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Rome Olympics

Construction of the Arecibo radio telescope begins, to be completed 3 years later

In an accident during the launch of a prototype of a Soviet ICBM rocket, 126 people were killed by the burning of the missile’s propellant, another 50 people died from the burns they sustained.

First UNIMATE robot, based on Devol’s ‘programmed parts handler’ design

Marketing of the pill in the USA

United States. Ronald Coase publishes “The Problem of Social Cost,” in which he argues that the smartest thing to do with externalities like pollution is to make them tradable. This is essentially the idea of the carbon tax, which would see the light of day

Carlos Rivera, a Chilean physicist at the Catholic University of Santiago, is sitting alone at the Hotel Continental in Buenos Aires, scribbling formulas on a paper napkin. A curious waiter says to him, “I know another man with this habit. He’s a customer who comes

There are 15 SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) projects, but for the first 10 years the Soviets have a virtual monopoly; then, from 1975, the Americans dominate.

The Soviets hit the Moon with a probe (Luna 2) and photographed its hidden side with another

Tullio Regge proposes to treat the structure of space-time as a four-dimensional (4D) structure built with “bones” that form irregular tetrahedra

At the 21st Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, President Khrushchev claims that the USSR would surpass the United States in agricultural and industrial production by 1970. The claim will backfire.

William Shockley introduces JFET (Junction Field Effect Transistor) transistors

At Hebgen Lake, near Yellowstone, an entire mountainside collapses (80 million tons of rock), killing 28 campers.

The United States launches the 64-kg Explorer 6 satellite. Its perigee is 237 km and its apogee is 41,900 km. This allows it to observe and characterize the Van Allen radiation belts. As a token of gratitude, at the end of the mission, a missile,

The United States and the USSR met in a kitchen. On July 24, 1959, in a setting depicting a suburban American kitchen, US Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev engaged in an impromptu discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of capitalism

Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductors files the patent for the integrated circuit (disputed with Texas Instruments). Noyce emphasizes the planar process, which allows each component to be connected with copper strips. Although he is the second, after Kilby of Texas, to file the same concept,

Planet Corporation’s first commercial robot. It was controlled by cams and limit switches.

First flight of the X-15 aircraft designed to fly at speeds exceeding Mach 5 and above 70 km in altitude: the first true aerospace plane.

Regina Fischer, mother of American chess champion Bobby Fischer, leaves home to study in Europe, leaving her son alone at home. Bobby is 16 and a national chess champion.

145 CORONA spy satellites provide the Americans with a clear, factual picture of the Soviet nuclear arsenal: number, type, and location of warheads. This will give the United States the ability to negotiate at the negotiating table for nuclear arms reduction with the knowledge of

Vietnam. North Vietnam begins infiltrating guerrillas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Munich. A KGB agent assassinates Stepan Bandera, legendary (to Western Ukrainians) but controversial (to Eastern Ukrainians) leader of the Ukrainian resistance, now in exile in Germany.

Fidel Castro and the bearded men enter Havana

By choice of party ideologue Mikhail Suslov, only successes would be announced. Korolev became Professor Sergeev, and Glushko Professor Petrovich. Then, on January 2, 1959, the 1st Cosmic Ship made it. It carried a detector of gas, magnetic fields, ions, meteoroids, and cosmic rays. On

New Guinea. The Australian government outlaws cannibalism and implements strict controls. The restrictive measure puts an end to the kuru epidemic, a fever that had already wiped out more than 20,000 Fore indigenous people.

In 1958 the Soviets launched one satellite, 4 failures, the Americans 7 satellites, 10 failures

Charles De Gaulle is elected President of the French Republic

1958 was the year that saw Morris Chang (future founder of TSMC in Taiwan), Pat Haggerty (future chairman of Texas Instruments), Jay Lathrop (co-inventor of photolithography for solid-state chips at Texas Instruments), and Jack Kilby (co-inventor of integrated circuits at Texas Instruments and future Nobel

The first stretch of the Autostrada del Sole, from Milan to Parma, has been inaugurated.

More than 60 nuclear-tipped Jupiter IRBM missiles are being installed at US military bases in Italy and Türkiye.

Eniwetok Atoll, Operation HardTack I, the 2.5Mton Yellowwood thermonuclear bomb fails, with the second stage almost failing to ignite; the explosion still generates a yield of 330Ktons.

After numerous failures, the US Navy also managed to launch its own satellite into orbit with the Vanguard rocket. Competition between the three agencies (US Army, US Navy, and US Air Force) during the early stages of the space race proved detrimental to the United

The U.S. Navy requests the construction of 12 submarines armed with Polaris missiles. Faced with pressure from Congress, Eisenhower agrees to build 19. Kennedy opts for 41. The 656 Polaris submarines will all be aimed at civilian targets.

Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Walter Gregg and his son are sitting on the porch of their home when a Mark 6 atomic bomb suddenly lands in their yard. His wife is sewing at home, and their two daughters are outside playing with a friend. The

10:47:56 PM (Eastern Time): The United States launches its first satellite from Cape Canaveral with Juno I (a Jupiter C designed by the German Werner von Braun, modified to accommodate an Explorer 1 satellite); the satellite’s low-power transmitter will continue to transmit until May 23,

Boeing launches the Boeing 707, which will dominate air travel, after several crashes, due to structural failures, of the De Havillard Comet, the previous commercial jet aircraft.

Russia, 37 km northeast of Moscow. The order is given to establish a secret, unnamed, and planned (i.e., not spontaneous) city, which will later become Zelenograd (Russian: Зеленоград) on January 15, 1963, with the aim of making it a technological development center. It will become

Failed experiment in Arab unification between Egypt and Syria.

The CIA estimates that the USSR has approximately 400 Bison nuclear bombers and 300 Bear nuclear bombers capable of striking American soil. This estimate is based on the serial numbers of a pair of bombers displayed in the May parade in Moscow’s Red Square. In

The nuclear submarine Nautilus is the first to reach the North Pole by passing under the ice floe (US Navy)

United States. The decades-long dispute between the US Navy, Army, Air Force, and civilians (NASA) over space launches rages on. The US Navy tends to view satellites as another form of submarine and missiles as protection for its fleets; the US Army views missiles as

The U.S. Navy’s Vanguard rocket explodes live on television on the launch pad; no one is injured, but the humiliation is great; now the American program is in Von Braun’s hands.

First launch of an American Atlas ICBM rocket, with a range of 19,000 km, a 3.8 megaton warhead, and a load and launch time of 15 minutes.

John Von Neumann, shortly before his death, theoretically conceived a vast state machine not only capable of computing any computable function (Turing Machine), but also of self-reproducing.

Kenneth Olsen and Harlan Andersen found Digital Equipment Corporation (now Digital)

Grace Hopper develops COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) for UNIVAC

The Navaho program, which had achieved the feat of producing a 136-ton, Mach 4 cruise missile, was cancelled; the technology was abandoned for the more promising ICBM; it was reconsidered in the 1970s and 1980s.

Successful launch of the one-and-a-half-stage Atlas rocket

The Cuban Missile Crisis: The World on the Brink of the Abyss

Hugh Everett is appointed head of the mathematics section of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group.

Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy is arrested by the Soviets who have occupied the country

Anglo-French troops withdraw from the Suez Canal Zone and are replaced by UN troops

Comet Arend-Roland, the unicorn comet (so called because of the orientation of its second tail, which is at a nearly flat angle – 180 degrees – to the first), is discovered.

The Soviet Union threatens to use atomic weapons if France and Britain do not withdraw from the Suez Canal Zone.

Franco-British landing at Port Said in Egypt

Hungary: Nagy launches final appeal on radio

Stockholm. John Bardeen, after dropping scrambled eggs on the floor when he received the Nobel Prize news, commits further gaffes: he washes his colored clothes, his vest, and his tailcoat from the ceremony together, staining everything green. On the day of the ceremony, he also

Budapest, Hungary: Anti-Soviet demonstration escalates into popular uprising; army fires on crowd, killing 80.

In the Physical Review, young physicists Tsung D. Lee and Chen N. Yang raise for the first time the issue of non-conservation of parity (parity symmetry breaking) in nuclear decay reactions. (In other words, by seeing the same reaction in a mirror, we can say

Secret agreement at Sevres between Israel, France, and Great Britain to regain control of the Suez Canal

New York City. The Game of the Century: American Bobby Fischer, 13, plays and wins at chess against Donald Byrne, the top seed in the national rankings and 13 years his senior. The 13-year-old Fischer makes two dramatic apparent sacrifices early in the game: first

French Prime Minister Guy Mollet proposed to British Prime Minister Anthony Eden that France and Great Britain unite as a single nation. The proposal would come to light exactly half a century later and be announced by the BBC under the headline “Vive la Frangleterre!”

Bikini Atoll; Operation RedWing; “Dakota” detonation on the surface (4m); 1.1Mton; prototype of the W-28 warhead, the most versatile and widely used American warhead, will be produced in 5 models and 20 variants; the test warhead weighed 815Kg, with a diameter of 50cm and a

The last British troops leave the Suez Canal Zone

Arthur W. Anderson discovers the bacterial species Deinococcus Radiodurans, during sessions to sterilize food through radiation: it is a bacterium that survives intense doses of radiation, indeed it thrives inside nuclear reactors.

A brutal Soviet crackdown on a demonstration in Tbilisi, Georgia. A young Eduard Shevardnadze witnesses it.

Civil war in Sudan: 500,000 dead.

The entire Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party visits Korolev at his NII-88 compound. There, Korolev demonstrates the new R-7 rocket (which will remain in use well into the 21st century), capable of delivering a thermonuclear warhead to American targets in less than half an

Nikita Khrushchev, Secretary of the CPSU, on the rostrum of the 20th Congress, systematically destroyed Stalin’s image in the so-called “Secret Speech”: he denounced Stalin, his predecessor, as having committed “gross abuse of power,” “cruel and inhuman torture,” “mass deportations and the murder of thousands

Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin takes the oath of office as a member of the Soviet Communist Party.

On the centenary of Nikola Tesla’s birth, the unit of measurement of the magnetic field is called the Tesla, symbol “T”.

The formal birth date of Artificial Intelligence (AI). John McCarthy, Paul Shannon, Marvin Minsky, and Arthur Samuel, all at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, discuss it.

John Nash became famous by solving the Riemann Embedding Problem. Shortly thereafter, he fell into a profound schizophrenic psychosis. The Riemann Embedding Problem: Is it possible to embed every surface, and more generally every manifold with a metric in the Riemannian sense, into some n-dimensional

Hugh Everett delivers the complete dissertation: The theory of the Universal Wave Function

The Soviet Union tests its first uncapped hydrogen fusion bomb

Edward F. Moore invents the Finite State Automaton

Englishman Christopher Cockerell patents the hovercraft, the first amphibious air-cushion vehicle

FIAT produces the “600” and motorises Italy

After years of research, mathematicians at the Rand Corporation have published the paper “A Million Random Digits.”

At an international mathematics conference in Tokyo, the young Yutaka Taniyama suggests a curious relationship between modular forms and elliptic equations