1955 in the United States

1955 in the United States
Decades:	1930s 1940s – 1950s – 1960s 1970s
Years:	1952 1953 1954 – 1955 – 1956 1957 1958
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48 stars (1912 – 1959)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1945–1964)

Events from the year 1955 in the United States.

Incumbents

• President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)
• Vice President: Richard Nixon (Republican)
• Chief Justice: Earl Warren
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph William Martin, Jr. (R-Massachusetts) (until January 3), Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) (starting January 3)
• Senate Majority Leader: William F. Knowland (R-California) (until January 3), Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas) (starting January 3)
• Congress: 83rd (until January 3), 84th (starting January 3)

Events

January–March

• January 7 – Marian Anderson is the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
• January 22 – The Pentagon announces a plan to develop ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) armed with nuclear weapons.
• January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Formosa from the People's Republic of China.
• February 1 – Ray Kroc opens a McDonald's fast food restaurant (the company's 9th since it was founded in 1940), but Kroc later takes over the company and oversees its worldwide expansion.
• February 10 – The Seventh Fleet of the United States Navy helps the Republic of China evacuate Chinese Nationalist army and residents from the Tachen Islands to Taiwan.
• February 12 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam.
• February 22 – In Chicago's Democratic primary, Mayor Martin H. Kennelly loses to the head of the Cook County Democratic Party, Richard J. Daley, 364,839 to 264,77.
• March 2 – Claudette Colvin (a fifteen year old African American girl) refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards whilst being kicked and handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station.
• March 5 – WBBJ signs on the air in the Jackson, Tennessee as WDXI, to expanded U.S. commercial television in rural areas.
• March 7 – The 1954 Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by NBC (also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV exactly as performed on stage). The program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to that time, and becomes one of the first great television classics.
• March 12 – Charlie Parker dies in New York at age 34.
• March 19 – KXTV of Stockton, California signs on the air in the United States, being the 100th commercial television station in the country.
• March 20 – Evan Hunter's adaptation of Blackboard Jungle premieres in the U.S., featuring the famous single, Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and his Comets. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song.
• March 28 – Glenshaw Glass Decided 348 U.S. 426 (1955).

April–June

• April 5 – Richard J. Daley defeats Robert Merrian to become mayor of Chicago by a vote of 708,222 to 581,555.
• April 12 – The Salk polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the FDA.
• June 7 – The $64,000 Question premieres on CBS television, with Hal March as the host.
• June 16 – Lady and the Tramp, Walt Disney's 15th animated film, premieres in Chicago, Illinois.

July–September

July 18: Disneyland opens to the public

• July 18 – The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially, powering Arco, Idaho.
• July 18 – Illinois's Governor William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act, that mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath or lose their jobs.
• July 18 – The Geneva Summit between the US, USSR, UK, and France begins.
• July 18 – The Disneyland Theme Park opens to the public in Anaheim, California.
• July 23 – The Geneva Summit between the US, USSR, UK, and France ends.
• August 19 – Hurricane Diane hits the northeast United States, killing 200 and causing over $1 billion in damage.
• August 22 – Eleven schoolchildren are killed when their school bus is hit by a freight train in Spring City, Tennessee.^[1]
• August 28 – Emmett Till is killed in Money, Mississippi.
• September 10 – Gunsmoke debuts on the CBS television network.
• September 24 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffers a coronary thrombosis while on vacation in Denver.
• September 30 – Actor James Dean is killed when his Porsche 550 Spyder collides with another automobile at a highway junction near Cholame, California.

October–December

• October 3 – The Mickey Mouse Club airs on the ABC television network.
• October 4 – The Brooklyn Dodgers finally win the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees 2–0 in Game 7 of the 1955 Fall Classic.
• October 11 – 70-mm film is introduced with the theatrical release of Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece, Oklahoma!
• October 20 – The first footage of Elvis Presley is filmed as part of a film short about Cleveland disc jockey Bill Randle.
• November 1 – A time bomb explodes in the cargo hold of United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B airliner flying above Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and 5 crew members on board.
• November 5 – Racial segregation is forbidden on trains and buses in U.S. interstate commerce.
• November 8 – Industrialist Malcolm Forbes won re-election to the New Jersey Senate, narrowly defeating fellow industrialist Charles W. Engelhard, Jr..
• November 12 – The Bugs Bunny cartoon Roman-Legion Hare debuts in the U.S.A.
• November 20 – Bo Diddley makes his television debut on Ed Sullivan's Toast Of The Town show for the CBS network.
• November 27 – Fred Phelps establishes the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.
• December 1 – Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person, and the national civil rights movement begins.
• December 5 – The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge to become the AFL-CIO.
• December 5 – The Montgomery Improvement Association is formed in Montgomery, Alabama by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Black ministers to coordinate a Black boycott of city buses.
• December 14 – Tappan Zee Bridge in New York opens to traffic.
• December 22 – American cytogeneticist Joe Hin Tjio discovers the correct number of human chromosomes.
• December 31 – General Motors becomes the first American corporation to make over USD 1 billion in a year.
• December 31 – Michigan J. Frog, a Warner Bros. cartoon character, made its debut in One Froggy Evening.

Ongoing

• Cold War (1945–1991)
• Second Red Scare (1947–1957)

Births

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Deaths

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References

External links

• Media related to 1955 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons