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British physicist Freeman Dyson proposes the Dyson Sphere, a myriad of space stations that literally envelop the star to absorb all the radiation it emits.

The first seven Mercury astronauts are announced to the public.

Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductors seeks a patent for the integrated circuit (contested with Texas Instruments). Noyce seeks to emphasize the planar process, which allows each component to be connected with copper strips.

Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin applies for admission to the Soviet Cosmonaut Candidate Program.

CORONA program (first American spy satellites): second launch (the first had failed a month earlier…), but the attitude control system fails and the rocket crashes. The third launch will successfully reach orbit, take pictures, and successfully launch the film into the atmosphere for recovery, but

In NASA’s first week of existence, Project Mercury is authorized

Full Moon Night. NASA’s founding certificate is signed (it will be operational on October 1, 1958), and its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is established in a building just steps from the office of Rocco Petrone, who will become a prominent figure in the organization.

The Russians launch Sputnik 3

John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli) is Pope

After Sputnik, the American military received approval to build three giant radars to detect ICBMs arriving from the USSR. One was built in Thule, northwest Greenland, one in Alaska, and one in the North Yorkshire Moors, England.

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev launches the first (Soviet) satellite: Sputnik 1; it will remain in orbit until early 1958. The rocket is the glorious R-7, which will remain in use for over sixty years. The day marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky,

Fairchild is founded. It is founded by the Traitorous Eight who left Shockley: Gordon Moore, C. Sheldon Roberts, Eugene Kleiner, Robert Noyce, Victor Grinich, Julius Blank, Jean Hoerni, and Jay Last. Three days later, Sputnik is launched, creating a sudden American need for missiles and

Togliatti of the Italian Communist Party wrote to Stalin: “Nagy is a reactionary.”

Lithuania. The last group of anti-Soviet partisans was finally destroyed. Berja’s order in 1944 demanded that the partisans be eliminated from Lithuania within two weeks. It took a little longer, but they succeeded. Berja had died three years earlier at just 54 years old.

US President Eisenhower reiterated that, as long as there were no civilian casualties, he saw no reason why the United States could not use tactical nuclear weapons against China in the context of the crisis with Taiwan.

Faced with the presumed numerical superiority of Soviet long-range nuclear bombers, the United States began development of the Genie, a 1.3-kton tactical nuclear weapon, launchable from a US Air Force fighter, capable of destroying an entire squadron of Soviet bombers without necessarily hitting them directly.

London. In the House of Commons, Churchill delivers his final speech as prime minister, his swan song. He addresses Britain’s decision to arm itself with the H-bomb. He speaks of the balance of terror: “the worst thing, yet, the best one.”

West Germany. The Allied occupation formally ends and West Germany regains full national sovereignty.

California. Ghiorso is awakened by the fire alarm, connected to the detector of the experiment for the creation of the first atom of element 101. That night the event will repeat itself another 16 times. After having already honored the state of California, and Berkeley,

Shockley, fresh from his resignation from Bell, offers Beckham Instruments the opportunity to manufacture transistors using gaseous diffusion to dope the semiconductor. Beckham Instruments accepts and plans to build a new division of the company in Los Angeles. Shockley, however, insists on locating it in

With the signing of the Geneva Accords, the states of Laos and Cambodia were created. And Vietnam was provisionally divided in two at the 17th parallel.

Robert Capa, a Hungarian-born American who accompanied the French in Vietnam, was killed by an anti-personnel mine; he was the most famous photographer of the Second World War.

Heinz Guderian dies in West Germany. Considered by some historians a unique example of an officer who theorized a new military technique and also put his theory into practice, Guderian remains one of the most famous and important figures of the Second World War, and

An RAF B-47 aircraft (RB-47E), modified for reconnaissance (upon American request), flying over the Kola Peninsula and airfields east of Leningrad, was flanked and repeatedly hit by MiG-17s. The aircraft managed to return to base, but from now on Washington banned low-altitude missions over Soviet

The KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoj Bezopasnosti or Committee for State Security) was born from the NKVD.

Bikini Atoll, Operation Castle; “Bravo” detonation: the “Shrimp” device is detonated. But due to errors in the bomb’s design, it turns out to be much more powerful than expected. The first signs that something has gone wrong arrive at the trigger bunker, 35 kilometers from

Bikini Atoll, Operation Castle; “Bravo” detonation on the surface (2m); 15Mton; crater 2km, 76m deep, mushroom cloud reaches 40,000m and a diameter of 106km

Bruno Augenstein of the RAND Corporation delivers the final report, “A Revised Development Program for Ballistic Missiles of Intercontinental Range,” concluding that the development of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) should be a priority. The thermonuclear Atlas D will enter service in September 1959, initially

Hugh Everett, after a couple of sherries with Charles Misner (his classmate) and Aage Peterson (Niels Bohr’s visitor and assistant) thinks of “ridiculous things about the implications of quantum mechanics”; in these moments Everett has the intuition of the so-called “Many-Worlds” theory and in the

French forces occupy the Vietnamese town of Dien Bien Phu, on the border with Laos; they are surrounded by 40,000 Viet Minh

Robert Oppenheimer is formally accused of association with known and unknown communists, but above all of the so-called Chevalier affair and of having actively tried to convince scientists not to work on Edward Teller’s H-bomb project.

Robert Oppenheimer shows up for a meeting with Lewis Strauss, who wants to deny him access to classified information.

Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan built the first prototype neutrino detector at one of the nuclear reactors at the Hanford Engineering Works in Washington state. This was Project Poltergeist. But they soon realized that they recorded the same average number of events even when the

Nevada Range: Operation Upshot-Knothole, “Dirty Harry” atmospheric nuclear detonation: most efficient low-yield fission explosion; tower explosion, 32 Ktons; causes one of the largest radiological disasters in North America: alone produces 30,000 of the total 85,000 roentgens/person of all North American nuclear tests; the overall increase

Draper Lab successfully installs and tests an Inertial Navigation System (INS) on an MIT B-29. The test flight is from Boston to Los Angeles. Eleven people are on board, but they will not touch the controls once aloft. After 2,232 nautical miles of navigation and

Thursday morning, 9:50 a.m. Stalin dies, succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev. From 1917 to 1953, at least 18 million people passed through the GULag system in the USSR. The death toll from shootings, torture, starvation, cold, and forced labor in the GULag concentration camps is between

Soviet Union. Stalin, suffering a stroke, is left unattended for several hours, as no one dares call a doctor due to the alleged (hysterical) “doctors’ conspiracy,” a conspiracy theory according to which Soviet doctors, mostly Jewish, systematically murdered leading members of the regime.

In the Soviet Union, a large part of the Bolshevik Jewish intelligentsia was shot.

Greece and Türkiye join NATO

North Korea. MacArthur reports to President Truman that North Korean troops are “disorganized and retreating,” and that “the war is very definitely coming to an end.”

UN troops conquer North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang.

Wake Atoll, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Meeting between General MacArthur and President Truman. MacArthur is considered a living legend. He won World War II against Japan, reconquered the Philippines, and has now rebuilt Japan, of which he is still governor. In recent

US Eighth Army enters North Korea

United States. Truman gives the OK to MacArthur, still governor of Japan, to send ground troops to Pusan, South Korea.

Two weeks after Truman’s decision to build the H-bomb (The Super), Albert Einstein read a statement on national television criticizing the militarization of American society, the hysterical nature of the nuclear arms race, and the disastrous illusion that it would make America safer. “Each step

China. Taiwan Strait: President Truman dispatches the Seventh Fleet, effectively preventing China’s attempt to seize the island.

Glenn Seaborg synthesizes Berkelium

Chang Kai Shek fled to the American-controlled island of Taiwan. The Nationalists took their military equipment, some artistic and cultural treasures from the Imperial Palace, and their seat at the UN with them.

The White Sands, New Mexico, research center is moved to Huntsville, Alabama.

At the White Sands Proving Ground, several atmospheric physics experiments were carried out, including the launch of a modified V-2 rocket to an altitude of 393 km.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) or Atlantic Pact is born, signed by 12 nations

An American reconnaissance flight over Mount Ararat in the Caucasus photographed the so-called Ararat Anomaly. Located 2.2 km from the summit at 4,724 m, it was also photographed by satellites and other aircraft and was believed by many Christian fundamentalists to be Noah’s Ark, having

The UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with resolution 217 A (III)

The Soviet Union, despite its formal adherence to the 1946 treaty regulating whaling, killed 180,000 more whales than the formally accepted limit. The North Pacific Right Whale (Eubalena japonica), for example, was nearly exterminated and made extinct in just three years of unregulated whaling by

Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonoga make quantum electrodynamics functional, the first complete explanation of the interactions between photons and electrons.

Dutch physicist Henrik Casimir demonstrates that quantum mechanics can create negative energy, discovering “virtual” particles that are continuously created and annihilated in an absolute vacuum.

A modified V-2 in the Soviet Union reaches an altitude of 175 miles at its apogee. The precise target hit inspires Korolyov to embrace German Helmut Grottrup and improvise a dance.

The English withdraw from the Indies: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon are born

The GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) is born

American private pilot Kenneth Arnold claims to have witnessed nine strange metallic objects flying over Washington State. US military authorities are using the term UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) for the first time.

The Dutch exterminate a group of Indonesian revolutionaries in the Battle of Marga in western Bali.

Romania. In the elections, the Communists ran in a single coalition, with various left-wing parties they had convinced to join them in the “Blocul partidelor democrate” (Democratic Parties Bloc). When the vote was counted, it officially received 70% of the vote, while the Peasant Party

B-29 reconnaissance aircraft (RB-29) flies for the first time off the coast of Siberia, using oblique photography to gather military information. Specifically, it covers the Chukotsky Peninsula, the Bering Strait, and the Kola Peninsula. The aircraft reaches within three nautical miles of the coast, a

United States. In 1945, Ernest Lawrence visited the General Electric Research Labs in Schenectady, New York, and came up with the idea of spinning electrons in a single orbit, rather than spiraling them. In 1944, Herb Pollock had led a team at the General Electric

GD is founded in Bologna to produce packaging machines for chocolate bars.

First USAF flight with one of the two Bell XS-1 prototypes; the other is in service with NACA, which, however, has a more gradual and scientific approach to the problem of exceeding Mach 1; on the sixth flight, Charles Yeager will already reach Mach 0.92;

Czechoslovakia. A pardon is approved for crimes committed against the Germans at the end of the war and in the immediate postwar period until October 28, 1945. It is difficult to estimate the number of Germans killed. They are in the tens of thousands. German

General Chiang Kai-Shek crushes communist resistance at Sipingjie

Oswald Avery begins experiments that will show that, of all biological molecules, only DNA transmits hereditary characteristics.

Russian-American George Gamow lays out the foundations of the Big Bang theory and predicts the presence of fossil radiation

Lyman Spitzer conceives the idea of a Space Telescope

Argonne Nat’l Labs founded in Chicago

World War II gave impetus to the mass production of plastic objects. In 1946, James Hendry built the first Screw Injection Molding Machine.

According to some historians, the Cold War began as a continuation of the Great Game, the conflict between Britain and Russia in Central Asia to keep the Russians away from the Mediterranean and India. The first signs of this were evident in Greece, Turkey, and

Civil war in India: 1 million dead.

The secrets of the American thermonuclear bomb are already in the hands of the Soviets.

Zgoda, now southwestern Poland, near Świetochłowice. A German punishment camp is closed. At its peak, 5,048 prisoners were held there. Two-thirds were sent to work in the coal mines each day. Up to 20 people died daily from starvation. In total, 1,855 people died, nearly

Three V-2s are launched from Altenwalde, Germany, as part of the British Project Backfire (with the consent of General Eisenhower) to learn more about German rocket technology; Korolev and other Soviet scientists are present at the launch but outside the gates.

Six women were sent by the US Navy to the Aberdeen proving ground to learn how to program the punch cards for an IBM computer. They were Jean Jennings, Marilyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Snyder, Frances Bilas, and Kay McNulty. They were an excellent team,

First Draft of the report on the EDVAC. Johnny von Neumann applies the theories of Turing and Gödel to computation, essentially laying the foundations of computer science: it also contains the description of what would become known as the “von Neumann architecture” of computers. The