FQ

Afghanistan and Pakistan. A major duel between the state and the nomads (Pawindah, meaning “people on foot”): the two nations ban migration, barring entry to anyone without proper documentation. For the Pawindah, this goes against a way of life they’ve lived for millennia.

Nevada Range: Operation PlumbBob, nuclear detonation from a 152m “Wheeler” balloon: the device weighs only 72kg and will enable the construction of 0.01-6 Kton “Davy Crockett” surface-to-air nuclear missiles that can be operated by a single person.

Operation Plumbob, United States. During the Pascal-B nuclear test of the Plumbob test series, a 1,000-ton underground test, images from high-speed cameras show a 2,000-ton manhole cover being shot upward at a speed of at least 66 km/s (only one frame shows it in flight).

Baikonur, 12:25 p.m. First successful launch of an ICBM. It was the Soviet R-7 Semyorka.

Nevada Range: Operation PlumbBob, nuclear detonation from a 6100m “John” rocket: 1.7Kton; five volunteers were below ground zero; the test was to test the device’s ability to destroy fleets of Soviet bombers.

Nevada Range: Operation PlumbBob, 457m balloon nuclear detonation “Hood”: 74Kton; thermonuclear (fusion) bomb: it is the largest atmospheric nuclear test ever carried out in the continental United States; 900 soldiers and 124 planes and helicopters are advanced towards ground zero with a radioactivity of 100

Soviet Union. Launch of the first nuclear-powered icebreaker. The Lenin, with three OK-150 reactors of 90 MW each, is launched. It will suffer two reactor accidents, which will be kept secret until the fall of communism in 1991.

American John Shellvan patents the process for producing synthetic penicillin

The KGB used thallium to assassinate Russian dissident Nikolai Khokhlov. On other occasions, it also used polonium, such as in 2006 with Litvinenko in London.

The Thomas A. Edison Inc. corporate conglomerate is absorbed by the McGraw Hill Electric Company.

Distant Early Warning Completed: 72 Radar Stations in Canada and Alaska to Spot Soviet ICBMs

The ABMA begins studies on a booster with a thrust of 6,800,000 N (680 ton); it is initially called Super-Jupiter and then renamed Saturn.

FIAT produced 12,000 units of the “500” per year. This figure rose to 350,000 in 1969.

Milan. Ernesto Gabrielli and the Della Porta family patented the getter to solve the vacuum problem in TV cathode ray tubes. Shortly thereafter, Philco, a world leader in the sector, placed an order with Gabrielli and Della Porta’s SAES Getter for one billion dollars in

The US Air Force begins the WS117L (Weapon System 117L) program. This is the first space-based photographic reconnaissance system. It will later evolve into the CORONA spy satellites (initially known by the covert acronym Discoverer). CORONA will be managed by the US Air Force and

Hungary: Kadar overthrows Nagy, ruling for 32 years (effectively until the end of the Cold War).

5:00 a.m. Hungary: Soviet armored troops enter Hungary with 5,000 tanks and 75,000 men.

Moscow decides on armed intervention in Hungary

Nobel Prize in Physics to William Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain

Escalating Suez Canal Crisis On October 31, 1956, Britain and France bombed Egypt in retaliation for its blockade of their shipping in the Suez Canal. The attack came two days after Israel invaded Egypt, conquering the Gaza Strip and advancing through the Sinai to the

Second Arab-Israeli war, with French and British intervention against Egypt, stopped by international condemnation (including the USA); the Israelis reach the Suez Canal which they occupy for a year

Beginning of the Hungarian Revolution On October 23, 1956, students, intellectuals, and workers took to the streets of Budapest demanding the end of Soviet rule and the communist government. On November 4, thousands of Soviet tanks entered the city to quell the uprising, which had

Gamal Abd El-Nasser Egyptian President

DH Lehmer proves that the first 25,000 zeros of the Zeta function satisfy the Riemann hypothesis.

Project 56. The components of four American nuclear bombs are subjected to safety tests in the Nevada desert, to certify their intrinsic safety in the event, for example, of an emergency landing of nuclear bombers, resulting in a fire on board. Only one of the

The antiproton is discovered by Owen Chamberlain, Emilio Segre’, Clyde Wiegand, and Tom Ypsilantis of the University of California, Berkeley.

Kalmus demonstrates that police dogs can distinguish the odor of human sweat except that of identical twins, thus demonstrating the genetic bias of sweat.

The DisneyLand amusement park opens in Anaheim, a former orange grove, 40 km from Los Angeles (now fully incorporated into the metropolis).

John von Neumann collapses while on the phone with Lewis Strauss. He will be diagnosed with bone cancer and undergo emergency surgery. He will be confined to a wheelchair, but will continue to produce and work, writing the book “The Computer and the Brain,” published

Vietnam. The USSR and China begin military assistance to North Vietnam.

1:15 a.m.: Five days after his aneurysm ruptured, Albert Einstein dies at Princeton Hospital; he refuses the risky surgery: “I want to go when I want; it’s in bad taste to artificially prolong life.”

Washington, DC. Pauline Goebel, secretary and financier of Harold Jesse Berney for his (alleged) trips to Venus (yes, you read that right), receives a phone call. The caller claims to be His Majesty Prince Ucelles of the planet Venus, and says that Berney is very

Mendelevium is the first element to be synthesized one atom at a time. To date, no amount has ever been created that is visible to the human eye. Its discoverer is Glenn Seaborg, who has also discovered many other elements.

First American aid to South Vietnam

JRR Tolkien publishes the Lord of the Rings trilogy in England, which will become required reading in all American middle schools.

Alan Turing committed suicide in Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK. He died by ingesting an apple poisoned with potassium cyanide, in keeping with his eccentric nature and inspired by the Snow White fairy tale he had loved since childhood. His mother claimed that her son, with dirty

Bruno Augenstein of the RAND Corporation delivers a report concluding that the development of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) should be a priority. After some revisions, the final report (delivered on February 8, 1954) will be titled “A Revised Development Program for Ballistic Missiles of

Iran. The Shah of Persia, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, returns to Tehran. The brief reign of the lawyer Mohammad Mosaddegh or Mosaddeq[a] (Persian: مُحَمَد مُصَدِق‎), who had been elected by the Iranian parliament two years earlier, ends. He had nationalized the AIOC (Anglo Iranian Oil Company),

The United States reimburses Enrico Fermi’s group with $400,000 for renouncing the rights to the slow neutron patent; the award, divided among the signatories and net of taxes, amounts to $24,000.

Stormy North Sea causes floods in England and the Netherlands, killing hundreds.

Winston Churchill publishes the first edition of “The Second World War,” a work in six volumes: Vol. I: The Gathering Storm, Vol. II: Their Finest Hour: The Collapse of France, Vol. III: The Grand Alliance: The War Engulfs America, Vol. IV: The Fatal Turning Point:

Anti-Soviet uprising in Berlin: Soviet crackdown leads to 42 executions and 25,000 arrests

Nobel Peace Prize to George Catlett Marshall

The Treaty of San Francisco comes into force between Japan and the nations that suffered its aggression during World War II. The reparations will be relatively modest compared to those imposed on Germany in World War I: $550 million to the Philippines, $300 million to

United States. President Truman signs a government order nationalizing American steel mills, for reasons of national security, for the Korean War. This provokes a strong internal reaction, not only from the Republican opposition. Lyndon Johnson declares this to be typical of practices that lead to

To decapitate the nascent European Community and prevent German rearmament, Stalin presented five conditions for German reunification: the withdrawal of all occupying forces, neutrality, Germany unified within the 1945 borders, the removal of limits on the development of the Ruhr, and the right to its

Americans Robert Briggs and Thomas King transplant the nucleus of an embryonic cell into a frog egg.

The first prototype of a numerically controlled machine was operational at MIT after several years of development. The APT (Automatically Programmed Tool) programming language was developed and released in 1961.

Penicillin is fully effective against all types of staphylococcus bacteria; in fact, 90% of the species of the bacterium are developing resistance to penicillin that will only manifest itself several years later.

Albert Einstein refused the offer to become President of Israel (he had already been the first honorary citizen of Tel Aviv since 1923)

Americans dynamite Adolf Hitler and Eva Brown’s home in Berchtesgaden

Texas Instruments purchases license to produce transistors from Western Electric Company

Winston Churchill again Prime Minister

Abraham Taub conducts a systematic study of all universes that are identical at every point in space, but expand at different speeds in different directions. To do this, he uses Bianchi Spaces, named after the famous professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and

The first protein sequence is deciphered

Korea. The Soviets propose a ceasefire and a bilateral withdrawal, north and south of the 38th parallel. A Gallup poll reveals that 51% of Americans are in favor and 37% against. Truman is not optimistic but asks General Ridgway to try. China agrees, and negotiations

It becomes clear that Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller have solved the design problems for the so-called Super, or H-bomb, or thermonuclear bomb.

South Korea. MacArthur’s successor, General Matthew Ridgway, managed to push the North Koreans and Chinese back above the 38th parallel, and thus retake Seoul.

Eniwetok Atoll: Operation GreenHouse, 61m “George” tower thermonuclear detonation: 225Kton; designed by Edward Teller, it has a deuterium-tritium fusion trigger and the trigger itself is due to the implosion of the device due to radiation rather than high explosives.

Seoul, South Korea. The Chinese attack with a force of 700,000 soldiers to retake Seoul. This would be the fifth time the conflict has changed hands in less than two years. This time, the attack fails. Between 110,000 and 161,000 attackers die, including approximately 90,000

General MacArthur wanted to drive the communists out of Korea and transfer the war to China; Truman, however, favored a policy of containment: MacArthur was stripped of his command of the armed forces.

The Catholic Church officially declares that the Big Bang is not in contradiction with the Catholic religion

Germany. The French occupation zone is the birthplace of the European Coal and Steel Community, which later became the European Community and then the European Union.

Iran. Lawyer Mohammad Mosaddegh or Mosaddeq[a] (Persian: مُحَمَد مُصَدِق‎) becomes prime minister, elected by the Iranian parliament. He nationalizes the AIOC (Anglo Iranian Oil Company), the concessionaire of the oil fields. This event leads to a British boycott of Iranian oil, a serious economic crisis,

After the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death for espionage, Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, who had been part of Julius Rosenberg’s spy ring since the 1930s, realized the net was closing in on them and left the United States for the Soviet Union, where they

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg sentenced to death on charges of nuclear espionage.

South Korea. MacArthur once again proposes to Truman to involve Chan Kai Shek and Taiwan in the Korean War, opening a second front in mainland China. The public request infuriates Truman, who accuses him of “rank insubordination.” He declares to his aides: “That son of

The Soviet Union (not officially involved in the conflict) begins to provide the necessary air cover for Chinese military maneuvers in North Korea; Soviet fighters fly without insignia and pilots without uniforms and insignia.

Alan Turing publishes “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in the journal Mind. He describes what will become known as the Turing Test, which he calls “The Imitation Game.”

American and South Korean troops in Korea reach the Yalu River on the Chinese border

First Chinese troops cross the border into North Korea to fight against United Nations troops (mostly Americans and South Koreans)

Korea. Stalin formally requests Mao, in a message, for the Chinese army to intervene in force to defend North Korea.

American troops stage a mock landing south of Seoul to divert North Korean attention from the real landing at Inchon, near Seoul.

Earthquake in India (Tibet): 8.7 on the Richter scale, 1,530 deaths

North Korean troops enter Seoul

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson upholds the doctrine that China’s integrity is in America’s national interest regardless of its dominant ideology.

During the Cold War, a synergistic triangular relationship was established in the United States between government, industry, and academia. The Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation became the main sponsors of basic research, spending as much as private industry (by 2010, this figure

Turing publishes Computing Machinery and Intelligence, in which he suggests criteria for judging whether a machine is endowed with artificial intelligence.

John Nash studies Non-Cooperative Game Theory and Bargaining Theory

The Catholic Church officially states that the body of the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven after her death, a belief that spread around the 6th century AD.