1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
Britain's George VI dies of lung cancer at Sandringham February 6 at age 56 after a reign of more than 15 years (the king was a heavy smoker). His widow, now 51, will continue for more than 3 decades to make herself popular as the "queen mum." Their elder daughter, who drove a truck every day during World War II, flies home from a visit to East Africa, and at age 25 ascends the throne as Elizabeth II (she will be crowned next year) to begin a long reign that will see the empire dwindle from 40 nations to no more than 12, with the British monarch having an effective voice in only one.
President Truman relieves Gen. Eisenhower of his post as Supreme Allied Commander at Ike's request in April and names Gen. Matthew Ridgway to succeed him. Gen. Mark Clark succeeds Ridgway in the Far East. Beijing (Peking) accuses U.S. forces in Korea of using germ warfare. U.S. Air Force planes bomb North Korean hydroelectric plants June 23, and by year's end some 1.2 million Chinese are engaged in the conflict under the command of Gen. Peng Dehuai (Peng Te-huai).
Playwright Lillian Hellman defies the Dies Committee May 22, testifying that she is not a "Red" but will not say whether she was 3 or 4 years ago because such testimony "would hurt innocent people in order to save myself . . . I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." But the communist "witch-hunt" that began last year continues, ruining many careers (see human rights, 1953).
French general Jean de Lattre de Tassigny at Paris dies January 11 at age 62; Italian diplomat-statesman Carlo, Conte Sforza at Rome September 5 at age 78; former Finnish president Kaarlo Juho Stahlberg at Helsinki September 22 at age 87.
Moscow ousts U.S. Ambassador George F. Kennan Jr. October 3. Kennan has commented on the isolation of Western diplomats in Moscow, and the Kremlin has demanded his recall.
Former Czech foreign minister Vladimir Clementis and communist leader Rudolf Slánsky stand trial on charges of treason and espionage November 27. Both 50, they are found guilty and hanged along with nine others at Prague December 3 as President Klement Gottwald purges his political rivals.
Former U.S. secretary of the interior Harold L. Ickes dies at Washington, D.C., February 3 at age 77.
Canada's first Canadian governor-general takes office January 24. Vincent Massey, 64, will serve until 1959 (he is a scion of the Massey-Harris farm equipment family; his brother Raymond is a prominent actor). Canadian nationalist and newspaper founder Herni Bourassa dies at Outremont outside Montreal August 31 on the eve of his 84th birthday.
A Cuban military coup March 10 overthrows President Prio Socarras and replaces him with former president Gen. Fulgencio Batista, now 51, who led the country effectively from 1933 to 1944. Batista seizes Havana's major army posts, aborts a scheduled democratic election, and gains control of the city's communications and transportation systems. Washington expresses disapproval, but Batista promises stability, business interests welcome a return of order and labor tranquility, Batista receives recognition from the United States March 27, and he will be a brutal and corrupt dictator until he is ousted in 1959 (see Castro, 1953).
Puerto Rico adopts a new constitution July 25 and becomes the first U.S. commonwealth (see referendum, 1951); residents obtain all rights of U.S. citizenship except voting in federal elections and need not pay federal income taxes (see 1954).
Bolivia has a revolution against the ruling Patino, Hochschild, and Aramayo tin-mine families; supported by the radicalized masses of workers and peasants, former economics professor Victor Paz Estenssoro, 44, seizes power as president April 9 and works with fellow revolutionist Hernan Siles Zuazo, 39, to nationalize the nation's three largest tin companies. The new regime will extend voting rights to Indians and begin transferring to them the arable land of the central plateau.
Argentina's First Lady Eva "Evita" Perón dies of uterine cancer July 26 at age 33, plunging the country into mourning. More popular than her husband, Juan, a champion of women who has won them the vote and persuaded the legislature to legalize divorce, she has also been quick to punish any who criticized her by having them tortured or simply "disappeared."
Egypt's dissolute king Farouk I abdicates July 26 after a 16-year reign and 3 days after a coup by Gen. Muhammad Naguib, 51, who forms a government September 7. Egypt and Sudan sign an agreement October 13 over use of water from the Nile, the Egyptian constitution of 1923 is abolished December 10, and Gen. Naguib will become president of a new Egyptian republic next year (see 1953).
Jordan's schizophrenic King Talal is deposed August 11 after a brief reign. His playboy son Hussein Ibn Talal, now 16, will ascend the throne next year, marry an American woman, and reign until 1999, despite at least 10 attempts on his life and countless conspiracies to depose him as he works to maintain peace in the Middle East.
Israel's first president Chaim Weizmann dies in office of a heart attack at his Rehovoth estate November 7 at age 77, having been reelected a year ago but been in such poor health since then he could not perform many of his duties. The Knesset replaces him December 8 with Itzhak Ben-Zvi.
Ethiopia takes over Eritrea from the British September 11 (see 1950; 1962).
Union leader Joshua (Mqabuko Nyongolo) Nkomo, 35, is elected president of the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress. He soon helps British colonial authorities win support for confederation plans but then storms out of a London conference that endorses the plans (see 1964).
A Mau Mau insurrection against Kenya's white settlers begins October 20 at a Seventh Day Adventist mission seven miles outside Nairobi. Colonial administrators have promised for years to grant self government and institute land reform, they have repeatedly broken their promises, and Kikuyu tribal leader Jomo Kenyatta (Kamau wa Ngengi), 63, has organized the Mau Mau ("Hidden Ones") as a secret society with a mission to drive out Kenya's white population. The Mau Mau have been accused in a series of arson and cattle-killing incidents, and Mau Mau gunmen now murder Kikuyu chief Kungu Waruhiu as he arrives in his car at the mission; London declares a state of emergency (it will last for nearly 8 years) and dispatches a cruiser and battalion of troops (see 1953).
Former British viceroy to India Victor A. J. H. Linlithgow, 2nd marquess of Linlithgow, dies at his native Abercorn, West Lothian, Scotland, January 5 at age 74. India gains sovereignty over Chandernagore from the French; it will be ceded to West Bengal in 1954.
Allied occupation of Japan ends April 28 after nearly 7 years in which a new constitution and many reforms have been adopted. Former Japanese prime minister Keisuke Okada dies at Tokyo October 17 at age 84, having supported efforts in 1945 to overthrow the Tojo government and make peace overtures to the Allies.
Former Australian prime minister William M. Hughes dies at Sydney October 28 at age 90.
The Republican Party nominates former general Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president (few voters are aware that Ike suffered a heart attack 3 years ago because it was hushed up). Democrats nominate Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson, 52, of Illinois, whom Republicans denigrate as an "egghead," coining a new word to mean intellectual. Critics accuse Gen. Eisenhower's running mate of taking a "slush fund" of $18,000 from California businessmen, but Sen. Richard Nixon appears on television September 23 and says, "I come before you tonight as a candidate for the vice presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity have been questioned"; he denies that any of the money in question went for his personal use and adds, "We did get something, a gift after the nomination. It was a little cocker spaniel dog, black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it 'Checkers.' The kids, like all kids, love the dog . . . Regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it." The speech produces more than 1 million favorable letters and telegrams.
Britain tests an atomic (nuclear fission) bomb developed by her physicists October 3 over Monte Bello Island off Western Australia. Gibraltar-born British nuclear physicist William G. (George) Penney, 43, was principal scientific officer of the department of scientific and industrial research at Los Alamos from 1944, helped develop the U.S. atomic bomb, has supervised development of the British device, and is knighted later in the year. Britain joins the United States and the USSR as a nuclear power.
The National Security Agency (NSA) established by President Truman's executive order October 24 is a counterpart to Britain's 6-year-old GCHQ; its huge budget will remain secret, officials will barely acknowledge its existence, and it will become larger than the 5-year-old CIA and the 44-year-old FBI combined. Established within the Department of Defense, it has a mission to conduct electronic surveillance of communications; formulate and protect codes, ciphers, and other forms of cryptology; intercept, decode, and analyze coded transmissions by electronic or other means from potentially inimical foreign and domestic governments and individuals. Headed by a general or admiral, the super-secret group will operate posts around the world to intercept signals and will grow to have an annual budget in the range of $5 billion (see Central Security Service, 1972; Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 1978).
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission tests a nuclear-fusion (hydrogen) device at the Eniwetok proving grounds in the Pacific November 1 (see 1951; von Neumann, Fuchs, 1946; Truman, 1950). Physicist Raemer E. Schreiber of Manhattan Project fame has led the group that has gone to Eniwetok to assemble the 82-ton, 20-foot-long device, nicknamed "Mike," from materials that include purple-black uranium, silvery deuterium, a touch of tritium, gold leaf, and waxy polyethylene. Conducted at 7:15 local time, the test is based on work by the late nuclear chemist William Draper Harkins and is the first full-scale thermonuclear explosion in history, letting go a fireball more than three miles long that soon fills the sky with a mushroom cloud eight miles wide at its stem, 27 miles long at its top, and nearly 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 (see 1951; Bikini, 1954).
Gen. Eisenhower wins 55 percent of the popular vote and 442 electoral votes in the U.S. presidential election, Stevenson only 89 electoral votes with 44 percent of the popular vote. President-elect Eisenhower visits Korea December 2 in fulfillment of a campaign promise. The UN adopts an Indian proposal for a Korean armistice December 3 but Beijing (Peking) rejects it December 15.
Scholar Owen Lattimore is indicted in December for perjury in connection with testimony he has given to defend himself against Sen. McCarthy's accusations of his being a Soviet agent (see 1950). A federal judge will quash the indictment in 1955, and the government will later drop the case for lack of evidence (see McCarthy, 1954).
Norfolk, Va.-born soprano Dorothy Maynor, 41, appears at Washington's Constitution Hall February 17, becoming the first black artist to perform commercially in the DAR auditorium since before 1939. Founder of the Harlem School for the Arts, she sang at President Truman's inauguration in 1949.
South Africa's Supreme Court invalidates apartheid racial legislation March 20 (see 1951), Prime Minister Daniel F. Malan introduces legislation April 22 to make the parliament the highest court, the bill passes, and demonstrations defying "unjust" racial laws begin June 26 under the leadership of people who include reformer Albert Luthuli, now 54, and Nelson Mandela, now 33 (see 1944); police arrest African National Congress (ANC) leaders through July, and ANC leaders say deliberate violations of the law will continue until all the jails in the country are filled. The government will charge Mandela and 155 others with treason in 1955, the case will not go to trial until 1958, Mandela will help conduct the defense, and a court will acquit those charged (see 1961).
Argentinian women vote for the first time on the same basis as men (see 1947).
Parliament passes legislation May 15 giving British women civil servants compensation equal to that of their male colleagues.
Greek women gain the right June 12 to vote on the same basis as men.
Chifuren is founded by Japanese activist Shigeri Takayama, 53, who before the war helped found the League for the Defense of Women's Rights to take part in government. She has served in the upper house of the Diet and has organized aid for widows of men killed in battle; her new women's organization will campaign for civil rights and consumer protection.
Philanthropist Anne Morgan dies at Mount Kisco, N.Y., January 29 at age 79.
Explorer Sven Anders Hedin dies at his native Stockholm November 26 at age 87.
Australian cattleman-prospector Langley (George) Hancock, 43, discovers a mountain of solid iron ore in the Hammersley Range when his light plane is forced off course, and he sees rust-colored outcroppings. Hancock will keep the location of his find secret for 10 years until a change in state mining laws permits him to stake his claim, but he gets in touch with the worldwide mining concern Rio Tinto that will make an agreement with Kaiser Aluminum and exploit the ore deposit that will bring Hancock an estimated $250 million, making him the richest man in Australia (see 1964).
President Truman orders federal seizure of U.S. steel mills April 8 to avert a nationwide strike that would cripple war production (see 1946). A bargaining dispute with the United Steelworkers of America has led to strike preparations, and the steel companies take legal action to block government operation of the mills.
The U.S. government returns the nation's railroads to private control May 23 after 21 months of operation by federal troops (see 1950).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 June 2 in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer that President Truman's executive order of April 8 was unconstitutional, it thereby places a limit on presidential power, and 600,000 CIO steel workers walk out June 23 to begin a 53-day strike. President Truman settles the strike July 24. His military advisers have exaggerated the effect that the strike would have on troops in Korea, and Truman has softened his tone. United States Steel Co. production will peak next year at 35 million tons (see 1959).
Canada adopts a federal Old Age Security Act through the efforts of her minister of health and welfare Paul Martin (see U.S. Social Security Act, 1935). A revision of the 1927 Old Age Pensions Act, the new law introduces a means-tested pension program jointly funded by the federal and provincial governments, with eligibility beginning at age 70 (the age will be lowered to 65 by 1970).
Congress amends the Social Security Act of 1935, increasing benefits to the elderly by 12.5 percent and permitting pension recipients to earn as much as $75 per month without loss of benefits.
U.S. income tax receipts reach a record $69.6 billion, but the nation has a record peacetime deficit of $9.3 billion as the Korean "police action" continues to drain U.S. resources.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules September 6 at San Francisco to uphold the conviction of labor leader Harry Bridges on charges that he lied about his communist affiliations to obtain U.S. citizenship.
CIO president Philip Murray dies of a heart ailment at San Francisco November 9 at age 66; AFL president William Green of a heart ailment at Coshocton, Ohio, November 21 at age 82. Green is succeeded by the AFL's New York-born secretary-treasurer George Meany, 58; the CIO chooses Walter P. Reuther of the United Automobile Workers Union as its chairman December 4 (see merger, 1955).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 291.90, up from 269.23 at the end of 1951.
"Sooner or later, the nation will have to return to heavier reliance on abundant coal," says a report by the President's Materials Policy Commission, headed by CBS chairman William S. Paley. "The nation could reduce consumption and physical waste of liquid fuels with little or no inconvenience," says the report, but although it predicts that U.S. demand for electricity will double in the next 2 years the demand will in fact quadruple, and the Paley Commission's recommendation of "an appropriate federal agency designated to undertake . . . a continuing broad appraisal of the nation's long-term energy outlook" is not implemented.
The Southern Pacific Railroad's 15-car streamliner City of San Francisco rams into a snowslide east of Yuba City in the Sierra mountains January 13 carrying 196 passengers and 30 crew members. Its three 2,250-horsepower engines are unable to dislodge it, diesel fuel runs out 30 hours later, passenger compartments are thrown into cold darkness as a blizzard rages outside, a Coast Guard helicopter drops medical supplies and food, the storm finally breaks January 16 after dropping 13 feet of snow on Donner Summit, and relief parties rescue all aboard.
Europe's Arlberg-Orient Express is rerouted via Salonica following last year's closing of the Turkish-Bulgarian border (see 1932; 1962).
The world's first commercial jet (a BOAC Comet 1) inaugurates service from London to Johannesburg May 2, carrying 32 fare-paying passengers and covering the 6,724-mile distance in less than 24 hours as compared to 32 hours with Hermes propeller planes (see 1948). De Havilland first put the Comet into the air in late July 1949, British Overseas Airways has begun shorter commercial jet flights with the Comet January 22, the four engines of the sleek new plane are built into its wings, it can carry 36 passengers and a crew of four at a cruising speed of 725 kilometers per hour, but it has a design flaw that will prove fatal (see 1953).
The Volga-Don Ship Canal opens between the Volga and Don Rivers in the Soviet Union. The 62-mile waterway provides a link for the Baltic-Black Sea route.
The United States Lines passenger ship S.S. United States leaves New York July 3 on her first transatlantic voyage and sets a new record. Designed by naval architect and marine engineer William F. Gibbs, now 66, she has been built with a superstructure that employs large amounts of aluminum, is driven by immense 240,000-horsepower steam turbines that can push her at speeds heretofore unattainable, and is convertible to a troopship that can transport 14,000 men in the event of war. The $79 million 53,000-ton vessel is 990 feet in length overall, can carry 1,750 passengers, and makes the crossing of 2,949 nautical miles in 3 days, 10 hours, 40 minutes, averaging 35.59 knots per hour (more than 40 mph), taking the Blue Riband from the Cunard Line's Queen Mary, which has held it for 14 years.
Shipbuilder Andrew Jackson Higgins dies of a stomach ailment at New Orleans August 1 at age 65.
London's last tram runs July 6 as motorbuses replace streetcars.
British Motors is created by a merger of Austin and Morris (see Austin, 1905).
Volkseigener Betrieb Sachsenring in East Germany begins production of the Trabant. Demand for the small, plastic-bodied car will far exceed supply.
General Motors introduces the Chevrolet Corvette—a low-bodied sportscar whose name has been suggested by Soap Box Derby creator Myron E. Scott, now 45.
Motorcar pioneer John W. Lambert dies at his Anderson, Ind., home May 20 at age 92; automobile and motorboat racer John R. Cobb is killed at Loch Ness, Inverness, September 29 at age 52 while trying to set a world speed record in a jet-propelled craft that disintegrates while traveling at more than 200 miles per hour.
Naval Reserve officer Grace Hopper invents the first computer compiler, making it possible to program a computer automatically instead of writing instructions for each new software package (see 1951). Now 46, Hopper is employed as a senior programmer for Remington Rand and works on Univac, introduced last year as the first large-scale commercial computer (see COBOL, 1959).
IBM introduces its first computer (see 1944; ENIAC, 1946; Univac, 1951). The company has reluctantly made the huge investment required to produce and service computers, and its 701 is the first electronic stored-program computer. Designed for scientific research, the 701 competes in the market with Remington Rand's scientific and business computer (see 1953).
The high-strength polyester film Mylar introduced by E. I. du Pont has grown out of the development of Dacron (see 1941) and will largely replace cellophane in the 1960s, finding uses not only in packaging and batteries but also in magnetic audio and video tape, capacitor dialectrics, and electrical insulation.
English architect-cryptographer Michael (George Francis) Ventris, 30, deciphers Myceanean texts dating from about 1400 B.C. to 1250 B.C., doing for inscriptions of the Minoan civilization what Champollion did for inscriptions of ancient Egypt in 1822 and earlier (see Evans, 1900). Ventris heard a lecture by the late Sir Arthur Evans when he was just 14; already a skilled cryptologist, he set his mind to work on the problem of discovering the secret of the ancient script used for the texts, and he published a paper at age 18 in the American Journal of Archaeology showing how the script was related to Etruscan script, but service in the Royal Air Force interrupted his work during the war years.
London-born University of London Institute of Archaeology associate Kathleen (Mary) Kenyon, 46, begins excavations at Tell as-Sultan, Jordan—site of the prehistoric city of Jericho mentioned in the Old Testament. She worked in 1929 with Gertrude Caton-Thompson on Zimbabwe ruins in southern Rhodesia, on digs in Britain, and—most recently—at the ancient Roman town of Sabratha. Continuing at the Jericho dig until 1958, she will unearth evidence that the city was founded in the Stone Age of the 8th millennium B.C., had an agricultural economy by about 7000 B.C., and was destroyed by the Israelites in about 1425 B.C.
South African icthyologist J. L. B. Smith receives a call in December from the Comoros Islands advising him that trawler fishermen there have caught a huge fish they call a gombessa and it may be a coelacanth, the prehistoric ancestor of all land animals that has inhabited the Earth for perhaps 350 million years (see 1938). Now 55, Smith has offered a £100 reward for such a catch; South Africa's prime minister Daniel F. Malan is a creationist and does not believe in evolution, but Smith reaches him at his beach house and persuades him that the nation's prestige is at stake; Malan dispatches an Air Force DC-3 (Dakota) to pick up the dead fish before it can decompose and bring it to Cape Town, where it proves to be exactly what Smith had hoped for.
Japanese chemist Kenichi Fukui, 33, publishes a paper showing that the essential process in many chemical reactions consists of an interaction between the highest occupied molecular orbital of one compound and the lowest unoccupied orbital of the other, with one molecule sharing its most loosely bound electrons with the other. The other molecule accepts the electrons at the site where they can be most tightly bound, and the interaction forms a new, occupied orbital whose properties are an intermediate between the two original orbitals.
New Jersey-born University of Maryland physicist Joseph Weber, 33, gives the first public talk on what will come to be called masers and lasers and soon realizes that it may be possible to detect the minute distortions of space called gravitational waves that were predicted by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity (see 1969).
Physicist Edward M. Purcell detects the 21-centimeter-wavelength radiation emitted by neutral atomic hydrogen in interstellar space (see nuclear magnetic resonance discovery, 1946). The Dutch astronomer H. C. van de Hulst predicted the existence of such radio waves 8 years ago, and their use will enable astronomers to determine the location and distribution of hydrogen clouds in galaxies and to measure the rotation of the Milky Way.
A poliomyelitis epidemic affects more than 50,000 Americans, killing 3,300 and leaving many thousands crippled (see 1950). New York-born University of Pittsburgh microbiologist Jonas E. (Edward) Salk, 38, tests a vaccine against polio, administering a hypodermic solution based on killed viruses. He has studied the findings of Australian virologists Jean Macnamara and Macfarlane Burnet, now 53 (see 1925), and discovered a way to mass-produce a vaccine by growing it on the kidneys of rhesus monkeys. Salk's vaccine employs a method of virus culture developed in the laboratory of Children's Hospital, Boston, by bacteriologists John F. (Franklin) Enders, 55, with Frederick C. (Chapman) Robbins, 36, and Thomas H. (Huckle) Weller, 37 (all three will share in a 1954 Nobel Prize). Enders helped Harvard bacteriology professor Hans Zinsser develop the first typhus vaccine in 1930 and will apply the Enders-Robbins-Weller culture method to developing a measles vaccine, but rhesus monkeys are infected with the SV-40 virus that does not affect them but contaminates Salk's vaccine and will be associated with cancers in those vaccinated (see 1962; Salk, 1954).
Reserpine is isolated by Swiss chemists employed by Ciba Corp. under the direction of Emil Schlitter; they produce pure crystals of the active ingredient in Rauwolfia serpentina (see Vakil, 1949). Chattanooga-born Boston University heart specialist Robert W. (Wallace) Wilkins observes that reserpine not only lowers high blood pressure but also reduces anxiety. Now 45, Wilkins developed one of the first "G-suits" for use by fighter pilots during the war (see rauwolfia, 1953; Woodward's synthesis, 1956; LSD and serotinin, 1953).
Isoniazid is introduced to fight tuberculosis. Hoffman-LaRoche research chemist H. Herbert Fox, 37, has employed work in organic chemistry to develop the drug (isonicotinic acid hydrozide), and it will be found to produce tumors in test mice but not in humans. So effective will it be as a prophylactic against TB that it will remain in use despite some potentially risky side effects.
German-born physician Willem Hueprin prepares to deliver a paper at a Colorado medical association meeting but is barred from doing so when it turns out that he intends to warn the state's miners that uranium mining increases their likelihood of contracting lung cancer.
French psychiatrist Jean Delay, 45, and his protégé Pierre Deniker, 35, report in July that they have obtained good results treating schizophrenic patients with chlorpromazine, suggesting a new potential for the antihistamine synthesized in the late 1940s. Chemists at Rhone-Poulenc develop a drug that intensifies the action of standard sedatives (see Thorazine, 1954).
British biochemist Rosalind Pitt-Rivers and others isolate the thyroid hormone tri-iodothyronine.
New Jersey-born Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar, M.D., 43, devises a scoring system for evaluating the heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, reflexes, and skin color of newborn infants to determine whether they need special help to stay alive. (Medical students will use Apgar's name as a mnemonic device to remember the signs appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, and respiration.) One of the few women medical students at Columbia University in the early 1930s, Apgar is head of the Medical Center's anesthesiology department and its first female professor.
The Japanese Red Cross opens Japan's first all-volunteer blood center (see Naito's Green Cross, 1951). A woman at a government branch of the Tokyo University Hospital contracted syphilis from tainted blood in 1948, the national scandal brought demands for an end to the use of independent blood brokers who received a commission for supplying bedside donors, U.S. occupation authorities have pressured the Ministry of Health to inaugurate a safe blood-donor program, but Japan had no volunteer blood-donor program during the war, and giving blood freely remains a foreign concept.
Former American G.I. Christine (originally George) Jorgensen, 26, returns to New York from Copenhagen December 15 wearing a fur coat and high heels after 2,000 hormone injections and six sex-change operations, one of which removed what she called her "malformation," meaning her penis. The Bronx-born Jorgensen sells her life story to American Weekly for $30,000 (her parents say the money will be used to help others "suffering in the no-man's-land of sex") and will do a nightclub act singing "I Enjoy Being a Girl" and doing impersonations of Marlene Dietrich (see 1953).
Nobel neurologist Sir Charles S. Sherrington dies at Eastbourne, England, March 4 at age 94; psychoanalyst Karen Horney at New York December 4 at age 67.
"Cancer by the Carton" in the December issue of Reader's Digest warns against smoking, which has generally been regarded as safe. The two-page article by Roy Norr has been condensed from the October issue of the Christian Herald (see Wynder, 1953).
Sonotone Corp. of Elmsford, N.Y., introduces the first transistorized hearing aids December 29 (see 1935; Zenith, 1943; transistor, 1947).
Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Catholic missionary Francis Xavier Ford dies in prison at Guangzhou (Canton) February 21 at age 60 (see 1921). Appointed bishop of Mei-hsien in Kwangtung Province in 1935, he remained at his post during World War II despite being surrounded by Japanese forces. He was arrested on espionage charges by the communists in December 1950 and forced to submit to public beatings en route to prison.
Malcolm X joins U.S. Black Muslim leader Elijah Mohammed following his release from prison after having served 6 years on a conviction of armed robbery (see 1931). Now 27, the disciple has educated himself behind bars, read the teachings of Elijah Mohammed, adopted the new faith, and changed his name from Malcolm Little; he will become the sect's first "national minister" in 1963 (see human rights, 1965).
The University of California, Berkeley, makes Pennsylvania-born educator Clark Kerr, 41, chancellor. Kerr received a Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1939 after teaching economics at Antioch and has worked as a labor organizer in California; the state regents issued a mandate 3 years ago that all professors sign loyalty oaths or be fired, Kerr signed but in his capacity as head of the faculty committee on tenure supported those who refused, and thereby gained the respect of his colleagues (see 1958).
China's 54-year-old Beijing (Peking) University merges with the 30-year-old Yanjing University. It moved back to Beijing in 1946 from temporary quarters at Kunming in Yan-an (Yunan) Province, relocating to Yanjing's spacious campus on the northwestern outskirts of Beijing. By 1962 it will have 10,671 undergraduates plus 280 graduate students.
Educator Maria Montessori dies at Noordwijk, Netherlands, May 6 at age 81; John Dewey of pneumonia at New York June 1 at age 92; former Harvard English professor Charles Townsend Copeland at Waverly, Mass., July 24 at age 92 (his students included Conrad Aiken, Brooks Atkinson, S. N. Behrman, Van Wyck Brooks, Malcolm Cowley, Bernard De Voto, John Dos Passos, Oliver La Farge, Walter Lippmann, Maxwell Perkins, Gilbert Seldes, and Robert Sherwood).
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's CBFT television goes on the air September 6 from Montreal, CBLT September 8 from Toronto (see CBC, 1936). Each has about 18 hours of programming per week, with CBFT broadcasting in English as well as French; the two stations combined can reach about 30 percent of Canadian homes, but not that many homes have TV sets. Programming hours will reach 30 hours per week by January of next year, microwave circuits will soon enable viewers to watch U.S. programs "live" from Buffalo, and by September 1954 nearly a million Canadians will have TV sets, and CBC programming will be available to more than 60 percent of the population.
Most major countries of the world have TV stations and receiving sets, but while the U.S. TV system employs 525 lines to the inch and produces a sharper image than the one produced by the 450-line BBC system, European countries have adopted a 625-line system that produces far better resolution. France and Monaco will institute 819-line systems; Britain, the United States, Japan, and Latin America will be locked into their coarser image systems, thus paying the penalty of leadership (see Japan, 1953; BBC-2, 1964).
Inventor John "Jack" Mullin of 1946 audiotape fame and Wayne R. Johnson demonstrate the first videotape November 11 at Beverly Hills, Calif. Crooner Bing Crosby hates live broadcasts that cannot be edited, and Crosby Enterprises has worked with Mullin and Johnson to develop the prototype of what they call the "filmless camera" (see 1956).
Some 17 million U.S. homes have TV sets by year's end, up from 5 to 8 million in 1950 (see 1958). President-elect Eisenhower owes his election victory in part to unquestioning support from Henry R. Luce's Time and LIFE magazines but perhaps even more to slick television commercials produced by Virginia-born New York advertising man Rosser Reeves, 42, of the Ted Bates agency; political candidates hereafter will be "sold" with techniques much like those used to promote soap, breakfast foods, and other packaged goods.
The National Enquirer founded in 1926 by a former Hearst advertising executive is taken over by Generoso Pope Jr., 25, whose father made a fortune in sand and gravel and has published the New York Italian-language newspaper Il Progresso. The Enquirer has become little more than a tout sheet, but Pope will emphasize crime, gore, miracle cures, gossip, and sex to build circulation that will pass 4 million per week by 1975 and multiply his $75,000 investment hundreds of times over.
Mad magazine has its beginnings in the Mad comic book that appears in May with 32 pages in full color satirizing other comic books and even making fun of itself. Founder-editor Harvey Kurtzman will develop a freckled, big-eared, cow-licked idiot boy character, comedian Ernie Kovaks will name the boy Melvin Cowznofski, and he will become infamous as Alfred E. Neuman ("What—Me Worry?"). Publisher William Gaines, 32, inherited his father's Educational Comics (EC) in 1947, has renamed it, and will sell his EC (Entertaining Comics) Publications to Kinney National Service (later Warner Communications) in 1968.
Former London Observer proprietor Waldorf Astor, 2nd viscount Astor (of Hever Castle), dies at his Cliveden estate in Buckinghamshire September 30 at age 73, having turned ownership over to a trust in 1945; Australian publisher Sir Keith (Arthur) Murdoch dies of cancer at Langwarrin, Victoria, October 4 at age 66, leaving his Adelaide newspapers the Sunday Mail and the News (his two smallest and least profitable properties) to his Melbourne-born son (Keith) Rupert Murdoch, 21, who has worked briefly as a junior copy editor at Lord Beaverbrook's London Daily Express. The younger Murdoch has run for office in a university labour club but been disqualified for distributing flyers, a violation of the rule against self-promotion; he will obtain his master of arts degree from Oxford next year, return home in 1954, and expand his inheritance into a worldwide media empire, acquiring papers beginning in 1956 at Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney and building their circulation with heavy promotion, reader contests offering big-money prizes to winners, and prominent coverage of racy crime, scandal, and sex stories, with photographs of bare-breasted young women on page three (see 1969).
Nonfiction: Marxian Socialism in America by New York-born Fortune magazine labor editor Daniel Bell, 33; Principles of International Law by Hans Kelsen, who envisions a world united under law superimposed on each nation's own legal code; Sword and Swastika by lawyer Telford Taylor, now 44, who took over 6 years ago as head proscutor of the Nuremberg war-crimes tribunal; The Hidden History of the Korean War by I. F. Stone; Witness by Whittaker Chambers; The View from the Fortieth Floor by Theodore H. White; The Irony of American History by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, now 60; The Power of Positive Thinking by clergyman Norman Vincent Peale, 54, of New York's Marble Collegiate Church; A House Is Not a Home by former New York madam Polly Adler, whose bestseller contains revelations that make her internationally famous; Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette by former International News Service columnist Amy Vanderbilt, 43, whose 700-page volume is a source of customs, mores, and manners by a relative of the late Commodore Vanderbilt (who had no manners at all); The Last Resorts by Cleveland Amory, who writes of Hobe Sound, Fla.; Newport, R.I.; Tuxedo Park, N.Y.; and other holiday resorts for the upper classes; The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch, who has left his Columbia University professorship to live in an adobe house at Tucson, Ariz.
A Universal Copyright Convention adopted by a conference convened at Geneva under UNESCO auspices will come into effect in 1955 (see Berne Convention, 1886). It will be revised (along with the Berne Convention) at Paris in 1971 to take into account the special needs of developing nations.
Book and manuscript collector-dealer A. S. W. Rosenbach dies at his native Philadelphia July 1 at age 75; philosopher-poet-critic George Santayana at Rome September 26 at age 88 in a convent that he founded as a sanctuary during World War II; philosopher-historian-critic Benedetto Croce dies at Naples November 20 at age 86.
Fiction: Make Me an Offer by English novelist (Cyril) Wolf Mankowitz, 27, whose Russian-born father sold all the antiques and second-hand books in his open-air East End market for about $150 to help his son go to Cambridge after the boy won a scholarship; Men of Good Will (Les Hommes de bonne volonté) by Jules Romains; The Natural by New York novelist Bernard Malamud, 38; The Long March by William Styron; The Works of Love by New York novelist Wright Morris, 32; Wise Blood by Georgia novelist (Mary) Flannery O'Connor, 27; The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy; Doting by Henry Green; East of Eden by John Steinbeck; The Old Man and the Sea (novella) by Ernest Hemingway; Player Piano by Indianapolis-born novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 29, who was captured by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944; Fail-Safe by Iowa-born novelist Eugene (Leonard) Burdick, 33, and Waco, Tex.-born Johns Hopkins political science teacher Harvey (John) Wheeler, 33; The Build-Up by William Carlos Williams; The Catherine Wheel by Jean Stafford; The Colors of the Day (Les Couleurs du jour) by Romain Gary; Giant by Edna Ferber; Sunday, Monday and Always (stories) by Dawn Powell; Steamboat Gothic by Frances Parkinson Keyes; Madam, Will You Talk? by English novelist Mary (Florence Elinor) Stewart (née Rainbow), 39; The Saracen Blade by Frank Yerby; No But I Saw the Movie (stories) by Peter De Vries, now 42, who has been a New Yorker magazine editor since 1944; Vanish in an Instant by Canadian mystery novelist Margaret Millar (née Sturm), 37; The Singing Sands by the late Josephine Tey.
Writer Norman Douglas dies on Capri February 9 at age 83; mystery novelist Josephine Tey at London February 13 at age 55; Knut Hamsun at Noerholmen, Norway, February 19 at age 92.
Poetry: That's What We Live For by Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, 29, who begins a 29-year career on the editorial staff of the cultural weekly Literary Life (Zycle Literackie), published at Kraków; La Balance intérieure by Charles Maurras, who wrote most of it in prison; A Mask for Janus by New York-born poet W. S. (William Stanley) Merwin, 25; Rod of Incantation by English poet Francis King, 29; "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas, whose father's brush with death last year inspired him to write, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light"; The Exiles by Henry Treece; The Dragon and the Unicorn by Kenneth Rexroth.
Poet-critic Charles Maurras gains release from a French prison on medical grounds and dies at Tours November 16 at age 84; poet Paul Eluard dies at Charentin-le-Point November 18 at age 56.
Juvenile: Charlotte's Web by E. B. White, illustrations by Garth Williams (the story of talking barnyard animals will be translated into 20 languages and have worldwide sales of more than 10 million copies); The Lost Island by Irish author Eilis Dillon, 32; The Borrowers by Mary Norton, whose fantasy about a family of tiny people will have four sequels; Do You Know the Magic Word? by Charlotte Zolotow.
Author Margaret Wise Brown comes down with appendicitis while on a book tour in France and dies at Nice November 13 at age 42.
Painting: Peace and War by Pablo Picasso; Les Footballeurs by Russian-born painter Nicolas de Staël, 38, who begins to turn away from abstractionism; Red Painting by New York minimalist Ad (Adolf F.) Reinhardt, 38; Woman and Bicycle by Willem de Kooning; Number Three by Jackson Pollock; Adam and Day One by Barnett Newman; Mountains and Sea by New York painter Helen Frankenthaler, 25, who has studied under Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo at Bennington, been influenced by Jackson Pollock and Hans Hofmann, developed a technique of applying very thin paint to unprimed canvas, allowing it to soak in and create atmospheric blots, and begun a relationship with New York critic Clement Greenberg; New York painter Elaine (Marie Katherine) de Kooning (née Fried), 32, gives her first exhibition at the Stable Gallery. Married to painter Willem de Kooning, now 48, she will teach at Bard College, Cooper Union, Yale, Carnegie-Mellon, and elsewhere.
Sculpture: Group II (People Waiting) (wood) by Barbara Hepworth; The Devil with Claws by Germaine Richter. Jo Davidson dies at Bercheron, Tours, France, January 2 at age 68.
Seattle's Frye Art Museum opens with galleries displaying under natural light the realist works collected by Charles Frye, a meatpacker who died in 1940, and his wife, Emma. Director Kay Greathouse, 48, will hold her post for nearly 30 years, but the vogue for abstract art will keep attendance low in the decades of her administration.
The Asahiflex 1 made by Asahi Optical Co. is Japan's first 35 mm. single lens reflex camera (see 1936; 1954).
Photographs: The Decisive Moment (Images à la sauvette) by Henri Cartier-Bresson expresses his theory that a photographer must wait for an instant of extraordinary clarity to capture the meaning that underlies outward appearances. Photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston dies at New Orleans May 16 at age 88; Edward S. Curtis at Los Angeles October 19 at age 84.
Theater: The Waltz of the Toreadors (La valse des toréadors) by Jean Anouilh 1/10 at the Comédies de Champs-Elysées, Paris; The Dream Weaver (La tejedora de sueños) by Antonio Buero Vallejo 1/11 at Madrid's Teatro Español; The Shrike by Philadelphia-born playwright Joseph Kramm, 44, 1/15 at New York's Cort Theater, with José Ferrer, Judith Evelyn, Eugenia Rawls, 161 perfs.; Jane by S. N. Behrman 2/1 at New York's Coronet Theater with Edna Best, Basil Rathbone, 100 perfs.; The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan 3/6 at London's Duchess Theatre, with Kenneth More, Peggy Ashcroft (later Celia Johnson, Googie Withers), David Aylmer, 513 perfs.; The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi (Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt 3/26 at Munich's Kammerspiele; London Laughs (revue) 4/12 at that city's Adelphi Theatre, with Jimmy Edwards, Vera Lynn, Tony Hancock, 1,113 perfs.; The Chase by Horton Foote 4/15 at the Playhouse Theater, New York, with John Hodiak, Kim Hunter, New Mexico-born actress Kim Stanley (originally Patricia Kimberly Reid), 27, Larry Chapman, 31 perfs.; The Chairs (Les chaises) by Eugène Ionesco 4/22 at the Théâtre Lanery, Paris; Dial M for Murder by Hankow, China-born English playwright Frederick Knott, 35, 6/18 at London's Westminster Theatre, with Alan MacNaghtan, Jane Baxter, Emrys Jones, Andrew Cruickshank, 425 perfs.; Quadrille by Noël Coward 9/12 at London's Phoenix Theatre, with Alfred Lunt, Joyce Carey; The Time of the Cuckoo by Arthur Laurents 10/15 at New York's Empire Theater, with Shirley Booth, Dino DiLuca, 263 perfs.; No Peace for the Ancient Faun (Non ce pace per Lantico fauno) by Carlo Terron 11/7 at Milan's Teatro di Via Mazzoni; The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie 11/25 at London's 453-seat Ambassadors Theatre, with Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim in a melodrama that will move March 25, 1974, to the larger St. Martin's Theatre and still be playing when Dame Agatha dies early in 1976 (7,516 perfs.); Time Out for Ginger by Ronald Alexander 11/20 at New York's Lyceum Theater, with Melvyn Douglas, Nancy Malone, New York-born actor Conrad Janis, 24, Philip Loeb, 246 perfs.; The Seven-Year Itch by New York-born playwright George Axelrod, 30, 11/20 at New York's Fulton Theater, with Tom Ewell, Iowa-born actress Neva Patterson, 30, 1,141 perfs.
Actor Ashley Cooper dies at New York January 3 at age 70; playwright George Howells Broadhurst at Santa Barbara, Calif., January 31 at age 85; Ferenc Molnár at New York April 1 at age 74; actor Leslie Banks at London April 21 at age 61; Canada Lee of a heart attack at New York May 8 at age 45; Gertrude Lawrence of a liver ailment (aggravated by an injection for ivy poisoning) at New York September 6 at age 54; playwright Louis Verneuil is found dead in his Paris apartment November 3 at age 59, an apparent suicide.
Television: Rootie Kazootie 1/2 on NBC with puppeteer Todd Russell, whose Gala Poochie, Polka Dottie, and Deetle Doodle will amuse pre-schoolers for several years; The Today Show 1/14 on NBC with Chicago radio personality Dave Garroway, 38, serving as master of ceremonies for the 2-hour morning news and interview show developed by Pat Weaver. Working out of a street-level studio with a window facing on New York's Rockefeller Center street traffic, Garroway is soon joined by chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs, whose presence encourages children to turn on the TV set; I've Got a Secret 6/19 on CBS with host Garry Moore, guests Orson Bean, Louise Albritton, Laura Z. Hobson, Melville Cooper in a quiz show created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, produced by Allan Sherman (to 4/3/1967); My Little Margie 6/16 on CBS with Gale Storm, Charles Farrell pioneers the TV sitcom (situation comedy) (to 8/24/1955); The Guiding Light 6/30 on CBS (after 15 years on radio); Mr. Peepers 7/3 on NBC with Detroit-born comedian Wallace Maynard "Wally" Cox, 27, as schoolteacher Robinson Peepers in a program created by Mississippi-born producer Frederick "Fred" Coe, 37 (to 6/12/1955); Mr. and Mrs. North 9/30 on CBS with Richard Denning, Barbara Britton in a series based on the stories, the 1941 Broadway play, and a radio series begun in 1942 (to NBC 1/26/1954; to 7/20/1954); Ding Dong School 10/2 on WNBQ, Chicago, with "Miss Frances" (nursery school teaching authority Frances R. Horwich) in a live, 30-minute morning show for 2- to 5-year-olds that turns the television screen into an animated picture book (to 12/1956 on NBC); This Is Your Life 10/1 on syndicated stations, with Ralph Edwards as host (to 9/10/1961); The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet 10/3 on ABC with former bandleader Oswald George "Ozzie" Nelson, 45, and his Des Moines-born actress wife, Harriet Hilliard (née Peggy Louise Snyder), 38, who began the show on radio 8 years ago with two paid actors who play the roles of the Nelsons' sons, David and Ricky. The actual sons played themselves beginning in 1949, and the family situation comedy will spawn a number of similar sitcoms (to 9/3/1966; 435 episodes); The Walter Winchell Show 10/5 on ABC with gossip columnist Winchell (to 12/8/1956); Bandstand 10/6 on WFIL, Philadelphia. The host of the afternoon teenage record show will be sacked after getting a drunk-driving ticket during the station's Road Safety campaign, announcer Dick Clark, now 22, will succeed him, the show will be picked up by ABC, it will be renamed American Bandstand and expand to 90 minutes in August 1957, and Clark will continue to be emcee for 35 years; Omnibus 11/9 on ABC with Manchester Guardian journalist Alistair Cooke as host (to 5/10/1954); The Ernie Kovacs Show 12/3 on CBS with comedian Kovacs (to 4/4/1953).
The U.S. television industry adopts a moral code March 1 raising the necklines of women who appear on TV.
The first son-et-lumière (sound and light) show is presented at the Château de Chambord on France's Cosson River, where curator Paul Robert-Houdin has devised a nighttime entertainment that employs multi-colored lights of varying intensity to illuminate the façades of historic buildings or ruins while loudspeakers boom out narration and music carried on a synchronized sound track. Within 50 years there will be son-et-lumière shows at other French locations, including Les Invalides and Versailles, plus shows at Rome's Forum, the Parthenon at Athens, Britain's Greenwich Palace (1957), Philadelphia's Independence Hall (1962), Cairo's Pyramids of Giza (1961), Delhi's Red Fort (1965), Mexico's ruins of Teotihuacán, and elsewhere in the world.
Films: Fred Zinnemann's High Noon with Gary Cooper, Philadelphia-born actress Grace Kelly, 22; Norman McLaren's short subject Neighbors uses pixillation to create an intensified sense of fantasy in an antiwar message about two neighbors who squabble over a flower growing on their property line, go to war, and destroy each other; John Ford's The Quiet Man with John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald; Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D with Carlo Battisti; Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! with Marlon Brando. Also: Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful with Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell; Jacques Becker's Casque d'Or with Simone Signoret; Daniel Mann's Come Back, Little Sheba with Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth; Robert Siodmak's The Crimson Pirate with Burt Lancaster, Nick Cravat; Yasujiro Ozu's The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice; Irving Reis's The Four Poster with Rex Harrison, Lili Palmer; Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach with Anna Magnani; Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth with Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, Cornel Wilde, James Stewart; Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru; Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of O-Haru; Charles Chaplin's Limelight with Chaplin, London-born actress Claire Bloom (originally Blume), 21; Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin's Little Fugitive with Richie Andrusco, Rickie Brewster; John Huston's Moulin Rouge with José Ferrer as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) with Alfonso Mejia; Orson Welles's Othello with Welles, Michael MacLiammoir, Suzanne Cloutier; John Huston's The Red Badgeof Courage with Audie Murphy, Bill Mauldin; George Sidney's Scaramouche with Stewart Granger, Eleanor Parker; Stuart Heisler's The Star with Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood; Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika with Harriet Andersson, 20, Lars Ekborg; Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear with Yves Montand; Walter Lang's With a Song in My Heart with Susan Hayward in a story based loosely on the life of Broadway musical star Jane Froman (see 1943); Anthony Asquith's The Woman in Question with Jean Kent, Susan Shaw (originally Patsy Sloots), 23, Hermione Baddeley, Dirk Bogarde.
Director Gregory LaCava dies at his Malibu Beach home March 1 at age 59; motion picture pioneer William Fox of a heart ailment at New York May 8 at age 73; actor John Garfield of a heart attack at New York May 21 at age 39; director Malcolm St. Clair at Pasadena, Calif., June 1 at age 55; Basil Radford of a heart attack at London October 20 at age 55; Susan Peters of complications resulting from paralysis at Vidalia, Calif., October 23 at age 31 (she has been a paraplegic since January 1, 1945, when a 22-calibre rifle bullet entered her spine in a hunting accident); Hattie McDaniel dies of breast cancer at Hollywood October 26 at age 57 after a 20-year career in which she has played the role of maid or cook in nearly 40 films.
Hollywood musicals: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain with Kelly, El Paso-born actress Debbie (originally Mary Frances) Reynolds, 20, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, Amarillo-born dancer Cyd Charisse (originally Tula Ellice Finklea), 29, in a spoof on early talking pictures with songs that include "My Lucky Star," "Broadway Melody," "Good Morning," and the title song. Also: Charles Vidor's Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, songs that include "Anywhere I Wander," "Ugly Duckling," "Inchworm," "Thumbelina"; George Sidney's Kiss Me Kate with Winston-Salem, N.C.-born singer Kathryn Grayson (originally Zelma Kathryn Hedrick), 30, Gillespie, Ill.-born singer Howard Keel (originally Harold Clifford Leek), 33, Ann Miller.
Stage musicals: New Faces 5/16 at New York's Royale Theater, with South Carolina-born singer Eartha Kitt, 24, Alice Ghostley, songs that include "Love Is a Simple Thing" by Jane Carroll, lyrics by Arthur Siegal, "Monotonous" by Arthur Siegal, lyrics by Jane Carroll, Nancy Graham, 365 perfs.; Wish You Were Here 6/25 at New York's Imperial Theater, with Sheila Bond, Jack Cassidy, music and lyrics by Harold Rome, songs that include "Where Did the Night Go?" and the title song, 598 perfs.; Love from Judy 9/25 at London's Saville Theatre, with Linda Gray, music by Hugh Martin, lyrics by Martin and Jack Gray, book by Eric Maschwitz and Jean Webster, 544 perfs.
Former London musical star Gertie Millar dies at Chiddingford April 25 at age 73, having quit the stage at age 29; Glasgow-born writer, lyricist, composer and director R. H. Burnside dies at Metuchen, N.J., September 14 at age 79; former British music-hall male impersonator Vesta Tilley (Lady De Frece) at London September 16 at age 88.
Opera: Trouble in Tahiti 6/12 at Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass., with music and libretto by Leonard Bernstein.
Berlin-born baritone Hermann Prey, 23, wins the third annual Meistersinger contest, sponsored by the U.S. Armed Forces assistance program for youth activities, makes his U.S. debut in November as a guest of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and joins the Hamburg Staatsoper upon his return to Germany.
Composer Italo Montemezzi dies at his native Vigasio May 15 at age 76; soprano Emma Eames at New York June 13 at age 86.
First performances: Symphony, Die Harmonic der Welt by Paul Hindemith 1/24 at Basel; Symphony No. 4 by Paul Creston 1/30 at Washington, D.C.; Symphonic Concertante in E minor by Sergei Prokofiev 2/18 at Moscow, with Mstislav Rostropovich as soloist; The Meeting of the Volga and the Don Rivers by Prokofiev 2/22 on Moscow Radio; Three Spiritual Folk Songs by the late Anton von Webern 3/16 at Columbia University's McMillin Theater; Walt Whitman symphonic essay by Creston 3/28 at Cincinnati; Symphony No. 4 by Morton Gould 4/13 at West Point, N.Y.; Water Music by John Cage 5/2 at New York; Symphony in E by Arizona-born composer Ulysses Kay, 34, 5/2 at Rochester, N.Y., in a concert conducted by Howard Hanson; Romance in D flat for Harmonica, String Orchestra, and Piano by Ralph Vaughan Williams 5/3 at New York, with Larry Adler as soloist; West Point Suite by Darius Milhaud 5/30 at West Point, N.Y.; Symphony No. 7 in C sharp minor by Prokofiev 10/11 at Moscow; Concerto for Tap Dancer and Orchestra by Gould 11/16 at Rochester, N.Y.; Symphony No. 7 by Roy Harris 11/20 at Chicago; Concerto for Violin by Gian-Carlo Menotti 12/5 at Philadelphia's Academy of Music; Sea Piece with Birds by Virgil Thomson 12/10 at Dallas.
Charlie Parker records "Autumn in New York" with a 40-piece orchestra in January, appears on TV with Dizzy Gillespie February 24, and appears with Paul Robeson September 26 at New York's Rockland Palace.
Dave Brubeck and his San Francisco quartet pioneer "modern" or "progressive" jazz (see 1946). Now 31, Brubeck makes his New York debut and begins a long career of innovation that will use elements of classical music to give jazz a new complexity of rhythm and counterpoint.
The Modern Jazz Quartet works to return jazz to the prestige it enjoyed before losing popularity to big bands and extend its appeal to a wider audience. La Grange, Ill.-born New York pianist John (Aaron) Lewis, 32; Pittsburgh-born bebop drummer Kenneth Spearman "Kenny" Clarke, 38; Detroit-born vibraphonist Milt Jackson, 30; and Wilmington, N.C.-born bassist Percy Heath, 29, wear tailored suits, use powerfully subdued arrangements, and will continue with one substitution until 1974 (Tuckahoe, N.Y.-born drummer Connie Kay [originally Conrad Kirnon], now 25, will replace Clarke in 1955). It will regroup in the 1980s and continue until 1995.
Popular songs: "Lullaby of Birdland" by George Shearing, lyrics by B. Y. Forster; "Takes Two to Tango" by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning; "Do Not Forsake Me" by Dmitri Tiomkin, lyrics by Ned Washington (for the film High Noon); "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" by Slim Willet; "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "Jambalaya—in the Bayou" by Hank Williams; "Wheel of Fortune" by Bennie Benjamin and George Weiss; "Blue Tango" by Leroy Anderson; "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" by Atlantic City, N.Y.-born Tin Pan Alley songwriter Bob Merrill (originally Henry Robert Merrill Levan), 32; "Delicado" by Waldyr Azevedo, English lyrics by Jack Lawrence; "When I Fall in Love" by U.S. songwriter Albert Selden; Teresa Brewer records "Till I Waltz Again with You"; Jo Stafford records "Jambalaya" and "You Belong to Me"; Rosemary Clooney records "Botch-A-Me," "Half As Much," and "Tenderly"; Atlanta-born choir singer Gladys Knight, 8, wins Ted Mack's Amateur Hour television talent show singing Nat King Cole's "Too Young" and forms the Pips with her 10-year-old brother Merald "Bubba" Knight, her 9-year-old sister Brenda, her cousins Edward Patten, 13, William Guest, 11, and William's sister Elenor (see 1961). "Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)" by Irving Berlin (for the 1954 film White Christmas); "I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus" by Tommy Conner.
Lyricist Edward Madden dies at Hollywood March 11 at age 75; composer Percy Wenrich at New York March 18 at age 72; songwriter Nat D. Ayer at Bath, England, September 19 at age 65; jazz pianist-bandleader Fletcher Henderson of a stroke at his Harlem home December 29 at age 54.
Seattle skier Jeanette Burr, 23, wins the Swiss National Ski Championship at Grindewald January 13.
Jockey Johnny Longden sets a record May 15 at age 45, becoming the first rider in America (and the second in the world) to bring home 4,000 winners, a record that will stand until 1957.
Jocky Eddie Arcaro wins his fifth Kentucky Derby, riding Hill Gail.
Frank Sedgman wins in men's singles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills, Maureen Connolly in women's singles.
The Olympic Games at Helsinki attract 5,867 contestants from 69 nations, including for the first time the Soviet Union (athletes from Warsaw Pact countries are housed in a separate Olympic Village with special security measures). Athletes from the communist countries have clearly been subsidized by their governments, and the Helsinki games end any illusions that the contestants are all amateurs from the upper classes, although medals may still be withdrawn where athletes have overtly accepted financial help (see 1984). U.S. athletes win the most medals; Bob Mathias repeats his 1948 decathlon victory. Czech runner Emil Zatopek wins the 5,000- and 6,000-meter runs plus the marathon; his wife, Dana, wins the javelin throwing competition.
Golfer Sam Snead wins his second Masters Tournament title.
Rocky Marciano wins the world heavyweight title that he will defend six times before retiring undefeated in 1956. Brockton, Mass., fighter Rocco Francis Marchegianao, 28, knocks out Jersey Joe Walcott September 23 in the 13th round of a title bout at Philadelphia. Mississippi-born boxer Archie Moore (Archie Lee Wright), 39, wins the world light-heavyweight title in a 15-round decision December 17, defeating Joe Maxim, who has agreed to fight him only if Moore guarantees him $100,000 of the purse (Moore himself nets only $800 but will hold the title for 9 years).
The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers 4 games to 2.
Mr. Potato Head is introduced by the U.S. toy maker Hasbro and vigorously advertised (along with Mrs. Potato Head) on television, the first toy to be promoted on TV. The company sells boxes containing sharp plastic pieces that represent eyes, ears, noses, and the like that children affix to real potatoes. More than 50 million boxes will be sold in the next 50 years as Hasbro designers add computer chips and other enhancements.
Scrabble gains popularity after a vacationing Macy's executive sees it played at a resort and orders a few dozen sets for the store to sell (see 1948). Sales of the game last year totaled 4,853, up from 1,632 in 1950 but only enough to give inventor Alfred Butts $135.43 in royalties (he receives about 3¢ per set). Orders pour in, sales increase to 200 per week by summer, James Brunot has been losing money on the game but finds 2,500 orders when he returns with his wife from a trip to Kentucky in search of a breeding ram, hires 35 workers to produce 6,000 sets per week, cannot keep up with demand, and finally turns over operations to the venerable Bay Shore, Long Island, firm Selchow & Righter (founded in 1867), whose management rejected the game years ago but will buy the Scrabble trademark from Brunot in 1972. Nearly 800,000 standard sets will be sold next year plus 300,000 cardboard versions and 30,000 deluxe versions.
Parker Brothers founder George Swinnerton Parker dies at Boston September 26 at age 85, having grown rich from such games as Monopoly, Ping Pong, and Sorry. The company's line of games has grown to number about 300, more than 100 of them contributed by George S. Parker (the others were purchased outright from their owners and revamped where necessary or manufactured and sold for their inventors on a royalty basis).
Beauvais-born Paris dress designer Hubert de Givenchy, 25, opens his own house February 2 at 8, rue Alfred de Vigny. Having apprenticed to Jacques Fath 8 years ago, Givenchy has designed since then for Lucien Lelong, Robert Piguet, and Elsa Schiaperelli; he slashes overhead costs to keep his prices low and gains international acclaim with his first collection, offering elegant ball gowns, carefully detailed separates, silk prints, embroidered fabrics, a tailored "Bettina blouse," high-style coats, and inventive accessories (see 1954).
Philadelphia-born couturier James Galanos, 27, shows his first line of original ready-to-wear designs at New York, having apprenticed to Robert Piguet at Paris and sold his first collection to Saks Fifth Avenue. Hiring talented dressmakers trained either in Europe or in Hollywood to create slim and simple fashions from fabrics he selects on trips to Europe, he will continue until his retirement in the late 1990s to use chiffon, lace, and silk in garments that will attract a clientele of notables.
Bonnie Cashin Designs is founded by Oakland, Calif.-born New York fashion designer Cashin, 36, who has created costumes for Roxy Theater dancers, helped design uniforms for women in the armed services, went on to create clothes for some 60 Hollywood films produced by 20th Century Fox, returned to New York 3 years ago, and has won her first Coty Award for her casual, layered clothes ("The Japanese refer to cold weather as a nine-layer day," she explained 2 years ago. "Hot is a one-layer day."). Cashin introduces canvas raincoats this year, will use industrial zippers for jump suits in 1955, and make suede Indian dresses with fringes in 1957.
"Never wear a white shirt before sundown," says an advertisement for Hathaway shirts in the October 18 issue of The New Yorker. Four out of five shirts sold in America are white, but the ratio will fall to two out of five in the next 15 years as all-cotton shirts give way to blends of cotton and synthetic fibers.
Seattle-born textile and product designer Jack Lenor Larsen, 24, launches a New York firm that will gain national prominence for innovative interior design.
Procter & Gamble introduces Gleem toothpaste and begins a major effort to penetrate the dentifrice business (see nutrition [Crest], 1955).
Ban Roll-On deodorant goes on sale in U.S. test markets. A colleague has suggested to Mum employee Helen Barnett Diserens that she develop an underarm deodorant based on the principle of the ball-point pen.
New York police rearrest bank robber Willie Sutton February 18 after he has been recognized on a subway, and a court sentences him to 17 years in prison on charges of having held up a Queens bank in 1950. Asked why he robs banks, he replies, "That's where the money is"; he offers to sell his life story to the highest bidder, the money to be used to help bar youngsters from criminal careers. Clothing salesman Arnold Schuster, 24, is credited with having pointed Sutton out to the police, rejects offers of police protection, and is shot dead near his Boro Park, Brooklyn, home the night of March 8 on orders from Murder, Inc., boss Albert Anastasia. Having stolen an estimated $2 million over the years, Sutton will serve time at the Attica State Correctional Facility and be paroled in 1967.
An article in the Yale Law Journal suggests that rape victims bear a responsiblity for the actions of their attackers because of the "unusual inducement to malicious or psychopathic accusation inherent in the sexual nature of the crime." Model penal codes of the next two decades will incorporate this concept.
London police investigate a reported burglary in progress the night of November 2 and corner Christopher Craig, 16, and Derek Bentley, 19, on a warehouse rooftop. Craig produces a pistol, Constable Sidney Miles asks him to surrender the weapon, and Bentley, who is mentally retarded, allegedly shouts, "Let him have it, Chris." Craig fires, killing the constable, will serve 10 years in prison, and become a plumber; Bentley, being of age, will be hanged at Wandsworth Prison in January of next year despite his mental condition and the ambiguity of his shout to Craig (who testifies that he did not shout anything). Bentley will not be exonerated until July 1998.
New York's Lever House opens April 29 on Park Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, the 24-story glass-walled building takes up far less of its site than the law permits. Critics hail its aesthetics (although some find it incongruous in a street of conventional buildings), a traveling gondola suspended from its roof enables window cleaners to wash its 1,404 panes of heat-resistant blue-green glass, but the windows are sealed, the centrally air-conditioned building makes profligate use of energy, and it will be a model for energy-wasting architectural extravangazas that will be constructed throughout much of the world.
The Fort Worth Plan presented by Victor Gruen Associates is the first U.S. proposal for reclaiming a downtown city area by banning automobiles from the central business district and turning it into a pedestrian shopping mall (see commerce [Kansas City], 1925; [Dallas], 1931). The plan will not be implemented (see Gruen, 1951; Northland, 1954).
The first Holiday Inn opens between a lumberyard and a two-lane highway (U.S. 70) in suburban Memphis, where local builder Kemmons Wilson puts up a motel with a 53-foot-high sign flashing green lights to lure motorists. It has a swimming pool, air conditioning, and a television set in every room; free ice, free baby cribs, free kennels and dog food for family pets; and no charge for children under 12 who share their parents' accommodations. Wilson took his wife and five young children on a trip to Washington, D.C., last year and decided that the motel business was "the greatest untouched industry in America." He will go into partnership next year with builder Wallace E. Johnson, now 51, to found the motel chain that will grow in the next 46 years to have 390,000 rooms in 2,400 hotels on five continents.
A 4-day London smog in December raises the city's death toll to three times its normal level. Ninety percent of the 4,703 dead are over age 45 and the Ministry of Health blames the contaminated air on irritant oxides of sulfur and other substances from coal smoke. One pollution expert estimates that in a bad fog year such as this a heaped teaspoonful of black powder enters the lungs of each Londoner (see 1955).
Rabbits infected with myxomatosis are released in France and the disease brings a sharp decrease in the French wild rabbit population (see 1951; 1953).
A giant Soviet tree-planting program undertaken by T. D. Lysenko is a fiasco, but Lysenkoism continues to dominate Soviet agriculture (see 1948; 1954).
The Santiago Declaration issued August 18 extends the maritime and fisheries jurisdictions of Chile, Ecuador, and Peru to 200 miles from their coastlines. The three agree to conserve marine resources in the South Pacific, but the United States maintains her three-mile limit and most other nations limit their jurisdictions to 12 miles (see 1966; politics [Jefferson], 1793).
The Braeburn apple discovered as a chance seedling near Nelson, New Zealand, may be a cross between a Granny Smith and a Lady Hamilton; varying in color between greenish-gold and yellow with red highlights, it is sometimes nearly solid red, has a firm texture, a sweet-tart taste, and will come to be grown in orchards worldwide (see Gala, 1960).
China's cereal grain production rises to 163 million tons, up from 110 million in 1949, but Asia's rice crop falls below the level of prewar harvests while populations have increased by roughly 10 percent from prewar levels (see 1956).
Drought reduces U.S. grain harvests. Farmers in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Tennessee are declared eligible for disaster loans August 1, but while the drought will last for 5 years and be even more intense than the one in the 1930s, its effects will be tempered by tree stands planted in the Depression years and by contour plowing and new tilling methods that combine to conserve available moisture and prevent creation of a new Dust Bowl (see 1953).
Nearly half of U.S. farms have tractors, up from one quarter in 1940.
Reduce and Stay Reduced by New York City Department of Health physician Norman Jolliffe, 51, gives sound advice on weight maintenance (see Weight Watchers, 1963).
New York State repeals its law against selling yellow-colored margarine; other dairy states continue to prohibit its sale (see 1943; 1967).
War-inflated food prices are so high that Gen. Eisenhower uses them as a campaign issue in his presidential campaign, but farm prices will fall 22 percent in the next 2 years and food prices will fall as a consequence.
The typical U.S. grocery store now carries about 4,000 different items, up from about 870 in 1928. By the mid-1960s the grocery will be a supermarket carrying some 8,000 items.
The Weber barbecue grill designed by Chicago metal worker George A. Stephen, 30, has a lid that permits backyard cooks to grill in any kind of weather. Stephen has modified the shape of a marine buoy to create his grill. It enjoys large sales at $50 per unit when ordinary girls sell for less than $10, his employer will change its company name to Weber-Stephen Products Co., and it will market charcoal- and propane gas-fueled Weber grills into the 21st century.
The Tetra Pak milk carton has its beginnings in a tetrahedron-shaped paper carton invented by Swedish innovator Ruben Rausing with help from engineer Erik Wallenberg. Rausing has studied economics at New York's Columbia University, observed advances in food packaging while in America, and (according to company legend) has watched his wife, Elizabeth, make sausages by tying off the ends. Made of paper, plastic, and aluminum, the Tetra Pak will also be used for fruit juices.
Nearly 40 percent of U.S. milk is now sold in waxed paperboard cartons rather than glass bottles (see 1936; 1967).
Pream powdered non-dairy creamer for coffee is introduced by M. and R. Dietetic Laboratories, Inc., of Columbus, Ohio. Made of water, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, sodium caseinate, sugar, di-potassium phosphate, propylene glycol monostearate, polysorbate 60, sterolyle-lactilate, salt, and artificial color and flavor, Pream keeps longer than real cream and costs less (see Coffee Rich, 1960; Coffee-Mate, 1961).
No-Cal Ginger Ale is the first palatable sugar-free soft drink. Introduced by Kirsch Beverages of Brooklyn, N.Y., it uses cyclamates in place of sugar and begins a revolution in the beverage industry (see cyclamates, 1951). Russian-born Hyman Kirsch, now 75, started a soft-drink business in 1904 with a 14 by 30-foot store in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section. Physicians at the Kingsbrook Medical Center he founded asked Kirsch in 1949 to develop a sugar-free, salt-free soft drink for obese, diabetic, and hypertensive patients (see Diet-Rite Cola, 1962).
Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes are introduced by Kellogg Co. (see 1950). Chicago's Leo Burnett advertising agency artist-copywriter Don Tennant, 30, creates Tony the Tiger to promoted the new breakfast food; it is 29 percent sugar, although the word sugar will later be dropped from its name in response to complaints from consumer activists.
Howard Johnson opens his 351st restaurant, making his Maine-to-Miami chain the world's largest (see 1937). Johnson has added a chain of higher-priced Red Coach Grills, has had 12 years' experience operating 24 eating places on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, wins a franchise to operate 10 restaurants on the new 118-mile New Jersey Turnpike, hires Pavillon restaurant chef Pierre Franey to upgrade the quality of Howard Johnson dishes, and sells frozen Howard Johnson's specialties through supermarkets (see 1960).
Church's Fried Chicken to Go opens in downtown San Antonio, Tex., where retired chicken incubator salesman George W. Church launches a fast-food restaurant opposite the Alamo, offering freshly-fried chicken at a time when other fast-food places sell only hot dogs and ice cream. Chicken still generally costs more than beef, but Church has spent more than 20 years in the poultry industry and cuts out all frills to keep his prices low. He will add french fries and jalapenos to his menu in 1955, by the time he dies in 1956 will have four Church's, and when his son George Jr. takes over in 1962 there will be eight. Church's will grow by 2002 to be the world's third-largest fast chicken chain, with more than 1,500 restaurants in 27 states, Puerto Rico, and eight foreign countries.
The Guide Kléber begins publication at Paris under the direction of Reims-born editor Jean Didier, 28, who will compete with the Guide Michelin, using a Gallic crowned red rooster in lieu of Michelin's three stars for restaurants "worth a special trip," a crowned black rooster in lieu of two stars, a crowned marmite in lieu of one star, and crossed keys instead of Michelin's crossed spoons and forks for worthy hotels. French tire maker Kléber-Colombes has backed Didier, whose guide has a vermilion cover instead of Michelin's bright red. Their choices will often, but not always, coincide.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. founds the Population Council "to stimulate, encourage, promote, conduct, and support significant activities in the broad field of population."
A contraceptive tablet developed by Chicago's G. D. Searle laboratories is made of phosphated hesperiden (see 1960; Pincus, Hoagland, 1954).
The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act becomes law June 27 and will remain the basic U.S. immigration law for 13 years. Drafted by Sen. Pat McCarran (D. Nev.) and Rep. Francis E. Walter (D. Pa.), it has been passed over President Truman's veto. It establishes more rigorous screening of aliens and broadens grounds for deportation to reduce security risks and keep out "subversives," although it removes the ban on Asian and African immigrants and permits spouses and minor children to enter as nonquota immigrants. Critics say the new law makes naturalized Americans second-class citizens by holding over them the threat of deportation and discriminates against various ethnic groups by extending the national origins quota system set up by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924; while Britain uses only half her quota of 65,000, Italy has a 20-year waiting list for her quota of 5,500 (emerging nations of Africa and Asia have token quotas of 100 each) (see 1959).
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