remedy," a history of thalidomide.
(WSJ, 2/1/00, p.A20)
1957 The landmark paper "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars" was published in the journal Reviews of Modern Physics by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle.
(NH, 8/96, p.65)
1957 Roger Revelle and Hans Suess published a paper in which they explained the resistance of seawater to absorb carbon dioxide.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.30)
1957 Leo Esaki, Nobel laureate, discovered that electrons could "tunnel" through solid barriers via tiny electrical devices and the "semiconductor tunnel diode" was born.
(WSJ, 10/1/98, p.A1)
1957 Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian physicist, suggested that neutrinos could come in different types, known to physicists as flavors. His hypothesis was proved in 1998 in Japan. Pontecorvo had defected to the Soviet Union seven years earlier.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.71)
1957 James Lovelock, British scientist, built an electron capture detector. Initially built to detect minute quantities of fatty acids, it instead detected the impurities that lay in between the lipids. It thus became useful for detecting traces of pesticides and CFCs.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.194)
1957 In California Iron Mountain mine owners blamed the federal government for fish kills. They held that the Shasta federal dam caused the buildup of pollutants and that previously flows from Spring Creek were rendered harmless by dilution in the Sacramento River.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1957 Alvin Leonard (d.2008 at 90) began serving as the public health director of Berkeley, Ca., and continued there until 1970.
(SFC, 5/29/08, p.B5)
1957 A fire at the Colorado Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant released some plutonium in the smoke. The fire was kept secret until 1969 when another fire released more plutonium.
(SFC, 8/27/99, p.A3)
1957 George Mason Univ. began as an extension of the Univ. of Virginia. It became independent in 1972.
(WSJ, 3/31/06, p.W11)
1957 Sir Edmund Hillary was part of a joint New Zealand-British ice trek that drove farm tractors on the Skelton Glacier to the South Pole.
(SFC, 1/14/99, p.C2)
1957 On the Gulf Coast a hurricane named Audrey killed over 500 people.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)
1957 Mob boss Albert Anastasia of Murder Inc. was gunned down by 2 hitmen in a New York barbershop.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.B1)
1957 Harrison Ford, film actor from 1915-1932, died. Most of his work was in silent films.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.8)
1957 George Gustav Heye (b.1876), collector of Indian artifacts, died. He and a few rich friends set up a foundation in 1922 that established the Museum of the American Indian. The museum closed in 1994 and the Smithsonian acquired the collection.
(WSJ, 9/21/04, p.D8)
1957 Adaline Kent (b.1900), surrealist sculptor, died. Her work included "Scribe" (1944).
(SFC, 11/17/01, p.D10)
1957 Wolfgang Korngold (b.1897), composer of opera, ballet and film scores, died.
(WSJ, 4/2/01, p.A20)
1957 Peter B. Kyne (b.1880), author, died. He wrote 25 novels and over 1,000 short stories, a number of which were turned into Hollywood movies. Kyne was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Mateo County where most of his work was set.
(Ind, 7/19/03, p.3A)
1957 Bernard Maybeck (.b1862), architect, died. Most of his Arts and Crafts style homes were done in Berkeley, Ca., where he lived.
(SFC, 1/29/03, p.F7)
1957 Julia Morgan (b.1872), architect, died. She was born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland.
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.F4)
1957 Eliot Ness, former FBI agent, died at age 57 of a heart attack.
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.A3)
1957 Max Ophuls (b.1902), German born film director, died in France. He made films in Germany, France, Netherlands and the US.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, DB p.50)
1957 Dorothy Sayers (b.1893), British detective novelist, died. Her main hero was Lord Peter Wimsey.
(NW, 8/20/01, p.56)
1957 Arturo Toscanini (b.1868), Italian conductor, died. He led the NBC Symphony from 1937-1954. In 1978 Harvey Sachs wrote his biography. In 2002 Sachs edited "The Letters of Arturo Toscanini," his correspondence with Ada Mainardi.
(HN, 3/25/01)(WSJ, 4/30/02, p.D7)
1957 James Whale (67), English director, died of suicide in Hollywood. His films included "Frankenstein," "Show Boat" and "The Invisible Man." Later biographies of Whale included: "James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters" by James Curtis; "James Whale: A Biography, or The Would-Be Gentleman" by Mark Gatiss; and "Father of Frankenstein" by Christopher Bram. The 1988 film "Gods and Monsters" was a mixture of fact and fiction about the last months of horror director James Whale.
(USAT, 9/15/98, p.1D)(SFEC, 11/1/98, Par p.18)
1957 The International Labor Organization (ILO) developed and ratified Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957 (No. 107), an international instrument dedicated to improving the living conditions of Indigenous peoples worldwide. In 1989 it was revised and renamed Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). Convention 169 recognizes Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination within a nation-state.
(http://tinyurl.com/gsrhxrq)(Econ, 2/6/15, p.32)
1957 In Afghanistan Czech engineers built a cement factory 75 km from Kabul. It was shut down by the Taliban in 1995 and reopened in 2016.
(AP, 5/29/16)
1957 Charles Bentley (1929-2017), American professor of geophysics, began working for the US Antarctica Expedition and helped map the Antarctica ice sheet. He and his team found that the West Antarctica ice sheet was 2 miles thick at some points and extended as far below sea level as the highest mountains rose above the surface. They also found the deepest spot on Earth not covered by ocean, later named the Bentley Subglacial Trench.
(SSFC, 3/27/17, p.C10)
1957 Argentina signed a treaty with the Vatican that created the post of military bishop.
(Econ, 4/2/05, p.34)
1957 In Britain Reg Smythe (d.1998 at 81), began the Andy Capp comic strip in the northern editions of the Daily Mirror.
(SFC, 6/16/98, p.A22)
1957 Britain launched its 1st sub-orbital Skylark rocket. The last Skylark, #441, was launched near Kiruna, Sweden, in 2005.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.74)
1957 In British Guyana the People’s Progressive Party won elections and Dr. Jagan and his wife won cabinet posts.
(SFC, 3/7/97, p.A24)
1957 The words "freedom of migration" were struck from China’s constitution. This effectively confined the peasants to the land where they were born. Authorities did not loosen up until 1983.
(USAT, 2/13/97, p.8A)
1957 The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) was established to ensure that Chinese Catholics not act contrary to the interests of their country.
(www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/032502/kungRmks.php)(Economist, 9/8/12, p.42)
1957 China under Mao Zedong set up its reform-through-labor system, known as laojiao.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.13)
1957 China’s Dongzhang Reservoir in Fuqing Province was filled. Prehistoric tombs were hidden underneath.
(Arch, 1/05, p.12)
1957 A flu pandemic began in China and killed 1-4 million people. It caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957. The Asian flu broke out in Guizhou, China, and over the next two years killed at least 1 million people worldwide. This H2N2 influenza virus continued to circulate until 1968, when it transformed via antigenic shift into influenza A virus subtype H3N2, the cause of the 1968 influenza pandemic.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%9358_influenza_pandemic)(SFC, 4/13/05, p.A5)(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)
1957 In Cuba the Capri Hotel was built in Havana. It became one of the flashiest mob joints of the time. Charles Tourine managed the nightclub and Nicholas di Costanzo ran the casino. Both were associated with Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A10)
1957 The Cuban urban underground was led by Frank Pais, an aspiring schoolteacher turned activist.
(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.D8)
1957 Denmark banned nuclear weapons from its soil.
(AP, 10/29/10)
1957 Egypt became the first country in the Arab world to elect a woman to parliament.
(Econ, 10/15/11, p.29)
1957 The French film “Three Days to Live" starred Leno Ventura and Jeanne Moreau.
(SFC, 10/31/15, p.E4)
1957 The Clemenceau, a French aircraft carrier, first set sail. It was taken out of service in 1997. In 2006 dismantling efforts faced problems. French officials said there are 45 tons of asbestos on the ship, but environmentalists put that number at up to 1,000 tons.
(AP, 2/15/06)
1957 German artist Heinz Mack founded the Zero magazine. Mack and Otto Piene invited artists like Günther Uecker to exhibit in their studio, and the three friends became the founding fathers of the Zero movement, seeking to overcome the pessimism of the postwar period and embrace technical progress, experimenting with light, high-tech materials and motion. In 2015 an exhibition at Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau museum featured work from co-founders Mack and Piene as well as Jean Tinguely, Lucio Fontana and Jef Verheyen.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_%28art%29)(AP, 3/20/15)
1957 Germany’s independent central bank, Bundesbank, was founded. It became a trailblazer for modern central banks.
(Economist, 10/6/12, p.87)
1957 In Zwickau, East Germany, the first Trabant car was manufactured. Production ceased in 1991.
(SSFC, 6/17/07, p.A2)
1957 Indar Jit Rikhye (1920-2007), UN peacekeeper from India, became chief of staff of UN forces along the Suez Canal. Prior to this each national liaison officer reported to their own governments.
(Econ, 6/9/07, p.99)
1957 Albert Metzger, owner of the Cecil Hotel in Alexandria, was kicked out of Egypt "with only two suitcases." The hotel had been founded by his father in 1929. The Cecil palace, which once attracted Alexandria's rich cosmopolitan elite, was nationalized by late president Gamal Abdel Nasser after Egypt's nationalist revolution in 1952. In 2007 the Metzger family regained control of the 86-room four-star hotel run by French company Accor.
(AFP, 6/21/07)
1957 In Honduras the military ousted the civilian president.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A8)
1957 In Hungary Bela Biszku became interior minister in the wake of the anti-Soviet revolution, when over 220 people who participated in the uprising were executed and many thousands imprisoned or persecuted. Biszku continued serving as interior minister to 1961. In 2014 he faced charges with war crimes over the suppression of the 1956 uprising.
(AP, 1/27/11)(AP, 3/18/14)
1957 Run Run Shaw (1907-2014) moved from Singapore to Hong Kong and built a studio that produced hundreds of films including “The One-Armed Swordsmith" and “Five Fingers of Death," which began a global craze for the martial arts.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.38)
1957 The state of Kerala in southwest India elected a Communist administration.
(NG, 5.1988, pp. 596)
1957 Iraq commissioned Le Corbusier to design the Baghdad Gymnasium as a small part of a planned Olympic city. It was only completed in 1982, under the rule of Saddam Hussein, under the guidance of Georges-Marc Presente, an associate of Le Corbusier, who ensured the strict application of the designer's clean, industrial, modernist principles.
(AFP, 4/23/12)
1957 Iraqi Shiite scholar Mohammed Baqr al Sadr founded the Daawa movement.
(WSJ, 4/28/05, p.A1)
1957 In Israel the Jewish town of Upper Nazareth was built on confiscated Palestinian land for the purpose of domination over Palestinian Nazareth. The 1997 book "Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Jalilee" (sic) by Dan Rabinowitz describes the relations between Arabs and Jews here.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.16)
1957 The Italian Mille Miglia automobile race, begun in 1927, was cancelled following the crash of a Ferrari driven by the Marquis de Portago. He and his co-driver were killed along with 10 bystanders when the car ran off the road at 90 mph.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A13)
1957 At this time only 2% of Italian homes had refrigerators. By 1974 this increased to 94%.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.63)
1957 Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) wrote "Umi to Dokuyaku." It was published in English as "The Sea and Poison" in 1972.
(SFEC, 9/30/96, p.A23)
1957 Saburo Sakai (d.2000 at 84) authored "Samurai." Sakai, a fighter pilot, reportedly shot down as many as 64 allied planes during WW II.
(SFC, 10/10/00, p.A21)
1957 The Japanese film “Black River" starred Tatsuya Nakadai and was directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.B13)
1957 The film "Kisses" by Yasuzo Masumura (d.1986 at 62) marked the director's debut.
(SFC, 9/2/97, p.E1)
1957 The film "The Lower Depths" starred Toshiro Mifune in a version of the Gorky story. It was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC,12/25/97, p.A25)(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1957 The Japanese film "Throne of Blood" (Kumonosujo) starred Toshiro Mifune in the Kurosawa directed reworking of Macbeth in the stylized manner of Noh drama. It was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.44)(SFC,12/25/97, p.A25)(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1957 The Japanese film “Untamed" starred Tatsuya Nakadai and was directed by Mikio Naruse.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.B13)
1957 Japan’s PM Nobusuke Kishi visited Australia and signed a commerce treaty. He was the country’s first post-war prime minister to visit Australia.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.37)
1957 Dr. Tomin Harada successfully pressed Japan’s government to enact a law to provide medical treatment to atomic bomb survivors.
(SFC, 6/29/99, p.A19)
1957 The Barisan Nasional Coalition began ruling Malaysia.
(Econ, 8/13/11, p.40)
1957 Ibrahim Nasir (31) became prime minister of the Maldives, a British protectorate.
(AP, 11/23/08)
1957 Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, aka the Iron Mayor of Mexico City, opened a new building for street vendors but left out fruit seller Rico Guillermina (1933-1996) and hundreds of others. She began a crusade and formed the Civic Association of Street Vendors which supported the PRI, who in return disregarded the laws controlling street sales.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A19)
1957 Mexico began allowing artists to pay taxes with donations of their artwork after muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros faced jail time for not paying taxes.
(SFC, 7/24/14, p.A4)
1957 Iusacell obtained a mobile radio telephone concession in Mexico.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A10)
1957 Diego Rivera, artist, died in Mexico City.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1957 Miguel Covarrubias, Mexican muralist, died. His work included murals for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in San Francisco.
(SFC, 4/20/01, p.A19)
1957 No one in Monaco pays income taxes except French citizens who arrived after this year.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.C1)
1957 In New Caledonia all native Kanaks were granted French citizenship.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A4)
1957 Abubakar Tafawa Balewa became Nigeria's first and only prime minister. He held the position until January 1966 when he was assassinated in the country's first military coup d'etat.
(AFP, 8/29/10)
1957 Paraguay began receiving economic support from Taiwan in exchange for supporting Taiwan at the UN.
(AP, 9/1/08)
1957 Jose Cojuangco, the father of Corazon Aquino, promised various Philippine government agencies that lent him money to buy Hacienda Luisita, a 14,800 acre sugar plantation, that he would sell much of the land to the peasants who worked it. He never did so.
(Econ, 12/10/05, p.49)
1957 The Polish novel "Kolumbowie" (Columbuses) by writer Roman Bratny was inspired by the heroics of WWII resistance fighter Stanislaw Likiernik (1923-2018). A TV series and film with the same title soon followed.
(AP, 5/21/18)
1957 East-West Games were held in Moscow.
(SFC, 9/21/04, p.B7)
1957 The Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions was founded in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.
(http://159.93.28.88/flnr/index.html)
1957 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev allowed the Chechens back to the Caucasus and the Checheno-Ingush republic was set up.
(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A12)
1957 South African reporter Henry Nxumalo (b.1917) was stabbed to death while investigating abortions. He was famous for his investigative pieces. Fondly called "Mr Drum", Nxumalo once enlisted as a farm worker to expose the brutality of white farmers. Nxumalo's life story was portrayed in a 2004 film called "Drum."
(AFP, 12/26/11)
1957 The 466-foot Tower of Madrid was completed. This was Spain’s tallest structure until the 758-foot Torrespana was completed in 1982.
(SFC, 11/27/15, p.A2)
1957 Ramon Rubial (d.1999 at 92), an anti-Franco socialist, was released from prison and became the underground leader of the Socialist Party.
(SFC, 5/26/99, p.C8)
1957 In Spain a flood devastated the Ciutat Vella, the historic district of Valencia. To avoid another such deluge the government diverted the Turia River and turned the riverbed into a public green zone.
(SFC, 8/15/07, p.G1)
1957 Mohammed Wardi (26) began his singing career in Sudan. He became known as the Golden Throat and blended Nubian music into the Arabic language.
(SFC, 9/21/07, p.A12)
1957 In Syria the Yarmouk Palestinian camp was created. It became the larges of 9 and evolved into a densely populated residential district just five miles (eight km) from the center of Damascus.
(AP, 1/8/13)
1957 The first team of 6 Tibetans trained at a Saipan US CIA base and then airdropped back into Tibet with modern weapons and radios. From 1957 to the early 1970s America spirited young Tibetans out through East Pakistan, trained them in Colorado, and parachuted them back to Tibet where they fought the Chinese army.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)(Econ, 1/2/16, p.64)
1957 The Vietnam Writers’ Association (VWA) was founded on the lines of cultural association in the Soviet bloc. In 2014 the alternative League of Independent Vietnamese Writers was founded.
(Econ, 7/18/15, p.34)
1957-1958 Henry Moore, sculptor, created his piece: "UNESCO Reclining Figure."
(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR p.9)
1957-1958 Isaac Bashevis Singer published "Shadows on the Hudson," a Yiddish novel in serial form in the Jewish Daily Forward. It was translated to English in 1997 and covered a circle of Jewish refugees in NYC in 1947-49.
(WSJ, 12/30/97, p.A8)
1957-1958 The International Geophysical Year was organized by the International Council on Scientific Unions.
(NOHY, 3/1990, p.235)
1957-1958 An English team including Sir Edmund Hillary traverses the continent of Antarctica for the first time.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 28)
1957-1959 The TV series "Whirleybirds" starred Ken Tobey (d.2002 at 85) as the co-owner of a helicopter for hire.
(SFC, 12/25/02, p.A29)
1957-1960 Miles Davis and Gill Evans collaborated to produce their masterpieces: "Miles Ahead," "Porgy and Bess," and "Sketches of Spain."
(SFC, 9/1/96, DB p.42)
1957-1960 In China some 3,000 scholars and government officials were incarcerated at the Jiabiangou forced labor camp in the northwestern desert. Only a few hundred outlived the camp. In 1997 Xianhui Yang (b.1946) began speaking survivors and over the next 5 years interviewed nearly 100. In 2000 he published a collection in China of 13 stories. In 2009 “Woman From Shanghai: Tales of Survival From a Chinese Labor Camp" was published in English.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.E2)
1957-1961 Gunsmoke is the top ranking network show on television for four seasons with rankings of 43.1, 39.6, 40.3, and 37.3%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1957-1963 The Sheri Lewis Show ran on NBC.
(SFC, 8/4/98, p.A1)
1957-1963 Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso lived in Paris. In 2000 Barry Miles authored "The Beat Hotel," an account of their years at the 9 Rue Git-leCoert managed by Madame Rachou.
(SFEC, 7/9/00, BR p.5)
1957-1964 In China Jean Pasqualini spent these years in a labor camp after being sentenced to 12 years detention for "counter revolutionary activities." His 1973 book "Prisoner of Mao" described his experiences.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A19)
1957-1967 Jimmy Hoffa led the Teamsters Union.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.C9)
Go to 1958
Return to home
1957 Jan 1, The state of Saarland, established in 1920 in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, joined the Federal Republic of West Germany. The Nazis had called the area "Westmark." After World War II the Saarland had come under French administration.
(Econ, 8/29/09, p.45)(http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Saarland)
1957 Jan 2, The SF Stock Exchange merged with the Los Angeles Stock Exchange and formed the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.B1)
1957 Jan 3, The Hamilton Watch Company was the first to introduce an electric watch in Lancaster, Pa.
(http://rondeau.net/history.html)
1957 Jan 5, President Eisenhower, in an address to Congress, proposed offering military assistance to Middle Eastern countries so they could resist Communist aggression; this became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. Under this doctrine a Middle Eastern country could request American economic assistance or aid from US military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of US forces "to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism". The phrase "international communism" made the doctrine much broader than simply responding to Soviet military action. A danger that could be linked to communists of any nation could conceivably invoke the doctrine.
(AP, 1/5/07)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Doctrine)
1957 Jan 6, Elvis Presley made another appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1957 Jan 7, Katie Couric, [Katherine], TV news host (Today), was born in Arlington, VA.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1957 Jan 9, British PM Anthony Eden resigned in the wake of the Suez crises.
(AP, 1/9/99)(Econ, 7/29/06, p.23)
1957 Jan 10, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to fight facial segregation by means of nonviolent protests. In 1986 David J. Garrow authored “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference." King met with about 60 black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. Their goal was to form an organization to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. In addition to King, Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, C.K. Steele, Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, Joseph Lowery of Mobile, and Ralph Abernathy of Montgomery, all played key roles in this meeting which led to the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Christian_Leadership_Conference)(ON, 4/2011, p.4,5)
1957 Jan 10, Harold Macmillan became prime minister of Britain, following the resignation of Anthony Eden.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1957 Jan 12, Harry Belafonte recorded "The Banana Boat Song."
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.D18)
1957 Jan 13, The Wham-O Company produced the 1st Frisbee. It was initially called the Pluto Platter.
(SFC, 7/1/02, p.B5)(MC, 1/13/02)
1957 Jan 14, Humphrey Bogart (57), actor, died in Los Angeles of cancer of the esophagus. His many films included “Casablanca" and “Caine Mutiny."
(SFEC, 5/18/97, Par p.6)(AP, 1/14/07)
1957 Jan 16, Three B-52's (accompanied at first by two spare aircraft) took off from Castle Air Force Base in California on the first nonstop, round-the-world flight by jet planes, which lasted 45 hours and 19 minutes.
(AP, 1/16/07)
1957 Jan 16, Arturo Toscanini (b.1867), Italian-US conductor (NBC), died in NYC. He led the NBC Symphony from 1937-1954. In 1978 Harvey Sachs wrote a biography of Toscanini. In 2002 Sachs edited "The Letters of Arturo Toscanini," his correspondence with Ada Mainardi. In 2017 Sachs authored a 2nd biography “Toscanini."
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9073009/Arturo-Toscanini)(HN, 3/25/01)(WSJ, 4/30/02, p.D7)(Econ 6/24/17, p.75)
1957 Jan 17, A 9-county commission recommended the creation of BART, the SF Bay Area Rapid Transport system.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1957 Jan 18, A trio of B-52's completed the first nonstop, round-the-world flight by jet planes, landing at March Air Force Base in California after more than 45 hours aloft.
(AP, 1/18/07)
1957 Jan 19, Pat Boone sang at President Eisenhower's inaugural ball.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1957 Jan 20, President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon were sworn in for their second terms of office in a private Sunday ceremony. A public ceremony was held the next day.
(AP, 1/20/07)
1957 Jan 21, US Pres. Eisenhower was inaugurated.
(EWH, 1968, p.1210)
1957 Jan 22, The “Truth or Consequences" TV show with Bob Barker became the first program to be recorded on videotape for subsequent airing in all time zones.
(SFC, 12/23/16, p.E3)
1957 Jan 22, Suspected "Mad Bomber" George P. Metesky, accused of planting more than 30 explosive devices in the New York City area, was arrested in Waterbury, Conn. He was later found mentally ill and committed to a mental hospital; he was released in 1973, and died in 1994 at age 90.
(AP, 1/22/98)(AP, 1/22/04)
1957 Jan 22, Israel completed its evacuation of Egyptian territory, excepting the Gaza Strip and the area of Aqaba.
(EWH, 1968, p.1242)
1957 Jan 23, Princess Caroline of Monaco, was born.
(HN, 1/23/99)
1957 Jan 23, Willie Edwards (25), US black, was murdered by KKK.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1957 Jan 31, In Japan Nobosuke Kishi was voted in as acting prime minister following the resignation of the ailing Tanzan Ishibashi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi)
1957 Jan, France began sending troops to Algeria to crush the rebel movement in what came to be called "The Battle for Algiers."
(SFC, 5/11/01, p.D4)
1957 Feb 1, Friedrich von Paulus (66), German field marshal (Stalingrad), died.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1957 Feb 5, Joseph Benson Hardaway (b.1895), animation director and voice actor, died. Nicknamed "Bugs," he was instrumental in naming the character "Bugs Bunny" when, while working on the film short "Hare-um, Scare-um," an animator handed him a model sheet of the rabbit character.
(www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?page=pr&FSctf=170)
1957 Feb 10, Laura Ingalls Wilder (b.1867) died in Mansfield, Missouri. She is known for writing the “Little House on the Prairie" series of children’s books released from 1932 to 1943 that focused on a settler and pioneer family and were drawn from the author’s childhood experiences.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder)
1957 Feb 12, Researchers announced the development of Borazan, a substance harder than diamonds.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1957 Feb 14, The Georgia Senate approved Sen Leon Butts' bill barring blacks from playing baseball with whites.
(HN, 2/14/98)(MC, 2/14/02)
1957 Feb 14, The “Southern Leadership Conference" was formed in New Orleans, Louisiana. Officers were elected which included: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Florida as Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Secretary, and Attorney I. M. Augustine of New Orleans, Louisiana as General Counsel. In August the name was changed to "Southern Christian Leadership Conference" at its first convention in Montgomery, Alabama.
(http://sclcnational.org/net/content/item.aspx?s=25461.0.12.2607)
1957 Feb 15, Andrei Gromyko replaced Dmitri T. Shepilov as the Soviet Foreign Minister.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1957 Feb 16, LeVar Burton, (Roots, Star Trek Next Generation), was born in Landstuhl, Germany.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1957 Feb 16, A US flag flew over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica. Wilkes Land is named after Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (later a Rear Admiral), the American explorer who commanded the 1838–42 United States Exploring Expedition.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land)(HN, 2/16/98)
1957 Feb 17, Suez Canal reopened.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1957 Feb 18, Robert Mitchum recorded "Robert Mitchum Calypso - Is Like So," with Mitchum singing a kind of pidgin English.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.D18)
1957 Feb 22, A skull was found by a crew digging a trench for an air conditioning system in downtown LA. The site was later planned to be used for a new Roman Catholic cathedral. An anthropologist identified the skull onsite as characteristic of native Americans prior to the Spanish arrival. Native Indian groups later contended the site a possible ancient burial ground and held up the construction plans. In 1997 the skull was reported lost.
(SFC, 10/27/97, p.C2)
1957 Feb 25, Buddy Holly and the Crickets recorded "That'll Be the Day."
(MC, 2/25/02)
1957 Feb 25, The US Supreme Court, in Butler v. Michigan, overturned a Michigan statute making it a misdemeanor to sell books containing obscene language that would tend to corrupt "the morals of youth."
(AP, 2/25/07)
1957 Feb 25, Supreme Court decided 6-3 that baseball is the only antitrust exempt pro sport.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1957 Feb 25, Nobosuke Kishi (1896-1987) began serving as prime minister of Japan. He continued for 2 terms to Jul 19, 1960. It was later reported that Kakuei Tanaka won his first cabinet job by handing Kishi a small backpack filled with ¥3 million.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.37)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.41)
1957 Feb 27, Mao made his speech "On Correct Handling of Contradictions Among People."
(MC, 2/27/02)
1957 Feb, Brazil began work began on its new capital, Brasilia. This was led by urban planner Lucio Costa, architect Oscar Niemeyer and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juscelino_Kubitschek)
1957 Feb, Basil Hirschowitz (b.1925), South Africa born gastroenterologist, introduced the first prototype “fiberscope." He had begun work using glass fibers to transmit light in 1954 while at the Univ. of Michigan. Fiber optics later revolutionized telecommunications and surgery.
(www.case.edu/artsci/dittrick/site2/museum/artifacts/group-d/fiberscope.htm)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.92)
1957 Mar 1, "Ziegfeld Follies of 1957" opened at Winter Garden NYC for 123 performances.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1957 Mar 1, Kokomo the Chimp became the Today Show animal editor.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1957 Mar 2, Boxer Carlos Ortiz won a technical knockout against Lou Filippo (1925-2009). Filippo was originally awarded a victory in the 1st bout against Ortiz after being hit after the bell, but a Times reporter questioned a member of the California State Athletic Commission about that ruling, and the no-contest decision was invoked. Filippo lost the next fight to Ortiz about a month later, and retired at 23-9-3 with 8 knockouts and one no-contest. Both were later named to the Boxing Hall of Fame. Filippo went on to play a role in all five of the “Rocky" movies.
(www.badlefthook.com/2009/11/5/1117708/lou-filippo-1925-2009)(SFC, 11/6/09, p.C5)
1957 Mar 3, Corry Brokken won Eurovision Song festival with "Just as then."
(SC, 3/3/02)
1957 Mar 5, Britain adopted a plan to triple nuclear energy production by 1965.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1957 Mar 5, Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fail-party won election in Ireland. DeValera (1882-1975) was elected Taoiseach (prime minister) and served his 3rd term as PM.
(MC, 3/5/02)(www.apostles.com/devalera.html)(ON, 9/04, p.7)
1957 Mar 6, The former British African colonies of the Gold Coast and Togoland became the independent state of Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana to independence from Britain. US VP Nixon and Martin Luther King attended the independence ceremony.
(SFC, 12/6/96, p.B1)(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.15)(SSFC, 2/11/07, p.C1)
1957 Mar 8, Israeli troops left Egypt. Suez Canal re-opened for minor ships.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1957 Mar 9, An 8.1 earthquake shook the Andreanof Islands, Alaska.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1957 Mar 9, Egyptian leader Nasser barred U.N. plans to share the tolls for the use of the Suez Canal.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1957 Mar 10, Thousands of soccer fans rioted in Italy.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1957 Mar 11, Charles Van Doren's 14-week run on the rigged NBC game show "Twenty-One" ended as he was "defeated" by attorney Vivienne Nearing; Van Doren's take was $129,000.
(AP, 3/11/07)
1957 Mar 11, American explorer Richard E. Byrd died in Boston at age 68.
(AP, 3/11/07)
1957 Mar 12, German DR accepted 22 Russian armed divisions.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1957 Mar 12, In Israel Rudolf Kasztner, hailed by admirers as a Holocaust hero for saving thousands of Jews, was assassinated by Jewish extremists. Critics had reviled him as a collaborator who "sold his soul." Kasztner, a Zionist leader in Hungary during World War II, headed the Relief and Rescue Committee, a small Jewish group that negotiated with Nazi officials to rescue Hungarian Jews in exchange for money, goods and military equipment.
(AP, 7/23/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Kastner)
1957 Mar 13, The FBI arrested Jimmy Hoffa on bribery charges.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1957 Mar 13, Bloody battles followed an anti-Batista demonstration in Havana, Cuba.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1957 Mar 15, Burton Abbot was executed for the 1955 abduction and killing of 14-year-old Stephanie Bryan.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.C17)
1957 Mar 16, Constantin Brancusi (b.1876), Romanian-born French sculptor, died. He willed his studio and work to France.
(WSJ, 3/30/00, p.A28)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi)
1957 Mar 17, In the Philippines a plane crash on Mt. Manunggal in Cebu killed Pres. Ramon Magsaysay (b.1907). 25 of the 26 passengers and crew aboard were killed.
(AP, 8/2/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Magsaysay)
1957 Mar 19, Pete Seibert (1924-2002) climbed to a summit in the Colorado Rockies with Earl Eaton, a uranium prospector, and beheld the area that he later turned into the Vail ski resort.
(SFC, 7/29/02, p.B5)
1957 Mar 20, Shelton 'Spike' Lee, film director (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X), was born.
(HN, 3/20/01)
1957 Mar 20, In Washington state the Dalles Dam pushed back the Columbia River to reap the benefits of hydroelectric power. In six hours the islands of Celilo Falls were gone forever beneath a mockingly tranquil reservoir pool.
(AP, 3/3/07)
1957 Mar 20, Britain accepted a NATO offer to mediate in Cyprus, but Greece rejected it.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1957 Mar 21, Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending," premiered in NYC.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1957 Mar 21, US President Eisenhower and British PM Harold Macmillan began a four-day conference in Bermuda.
(AP, 3/21/07)
1957 Mar 21, Vice President Nixon returned to the U.S. after spending three weeks on a tour of Africa.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1957 Mar 22, An earthquake, centered in Daly City, Ca., hit the SF Bay Area and caused extensive damage to Mary’s Help Hospital.
(Ind, 8/11/01, 5A)(CW, Winter 04, p.45)(DCFD, Centennial, 2007)
1957 Mar 23, US army sold its last homing pigeons.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1957 Mar 23, Algerian independence fighter Ali Boumendjel (b.1919) was tortured and killed by French soldiers. In 2021 French President Emmanuel Macron met with four grandchildren of Boumendjel to inform them of the truth.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Boumendjel)(AP, 3/3/21)
1957 Mar 25, US Police and customs agents seized copies of “Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. In May Ferlinghetti was arrested along with City Lights manager Shigeyoshi Murao (d.1999) on obscenity charges. The defending attorneys were J.W. Ehrlich and Albert Bendich (1929-2015). By the Fall Judge Clayton Horn found the poem of "redeeming social importance." Shig later managed City Lights and authored the occasional "Shig's Review." In 2006 Bill Morgan and Nancy J. Peters edited “Howl On Trial: The Battle for Free Expression."
(SFEC, 11/28/99, BR p.10)(www.citylights.com/His/CLhowlhist.html)(SSFC, 11/5/06, p.M3)(SFC, 1/14/15, p.D3)
1957 Mar 25, The Treaties establishing the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community were signed in Rome by six member countries. The Treaty of Rome enabled people, goods, services and money to move unchecked throughout the Union. The Council of Ministers represents the governments of the members. Major decisions are made by the Council of Foreign Ministers. A 20-member Commission composed of appointed representatives of each member state serves as the administrative arm and members represent the Union. The Commission proposes and executes laws and policies. A European Parliament is composed of 626 members elected by the electorates of the member states and they sit in party groups. The Commission proposes, the Parliament advises, and the Council decides. The goal was to create a common market for all products but especially coal and steel.
(http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/eec.htm)(AP, 3/25/97)(HN, 3/24/98)
1957 Mar 25, The Euratom Treaty established the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom). The international organization was founded with the purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, developing nuclear energy and distributing it to its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Atomic_Energy_Community)
1957 Mar 27, In the 29th Academy Awards "Around the World in 80 Days" won the Academy Award for best picture; Yul Brynner won best actor for "The King and I," Ingrid Bergman was awarded best actress for "Anastasia" and George Stevens received best director for "Giant."
(AP, 3/27/07)
1957 Mar 29, Joyce A.L. Cary (68), English writer (Horse's Mouth), died.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1957 Mar 30, Tunisia and Morocco signed a friendship treaty in Rabat.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1957 Mar 31, The original version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," starring Julie Andrews, aired live in color on CBS. The show drew an estimated record TV audience of 107 million. Kaye Ballard and Alice Ghostley played the step-sisters.
(AP, 3/31/07)(SFC, 1/25/19, p.C4)
1957 Apr 3, Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," premiered in London.
(V.D.-H.K.p.369)(MC, 4/3/02)
1957 Apr 4, Heitor Villa-Lobos' 10th Symphony, premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1957 Apr 6, NYC ended trolley car service.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1957 Apr 7, The last of New York City’s electric trolleys completed its final run from the city’s borough of Queens to Manhattan.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1957 Apr 10, John Osborne’s play “The Entertainer," starring Laurence Olivier, opened in London.
(AP, 4/10/07)
1957 Apr 10, Egypt reopened the Suez Canal to all shipping traffic. The canal had been closed due to wreckage resulting from the Suez Crisis.
(AP, 4/10/08)\
1957 Apr 11, The Ryan X-13 Vertijet became the 1st jet to take-off and land vertically.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1957 Apr 13, The jury-deliberation movie drama "12 Angry Men," starring Henry Fonda, opened in New York.
(AP, 4/13/07)
1957 Apr 13, Due to lack of funds, Saturday mail delivery in US was temporarily halted.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1957 Apr 15, Saturday mail delivery was restored after Congress gave the PO $41 million.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1957 Apr 19, Charles Funk (76), Encyclopedist (Funk & Wagnall’s), died.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1957 Apr 21, In the 11th Tony Awards: Long Day's Journey into Night and My Fair Lady won. Edie Adams won a Tony award for supporting actress as Daisy Mae in “Li’l Abner."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Tony_Awards)(SFC, 10/17/08, p.A2)
1957 Apr 25, The 1st experimental sodium nuclear reactor operated.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1957 Apr 26, Jamestown, Va., 350th Anniversary Festival opened.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1957 Apr 27, Mario A. Gianini, creator of the maraschino cherry, died.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1957 Apr 29, The 1st military nuclear power plant was dedicated at Fort Belvoir, Va.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1957 Apr, Ricky Nelson sang his version of “I’m Walkin" by Fats Domino on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" TV show.
(SSFC, 1/15/06, p.C1)
1957 Apr, Mao experimented under the slogan: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend." Alarmed at the resulting barrage of criticism, he reversed course and some 300,000 of intellectuals were jailed or sent to the countryside to do manual labor.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A14)(http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/9-8-82.shtml)
1957 Apr, Jordan's Western-allied King Hussein suspended parliament for four years after an attempted leftist coup.
(AP, 1/23/13)
1957 May 2, Crime boss Frank Costello narrowly survived an attempt on his life in New York; the alleged gunman, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, was acquitted at trial after Costello refused to identify him as the shooter.
(AP, 5/2/07)
1957 May 2, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (48), the controversial Republican from Wisconsin, died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. McCarthy drank himself to death.
(AP, 5/2/97)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.A26)
1957 May 3, A low flying Navy bomber, while practicing evasion maneuvers, sheared two high-voltage lines in the East Bay of San Francisco causing a power outage in SF and the Peninsula.
(SFC, 5/4/09, p.B2)
1957 May 4, It was reported that NATO has warned the Soviet Union that it would meet any attack with all available meads including nuclear weapons.
(SFC, 5/4/09, p.B2)
1957 May 4, The Anne Frank Foundation formed in Amsterdam.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1957 May 6, Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey into Night" won the Pulitzer Prize for drama; John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" won the Pulitzer for biography or autobiography.
(AP, 5/6/07)
1957 May 6, Last broadcast of "I Love Lucy" on CBS-TV. [see Jun 24]
(MC, 5/6/02)
1957 May 9, Ezio F. Pinza, Italian bass (La Scala of Milan, NY Met Opera, Broadway musicals), died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1957 May 9, Heinrich Campendonk (b.1889), German-born Dutch artist and a member of the Der Blaue Reiter group (1911-1912), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Campendonk)
1957 May 10, Sid Vicious, [John Simon Ritchie], bassist (Sex Pistols), was born in England.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1957 May 10, Gabriel París Gordillo (1910-2008) began serving as President of Colombia and as Chairman of the Colombian Military Junta Government following the 1957 Coup d'état. He was succeeded in August, 1958, by Alberto Lleras Camargo.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Par%C3%ADs_Gordillo)
1957 May 12, Erich von Stroheim (b.1885), Austrian-US actor and director, died of cancer in Paris. His films included "Grand Illusion," "The Merry Widow," and "Greed." In 2000 Arthur Lennig published the biography "Stroheim."
(WSJ, 2/23/00, p.A20)(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002233/)
1957 May 13, Jean Peters (d.2000 at 73), actress, married Howard Hughes (51) in Tonopah, Nev.
(SFC, 10/21/00, p.A24)
1957 May 15, The 1st British hydrogen bomb was detonated on Christmas Island in South Pacific. The 200 - 300 kilotons yield was less than expected.
(www.atomicarchive.com/Timeline/Time1950.shtml)
1957 May 16, Pope Pius XII published his encyclical Invicti Athletae.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1957 May 18, In the 83rd Preakness: Eddie Arcaro aboard Bold Ruler won in 1:56.2.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1957 May 22, South Africa government approved race separation in universities.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1957 May 24, Anti-American rioting broke out in Taipei, Taiwan.
(AP, 5/24/07)
1957 May 25, "Shinbone Alley" closed at Broadway Theater in NYC after 49 performances.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1957 May 28, The National League approved the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants baseball teams to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
(AP, 5/28/97)
1957 May 29, British-born Hollywood director James Whale ("Frankenstein") was found dead in his swimming pool, a suicide; he was 67.
(AP, 5/29/07)
1957 May 29, Algerian rebels killed 336 collaborators.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1957 May 29, Laos Government of prince Suvanna Phuma resigned.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1957 May 29, George Bacovia [Vasiliu] Romanian poet, composer (Plumb), died at 75.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1957 May 30, In California Santa’s Village, a Christmas theme park, opened in Scotts Valley. It filed for bankruptcy in 1977 and finally closed in 1979.
(SFC, 5/31/08, p.B2)(www.santasvillage.net/santas.village.scotts.valley.html)
1957 May, Frank Lloyd Wright (89) traveled to Iraq to design an opera house for Baghdad. His multi-building scheme was never built.
(WSJ, 8/20/03, p.D12)
1957 May, Two US fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) over the English countryside. This was only made public on Oct 20, 2008, when Britain made public secret files on UFOs.
(Reuters, 10/20/08)
1957 Jun 7, Mrs. Elizabeth S. Kingsley, double-Crostic puzzle creator, died.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1957 Jun 8, Mao ordered an "anti-rightist" witch hunt and Deng Xiaoping executed it.
(www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1959/05/chinawilt.htm)
1957 Jun 10, John Diefenbaker, Progressive Conservative Party, was elected PM of Canada. He served until 1963.
(CFA, '96, p.81)(HN, 9/18/98)(MC, 6/10/02)
1957 Jun 10, Harold MacMillan became British PM.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1957 Jun 11, 12 died in a train crash in Vroman, Colo.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1957 Jun 12, Bandleader Jimmy Dorsey (53) died in New York.
(AP, 6/12/07)
1957 Jun 13, The Mayflower 2, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620, arrived at Plymouth, Mass., after a nearly two-month journey from England. Britain had built the vessel and sailed it to the US as a gift of friendship. In 2017 it went into drydock for a $7.5 million makeover in time for 2020 festivities marking the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim landing.
(AP, 6/13/07)(SFC, 11/24/17, p.A10)
1957 Jun 16, There was a French offensive in Algeria.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1957 Jun 17, The Tuskegee boycott began as Blacks boycotted city stores.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1957 Jun 17, Mob underboss Frank Scalice was shot to death at a produce market in the Bronx, N.Y.
(AP, 6/17/07)
1957 Jun 19, Walt Disney’s movie "Johnny Tremain" was released in movie theaters.
(DT, 6/19/97)
1957 Jun 24, "I Love Lucy," last aired on CBS-TV. [see May 6]
(MC, 6/24/02)
1957 Jun 24, A 37-kiloton nuclear fission bomb, code-named Priscilla, was exploded in the Nevada desert at Frenchman Flat. The security of a bank vault was tested in the experiment. At this time the US was manufacturing 10 nuclear bombs a day.
(SSFC, 8/22/04, p.E1)
1957 Jun 26, Marin County, Ca., selected Frank Lloyd Wright (88) as architect for its new civic center.
(SSFC, 5/20/18, p.L11)
1957 Jun 26, Hurricane Audrey hit Louisiana earlier than expected. It left at least 390 people dead with 192 missing in Louisiana and Texas.
(SFC, 6/26/09, p.D10)
1957 Jun 27, More than 500 people were killed after Hurricane Audrey slammed through coastal Louisiana and Texas.
(AP, 6/27/97)
1957 Jun 27, Malcolm Lowry (b.1909), English novelist, died in Sussex, England. He is best known for his novel “Under the Volcano" (1947). In 2007 Michael Hofmann edited “The Voyage That Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry in His Own Words."
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mlowry.htm)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.E2)
1957 Jun 30, The American occupation headquarters in Japan was dissolved.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1957 Jul 1, The International Geophysical Year, an 18-month global scientific study, began. 12 nations established over 60 stations in Antarctica. The beginning of international cooperation in Antarctica and the start of the process by which Antarctica becomes "non-national."
(AP, 7/1/07)(http://tinyurl.com/337joj)
1957 Jul 2, Mike Anger, rocker (The Blow Monkeys-Wicked Ways), was born.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1957 Jul 2, The Seawolf, the 1st submarine powered by liquid metal cooled reactor, was completed.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1957 Jul 2, Grayback, the 1st submarine designed to fire guided missiles, was launched.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1957 Jul 4, In Italy the new 13 horsepower Fiat 500 (Cinquecento) was launched in Turin. In 1965 Fiat introduced the 500 F model. The car could get 58 mpg from its 4.25-gallon tank.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.69)(SSFC, 5/1/11, p.J1)(SFC, 4/13/12, p.F1)
1957 Jul 6, Althea Gibson (1927-2003) became the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title, defeating fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.
(AP, 7/6/97)(SFC, 9/29/03, p.A1)
1957 Jul 8, Irish premier Eamon de Valera arrested Sinn-Fein leaders.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1957 Jul 8, William Cadbury (89), chocolate maker, died.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1957 Jul 12, The U.S. surgeon general, Leroy E. Burney (d.1998 at 91), reported that there is a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. Dr. John Altshuler (1931-2004) co-researched the "Joint Report of Study Group on Smoking and Health," published by the US Public Health Service.
(HN, 7/12/98)(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A17)(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A20)
1957 Jul 12, Santa Susana in Los Angeles County began receiving the nation’s first commercial electricity from a small, civilian-owned, nuclear reactor. It was shut down in 1964 and scientists later reported that the plant might be responsible hundreds of cancer cases. PG&E had teamed with General Electric to establish the Vallecitos atomic energy plant, the world’s 1st privately owned and operated nuclear facility.
(SFC, 4/7/01, p.A5)(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1957 Jul 14, Soviet steamer "Eshghbad" sank in Caspian Sea and 270 drowned.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1957 Jul 15, James M. Cox (b.1870), 3-time Ohio governor and founder of Cox Enterprises, died. Cox was defeated in the 1920 Presidential Election by fellow Ohioan Senator Warren G. Harding of Marion, Ohio. He left his family a business that included broadcast properties and a string of newspapers.
(WSJ, 6/2/07, p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cox)
1957 Jul 16, Marine Maj. John Glenn set a transcontinental speed record when he flew a jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1957 Jul 17, Leona Gage (1939-2010) of Maryland won the Miss USA title as part of the Miss Universe Pageant in Long Beach, Ca. Officials soon stripped her of the title after learning that she was a mother of two and had lied about her age.
(SFC, 10/13/10, p.C5)(www.oocities.com/televisioncity/9699/mc57.htm)
1957 Jul 17, Lila Bliss found her daughter, Juliette Hampton Morgan (b.1914), dead next to an empty bottle of sleeping pills. In 1936 Juliette had signed a pledge with other women in Montgomery, Alabama, to no longer remain silent in the face of crime done in their name. In 2007 Mary Stanton authored “Journey Toward Justice," a biography of Juliette Hampton Morgan.
(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P13)
1957 Jul 22, Walter "Fred" Morrison applied for a patent for a "flying toy" which became known as the Frisbee.
(AP, 7/22/07)
1957 Jul 22, In El Segundo, Ca., 2 police officers were shot and killed after pulling over a car for running a red light. Gerald Mason (68) was arrested in 2003 following fingerprint ID from a new FBI database.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A5)
1957 Jul 23, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (b.1896), Sicilian aristocrat and writer, died in Rome. His classic novel “Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard), was published in 1958. It was about Sicilian blue bloods struggling to adopt to the changes ushered in by Italian unification in the 1860s and included the line: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." David Gilmour later authored the biography “The Last Leopard" (1991). In 1963 the film "Leopard" starred Burt Lancaster as the prince who makes the ceremonial cut into the timballo. It was directed Luchino Visconti and based on the novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
(WSJ, 12/9/06, p.P24)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.61)(SFC, 10/2/96, zz1 p.8)(Econ., 10/24/20, p.56)
1957 Jul 25, The monarchy in Tunisia was abolished in favor of a republic. Habib Bourguiba (1903-2000) began serving as president and continued to 1987.
(AP, 7/25/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habib_Bourguiba)
1957 Jul 26, Pres. Carlos Castillo Armas of Guatemala was assassinated.
(WUD, 1994, p.1685)
1957 Jul 26, USSR launched the 1st intercontinental multistage ballistic missile.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1957 Jul 28, The Situationist International (SI) was formed at a meeting in the Italian village of Cosio d'Arroscia with the fusion of several extremely small avant-garde artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an off-shoot of COBRA), and the London Psychogeographical Association. The groups came together intending to reawaken the radical political potential of surrealism. The group also later drew ideas from the left communist group Socialisme ou Barbarie.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International)
1957 Jul 28, The 6th World Youth Festival opened in Moscow with the motto “For Peace and Friendship." Some 34,000 participated from 131 countries. The 1st such conference was held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1947. This festival also marked the international debut of the song "Moscow Nights", which subsequently went on to become perhaps the most widely recognized Russian song in the world.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_World_Festival_of_Youth_and_Students)
1957 Jul 29, The International Atomic Energy Agency was established.
(AP, 7/29/97)
1957 Jul 29, Jack Paar made his debut as host of NBC’s late-night TV show "Tonight" and stayed on till 1962.
(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.A16)(SFC, 5/7/97, p.E1)(AP, 7/29/97)
1957 Jul 31, The Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.
(AP, 7/31/07)
1957 Jul, Buddy Holly and the Crickets of Lubbock, Texas, recorded "Peggy Sue" in Clovis, New Mexico. The song was initially named Cindy Lou after Holly's niece, but band member Jerry Allison got Buddy to change the name in order to impress Peggy Sue. In 2008 Peggy Sue Gerron (1940-2018) released her autobiography "Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?" A 1986 movie called "Peggy Sue Got Married" featured Kathleen Turner as a character named Peggy Sue.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Sue)(SFC, 10/3/18, p.C5)
1957 Jul, Two "unarmed" nuclear bombs were dropped off Cape May, N.J., by a cargo plane that developed engine trouble. They were never found.
(SFEC, 11/22/98, Par p.22)
1957 Jul, Work began on San Francisco’s Central Freeway with construction costs at $7.8 million. It opened in 1959.
(SFC, 8/21/96, p.A16)(SFC, 1/3/07, p.B1)
1957 Aug 1, The United States and Canada reached agreement to create the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).
(AP, 8/1/97)
1957 Aug 1, Lewis Hill (b.1919) committed suicide in Duncan Mills, Sonoma County, Ca. He had helped found Pacifica Radio (KPFA).
(SFC, 7/22/99, p.E5)(www.ringnebula.com/folio/Issue-12/Conversation_Joy_Hill.htm)
1957 Aug 5, "American Bandstand," a teenage dance show hosted by Dick Clark (1929-2012) in Philadelphia, made its network debut on ABC-TV.
(WSJ, 3/24/97, p.B1)(SFC, 11/10/99, p.E3)(AP, 8/5/07)(SFC, 4/19/12, p.C5)
1957 Aug 6, The Japanese Nikkei Index pulled ahead of the Dow Jones Index. The Nikkei peaked at 38,915 on Dec 31, 1989.
(WSJ, 9/5/01, p.C1)
1957 Aug 7, Oliver Hardy (65), the heavier half of the Laurel and Hardy comedy team, died in North Hollywood, Calif.
(AP, 8/7/07)
1957 Aug 11, Paul Hindemith's opera "Harmonie der Welt," premiered in Munich.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1957 Aug 15, The musical "West Side Story," composed by Leonard Bernstein and based on a concept by Jerome Robbins, first opened in Washington D.C. The story was by Arthur Laurents and the lyrics were by Stephen Sondheim.
(SFEM, 5/23/99, p.18)
1957 Aug 19, The first balloon flight to exceed 100,000 feet took off from Crosby, Minnesota. US Major David Simons reached 30,933 m. in a balloon.
(HN, 8/19/00)(MC, 8/19/02)
1957 Aug 21, Kim Sledge, vocalist (Sister Sledge-We are Family), was born in Phila.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1957 Aug 25, Prince Suvanna Phuma formed a government in LAOS with the Pathet Lao.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1957 Aug 26, Ford Motor Company revealed the Edsel, its latest luxury car.
(HN, 8/26/99)
1957 Aug 26, The Soviet Union announced it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile.
(AP, 8/26/97)
1957 Aug 28, Sen Thurmond began a 24-hr filibuster against civil rights bill.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1957 Aug 29, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond (then a Democrat) ended a filibuster against a civil rights bill after talking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Arnold Aronson (d.1998 at 86) help to lobby for the bill.
(AP, 8/29/97)(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)(SSFC, 12/17/00, Par p.15)
1957 Aug 31, The Federation of Malaya (Malaysia) gained independence from Britain (National Day). Malaysia established itself as a constitutional monarchy. Article 11 in the constitution gave every person “the right to profess and practice his religion." Pro-bumiputra (sons of the soil) discrimination was laid down in the constitution to ease Malays’ fears of being marginalized by Chinese and Indian migrants. A 1988 amendment denied the regular courts all jurisdiction over matters dealt with by the Muslim sharia courts.
(YN, 8/31/99)(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)(AP, 8/31/07)(Econ, 9/1/07, p.11)
1957 Sep 1, Gloria Estefan, singer (Miami Sound Machine-Conga, 1-2-3), was born in Cuba.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1957 Sep 2, Pres. Eisenhower signed the Price-Anderson Act, which limited firms’ liability in commercial nuclear disasters. The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, a United States federal law, has since been renewed several times since its passage.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price-Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act)(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1957 Sep 2, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock. Pres. Eisenhower soon responded with Federal troops to enforce federal law for integration. The nine students, mentored by Daisy Gatson (d.1999 at 84) went on to lead very productive lives as detailed in a 1997 retrospective.
(www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=89)(SFC, 4/28/00, p.A11)
1957 Sep 4, Arkansas National guardsmen turned away Black students from Central High School in Little Rock. 9 students made it into the school on September 24 under the protection of federal troops sent by Pres. Eisenhower. In 2007 Elizabeth Jacoway authored “Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crises That Shocked the Nation."
(AH, 10/07, p.61)
1957 Sep 4, Ford Motor Co. introduced the 1958 Edsel. It was designed by Roy Brown and sold only 173,000 units through 1960.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, p.D12)(AP, 9/4/97)
1957 Sep 5, Viking Press first published "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. Kerouac typed out the manuscript in 20 days on a single roll of teletype paper. The book focused on a 1949 road trip in a new Hudson with Neal and Luanne Cassidy and Al Hinkle (1926-2018) with wife Helen Argee. In 1997 his book of notes from the early 1950s: "Some of the Dharma" was published.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, BR p.8)(SSFC, 1/30/05, p.A19)(AP, 9/5/07)(SSFC, 12/30/18, p.C2)
1957 Sep 5, Cuban dictator Batista bombed the Cienfuegos uprising.
(MC, 9/5/01)
1957 Sep 7, The original version of the animated NBC peacock logo, used to denote programs "brought to you in living color," made its debut at the beginning of "Your Hit Parade."
(AP, 9/7/07)
1957 Sep 8, Pope Pius XII posted his encyclical On motion pictures, radio, TV.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1957 Sep 9, President Eisenhower signed into law the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction.
(AP, 9/9/97)
1957 Sep 9, Nashville's new Hattie Cotton Elementary School was dynamited.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1957 Sep 12, James Vicary (b.1915), a market researcher, announced that he had invented a new way to get people to buy things, whether they wanted them or not. He called it subliminal advertising and said that he had tested the process at a New Jersey movie theater. In 1962 he admitted that his results were fabricated in order to drum up business for his market research firm. A subliminal projector called a tachistoscope had been used during World War II in training soldiers to recognize enemy aircraft. A book published in 1898 (The New Psychology by E.W. Scripture) laid out most of the principles of subliminal response.
(WSJ, 11/5/07, p.B1)(www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_187.html)
1957 Sep 12, Detroit Mayor Albert Cobo died of a heart attack, just months before his last term in office would have ended.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Cobo)
1957 Sep 12, Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus visited the US.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1957 Sep 14, Pres. Eisenhower met with Arkansas Gov. Faubus in Rhode Island. Gov. Faubus agree to cooperate with the president’s decisions regarding the high schools of Little Rock.
(http://tinyurl.com/2vggdj)
1957 Sep 16, Qi Baishi (b.1864), Chinese artist, died in Beijing. In 2011 one of his ink paintings was auctioned for $65 million.
(Econ, 10/22/11, p.82)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_Baishi)
1957 Sep 17, Two male attorneys "stood in" as actress Sophia Loren and producer Carlo Ponti were married by proxy in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Legal issues later forced an annulment; the couple wed in Sevres, France, in 1966.
(AP, 9/17/07)
1957 Sep 17, The Thai army seized power in Bangkok.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1957 Sep 18, "Wagon Train" premiered.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1957 Sep 19, The United States conducted its first underground nuclear test, code-named "Rainier," in the Nevada desert.
(AP, 9/19/07)
1957 Sep 19, Eight engineers, who had recently left Shockley Semiconductor, signed papers to form Fairchild Semiconductor in Santa Clara County. Jean A. Hoerni (1925-1997) was one of the "Fairchild Eight." He was credited with building the bridge from the transistor to the integrated circuit. Eugene Kleiner (d.2003), another co-founder, helped found the Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers venture capital firm in 1972. The other engineers included Julius Blank (1925-2011), Jay Last (1929-2021), Victor Grinich (d.2000 at 75), Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts. NYC bankers Arthur Rock and Bud Coyle helped the engineers start Fairchild Semiconductor.
(SFC, 11/11/00, p.A26)(SFC, 11/26/03, p.D1)(SSFC, 9/30/07, p.F1)(SFC, 9/24/11, p.C3)(SFC, 11/23/21, p.C4)
1957 Sep 20, "M Squad," starring Lee Marvin, premiered on NBC-TV.
(AP, 9/20/07)
1957 Sep 20, Jean Julius Christian Sibelius (b.1865), Finnish composer (Finlandia), died. He had published no music for the last three decades of his life.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Sibelius)(Econ, 2/18/12, ILp.20)
1957 Sep 21, "Perry Mason," starring Raymond Burr, premiered on CBS-TV. The show ran to 1966 and returned in 1985. Barbara Hale (1922-2017) played Della Street, Perry Mason’s loyal secretary.
(AP, 9/21/97)(SFC, 8/20/99, p.D6)(SSFC, 1/29/17, p.A10)
1957 Sep 21, Norway's King Haakon VII died in Oslo at age 85.
(AP, 9/21/07)
1957 Sep 22, The TV series "Maverick" premiered on ABC. It starred James Garner as Maverick and Jack Kelly as brother Bart Maverick.
(AP, 9/22/07)(AP, 7/20/14)
1957 Sep 22, In Haiti Francois Duvalier (1907-1971) won the election for the presidency. He spent 14 years in office. His reign of terror exceeded the ruthless American occupation (1915-1934).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Duvalier)(Econ, 2/18/12, p.85)
1957 Sep 23, "That'll Be Day" by Buddy Holly & Crickets reached #1.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1957 Sep 23, Nine black students who had entered Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas were forced to withdraw because of a white mob outside. Pres. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10730 to send Federal troops to maintain order and peace while the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, AR, took place.
(AP, 9/23/97)(www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=89)
1957 Sep 24, The Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-to-0.
(AP, 9/24/97)
1957 Sep 24, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine black students entering its newly integrated high school.
(HN, 9/24/98)
1957 Sep 25, With 300 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division standing guard, nine black children forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., because of unruly white crowds, were escorted to class. Vice principle Elizabeth Huckaby (d.1999 at 93) escorted the children and in 1980 published "Crisis at Central High."
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.D5)(AP, 9/25/07)
1957 Sep 26, The musical "West Side Story" by Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins opened on Broadway and ran for 732 performances. The loose adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" produced several hit songs, including "Maria" and "Tonight". The story was by Arthur Laurents.
(AP, 9/26/97)(www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=2639)
1957 Sep 26, Dag Hammarskjold was re-elected secretary-general of UN.
(MC, 9/26/01)
1957 Sep 29, The New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds, losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-to-1. The Giants moved to San Francisco.
(AP, 9/29/97)
1957 Sep 29, The Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game before moving to Los Angeles, losing to the Phillies 2-1 in Philadelphia.
(AP, 9/29/07)
1957 Sep 29, In Montgomery, West Pakistan (later renamed to Sahiwal, Pakistan), an express train collided with stationary oil train and 250 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1957 Sep 29, The USSR’s Mayak nuclear plant in the Chelyabinsk region saw one of the world's worst nuclear accidents when a waste tank exploded. 20 million curies of deadly strontium and cesium were released. This was about 40% of the amount later released at Chernobyl. Some 23,000 sq. km. (9,200 sq. miles) were contaminated and prompted authorities to evacuate 10,000 residents from neighboring regions.
(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A8)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.E1)(AP, 12/7/17)
1957 Oct 1, The motto "In God We Trust" began appearing on US paper currency.
(AP, 10/1/07)
1957 Oct 1, B-52 bombers began full-time flying alert in case of USSR attack.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1957 Oct 2, The World War II drama "The Bridge on the River Kwai," directed by David Lean, premiered in Britain. The film opened in the United States the following December.
(AP, 10/2/07)
1957 Oct 3, The comedy series "The Real McCoys" premiered on ABC-TV. Richard Crenna began playing the married Luke on "The Real McCoys." The 6-year series starred Walter Brennan as head of a West Virginia clan that moves to the LA San Fernando Valley.
(SFC, 1/20/03, p.B4)(AP, 10/3/07)
1957 Oct 3, Willy Brandt was elected mayor of West Berlin.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1957 Oct 4, The television series "Leave It to Beaver" premiered on CBS. It ended in 1963 after 6 season. Joe Connelly (d.2003 at 85), writer-producer, co-created the show. It featured Jerry Mathers (9) as Beaver, Tony Dow (12) as his older brother Wally, Hugh Beaumont as the father and Barbara Billingsley (1915-2010) as the mother. Frank Bank (1942-2013) played Lumpy, a foil to Beaver and Wally. Ken Osmond played Wally’s friend Eddie Haskell.
(AP, 10/4/97)(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A25)(SSFC, 10/17/10, p.C9)(SFC, 4/18/13, p.D5)
1957 Oct 4, The TV series “Trackdown" featured Robert Culp (1930-2010). It was based in part on files of the Texas Rangers. The series continued to 1959.
(SFC, 3/25/10, p.C3)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0050071/)
1957 Oct 4, Jimmy Hoffa was elected president of the Teamsters Union.
(AP, 10/4/07)
1957 Oct 4, The Space Age and "space race" began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (traveler), the first man-made space satellite. The satellite, built by Valentin Glushko, weighed 184 pounds and was launched by a converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Sputnik, developed under the chief scientist Sergei Korolyov, orbited the earth every 96 minutes at a maximum height of 584 miles. The event was timed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. In 1958, it reentered the earth's atmosphere and burned up. It was followed by 9 other Sputnik spacecraft.
(WSJ, 10/7/96, p.B4)(SFC, 8/2/97, p.A12)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)(WSJ, 10/3/97, p.A8)(AP, 10/4/97)(HN, 10/4/98)(AP, 10/1/07)
1957 Oct 7, The Danny Thomas Show made its debut on the CBS Television Network at 9:00 P.M inheriting the time slot vacated by I Love Lucy.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Danny_Thomas_Show)
1957 Oct 7, A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield) north of Liverpool, England, spread radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk. At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were subsequently linked to the accident. PM Harold Macmillan ordered the disaster hushed up.
(HN, 10/7/00)(Econ, 9/11/04, p.76)(Econ, 10/13/07, p.63)
1957 Oct 8, The Brooklyn Baseball Club announced it was accepting an offer to move the Dodgers from New York to Los Angeles.
(AP, 10/8/07)
1957 Oct 8, Jack Soble, confessed Soviet spy, was sentenced in NYC to 7 years for espionage.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1957 Oct 10, President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologized to Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, the finance minister of Ghana, after the official had been refused service in a Dover, Del., restaurant.
(AP, 10/10/97)
1957 Oct 10, The Milwaukee Braves won the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees in Game 7, 5-0.
(AP, 10/10/07)
1957 Oct 10, The TV series "Zorro," starring Guy Williams as the masked hero, debuted on ABC.
(AP, 10/10/07)
1957 Oct 13, CBS-TV broadcast "The Edsel Show," a one-hour live special starring Bing Crosby designed to promote the new, ill-fated Ford automobile. It was the first special to use videotape technology to delay the broadcast to the West Coast.
(AP, 10/13/07)
1957 Oct 14, Lester Bowles Pearson (1897-1972, former president of the UN General Assembly (1952-1953) and later Canadian PM (1963-1968) won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in defusing the Suez crisis.
(www.un.org/depts/dhl/deplib/un_milestones.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/ojxcz)
1957 Oct 16, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip began a visit to the United States with a stopover at the site of the Jamestown settlement in Virginia.
(AP, 10/16/07)
1957 Oct 17, The movie "Jailhouse Rock," starring Elvis Presley, had its world premiere in Memphis, Tenn.
(AP, 10/17/07)
1957 Oct 17, French author Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
(WUD, 1994, p.524)(AP, 10/17/97)
1957 Oct 17, Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited the White House.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1957 Oct 19, "Damn Yankees" closed at 46th St. Theater NYC after 1,022 performances.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1957 Oct 20, Walter Cronkite began hosting his weekly documentary: “The Twentieth Century." In 1967 the title was changed to “The Twenty-First Century" and it ran through 1970.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0050072/)
1957 Oct 21, The film "Jailhouse Rock" starring Elvis Presley opened.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1957 Oct 22, Conrad Adenauer was re-elected chancellor of West-Germany.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1957 Oct 23, Paul Kagame was born to a Tutsi family in southern Rwanda.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kagame)
1957 Oct 24, Christian Dior (52), French fashion magnate and inventor of the postwar "New Look," died in Italy. He was succeeded by his favorite assistant, Yves Saint Laurent.
(SFC, 1/9/97, p.E7)(SFC, 6/9/98, p.D3)(MC, 10/24/01)
1957 Oct 25, The movie musical "Pal Joey," starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, was released.
(AP, 10/25/07)
1957 Oct 25, Mob boss Albert Anastasia, the "Lord High Executioner" of "Murder Inc.," was shot to death in a barber shop inside the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York.
(AP, 10/25/07)
1957 Oct 26, The Russian government announced that Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the nation’s most prominent military hero, had been relieved of his duties as Minister of Defense. Khrushchev accused Zhukov of promoting his own "cult of personality" and saw him as a threat to his own popularity.
(AP, 10/26/97)(HN, 10/26/98)
1957 Oct 26, Nicos Kazantzakis (b.1885), writer (The Last Temptation of Christ), died.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1957 Oct 29, Louis B. Mayer (b.1885), Belarus born MGM producer, died. In 2005 Scott Eyman authored “Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer."
(www.answers.com/topic/louis-b-mayer)
1957 Oct 29, Hand grenade exploded in Israel's Knesset (Parliament).
(MC, 10/29/01)
1957 Oct 31, Jamaica, a musical, opened on Broadway at Imperial Theater. The book was by Yip Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Harold Arlen. Lena Horne (1917-2010) starred in the musical. It continued for 558 performances.
(Econ, 5/22/10, p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_%28musical%29)
1957 Oct, Pres. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to return to their armories, which effectively removed them from the control of Gov. Faubus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orval_Faubus)
1957 Nov 1, World longest suspension bridge opened in Mackinac Straits, Mich.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1957 Nov 2, The 1st titanium mill opened in Toronto, Ohio.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1957 Nov 3, Canada fired up the National Research Universal (NRU) nuclear reactor near Ottawa. The 200 MWt reactor began producing medical and industrial radioisotopes, including molybdenum-99, a critical isotope used for medical diagnoses.
(Econ, 6/20/09, p.38)(www.aecl.ca/Science/RR/History.htm)
1957 Nov 3, The Soviet Union launched into orbit Sputnik Two, the second manmade satellite; a dog on board named Laika, the first animal in space, was sacrificed in the experiment. Sputnik 2 remained in orbit another 162 days before burning up. Safe reentry process had not yet been developed.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)(AP, 11/3/97)(HN, 11/3/98)
1957 Nov 3, Wilhelm Reich (b.1897), Austria-born psychoanalyst, died in the US. His work was based on the sexual energy in people that he called "Orgone." In 1999 Farrar, Straus & Giroux published: "American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940-1947."
(WUD, 1994, p.1209)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich)
1957 Nov 8, Romance of the Skies, a Pan Am luxury airliner enroute to Hawaii from San Francisco, crashed in the Pacific Ocean. Only a handful of bodies and some wreckage were found. A crew of 6 and 38 passengers had been booked on the flight.
(SSFC, 11/4/07, p.A1)
1957 Nov 15, US sentenced Soviet spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel to 30 years and $3,000 fine.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1957 Nov 15, Soviet Premier Khrushchev asserted Soviet superiority in missiles, challenging the U.S. to a rocket-range shooting match.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1957 Nov 16, Edward Gein butchered his last victim. Gein, a handyman in Plainfield, Wis., liked to dig up fresh graves, cut the skin off corpses, wear the skin on his own body and dance in the moonlight. He was picked up in this year and evidence showed that he’d been collecting body parts for years. He had skulls on bedposts, a human heart in a saucepan, and a lady out in his barn dressed like a deer. The 1974 film "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was based on his story.
(SFC, 5/18/96, p.E-4)(MC, 11/16/01)
1957 Nov 18, Antonin Novotny (1904-1975) was appointed president of Czechoslovakia and served to 1968.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%C3%ADn_Novotn%C3%BD)
1957 Nov 21, A student strike began at the Central Univ. of Venezuela (UCV) against the electoral fraud of the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez. This soon led his downfall.
(WSJ, 11/24/07, p.A12)(www.handsoffvenezuela.org/students_march_referendum.htm)
1957 Nov 25, President Eisenhower suffered a slight stroke. [see Nov 26]
(AP, 11/25/97)
1957 Nov 26, President Eisenhower suffers a minor stroke. [see Nov 25]
(HN, 11//99)
1957 Nov 27, Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg, attorney, JFK & Jackie's daughter, was born.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1957 Nov 27, Army withdrew from Little Rock, Ark., after Central HS integration.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1957 Nov 28, "Look Homeward, Angel" with Anthony Perkins premiered in NYC.
(DT, 11/28/97)
1957 Nov 29, John Coltrane and the Thelonius Monk quartet performed together for a show at Carnegie Hall. Tapes of the performance, recorded by Voice of America, were mislabeled and lost until 2005.
(SFC, 10/4/05, p.E8)
1957 Nov 29, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (60), Austrian-US composer (Kathrin, sound tracks for Captain Blood, Don Juan), died.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1957 Nov 29, Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, born in the US in 1918, was shot to death in Vilnius for partisan activities in southern Lithuania.
(LHC, 3/6/03)
1957 Nov 30, An assassination attempt on Indonesian Pres. Sukarno killed 8.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1957 Nov, Gordon Gould (d.2005), a Columbia Univ. doctoral student under Dr. Townes, came up with a process for concentrating visible light as opposed to microwaves of a maser. He was the 1st to use the term laser.
(Econ, 6/11/05, TQ p.28)
1957 Nov, William E. Schirmer (b.1891), SF Bay Area architect, died in a car crash along with his wife when a drunk driver crossed a center line.
(SFC, 8/2/08, p.F6)
1957 Nov, Communist bosses gathered in Moscow. Mao Zedong predicted that between a third and a half of the world’s population might be killed in a nuclear conflagration, but that most survivors would be living in the socialist block and “imperialism would be razed to the ground."
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/quemoy_matsu-2.htm)(Econ, 11/27/10, p.65)
1957 Dec 2, The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first full-scale commercial nuclear facility to generate electricity in the US, went critical. [see July 12] It was taken out of service in 1982.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)(AP, 12/2/07)
1957 Dec 3, Maria Ridulph (7) disappeared while playing in Sycamore, Illinois. In April, 1958, two people foraging for mushrooms found her remains. In 2011 prosecutors in Sycamore charged Jack Daniel McCullough (71), a former police officer, in the abduction of Ridulph after an ex-girlfriend's discovery of an unused train ticket blew a hole in his alibi. At the time, McCullough's name was John Tessier. On Sep 14, 2012, McCullough was convicted of the murder. On Dec 9 McCullough was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 7/3/11)(AP, 9/14/12)(AP, 12/11/12)
1957 Dec 5, The William Inge play, “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," opened at New York's Music Box Theatre and ran for a total of 468 performances, closing on January 17, 1959. It was directed by Elia Kazan. The drama was reworked by Inge from his earlier play, Farther Off from Heaven, first staged in 1947 at Margo Jones' Theatre '47 in Dallas, Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_at_the_Top_of_the_Stairs)
1957 Dec 5, NYC became the 1st city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market with its Fair Housing Practices Law.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1957 Dec 6, AFL-CIO members voted to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The union had been expelled because of racketeering by its executives, including union president Dave Beck and vice president James R. Hoffa. The criminal activity was disclosed during a special Senate committee investigation of racketeering and organized crime in labor-management relations. The Teamsters were readmitted in Oct, 1987, but disaffiliated themselves from the AFL-CIO in 2005.
(HNQ, 1/8/99)(AP, 12/6/07)
1957 Dec 6, America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit failed as Vanguard TV3 rose only about four feet off a Cape Canaveral, Fla., launch pad before crashing back down and exploding.
(AP, 12/6/08)
1957 Dec 9, Japan [announced?] its 1st ambassador to Israel.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1957 Dec 11, The movie "Peyton Place," based on the novel by Grace Metalious, starred Lana Turner and had its world premiere in Camden, Maine, where most of it had been filmed.
(AP, 12/11/07)(SFC, 8/13/14, p.E8)
1957 Dec 17, The United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.
(AP, 12/17/97)
1957 Dec 18, Alex Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins starred in the film "Bridge on the River Kwai." It premiered at the RKO Palace Theater in New York City and later won multiple Oscars.
(WSJ, 2/27/96, p.A19)(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB p.8)(AP, 12/18/97)
1957 Dec 18, The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line [see July 12].
(AP, 12/18/07)
1957 Dec 19, The musical play "The Music Man," starring Robert Preston, with book and songs by Meredith Willson, opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theater for 1,375 performances. Mason City, Iowa, Willson's home town, unveiled Music Man Square in 2002
(AP, 12/19/97)(MC, 12/19/01)(SSFC, 3/14/04, p.D12)
1957 Dec 20, Elvis Presley was given a draft notice to join US Army for National Service.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1957 Dec 25, Frederick Law Olmsted (87), US architect (Central Park, NYC), died.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1957 Dec 25, Ramdane Abane (b.1920), Algerian Berber revolutionary leader, was assassinated in Morocco.
(www.amazighworld.org/history/personalities/ramdane_abane.php)(SFC, 6/28/08, p.E2)
1957 Dec 26, The Ingmar Bergman film "Wild Strawberries," starring Victor Sjostrom, opened in Sweden.
(AP, 12/26/07)
1957 Dec 29, Singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were married in Las Vegas.
(AP, 12/29/97)
1957 Dec, The 1st Beijing Int’l. Airport opened.
(Hem, 8/02, p.34)
1957 AndreÏ Makine, writer, was born in Siberia. He emigrated to Paris in 1987 where he authored "Dreams of My Russian Summers" (1994), "The Crime of Olga Arbyelina" (1998) and "Music of a Life" (2002).
(SSFC, 8/18/02, p.M3)
1957 Francis Bacon painted his "Study for Portrait of Van Gogh, V."
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB p.29)
1957 Alexander Calder (1898-1976) made his black standing piece "Seven-Foot Beastie."
(SFC,11/15/97, p.C1)
1957 Roy De Forest painted the racially charged "It’s a Long Way to Alabama."
(SFEC, 9/29/96, DB p.44)
1957 Don Martin (d.2000 at 68), one of Mad's maddest cartoonists, began working for Mad. Martin left Mad in 1987 and published his Don Martin cartoon magazine in 1994.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A20)
1957 Alberto Giacometti made a bronze portrait bust of his brother Diego.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A17)
1957 Jasper Johns painted "Drawer" and "Book."
(SFEC, 11/24/96, C15)
1957 David Park painted his classic "Canoe."
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.E6)
1957 Picasso created a suit of 45 pictures based on Velasquez’s "Las Meninas" over a 4-month period.
(WSJ, 7/17/01, p.A16)
1957 Ted Hughes (1930-1998), British poet, published his first book of poetry "Hawk in the Rain." It re-defined the shape of post-war English poetry.
(SFC, 10/30/98, p.A17)(Econ, 11/8/03, p.83)
1957 John Osborne wrote his play "The Entertainer."
(WSJ, 11/27/96, p.A10)
1957 Gary Becker (b.1930), Nobel prize winning economist (1992), authored “The Economics of Discrimination."
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.92)
1957 Rolf Blomberg published "Buried Treasure and the Anacondas," an account of the search for Inca treasure in the Llanganati Mountains of Ecuador.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, p.A10)
1957 Herb Caen, SF newspaper columnist, wrote his 5th book "Caen’s Guide to San Francisco."
(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A13)
1957 Italo Calvino, Italian writer, authored his novel “Il Barone Rampante" (The Baron in the Trees). It tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baron_in_the_Trees)
1957 Noam Chomsky (b.1928), American linguist, authored “Syntactic structures."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.96)
1957 Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), expatriate British writer, authored “Justine," the first volume his 4-part Alexandria Quartet (1957-1960).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Durrell)
1957 Lawrence Durrell authored “Bitter Lemons." The autobiographical work described the three years (1953–1956) he spent on the island of Cyprus.
(Econ, 6/30/12, p.74)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lemons)
1957 Leon Festinger authored “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance." The basic idea behind cognitive dissonance theory is that people do not like to have dissonant cognitions. As a result, when someone does experience two or more dissonant cognitions (or conflicting thoughts), they will attempt to do away with the dissonance.
(WSJ, 12/4/06, p.B1)
1957 Ian Fleming (1908-1964), English author best known for his James Bond novels, authored “From Russia With Love."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming)
1957 John Fleming (d.1997 at 77), an int’l. legal scholar, wrote "The Law of Torts," a classic work on personal injury law.
(SFC, 9/27/97, p.C2)
1957 E. Franklin Frazier published his work: "Black Bourgeoisie."
(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p. 37)
1957 Arthur Frommer self-published his first travel book "Europe on $5 a Day." It had begun as a guidebook for GI’s.
(SFEC, 11/10/96, p.T2)(SSFC, 5/6/07, p.G3)
1957 Harold Gilliam authored “San Francisco Bay."
(SFC, 12/27/14, p.C2)
1957 Stanford Prof. Edward Gintzton (d.1998 at 82) wrote his textbook "Microwave Measurement." He was a pioneer in the development of medical linear accelerators for the treatment of cancer and co-founded Varian Associates (1948).
(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A18)
1957 Martin Luther King wrote his autobiography "Stride Toward Freedom."
(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.14)
1957 "The Copernican Revolution" by Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1923-1996) was published.
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1957 Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) wrote "The Cat in the Hat" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
(SFC, 3/28/97, p.D2)(WSJ, 12/24/98, p.B1)
1957 William Gibson published "The Miracle Worker," the story of Helen Keller.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, BR p.3)
1957 Richard Hoggart (b.1918), British academic, authored “The Uses of Literacy," a pioneering work of cultural criticism and look at the English working class after WWII.
(WSJ, 9/20/08, p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hoggart)
1957 Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), Swiss-born psychoanalyst, authored “The Undiscovered Self."
(SFC, 6/5/11, p.G7)(www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Carl-Jung.htm)
1957 Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), Swiss-born psychoanalyst, published his work “Memories, Dreams, Reflections."
(SFC, 6/5/11, p.G7)(http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2002/jungtimeline.htm)
1957 Janos Kornai (b.1928), Hungarian economist, authored “Overcentralization." This was the 1st book by an economist behind the Iron Curtain to examine the command of “actual socialism" and to criticize central planning.
(WSJ, 1/30/07, p.B15)
1957 C.Y. Lee authored his novel "The Flower Drum Song," a story of San Francisco’s Chinatown. It inspired a Rogers and Hammerstein musical and was made into a film in 1961.
(SFC, 9/18/02, p.A1)
1957 Max Lerner authored "America as a Civilization."
(WSJ, 11/10/98, p.A20)
1957 Art Linkletter (1912-2010), radio and TV talk-show pioneer, authored “Kids Say the Darndest Things" (1957).
(SFC, 5/27/10, p.C4)
1957 Norman Mailer published his essay "The White Negro" in Dissent.
(WSJ, 2/24/97, p.A20)
1957 James Michener (d.1997 at 90) wrote his novel "The Bridge at Andau," and co-authored "Rascals in Paradise." He also published his "Selected Writings."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A17)
1957 The book “The Sultan in Oman" by Jan Morris (b.1926), British travel writer, was published. It was set in 1955 and described the Sultan’s traveling party after a brief war.
(www.hku.hk/english/courses2000/2045/morris.htm)
1957 Wright Morris won the National Book Award for his epic novel "The Field of Vision."
(SFC, 5/1/98, p.D7)
1957 Vladimir Nabokov authored his novel “Pnin," the story of a master failer.
(WSJ, 2/16/08, p.W10)
1957 Vance Packard (1914-1996) wrote "Hidden Persuaders," a critique of advertising and the consumer society. Packard revealed physiological techniques used by advertisers, including subliminal messages.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B6)(Econ, 12/20/08, p.107)
1957 Darcy Ribeiro, anthropologist (1923-1997), wrote "Indigenous Language and Cultures in Brazil."
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A20)
1957 Ayn Rand (1905-1982) wrote her novel "Atlas Shrugged."
(SFEC, 7/26/98, BR p.3)
1957 Martin Russ authored "The Last Parallel," an memoir of combat in the Korean War.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Par p.18)
1957 Ian Pierre Watt (d.1999 at 82), professor at Stanford, authored "The Rise of the Novel." His work also included "Myths of Modern Individualism" and "Essays on Conrad." A collection of his essays, "Critical History: The Career of Ian Watt," was published after his death.
(SFC, 12/16/99, p.A33)
1957 Evelyn Waugh authored "The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold." "He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and Jazz—everything in fact that had happened in his lifetime."
(WSJ, 1/4/02, p.A11)
1957 In East Germany Ruth Werner (d.2000), Communist spy in Britain during WW II, authored a novel of her early years: "An Unusual Girl."
(SFC, 7/11/00, p.A23)
1957 Herbert Yardley, American cryptographer, authored “The Education of a Poker Player."
(Econ, 12/19/15, p.41)
1957 "The Bald Singer" began running at the La Huchette theater in Paris. It was still being performed in 1996.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, T9)
1957 The first Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival in the US was held.
(Dr, 7/96, V1#1, p.5)
1957 The ballet "Sonate a trois" by Maurice Bejart was based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s play "No Exit." The music was from the "Sonata for Piano and Percussion" by Bela Bartok.
(SFC, 11/8/96, p.C5)
1957 The ballet "Agon" with music by Stravinsky was produced by George Balanchine.
(WSJ, 6/19/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 10/10/00, p.A24)
1957 Benjamin Britten wrote his ballet "The Prince of the Pagoda's."
(SFEC, 1/17/99, DB p.29)
1957 The Broadway show "Square Root of Wonderful" by Carson McCullers featured the debut of Mark Lenard (1918-1996), later Sarek of Vulcan, the father of Mr. Spock.
(SFC, 11/27/96, p.B2)
1957 The Broadway musical "Jamaica" with Lena Horne was directed by Robert Lewis.
(SFC,11/25/97, p.A22)
1957 Capital Records put out a 12-inch album titled “Birth of the Cool." It included recordings from 1949-1950 singles by a NYC nonet under Miles Davis.
(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.W12)
1957 Jonel Perlea (1900-1970), Romania-born composer, became the principal conductor of the Connecticut Symphony and continued there for ten years.
(http://soundfountain.org/rem/remperlea.html)
1957 The jazz opera "Shinbone Alley" opened on Broadway. It was written by Joe Darion with music by George Kleinsinger.
(SFC, 6/22/01, p.D4)
1957 The Broadway show "Time Remembered" starred Richard Burton, Helen Hayes and Susan Strasberg. It was based on the play "Leucadia" by Jean Anouilh.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.A22)
1957 "Eugenia" with Tallulah Bankhead was produced on Broadway by Randolph Carter.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1957 Marvin Mirisch (d.2002 at 84) and his brothers, Walter and Harold (d.1968), launched a film production outfit that led to 68 movies over the next 17 years.
(SFC, 11/21/02, p.A25)
1957 "Half Gun, Will Travel" began to run on TV and continued for 6 years.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.E5)
1957 John Hart (1917-2009) starred as Hawkeye in the TV series “Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans." Lon Chaney Jr. played Chingachgook.
(SFC, 9/24/09, p.D5)
1957 MGM closed its cartoon studio in a panic over diminishing audiences due to television. William Hanna and Joe Barbera (1911-2006) formed their own company and began making cartoons for TV. The Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon program "Ruff & Reddy" began.
(SFC, 6/3/97, p.B4)(WSJ, 12/21/06, p.D8)
1957 Terrytoons produced the "Tom Terrific" cartoons series until 1959. Lionel Wilson (d.2003 at 79) was the voice. It ran on Captain Kangaroo.
(SFC, 5/31/03, p.A20)
1957 Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges (d.1998) began as a TV series. It ran to 1961. It was mostly filmed at the Marineland of the Pacific in LA.
(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A4)
1957 Elvis Presley appeared a 2nd time on the Ed Sullivan TV Show.
(SFC,1/22/97, p.A20)
1957 Lawrence Harvey Zeigler, later known as Larry King, began sweeping floors for at a radio station in Miami.
(WT-NWA, 7/01, p.43)
1957 Stripper Tempest Storm, born as Annie Banks in Eastman, Georgia, signed a $100,000 contract in SF to tour the burlesque circuit. In 1987 she published her autobiography: "The Lady Is a Vamp."
(SFC, 7/15/99, p.B7)
1957 Barney Wilen, French saxophonist, sat in with Miles Davis on a session for "Ascenser pour l’Echafaud" (Elevator for the Scaffold), a classic film by Louis Malle.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A15)
1957 Harry Belafonte sang his "Banana Boat Song."
(SFEC, 9/8/96, DB p.64)
1957 The Coasters sang "Down in Mexico."
(SFC, 11/20/02, p.A21)
1957 Sammy Cooke made a hit with "You Send Me." He had just switched from gospel music to pop. Clifton White (d.1998 at 76), guitarist and band leader, led the band behind Cooke’s music.
(SFC, 4/798, p.A21)
1957 Jerry Lee Lewis made a hit with his recording of “Great Balls of Fire," written by Earl Burroughs (1925-2016) and Otis Blackwell.
(SFC, 4/14/16, p.D5)
1957 Johnny Heartsman recorded "Johnny’s House Party," a top 20 R&B hit.
(SFC, 1/1/97 p.C2)
1957 Bobby Helms recorded "Jingle Bell Rock."
(SFC, 12/24/99, p.C8)
1957 The Kingston Trio singing group formed in and around Palo Alto, Calif.
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.52)
1957 Buddy Knox had a hit with his song "Party Doll."
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.D1)
1957 John Lennon met Paul McCartney and invited him to join his Quarrymen. McCartney soon introduced Lennon to George Harrison.
(SFC, 12/1/01, p.D1)
1957 Thelonious Monk recorded alone on Round Midnight. A CD was later released titled Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Himself (Riverside Original Jazz Classics). Monk also wrote "Crepuscule with Nellie," a ballad to his wife (d.2002).
(WSJ, 10/14/95, p.A-12)(SFC, 6/28/02, p.A26)
1957 Frank Sinatra sang "All the Way."
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)
1957 Don Stover (1928-1996), blue grass banjo player, recorded "Knee Deep in Bluegrass," with Bill Monroe. His bands included the Coal River Valley Boys, the Lilly Brothers Band and the White Oak Mountain Boys with whom he recorded "Things in Life."
(SFC, 11/13/96, p.C3)
1957 Richard Berry recorded "Louie, Louie" with the Pharaohs on Flip Records. It was intended as the B-side of "You Are My Sunshine." It sold about 130,000 copies.
(SFC, 1/25/97, p.A19)(SFC, 4/11/98, p.C5)
1957 Margaret Hillis (d.1998 at 76) founded the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.21)
1957 The Santa Fe Opera opened with its first season.
(WSJ, 8/15/96, p.A10)
1957 Martin Stone (d.1998 at 83) founded WVIP Radio in Mount Kisco, N.Y. He produced "Howdy Doody" at NBC in the late 40s and early 50s and "Author Meets the Critics."
(SFC, 6/19/98, p.B6)
1957 In Toledo, Ohio the Craig Memorial Bridge, a drawbridge over the Maumee River, became a major link for trucks between Ohio and Michigan.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.20A)
1957 Canyon Dam, 30 miles NE of San Antonio, Tx., was completed.
(SFC, 7/5/02, p.A4)
1957 In San Francisco abstract painter Dmitri Grachis (1932-2021) opened his Spatsa Gallery on Filbert Street at Fillmore. Over the next four years it served as a gathering place for Beat artists. In 1990 the Natsoulas Gallery published "The Spatsa Gallery 1958-1961".
(https://tinyurl.com/y3bfgemj)(SFC, 1/27/21, p.B1)
1957 In the SF Bay Area Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds and David Guard formed the Kingston Trio folk group.
(SFC, 1/30/20, p.C6)
1957 In northern California the Almaden Air Force Station was established on Mount Umumhum, a 44-acre site just south of Los Gatos. The site had played a role in the creation story of the local Amah Mutsun Indians. The base was decommissioned in 1979. In 2010 a cleanup of toxic paint and asbestos began under a $3.2 million federal grant.
(SFC, 7/10/10, p.A1)
1957 San Francisco Attorney Bill Evers (1927-2017) Jim McClatchey, publisher of the Sacramento Bee, formed the Tahoe Improvement and Conservation Association. It later became the League to Save Lake Tahoe.
(SFC, 7/7/17, p.D7)
1957 Eichler Homes in California began to offer an atrium as a sales booster.
(SFEM, 11/3/96, p.14)
1957 In California the first American plastic home was exhibited in Disneyland's Tomorrowland.
(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W10)
1957 On the West Coast the Beat Generation wore beards and sandals and experimented with Zen and pot with Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road" (1956) as their Bible. The character Elmo Hassel was Herbert Huncke, beat poet and addict.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)(SFC, 8/9/96, p.D1)
1957 In San Francisco Herb Lee (1933-2017) became the city’s first Chinese American police officer.
(SSFC, 11/12/17, p.C10)
1957 California state prison guards formed the California Correctional Officers Association, mainly as a social organization. The group became politically active in the 1970s and in 1982 formally organized as a labor union.
(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.A7)
1957 In San Francisco the Franciscan Crab Restaurant was built at Pier 43½. The front design by Hewitt C. Wells featured a prow-like shape.
(SSFC, 3/24/13, p.C2)
1957 Mrs. Leonard "Etya" Gechtoff, owner of the East and West Gallery in SF coined the term "beatnik" following the launch of Sputnik. For the self-labeled Beat Movement of the 1950s and '60s, "beat" originally meant "exhausted." It was later sometimes interpreted as "beatific" and also derisively as "beatnik." Centered in the Bohemian artist communities in California and New York, the movement was social and literary with adherents adopting a style of seedy dress and the "hip" vocabulary of jazz musicians. Major figures of the movement were novelist Jack Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg.
(SFC,11/11/97, p.D3)(www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/conner74.htm)
1957 Newspaper columnist Herb Caen picked up the term "beatnik" to describe the Beat poets of San Francisco.
(www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/conner74.htm)
1957 In San Francisco Cyril Magnin, mercantile family head, and George Killion, chief executive of American President Lines, founded the World Trade Club. In 2006 the club dissolved due to declining membership and financial losses.
(SFC, 10/24/06, p.B3)
1957 The C.A. Thayer, a 3-masted wooden schooner, made its last voyage to SF from Puget Sound under the command of Adrian F. Raynaud (d.1997 at 102). The ship was berthed at the SF Maritime National Historic Park. It was built as a lumber schooner in Eureka, Ca., in 1895 and made its last commercial voyage as a cod fishing boat in 1950. In 2007 it was re-christened at the Hyde Street Pier following a $14 million rebuild in Alameda.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A24)(SFEC, 7/12/98, DB p.31)(SFC, 4/13/07, p.B1)
1957 The United Church of Christ was formed as a combination of the Congregational-Christian Church, the Evangelical Church and the Reformed Church. These were outgrowths of the German Reformed Church (1793) and the German Evangelical Synod of North America (1872).
(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A11)
1957 Rev. Billy Graham led a New York Crusade at Madison Square Garden that was televised coast-to-coast.
(SFEC, 9/21/97, Z1 p.3)
1957 Martin Luther King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
(WSJ, 11/3/97, p.A20)
1957 Carlo Gambino (d.1976) became head of the Gambino crime family and was later the model for Don Corleone in the film "The Godfather."
(SSFC, 8/11/02, Par p.4)
1957 Andrew Eliot Rice (d.2010 at 87) helped form the Society for Int’l. Development, an organization for fostering development programs around the world.
(SFC, 6/12/10, p.D8)
1957 Billy Barty (d.2000 at 76) founded Little People of America, an advocacy group for dwarfs.
(SSFC, 12/24/00, p.B5)
1957 Leo Castelli (d.1999 at 91) opened his art gallery on East 77th Street in NYC. He became the arbiter of a new movement, Neo-Dada, that quickly transformed to the Pop Art scene.
(WSJ, 8/25/99, p.A16)
1957 GQ, a men's fashion magazine was founded.
(SFC, 6/12/03, p.A25)
1957 Life magazine printed R. Gordon Wasson’s “Seeking the Magic Mushroom" detailing his experiences at a religious ritual in Mexico. Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, experienced the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushroom during a trip to Mexico in 1955.
(WSJ, 7/11/06, p.B10)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.78)
1957 National Geographic Magazine published a picture of flamingos that inspired Donald Featherstone of Leominster, Mass., to start a business making plastic models for yard ornaments. The plastic flamingo was designed at Union Products in Mass. In 1958.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, zone 1 p.2)(SFC, 7/14/99, p.8)
1957 Tatyana (d.1982) and Maurice Grosman set up the Universal Limited Art Editions lithography workshop (ULAE) in a Long Island carriage house.
(SFC, 3/31/97, p.E6)
1957 Commercial jet travel began to grow.
(SFEC,12/797, p.T3)
1957 Tang, a dry breakfast beverage in crystal form, was introduced.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, DB p.27)
1957 Ben Eisenstadt, founder of Cumberland Packaging Corp., with his son Marvin and chemist Paul Kracauer developed a saccharine-based sweetener that was initially geared toward diabetics. It later became known as Sweet’N Low, which became a registered trademark of Cumberland Packaging Corp. in 1970. In 2006 Rich Cohen authored “Sweet and Low: A Family History."
(SSFC, 4/23/06, p.M6)(Econ, 1/30/10, p.77)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Eisenstadt)
1957 Boxer Middleweight Sugar Ray Robinson lost, won and lost his title.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)
1957 Reporters William Lambert (d.1998 at 78) and Wallace Turner won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for their series on Dave Beck, the president of the Int’l. Brotherhood of Teamsters. They exposed that Teamsters and racketeers had combined forces to take over the Portland City government. The articles in the Oregonian were later used by Robert Kennedy for his probe on the Teamsters.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.A22)
1957 The 29th Academy Awards were held at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Ingrid Bergman won for her role in Anastasia.
(SFC, 3/15/02, p.D1)
1957 Mr. Magoo, a near-sighted cartoon character, won his 2nd academy award.
(WSJ, 7/31/97, p.A1)
1957 A group of scientists and supporters from around the world gathered in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to call attention to the risks of nuclear war. In 1995 scientists in London had issued a manifesto declaring that researchers must take responsibility for their creations, such as the atomic bomb. The manifesto served as the philosophical origin for the Pugwash Conference.
(WSJ, 10/16/95, p. A-15)(SFC, 9/2/05, p.B5)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower named Elbridge Durbrow (d.1997 at 93) as ambassador to South Vietnam, the newly divided southern portion of Indochina. He served there until 1961.
(SFC, 5/24/97, p.A20)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower gave authority to senior military commanders to retaliate with nuclear weapons if the president could not be reached or was unable to respond to a nuclear attack against the US in a policy known as "pre-delegation authority." A memo to this effect was dated Dec 19, 1958.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A2)(SFC, 9/2/98, p.A5)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.
(AP, 7/29/08)
1957 Vice-president Richard Nixon was stoned in Caracas.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)
1957 Pres. Eisenhower appointed Dr. Katherine B. Oettinger (d.1997 at 94) chief of the Children’s Bureau in the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). The bureau was abolished in 1967 under Pres. Johnson.
(SFC,10/20/97, p.A19)
1957 Herbert Brownell, US attorney general, resigned. He was replaced by William P. Rogers (d.2000 at 87). Rogers later served as sec. of state under Pres. Nixon (1969-1973).
(SFC, 1/4/01, p.C3)
1957 The US began its Corona project, a secret attempt to put a reconnaissance satellite into orbit. Pres. Eisenhower put it on fast track in 1959. The first 12 launch attempts failed. In 1960 a successful flight photographed a large part of the Soviet Union. In 1998 2 books were published on the project: "Eye in the Sky" a collection of essays edited by 3 experts and "The Corona Project" by Curtis Peebles. Details on corona were declassified in 1995.
(WSJ, 7/6/98, p.A13)(SFC, 8/15/12, p.C8)
1957 The US FDA approved the drug Propoxyphene. It was marketed as the pain killer under the name Darvon and Darvocet. In 2009 an FDA advisory committee voted 14-12 against continued marketing following safety concerns which linked the drug to sometimes serious and fatal heart rhythm abnormalities. In 2010 US drug makers agreed to stop marketing the drug.
(SFC, 11/20/10, p.A7)
1957 The US Mail Special Delivery increased to $.30 for the guaranteed immediate delivery.
(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A6)
1957 The US Senate investigated the Teamsters and leaders Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)
1957 William Proxmire (1915-2005), Wisconsin Democrat, won a special election to fill the seat of US Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. Proxmire served until 1989.
(SFC, 12/16/05, p.A4)
1957 The legal term "informed consent" was first used by attorney Paul Gebhard (d.1997 at 69) in a court proceeding of Salgo vs. Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. The ruling in the case defined the term "full disclosure."
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A22)
1957 The FBI closed its investigation on Jay Lovestone (d.1999), a former Communist turned CIA informer, after 6 years of wiretaps. Lovestone worked as an executive secretary for the AFL's Free Trade Union Committee which was primarily supported by CIA funds.
(WSJ, 5/19/99, p.A20)
1957 In the US Arkansas Gov. Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent school integration at Little Rock High School and Eisenhower responded with Federal troops to enforce federal law for integration.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)(SFC, 5/19/95, C-15)
1957 In California’s Napa County the farming town of Monticello, founded in 1866, was drowned as the Putah River was dammed to create lake Berryessa.
(SSFC, 12/6/15, p.C1)
1957 Mississippi created the Sovereignty Commission to fight against the Civil Rights movement. It informed the police about planned marches and encouraged police harassment of African-Americans who cooperated with civil rights groups.
(WSJ, 6/11/99, p.A8)
1957 Bill and Daisy Myers became the first Black couple to buy a house in Levittown (Willingboro), Pa. State police were required to protect them. They lived there until 1961. In 1999 Daisy was given a reception and an apology from the Bristol Township Mayor Sam Fenton. Levittown was created by William Levitt, who kept costs down by bringing in ready made walls and buying appliances directly from manufacturers. In 2009 David Kushner authored “Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb."
(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A6)(Econ, 5/31/08, p.28)(WSJ, 2/5/08, p.A11)
1957 Hondo Oil Co., led by Robert O. Anderson (1917-2007), discovered the quarter-billion-barrel Empire-Abo oilfield in southeast New Mexico.
(WSJ, 12/8/07, p.A7)
1957 The founders of Insta Burger King in Miami changed its name to Burger King and introduced the broiled Whopper.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.A20)
1957 Chrysler pioneered a Highway Hi-Fi system that actually played records.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1957 In the US the first coupon clearing house was created. The first consumer coupon was an offer for a free glass of Coca-Cola issued in the mid 1890s.
(WSJ, 2/16/08, p.A12)
1957 Ford introduced the Edsel. It was the first car designed using market research. Americans rejected the car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1957 Fritz Wankel brought out his rotary engine.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)
1957 Jackie Robinson, baseball star, became vice president of Chock Full O’Nuts. In 1996 his widow, Rachel, co-wrote with Lee Daniels: "Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait." In 1997 Arnold Rampersad published Jackie Robinson, A Biography."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, BR p.10)(SFEC,10/19/97, BR p.1)
1957 AT&T introduced its Touchtone phones.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.E5)
1957 Seymour Cray (1925-1996) co-founded Control Data Corp. where he built the first computer to use radio transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
(SFC, 9/24/96, p.A6)
1957 Eight engineers left Shockley Semiconductor to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Jean A. Hoerni (1925-1997) was one of the "Fairchild Eight," founders of the Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. He was credited with building the bridge from the transistor to the integrated circuit. Victor Grinich (d.2000 at 75) helped form Fairchild. Eugene Kleiner (d.2003), another co-founder, helped found the Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers venture capital firm in 1972. Others included Jay Last, C. Sheldon Roberts and Julius Blank.
(SFC, 2/5/97, p.A20)(SFC, 11/11/00, p.A26)(SFC, 11/26/03, p.D1)
1957 Hoover produced its best selling model, the Convertible (Model 65), an upright vacuum cleaner that could be converted with a hose for above the floor cleaning.
(SFC, 7/19/08, p.F2)
1957 Ken Olson, a former MIT engineer, received $70,000 from American Research & Development (ARD) to develop Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) in return for a 70% stake.
(WSJ, 5/21/08, p.A17)
1957 The Hewlett-Packard Corp. went public and began operating its new site at Stanford Research Park.
(SFC, 3/3/99, p.A11)
1957 A Monsanto sponsored all-plastic House of the Future became part of Disney’s Tomorrowland.
(SFC, 7/14/96, p.T3)
1957 Joseph F. Cullman III (d.2004) took over as head of Philip Morris until 1978. Under his leadership Marlboro Country advertising was adopted and profits led to 1st place ranking.
(SFC, 5/4/04, p.B7)
1957 The first Toys R US store opened. The company was founded by Charles Lazarus, who opened Children's Bargain Town, a baby furniture store, in Washington, DC. It became a public company in 1978. In 2017 the company filed for bankruptcy and in 2018 filed a plan to close or sell its 740 stores in the US.
(SFC, 3/16/18, p.C3)
1957 The birth control pill developed by Dr. Djerassi in 1951 was approved in the US for treating menstrual problems.
(SJSVB, 4/8/96, p.8)
1957 Dr. Hilary Koprowski of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia developed an oral polio vaccine and tested it in Africa (Congo). The Wister polio vaccine was given to some 300,000 people in the Belgian Congo from 1957-1960. A later theory held that reuse of needles during the immunization program caused AIDS via “serial passage" that transformed the SIV virus into HIV. In 1999 Edward Hooper authored “The River," a detailed hypothesis for the origin of AIDS in Africa. Hooper suspected that the Wister polio vaccine, produced from monkey kidney cells, contained SIV virus. In 2000 a computerized study indicated that the AIDS virus was introduced to humans about 1930.
(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 1/15/01, p.A11)(SFC, 4/13/05, p.A5)
1957 Thalidomide was officially introduced to the market. It was discovered by Chemie Gruenethal, a German pharmaceutical firm, and marketed as a sedative with no side effects. It was later linked to severe birth defects. In 2001 Trent Stephens and Rock Brynner authored "Dark Remedy," a history of thalidomide.
(WSJ, 2/1/00, p.A20)
1957 The landmark paper "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars" was published in the journal Reviews of Modern Physics by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle.
(NH, 8/96, p.65)
1957 Roger Revelle and Hans Suess published a paper in which they explained the resistance of seawater to absorb carbon dioxide.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.30)
1957 Leo Esaki, Nobel laureate, discovered that electrons could "tunnel" through solid barriers via tiny electrical devices and the "semiconductor tunnel diode" was born.
(WSJ, 10/1/98, p.A1)
1957 Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian physicist, suggested that neutrinos could come in different types, known to physicists as flavors. His hypothesis was proved in 1998 in Japan. Pontecorvo had defected to the Soviet Union seven years earlier.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.71)
1957 James Lovelock, British scientist, built an electron capture detector. Initially built to detect minute quantities of fatty acids, it instead detected the impurities that lay in between the lipids. It thus became useful for detecting traces of pesticides and CFCs.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.194)
1957 In California Iron Mountain mine owners blamed the federal government for fish kills. They held that the Shasta federal dam caused the buildup of pollutants and that previously flows from Spring Creek were rendered harmless by dilution in the Sacramento River.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1957 Alvin Leonard (d.2008 at 90) began serving as the public health director of Berkeley, Ca., and continued there until 1970.
(SFC, 5/29/08, p.B5)
1957 A fire at the Colorado Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant released some plutonium in the smoke. The fire was kept secret until 1969 when another fire released more plutonium.
(SFC, 8/27/99, p.A3)
1957 George Mason Univ. began as an extension of the Univ. of Virginia. It became independent in 1972.
(WSJ, 3/31/06, p.W11)
1957 Sir Edmund Hillary was part of a joint New Zealand-British ice trek that drove farm tractors on the Skelton Glacier to the South Pole.
(SFC, 1/14/99, p.C2)
1957 On the Gulf Coast a hurricane named Audrey killed over 500 people.
(TMC, 1994, p.1957)
1957 Mob boss Albert Anastasia of Murder Inc. was gunned down by 2 hitmen in a New York barbershop.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)(WSJ, 5/1/97, p.B1)
1957 Harrison Ford, film actor from 1915-1932, died. Most of his work was in silent films.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.8)
1957 George Gustav Heye (b.1876), collector of Indian artifacts, died. He and a few rich friends set up a foundation in 1922 that established the Museum of the American Indian. The museum closed in 1994 and the Smithsonian acquired the collection.
(WSJ, 9/21/04, p.D8)
1957 Adaline Kent (b.1900), surrealist sculptor, died. Her work included "Scribe" (1944).
(SFC, 11/17/01, p.D10)
1957 Wolfgang Korngold (b.1897), composer of opera, ballet and film scores, died.
(WSJ, 4/2/01, p.A20)
1957 Peter B. Kyne (b.1880), author, died. He wrote 25 novels and over 1,000 short stories, a number of which were turned into Hollywood movies. Kyne was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Mateo County where most of his work was set.
(Ind, 7/19/03, p.3A)
1957 Bernard Maybeck (.b1862), architect, died. Most of his Arts and Crafts style homes were done in Berkeley, Ca., where he lived.
(SFC, 1/29/03, p.F7)
1957 Julia Morgan (b.1872), architect, died. She was born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland.
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.F4)
1957 Eliot Ness, former FBI agent, died at age 57 of a heart attack.
(SFC, 9/11/97, p.A3)
1957 Max Ophuls (b.1902), German born film director, died in France. He made films in Germany, France, Netherlands and the US.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, DB p.50)
1957 Dorothy Sayers (b.1893), British detective novelist, died. Her main hero was Lord Peter Wimsey.
(NW, 8/20/01, p.56)
1957 Arturo Toscanini (b.1868), Italian conductor, died. He led the NBC Symphony from 1937-1954. In 1978 Harvey Sachs wrote his biography. In 2002 Sachs edited "The Letters of Arturo Toscanini," his correspondence with Ada Mainardi.
(HN, 3/25/01)(WSJ, 4/30/02, p.D7)
1957 James Whale (67), English director, died of suicide in Hollywood. His films included "Frankenstein," "Show Boat" and "The Invisible Man." Later biographies of Whale included: "James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters" by James Curtis; "James Whale: A Biography, or The Would-Be Gentleman" by Mark Gatiss; and "Father of Frankenstein" by Christopher Bram. The 1988 film "Gods and Monsters" was a mixture of fact and fiction about the last months of horror director James Whale.
(USAT, 9/15/98, p.1D)(SFEC, 11/1/98, Par p.18)
1957 The International Labor Organization (ILO) developed and ratified Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957 (No. 107), an international instrument dedicated to improving the living conditions of Indigenous peoples worldwide. In 1989 it was revised and renamed Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). Convention 169 recognizes Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination within a nation-state.
(http://tinyurl.com/gsrhxrq)(Econ, 2/6/15, p.32)
1957 In Afghanistan Czech engineers built a cement factory 75 km from Kabul. It was shut down by the Taliban in 1995 and reopened in 2016.
(AP, 5/29/16)
1957 Charles Bentley (1929-2017), American professor of geophysics, began working for the US Antarctica Expedition and helped map the Antarctica ice sheet. He and his team found that the West Antarctica ice sheet was 2 miles thick at some points and extended as far below sea level as the highest mountains rose above the surface. They also found the deepest spot on Earth not covered by ocean, later named the Bentley Subglacial Trench.
(SSFC, 3/27/17, p.C10)
1957 Argentina signed a treaty with the Vatican that created the post of military bishop.
(Econ, 4/2/05, p.34)
1957 In Britain Reg Smythe (d.1998 at 81), began the Andy Capp comic strip in the northern editions of the Daily Mirror.
(SFC, 6/16/98, p.A22)
1957 Britain launched its 1st sub-orbital Skylark rocket. The last Skylark, #441, was launched near Kiruna, Sweden, in 2005.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.74)
1957 In British Guyana the People’s Progressive Party won elections and Dr. Jagan and his wife won cabinet posts.
(SFC, 3/7/97, p.A24)
1957 The words "freedom of migration" were struck from China’s constitution. This effectively confined the peasants to the land where they were born. Authorities did not loosen up until 1983.
(USAT, 2/13/97, p.8A)
1957 The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) was established to ensure that Chinese Catholics not act contrary to the interests of their country.
(www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/032502/kungRmks.php)(Economist, 9/8/12, p.42)
1957 China under Mao Zedong set up its reform-through-labor system, known as laojiao.
(Econ, 1/12/13, p.13)
1957 China’s Dongzhang Reservoir in Fuqing Province was filled. Prehistoric tombs were hidden underneath.
(Arch, 1/05, p.12)
1957 A flu pandemic began in China and killed 1-4 million people. It caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957. The Asian flu broke out in Guizhou, China, and over the next two years killed at least 1 million people worldwide. This H2N2 influenza virus continued to circulate until 1968, when it transformed via antigenic shift into influenza A virus subtype H3N2, the cause of the 1968 influenza pandemic.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%9358_influenza_pandemic)(SFC, 4/13/05, p.A5)(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)
1957 In Cuba the Capri Hotel was built in Havana. It became one of the flashiest mob joints of the time. Charles Tourine managed the nightclub and Nicholas di Costanzo ran the casino. Both were associated with Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante.
(SSFC, 2/16/14, p.A10)
1957 The Cuban urban underground was led by Frank Pais, an aspiring schoolteacher turned activist.
(WSJ, 7/10/02, p.D8)
1957 Denmark banned nuclear weapons from its soil.
(AP, 10/29/10)
1957 Egypt became the first country in the Arab world to elect a woman to parliament.
(Econ, 10/15/11, p.29)
1957 The French film “Three Days to Live" starred Leno Ventura and Jeanne Moreau.
(SFC, 10/31/15, p.E4)
1957 The Clemenceau, a French aircraft carrier, first set sail. It was taken out of service in 1997. In 2006 dismantling efforts faced problems. French officials said there are 45 tons of asbestos on the ship, but environmentalists put that number at up to 1,000 tons.
(AP, 2/15/06)
1957 German artist Heinz Mack founded the Zero magazine. Mack and Otto Piene invited artists like Günther Uecker to exhibit in their studio, and the three friends became the founding fathers of the Zero movement, seeking to overcome the pessimism of the postwar period and embrace technical progress, experimenting with light, high-tech materials and motion. In 2015 an exhibition at Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau museum featured work from co-founders Mack and Piene as well as Jean Tinguely, Lucio Fontana and Jef Verheyen.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_%28art%29)(AP, 3/20/15)
1957 Germany’s independent central bank, Bundesbank, was founded. It became a trailblazer for modern central banks.
(Economist, 10/6/12, p.87)
1957 In Zwickau, East Germany, the first Trabant car was manufactured. Production ceased in 1991.
(SSFC, 6/17/07, p.A2)
1957 Indar Jit Rikhye (1920-2007), UN peacekeeper from India, became chief of staff of UN forces along the Suez Canal. Prior to this each national liaison officer reported to their own governments.
(Econ, 6/9/07, p.99)
1957 Albert Metzger, owner of the Cecil Hotel in Alexandria, was kicked out of Egypt "with only two suitcases." The hotel had been founded by his father in 1929. The Cecil palace, which once attracted Alexandria's rich cosmopolitan elite, was nationalized by late president Gamal Abdel Nasser after Egypt's nationalist revolution in 1952. In 2007 the Metzger family regained control of the 86-room four-star hotel run by French company Accor.
(AFP, 6/21/07)
1957 In Honduras the military ousted the civilian president.
(SFC, 8/9/99, p.A8)
1957 In Hungary Bela Biszku became interior minister in the wake of the anti-Soviet revolution, when over 220 people who participated in the uprising were executed and many thousands imprisoned or persecuted. Biszku continued serving as interior minister to 1961. In 2014 he faced charges with war crimes over the suppression of the 1956 uprising.
(AP, 1/27/11)(AP, 3/18/14)
1957 Run Run Shaw (1907-2014) moved from Singapore to Hong Kong and built a studio that produced hundreds of films including “The One-Armed Swordsmith" and “Five Fingers of Death," which began a global craze for the martial arts.
(Econ, 1/11/14, p.38)
1957 The state of Kerala in southwest India elected a Communist administration.
(NG, 5.1988, pp. 596)
1957 Iraq commissioned Le Corbusier to design the Baghdad Gymnasium as a small part of a planned Olympic city. It was only completed in 1982, under the rule of Saddam Hussein, under the guidance of Georges-Marc Presente, an associate of Le Corbusier, who ensured the strict application of the designer's clean, industrial, modernist principles.
(AFP, 4/23/12)
1957 Iraqi Shiite scholar Mohammed Baqr al Sadr founded the Daawa movement.
(WSJ, 4/28/05, p.A1)
1957 In Israel the Jewish town of Upper Nazareth was built on confiscated Palestinian land for the purpose of domination over Palestinian Nazareth. The 1997 book "Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in Jalilee" (sic) by Dan Rabinowitz describes the relations between Arabs and Jews here.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.16)
1957 The Italian Mille Miglia automobile race, begun in 1927, was cancelled following the crash of a Ferrari driven by the Marquis de Portago. He and his co-driver were killed along with 10 bystanders when the car ran off the road at 90 mph.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A13)
1957 At this time only 2% of Italian homes had refrigerators. By 1974 this increased to 94%.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.63)
1957 Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) wrote "Umi to Dokuyaku." It was published in English as "The Sea and Poison" in 1972.
(SFEC, 9/30/96, p.A23)
1957 Saburo Sakai (d.2000 at 84) authored "Samurai." Sakai, a fighter pilot, reportedly shot down as many as 64 allied planes during WW II.
(SFC, 10/10/00, p.A21)
1957 The Japanese film “Black River" starred Tatsuya Nakadai and was directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.B13)
1957 The film "Kisses" by Yasuzo Masumura (d.1986 at 62) marked the director's debut.
(SFC, 9/2/97, p.E1)
1957 The film "The Lower Depths" starred Toshiro Mifune in a version of the Gorky story. It was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFC,12/25/97, p.A25)(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1957 The Japanese film "Throne of Blood" (Kumonosujo) starred Toshiro Mifune in the Kurosawa directed reworking of Macbeth in the stylized manner of Noh drama. It was directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, DB p.44)(SFC,12/25/97, p.A25)(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A21)
1957 The Japanese film “Untamed" starred Tatsuya Nakadai and was directed by Mikio Naruse.
(WSJ, 7/2/08, p.B13)
1957 Japan’s PM Nobusuke Kishi visited Australia and signed a commerce treaty. He was the country’s first post-war prime minister to visit Australia.
(Econ, 7/12/14, p.37)
1957 Dr. Tomin Harada successfully pressed Japan’s government to enact a law to provide medical treatment to atomic bomb survivors.
(SFC, 6/29/99, p.A19)
1957 The Barisan Nasional Coalition began ruling Malaysia.
(Econ, 8/13/11, p.40)
1957 Ibrahim Nasir (31) became prime minister of the Maldives, a British protectorate.
(AP, 11/23/08)
1957 Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, aka the Iron Mayor of Mexico City, opened a new building for street vendors but left out fruit seller Rico Guillermina (1933-1996) and hundreds of others. She began a crusade and formed the Civic Association of Street Vendors which supported the PRI, who in return disregarded the laws controlling street sales.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A19)
1957 Mexico began allowing artists to pay taxes with donations of their artwork after muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros faced jail time for not paying taxes.
(SFC, 7/24/14, p.A4)
1957 Iusacell obtained a mobile radio telephone concession in Mexico.
(WSJ, 8/7/96, p.A10)
1957 Diego Rivera, artist, died in Mexico City.
(Hem., 1/96, p.50)
1957 Miguel Covarrubias, Mexican muralist, died. His work included murals for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in San Francisco.
(SFC, 4/20/01, p.A19)
1957 No one in Monaco pays income taxes except French citizens who arrived after this year.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.C1)
1957 In New Caledonia all native Kanaks were granted French citizenship.
(SFC, 10/5/20, p.A4)
1957 Abubakar Tafawa Balewa became Nigeria's first and only prime minister. He held the position until January 1966 when he was assassinated in the country's first military coup d'etat.
(AFP, 8/29/10)
1957 Paraguay began receiving economic support from Taiwan in exchange for supporting Taiwan at the UN.
(AP, 9/1/08)
1957 Jose Cojuangco, the father of Corazon Aquino, promised various Philippine government agencies that lent him money to buy Hacienda Luisita, a 14,800 acre sugar plantation, that he would sell much of the land to the peasants who worked it. He never did so.
(Econ, 12/10/05, p.49)
1957 The Polish novel "Kolumbowie" (Columbuses) by writer Roman Bratny was inspired by the heroics of WWII resistance fighter Stanislaw Likiernik (1923-2018). A TV series and film with the same title soon followed.
(AP, 5/21/18)
1957 East-West Games were held in Moscow.
(SFC, 9/21/04, p.B7)
1957 The Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions was founded in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.
(http://159.93.28.88/flnr/index.html)
1957 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev allowed the Chechens back to the Caucasus and the Checheno-Ingush republic was set up.
(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A12)
1957 South African reporter Henry Nxumalo (b.1917) was stabbed to death while investigating abortions. He was famous for his investigative pieces. Fondly called "Mr Drum", Nxumalo once enlisted as a farm worker to expose the brutality of white farmers. Nxumalo's life story was portrayed in a 2004 film called "Drum."
(AFP, 12/26/11)
1957 The 466-foot Tower of Madrid was completed. This was Spain’s tallest structure until the 758-foot Torrespana was completed in 1982.
(SFC, 11/27/15, p.A2)
1957 Ramon Rubial (d.1999 at 92), an anti-Franco socialist, was released from prison and became the underground leader of the Socialist Party.
(SFC, 5/26/99, p.C8)
1957 In Spain a flood devastated the Ciutat Vella, the historic district of Valencia. To avoid another such deluge the government diverted the Turia River and turned the riverbed into a public green zone.
(SFC, 8/15/07, p.G1)
1957 Mohammed Wardi (26) began his singing career in Sudan. He became known as the Golden Throat and blended Nubian music into the Arabic language.
(SFC, 9/21/07, p.A12)
1957 In Syria the Yarmouk Palestinian camp was created. It became the larges of 9 and evolved into a densely populated residential district just five miles (eight km) from the center of Damascus.
(AP, 1/8/13)
1957 The first team of 6 Tibetans trained at a Saipan US CIA base and then airdropped back into Tibet with modern weapons and radios. From 1957 to the early 1970s America spirited young Tibetans out through East Pakistan, trained them in Colorado, and parachuted them back to Tibet where they fought the Chinese army.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)(Econ, 1/2/16, p.64)
1957 The Vietnam Writers’ Association (VWA) was founded on the lines of cultural association in the Soviet bloc. In 2014 the alternative League of Independent Vietnamese Writers was founded.
(Econ, 7/18/15, p.34)
1957-1958 Henry Moore, sculptor, created his piece: "UNESCO Reclining Figure."
(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR p.9)
1957-1958 Isaac Bashevis Singer published "Shadows on the Hudson," a Yiddish novel in serial form in the Jewish Daily Forward. It was translated to English in 1997 and covered a circle of Jewish refugees in NYC in 1947-49.
(WSJ, 12/30/97, p.A8)
1957-1958 The International Geophysical Year was organized by the International Council on Scientific Unions.
(NOHY, 3/1990, p.235)
1957-1958 An English team including Sir Edmund Hillary traverses the continent of Antarctica for the first time.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 28)
1957-1959 The TV series "Whirleybirds" starred Ken Tobey (d.2002 at 85) as the co-owner of a helicopter for hire.
(SFC, 12/25/02, p.A29)
1957-1960 Miles Davis and Gill Evans collaborated to produce their masterpieces: "Miles Ahead," "Porgy and Bess," and "Sketches of Spain."
(SFC, 9/1/96, DB p.42)
1957-1960 In China some 3,000 scholars and government officials were incarcerated at the Jiabiangou forced labor camp in the northwestern desert. Only a few hundred outlived the camp. In 1997 Xianhui Yang (b.1946) began speaking survivors and over the next 5 years interviewed nearly 100. In 2000 he published a collection in China of 13 stories. In 2009 “Woman From Shanghai: Tales of Survival From a Chinese Labor Camp" was published in English.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.E2)
1957-1961 Gunsmoke is the top ranking network show on television for four seasons with rankings of 43.1, 39.6, 40.3, and 37.3%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1957-1963 The Sheri Lewis Show ran on NBC.
(SFC, 8/4/98, p.A1)
1957-1963 Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso lived in Paris. In 2000 Barry Miles authored "The Beat Hotel," an account of their years at the 9 Rue Git-leCoert managed by Madame Rachou.
(SFEC, 7/9/00, BR p.5)
1957-1964 In China Jean Pasqualini spent these years in a labor camp after being sentenced to 12 years detention for "counter revolutionary activities." His 1973 book "Prisoner of Mao" described his experiences.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A19)
1957-1967 Jimmy Hoffa led the Teamsters Union.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.C9)
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