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The Americans with Juno I (modified Jupiter C) launch satellites into orbits around the Moon and the Sun

Von Braun launches the third American satellite: Explorer 3

American Air Force Base (SAC) in Sidi Slimane, Morocco. A B-47 nuclear bomber is on ground alert carrying a 10-ton Mark-36 nuclear bomb. It contains piezoelectric crystals that, when the bomb’s nose hits the ground, send an electrical signal that triggers the detonator, creating a

Ken Kesey arrives in the San Francisco Bay Area to graduate from Stanford. He also works as a nurse at a psychiatric hospital, where he volunteers for a CIA program (MKUltra) to test the psychedelic effects of LSD. Ken enjoys it. He later writes “One

Control Data Corporation introduces the 1604, designed by Seymour Cray; it is the first all-transistor computer at the modest price of $1.5 million (half the price of an IBM machine).

Amintore Fanfani inaugurates the first post-war Italian Centre-Left government (DC-PSDI)

Sputnik 2 launches the dog Laika (her real name was Kudryavka) into orbit; she disintegrates in the atmosphere four months later. Ten more dogs are launched into space by the Soviets. Six survive.

Windscale, Cumbria, northwest England. A serious nuclear accident at a plutonium-mining plant for weapons purposes occurs. In one of the reactors, graphite ignites and burns for three days, releasing radioactive substances into the air. The accident is the most serious ever to occur at the

A quartet of astute astronomers realize that stars serve as cosmic forges. They are Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, William Fowler, and Fred Hoyle. The theory is Stellar Nucleosynthesis, better known as B2FH.

John Bardeen (the transistor inventor), Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer formulated the theory of superconductivity (BCS Theory), which proved to be precise and useful. It earned them the Nobel Prize in 1972.

Until 1957, the US Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) refused to share its nuclear targets with other commands. When sharing was done, hundreds of “time-over targets” were discovered—for example, the Kremlin would be hit by US Navy missiles, then by Army Minuteman missiles, and

H2N2 flu, the Asian flu, spreads around the world

Complete Franco-British withdrawal from Suez after the arrival of UN troops

Pratica di Mare Airport. The pilot, Lt. Col. Giovanni Franchini, revs the jet engine to maximum revs, takes off, and climbs rapidly. At 13,500 meters, when the plane has almost reached its ceiling, Lt. Col. Franchini, having received the approval of air traffic control, dives

Anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary suppressed by Russian soldiers: 3,000 dead and 15,000 wounded in Budapest alone. 26,000 people arrested, 229 shot, 350 Soviets killed, 37 Hungarian policemen lynched by the crowd.

Hungary: Nagy announces democracy; numerous lynchings of Soviet collaborators and intelligence workers documented on the streets of Budapest

Hungary: Clashes are increasingly violent

John Archibald Wheeler and his doctoral student Hugh Everett, drastically rewrote and shortened the thesis The theory of the Universal Wave Function, in order to water down the thesis that instead demonstrated the Many-Worlds Interpretation

“The Seven Year Itch” starring Marilyn Monroe is coming out in theaters.

Poznan, Poland: Anti-Soviet uprising bloodily suppressed, 70 dead

Eninman Island; Operation RedWing, Zuni surface detonation at 2.7 m, 3.5 Mton; three-stage “clean” thermonuclear device: it draws 85% of its power from fusion (low radioactivity) rather than nuclear fission (high radioactivity); it is a prototype of the 25 Mton Mark-41 bomb, which will be

Bikini Atoll, Operation Red Wing, “Cherokee” detonation at 1,326 meters, 3.8 million tons, first thermonuclear bomb detonation dropped from an aircraft (a B-52). The target was Namu Island, but the pilot mistook the island and dropped the bomb on an island 7 kilometers away.

Construction of the Autostrada del Sole begins

The IDEAL X, a former World War II oil tanker, departs from the port of Newark, USA, bound for Houston, Texas. It’s packed with standard-sized containers that fit perfectly inside each other. These are the first containers, which will enable the automated transport of huge

The German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal commissioned clinical trials of the active ingredient in Thalidomide, a drug used to reduce or eliminate nausea during pregnancy. It was also tested on breastfeeding women, but only one case was mentioned involving a pregnant woman, and positive effects were

Project GENETRIX (WS-119L). From bases in West Germany, Scotland, Norway, and Turkey, 516 high-altitude balloons are released and, at the mercy of the jet stream, head eastward across the Soviet Union. They are at an altitude of 18 kilometers. Only 44 will be recovered on

Black girl Rosa Parks, in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white man when asked by the bus driver; the episode would become a symbol for the civil rights movement in the United States.

Giovanni Gronchi President of the Italian Republic

First flight of an aircraft with a functioning nuclear reactor (80 tons) on board: the aircraft was the NB-36, a modified version of the B-36; 47 flights were made until March 28, 1957, when the Air Force abandoned the project. The engines studied ranged from

Moscow. Aviation Day. During the military parade, ten Bison bombers fly over the city above observers, including several American informants, then disappear over the horizon, only to return in a new formation, always coming from the same direction. This is repeated several times, leading the

Bruno Pontecorvo reappears at a press conference in the Soviet Union

Saratov, Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin was already passionate about aeronautics and took classes on flight theory and the structure of airplanes and their engines.

USSR. The Baikonur space base was built in 1955, purposely named after a town 350 kilometers to the north, in the hope that the Americans would hit the wrong Baikonur. Korolev wanted it as far south as possible (an indication of his civilian priority), while

Soviet Union. The military takes control of the Tyura-tam base (which later becomes the Baikonur Cosmodrome).

Barbaricina, Tuscany. Adriano Olivetti brings Mario Tchou to the company and tasks him with forming a working group that, in collaboration with the University of Pisa, aims to design and build an all-Italian electronic calculator, at Enrico Fermi’s suggestion. This will use the 150 million

Finland. The Soviet Red Army abandons the last Soviet military base on Finnish soil.

Britain decides to withdraw from negotiations to form a European economic union. Contrary to British expectations, the remaining six nations reach an agreement, creating the European Community in 1957, without Britain.

Salvador Dalí painted Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus). It depicts Christ on a cross depicted as the development of a tesseract, a four-dimensional cube developed in three dimensions.

The first transistor radio was released, and 150,000 units were sold. It was the Regency TR-1, made by the Regency Division of IDEA (Industrial Development Engineering Associates) in Indianapolis, Indiana. It cost $49.95. It used four Texas Instruments NPN transistors mounted on a printed circuit

First Taiwan Crisis over the possession of the tiny fortified islands of Quemoy, Matsu, and other rocks off the Chinese coast. Mao orders heavy bombing of Quemoy. Two American officers die under the bombs. Three American aircraft carriers deploy to the Strait. Members of the

Anti-French uprising by the National Liberation Front begins in Algeria

End of the First Indochina War

The Gray Board’s verdict in the Security Hering v. Oppenheimer case arrives: the Gray Board determines (by a two-to-one vote) that Robert Oppenheimer is a loyal and law-abiding citizen but, at the same time, could pose a security risk; Evans, a member of the commission

In preparation for the Int’l Geophysical Year, Mikhail Tikhonravov, in consultation with Valentin Glushko and mathematician Mstislav Keldysh, and at the urging of Sergei Korolev, wrote Report on Artificial Satellite of the Earth. Chapter III describes a lunar mission. The race to the Moon will

The Soviet government officially launches the development program for their first ICBM ballistic missile: the R-7 (American name: SS-6). It is headed by Korolev.

Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy gives a speech on radio and television in which he attacks President Eisenhower head-on.

Trieste is the scene of violent clashes, resulting in deaths and injuries. Mayor Bartoli, on the 35th anniversary of the landing of Italian soldiers in the city, intends to raise the Italian flag on the town hall. General Winterton opposes this (Zone A is still

Washington DC is a city in the grip of a witch hunt

William Fowler’s team experimentally finds the hidden energy level of Carbon, which is necessary to enable stars to produce heavy elements (which we are made of); this energy level had already been theoretically predicted by Fred Hoyle.

First color TV in the USA

After 4 years of research, Jay Forrester and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology install memory cells with a magnetic core on the Whirlwind computer, achieving 6us of access time (half of what was previously achieved).

Kinsey publishes the famous treatise “Sexual behavior in the human female” which locates the primary site of stimulation of the female orgasm in the chlorophyll, making this information available even to those men who for whatever reason had not arrived there on their own through

Willard Rockwell founds Rockwell

Kaesong, Korea. The Korean War ceasefire is signed. Representatives of the UN, the United States, North Korea, and China sign. The treaty states “ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.”

Cuba. The Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba are attacked. The attempt fails, and Fidel Castro and his men are among those arrested. Fidel’s mother rushes to Santiago and contacts Galician Archbishop Enrique Perez Serantes, begging him to pressure her son’s life. Before the court,

Execution of the Rosenbergs

President Eisenhower approved the shipment of nuclear cores by sea for overseas assembly of atomic bombs, where permitted by agreements with the host countries. Dispersing the bomb parts across dozens of different locations around the globe would make their immediate destruction difficult.

After a drunken bout, Stalin falls to the ground due to illness, no one helps him for hours, for fear of the dictator’s power found in such a condition; he will die a few days later.

Ike Eisenhower, newly inaugurated, sent several secret messages to Mao and the Chinese, through three emissaries and diplomatic channels, including Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The message stated that if the Korean War did not end soon, the United States might resort to the ultimate

Truman, as outgoing president, delivers a televised address to the nation, in which he cites “the eighth year of the atomic age,” and (prophetically) “Soviet expansionist aims have been checked, and sooner or later the time must come for change in the Soviet Union, from

Eniwetok Atoll, Operation Ivy, “King” detonation, released from an aircraft at 450 meters, 500 ktons, the largest and most efficient fission bomb ever detonated; before King, it was believed that the problem of the critical mass of uranium would limit the yield of fission bombs

To enable the design and construction of the Teller-Ulam H-bomb, a computer, the MANIAC (Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator, and Computer), was built.

Robert Heinlein writes the novel “The Rolling Stone” where a spacecraft launched from the Moon uses a flyby with the Earth to reach Mars

The British evacuate the Suez Canal zone

Helsinki Olympics

Michael Ventris publishes Work Note 20, a turning point in the long quest to understand Linear B. The tablets had been found by Sir Arthur Evans 52 years earlier. Ventris notices that certain sequences of symbols appear frequently, and hypothesizes that they are the names

Gordon Teal of Texas Instruments, manufactures the first Shockley-designed silicon NPN transistor.

Buzz Aldrin, a future member of Apollo 11, shoots down his first Soviet MiG in Korea; his camera footage will be published in LIFE and will be the first of a Russian pilot caught in the act of ejecting during a dogfight in Korea; Aldrin

The first jet airliner entered service, marking the first commercial use of jet engines: the British De Havilland Comet I. But there were problems: the first disaster occurred in January 1954, when the plane broke up mid-air over the Mediterranean Sea 20 minutes after takeoff

First Atlantic crossing by helicopter: Sikorsky S55

The AEDS (Atomic Energy Detonation System) begins its worldwide deployment. It is a network of seismometers designed to identify and locate potential adversary nuclear explosions.

Buzz Aldrin, with his F-86 Interceptor, member of the 51st Fighter Wing, arrives in Korea

Pope Pius XII gives a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, where he alludes to the possibility that the Big Bang may be science’s discovery of the divine creation of the world. At this point, Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest and scientist who contributed

The Po River bursts its banks: flooding in the Polesine area: 200 dead, 180,000 evacuated

London. The Conservatives win the elections, and Winston Churchill returns to lead the government with renewed energy, despite being in his seventies. On the other side of the Atlantic, in the Special Relationship, Ike Eisenhower returns, albeit wary of his British ally. Churchill will promote

North Korea. Mao orders the army to enter North Korea. Stalin promises logistical support and air cover.

The UN resolution “United for Peace” decides to continue UN military operations on North Korean territory.

Allied troops siege Seoul: 536 Americans die, with another 21,000 North Korean casualties, including deaths and prisoners; the South Korean capital, although liberated, is devastated.

South Korea. To the Chinese’s great surprise, the Americans immediately decide to intervene in the conflict and send troops to defend the port of Busan.

Chinese and North Korean troops invade South Korea: the United States intervenes at the request of the UN. 1.5 million dead: 33,629 Americans, 58,809 South Koreans, and 95,772 UN personnel (including Americans and South Koreans), 214,000 North Koreans, 404,401 reported Chinese deaths (probably many more),