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S. Skewes shows that the frequency with which prime numbers become sparse, as found by Gauss, was underestimated for sufficiently large digits; the first such digit must be less than 10^10^1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000; if a person played chess with all the particles in the universe, where one

The military overthrows the government of Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina.

The NATO alphabet is coined: Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey Xray Yankee Zulu approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the FAA, and the International Telecommunication

Indonesia. The general election, with an exceptional turnout of 92% of eligible voters, leads to a stalemate: each of the four main parties wins between 15% and 22% of the vote. Sukarno ends the stalemate. In 1963, the dictatorship becomes official.

North American wins contract to build X-15 aircraft

Cold War. The United States believed it was catching up with the Soviet Union in terms of nuclear weapons. It amassed 2,280 thermonuclear weapons, twenty times the Soviets’. But this information would only become evident with the Corona spy satellite program from 1960 onwards. Until

Operation Alert 1955. A Soviet nuclear attack on American cities is simulated, with bombs ranging from 20,000 to 5,000,000 tons. Sirens sound, 15,000 public employees are evacuated from Washington, D.C. alone, the president and his staff are taken to a secret location for three days,

China. Mao refuses to join the Warsaw Pact, as Moscow had requested.

Cuba. Fidel Castro is released from prison by Batista. Two years earlier, there had been an attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The attempt had failed, and among those arrested were Fidel Castro and his men. Fidel’s mother rushed to Santiago to

The Warsaw Pact is born

Hungary: Reformer Nagy ousted from leadership

Wernher Von Braun, the new director of the American Institute for Space Exploration in Huntsville, Alabama, calls on Oberth, his former mentor when they were in Germany, to work on a project called “The Development of Space Technologies in the Next Ten Years.”

A few weeks after US President Eisenhower’s statements on the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, China extended an olive branch: “The Chinese people do not want a war against the United States.” The following week, China ceased its eight-month-long bombing campaign in the Taiwan

In one of his last acts before his death, Albert Einstein wrote a short but intense preface to the book “Earth’s Shifting Crust: a Key to some Basic Problems of Earth Science” by Charles Hapgood, in which he harshly criticized the theory of continental drift.

A group of scientists announce that Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine works. Polio has killed thousands of people each year for centuries, paralyzed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and confined thousands to iron lungs.

American agronomist Norman Borlaug spent years and decades crossbreeding wheat, corn, and rice until he developed extremely productive and resilient crops. By combining these species with modern cultivation techniques, Borlaug transformed countries like Mexico, India, and Pakistan from starving countries into net exporters of wheat,

Churchill resigns. Sir Winston Churchill, the English statesman who led Great Britain and the Allies during World War II, resigns as prime minister. Churchill, a valiant fighter in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902, had held various government and military positions and in 1940

In 1955, Jacuzzi began selling the J-300 model.

James Dean wears blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause. Jeans had also been worn on the big screen by Marlon Brando in “Wild One” (1953) and by John Wayne in Stagecoach (1939).

The three-body problem was attacked head-on by Andrei Kolmogorov, who outlined the guidelines for its treatment. His program was completed by Vladimir Arnold and Jurgen Moser in 1962 in the so-called KAM theorem. Henri Poincaré had already tackled the problem at the end of the

Andrei Kolmogorov dusts off the three-body problem

GL Pearson, CS Fuller, and DM Chapin produce the first solar cell at Bell Labs

GC Devol develops the project of a ‘programmed parts handler’, American patent for the project in 1961. Devol also introduces the name Universal Automation later shortened to UNIMATION, the first robotics company

British inventor C.W. Kenward applies for a patent for a robot design, patent in 1957

IBM produces the 650, the first mass-produced computer with 120 installations in the first year

Luigi Romersa publishes an account in France claiming he was present during a nuclear test (probably a dirty bomb) in the Baltic Sea (the island of Rügen), as Mussolini’s envoy and with Hitler’s approval, in October 1944. However, the news is largely ignored for the

The first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, is launched at the US base in Groton.

Mathematician Derek Lawden mathematically describes the flyby

Construction of the second Aswan Dam, commissioned by Nasser with Soviet financial support

Hugh Everett begins writing his doctoral thesis in quantum mechanics

2:30 a.m. Enrico Fermi dies in his sleep of a heart attack (he had been suffering from stomach cancer for two months) at the age of 54. He is buried in Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was amended to grant Allied personnel access to American nuclear weapons. The Soviets protested vigorously, because less than ten years before the end of the war, it would give the Germans the power to use nuclear weapons against the

Condoleeza Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of John Wesley Rice Jr., a Presbyterian priest, and Angelena Ray. Her unusual given name, Condoleezza, derives from the Italian expression used in classical music, “con dolcezza” (with sweetness).

The first U-2 prototype is in flight. The secret project is called AQUATONE, and had been approved only eight months earlier. It would be the protagonist of hundreds of flights over the Soviet Union. But fierce Soviet opposition and the downing of one of these

Hungary: Nagy forces reforms

Trieste returns to Italy: the issue takes center stage internationally; Tito threatens armed intervention.

The London Memorandum is signed: for the Trieste Zone, Zone A goes to Italy and Zone B to Yugoslavia. Tito tries to obtain better terms until the very end, and the final settlements are facilitated by the American offer of non-repayable financing and raw materials

Shockley, one of the fathers of the transistor, is going through a midlife crisis. After nursing his wife through cancer, he leaves her, finds a girlfriend, marries her, quits Bell Labs, buys a sports car, and starts a company.

The advent of the first transistor radios wasn’t just a marketing and electronics event. It was a socio-cultural one: the radio became a personal object, and everyone listened to the music they wanted. This brought enormous success to rock ‘n’ roll in the West and

When Pat Haggerty, Executive VP of Texas Instruments, tries to convince RCA (the big name in tabletop radio) to make a portable transistor radio, RCA responds that “consumers don’t need portable radios.”

The first transistors were sold by Texas Instruments to the US military for 16 USD each.

CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) is founded in Geneva. It was born from an idea by French physicist Louis de Broglie in the post-war period. Twelve Western European nations ratified the treaty. These were nations that had been at war with each other until

Enrico Fermi returned to Europe for the second time after the war. He traveled to Paris, the Alps, and gave physics lectures in Varenna on Lake Como, where he also met Heisenberg. But Enrico Fermi began to experience obvious health problems: he had difficulty swallowing

Soviet Union. By order of Nikita Khrushchev, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Georgy Malenkov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, a test was ordered that was then kept secret until 1993. During a military exercise held at the

United States. The Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP) meets for the first time (it would meet 307 more times during the Cold War). This is a body serving the American defense and intelligence community (essentially the CIA and company). The meeting is significant because it marks

Alcide De Gasperi dies. Alcide De Gasperi was one of the founders and leader of the Christian Democrats, in which he participated since writing a pamphlet entitled “Reconstructive Ideas of Christian Democracy” in 1943. Before Fascism, he had been a member of parliament for the

Soviet Union. Kengir Gulag uprising in Kazakhstan. This is the gulag where Alexander Solzhenitsyn was held. After the uprising, on June 25th, T-34 tanks and strafing planes arrived, followed by special forces. The dead and wounded numbered approximately six hundred. In the fall of 1955,

Natta, in Milan, invents polypropylene

Leo Burnett created the Marlboro Man, the cowboy with jeans and a cigarette.

Gordon Allport, a psychology professor at Harvard, formulates The Contract Hypothesis, according to which interpersonal contacts are the most effective way to reduce prejudice.

Edwin Hubble dies. Hubble was destined for success: six feet tall, handsome, intelligent, and confident, he excelled in everything he did. He was a champion in track and field, basketball, water polo, and boxing. But Edwin Powell Hubble was above all an American astronomer who

Mikhail Gorbachev and Raisa get married in Moscow

Pella, Fanfani, Scelba, Segni, Zoli, Tambroni, Leone governments (DC-PRI-PSI-PSDI-PLI)

Percy L. Spencer of Raytheon (USA) invents the Microwave Oven

Grey Walter builds the “turtle,” in some ways the first artificially intelligent robot (it wandered around until its batteries ran out, went to recharge them at the nearest socket, and set off again).

Roger Sperry performs commisurotomy experiments (separation of the corpus callosum or separation of the two cerebral hemispheres) on cats

Americans Harold Ulrey and Stanley Miller test the primordial soup theory and create amino acids in a primordial broth recreated in the laboratory

Michael Ventris gives a public lecture on the decoding of the Linear B script found on clay tablets in Crete in 1900 inside the Palace of Knossos. Ventris notices that certain sequences of symbols appear frequently, and hypothesizes that they are the names of important

Nevada desert. Tests of nuclear warhead cannons. Range of about 32 kilometers and a 14,000-ton warhead. All sorts of things are placed at various distances from ground zero to test the consequences. And 3,000 soldiers hunched over in a trench, who after the explosion are

Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. Eleven universities collaborate to create the Cosmotron: a copper ring with 288 electromagnets, each weighing 8 tons. It can accelerate protons to 88% the speed of light.

The polio vaccine. Jonas Salk was the discoverer of the polio vaccine. After graduating from New York University, Salk specialized in bacteriology at the University of Michigan, where he served as a researcher. In 1953, he completed the preparation of the polio vaccine, composed of

James Watson and Francis Crick discover the double helix structure of DNA

Pauling publishes his article on the alleged triple helix of DNA, but before publishing it, a copy is given by Pauling’s son, Peter, to his laboratory colleagues James Watson and Francis Crick who will be encouraged to continue their research on the subject, and who

Oleg Penkowsky, a CIA spy in Moscow, is executed by the NKVD (the future KGB); he had managed to photograph classified documents on Soviet ICBM missiles and smuggle 111 rolls of film to the West; his Soviet contact, also captured, committed suicide with the poison

Vietnam. The French ask U.S. President Eisenhower for direct intervention in Vietnam. The Americans reject the request.

Vietnam. The French replaced the British, who temporarily occupied Vietnam immediately after the war. However, the war proved more difficult for the French than expected.

First copy of Playboy, Hugh Hefner’s magazine.

Eniwetok Atoll, Operation Ivy, “Mike” detonation at 1m, 10.4 Mton (10,400 Kton), the first thermonuclear (nuclear fusion) bomb, the first “artificial star.” Mike was equipped with a massive 82-ton refrigeration system to keep the deuterium and tritium liquid; the power of the explosion was greater

The United States tests the first thermonuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll (designed by Edward Teller) (fission bomb that triggers a fusion bomb)

Leningrad, Russia. A little north of Nevsky Prospect, at Maternity Hospital No. 6, Vladimir Putin was born. The hospital was founded by Catherine the Great and is the oldest in Russia.

Great Britain. The first British strategic nuclear bomber, the Vulcan, makes its test flight. Four months later, the Victor follows, on December 25th. The first, however, was the Valiant, which was only a temporary solution to fill a gap in time. The three models (Valiant,

Alan Turing publishes “The chemical basis of morphogenesis,” exploring hypotheses about how patterns are generated in plants and animals.

7.7 earthquake north of Los Angeles

United States. The Republican National Convention opens. MacArthur is the keynote speaker. The nomination goes to Ike Eisenhower, who chooses Richard Nixon as his running mate.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is founded. One of its key founders was Edward Teller, who strongly supported a nuclear weapons development laboratory independent of Los Alamos, where he disagreed with Oppenheimer and other scientists. Edward Teller founded Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (now Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,

A squadron of B-45s modified for reconnaissance (RB-45-C) flies at night over Lithuania (USSR), Belarus (USSR), and Ukraine (USSR). This is an RAF mission, approved by Churchill at the request of the Americans. The mission will be repeated in 1954.

Ruben Rausing, in Sweden, founded Tetra Pak

Eckert and Mauchly, EMCC – Remington Rand had not forgotten the value of the women programmers they had met in the US Navy and hired Betty Snider Holberton (who would develop COBOL and FORTRAN), Jenny Jennings Bartik, Kay McNulty, and the legendary Grace Hopper, who

George VI dies. After a long battle with cancer, George VI, King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has passed away. Second son of George V, he ascended the throne in 1936 following the abdication of his elder brother, Edward VIII, who had not given

George VI dies, succeeded by his daughter Elizabeth II, who becomes Queen of England and reigns for more than half a century.