istoryworld
All Events
An armistice ends the Korean War, leaving several million dead and a country divided either side of a military zone along the 38th parallel
The first Soviet hydrogen bomb is successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan
The Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh is removed from office in an armed coup sponsored by the CIA and Britain's MI6
Improved methods of testing prove conclusively that Piltdown Man was constructed by Charles Dawson from a human skull and the jaw of an ape
Cambodia wins independence from the colonial power, France
Secret-police chief Lavrenti Beria is executed by the new Soviet regime
Merce Cunningham forms his own company of dancers, initially at Black Mountain College in North Carolina
Molecular biologists Francis Crick and James Watson announce their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA
Churchill moves Harold Macmillan to a new department, as minister of defence
Baseball star Joe Dimaggio marries Marilyn Monroe, but the marriage lasts only a year
Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio, with Richard Burton as narrator
Senator McCarthy's Communist witch-hunt is broadcast live for several weeks on US television
Japanese film director Kurasawa Akira directs The Seven Samurai
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb', is investigated for Communist sympathies and his security clearance is withdrawn
The term Domino Theory is coined to reflect President Eisenhower's view of how states might fall to Communism
A painting by Graham Sutherland, commissioned for Winston Churchill's 80th birthday, does not meet with the full approval of the sitter or his wife
Bill Haley & His Comets record Rock Around the Clock, providing an early classic of US rock and roll
The German firm NSU builds the first working example of the rotary engine invented in 1924 by Felix Wankel
Hungarian photographer Robert Capa is killed by a land mine in Vietnam
Alfredo Stroessner seizes power in Paraguay, introducing three decades of repressive dictatorship
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends with the surrender to the Vietminh of 12,000 French troops
The French abandon Vietnam, leaving the country divided at the seventeenth parallel
Politician and author Winston Churchill completes his six-volume history The Second World War
The US Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in US schools is illegal
Oxford medical student Roger Bannister runs the first four-minute mile, at the Iffley Road track
