Eniwetok Atoll, Operation HardTack I, “Wahoo” detonation underwater at 150m depth on a 1000m seabed, 9Kton

Eisenhower approves the WS117L (Weapon System 117L) program. This is the first space-based photographic reconnaissance system. It is managed by the U.S. Air Force and the CIA (CIA-managed projects generally have all-capitalized acronyms) and will evolve into the CORONA spy satellites (initially known to the public as Discoverer, as they were designed for scientific study).

Jack S. Kilby of Texas Instruments creates the first integrated circuit

In the article “Infrared and Optical Masers” in Physical Review, Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes of Bell Labs theorize the laser

In 1957 the Soviets launched 2 satellites, zero failures, the Americans zero satellites, one failure

John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and J. Robert Schrieffer show that electrons can form pairs whose quantum properties allow them to move without resistance: superconductivity.

Hugh Everett III proposes the Many-Worlds Interpretation: the entire universe splits at every measurement because of the R (probabilistic) part of quantum mechanics

Soon after the discovery of the P (Parity) violation, the C (Charge) parity violation was also discovered in reactions involving antimatter: the CP transformation was then introduced to pass from matter to antimatter.

Leon Lederman measures the helicity of the muon resulting from the decay of the pion and discovers that parity is not conserved! In other words, seeing the same reaction in a mirror, we can say with certainty that it is a mirror image (i.e., in our universe, it is impossible); this is the first breaking of parity symmetry in physics.

First formation round-the-world flight: B52 Octaturbogetto

Successful launch of the single-stage Thor rocket

International Geophysical Year (IGY): Both the Soviets (125) and the Americans (210) will launch satellites into space

Joe Kittinger and David Simons reached and exceeded the altitude of 30 km in their hot air balloons several times.

New Mexico. The navigator of a B-36 bomber loses his balance after an air pocket and grabs the first handhold he finds, the bomb’s manual release handle. It’s an H-bomb, fortunately without a nuclear core, which falls in a desert area not far from the Sandia laboratories. The incident won’t be made public immediately. At 11:50 a.m. local time, a U.S. Air Force B-36J-5-CF Peacemaker, 52-2816, was ferrying a Mark 17 ten-megaton thermonuclear device carrying a 42,000-pound hydrogen bomb from Biggs AFB, Texas, to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, when a crew member in the bomb bay was shaken by turbulence and inadvertently grabbed the bomb’s manual release lever to stabilize himself, accidentally releasing the hydrogen bomb and dropping it directly through the Peacemaker’s closed bomb doors, allowing the nuclear bomb to fall freely until impact 4.5 miles south of the Kirtland tower. The nuclear chain required for detonation fortunately did not occur, however, the non-nuclear high explosives detonated on impact, creating a 25-by-12-foot crater. The incident was revealed to the public in the 1980s.

The ABMA makes the crucial decision to use clustered engines, meaning multiple engines in the same stage rather than one large engine.

Soviet Union. The military takes control of the Plesetsk launch base.

The thesis committee accepts the doctoral thesis Hugh Everett, Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, a drastically rewritten and shortened version of the previous thesis The theory of the Universal Wave Function, which instead demonstrated the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

In Chelyabinsk, Urals, at the Mayak plant, a 100-ton container of radioactive cesium explodes: thousands of people die and the contaminated area is immense, but the full extent of the damage will only be discovered decades later; more than 2 million Curies are released into the environment.

At Brookhaven Laboratory, a particle accelerator is used to test the nature of neutrinos. The proton beam is fired at a beryllium target, producing pions (combined up and down quarks), which rapidly decay into muons and neutrinos. They then encounter a 13-meter steel barrier (made from the hull of a decommissioned battleship). The muons crash, and the neutrinos pass unscathed. Of the 100 trillion neutrinos passed, 51 are detected and generate a muon, never an electron. Muon neutrinos (of a muon flavor) are therefore different from electron neutrinos (of an electron flavor).

Israelis withdraw from occupied Sinai

The U.S. Navy contracts Swiss inventor Auguste Piccard for consulting and the use of the Trieste bathyscaphe, which is brought to San Diego, California. Two years later, it will be sent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Treaty of Rome: the European Economic Community (EEC), later the European Union (EU) was born

Independence of Ghana; first independent state in Black Africa

John von Neumann dies. He had been diagnosed with bone cancer and underwent emergency surgery two years earlier. Edward Teller, who was frequently at his side during his final days, reports that John was not only dedicated to his thoughts but benefited from them. Perhaps like no other. Unfortunately, the final stages of his illness affected his brain. Teller says he has never seen another human being suffer so much from a loss due to disease.

American Physical Society, New York. Leon Lederman announces the severe violation of parity in our universe. Pion decay creates a muon and a neutrino, which can have spin +1/2 or -1/2, but there are twice as many of one type as the other. The universe is slightly left-handed. (In other words, the laws of physics at the quantum level change when a reaction is mirrored, that is, when spatial coordinates are reversed. Therefore, unlike macroscopic reality, it is possible at the quantum level to tell whether an image is the real one or the mirrored one.) Why does this matter? When the universe formed in the Big Bang, it should have generated matter and antimatter in equal amounts, if nature treated them exactly the same, leaving behind nothing but energy for mutual annihilation. Yet, our matter-dominated universe exists. CP (Charge and Parity) violation is essential to explain this imbalance, although there are still many unsolved aspects.

China. Mao chills Western public opinion: “We must not fear atomic bombs and missiles. […] As for China, if the imperialists unleash war against us, we could lose more than three hundred million people. So what? War is war. Years will pass, and we will set to work to make even more children than before.”

USSR. The last German soldiers held captive in Russia return home, a full 12 years after the end of the war. Stalin had proclaimed an amnesty in 1950 for the Germans still held in the gulags, who had proven themselves good workers. Others had been reclassified as political prisoners and were only released by Khrushchev with another amnesty in 1957.

Battle of Algiers: French police action, with FLN reaction

Ike Eisenhower confirmed at the White House