1956

This notion probably had its seed in the rapid rise of mass media, especially television, and the increasing sophistication of marketing (both commercial and propagandistic). Some people thought it was in everyone's best interest to believe that good, clean consumerism was the only powerful force at work in the world. In the USA at least, those people were working hard to concoct the image of tranquility that now passes for fifties nostalgia.

In truth, the decade of the fifties was no exception to the rule of dizzying change that marked the rest of the twentieth century. I take you back now to 1956, in which, for instance...

• Fats Domino, Perry Como, Little Richard, Dean Martin, The Platters, Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Benny Goodman Trio, Mitch Miller, Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, Doris Day, Bill Haley and the Comets, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Harry Belafonte, Lawrence Welk, Count Basie, and Jerry Lewis all have Top Forty hit singles.
• Samuel J. Seymour, the last eyewitness to the death of Abraham Lincoln dies.
• 25 people are hospitalized after a melee at a Bill Haley concert in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
• Construction begins on Brasilia, Brazil.
• Elvis Presley has his first #1 hit (Hound Dog), his first Gold Record (Heartbreak Hotel), his first Gold Album (Elvis Presley), and his first movie (Love Me Tender). Nobody has ever heard of him before, but of the top 20 hit singles of 1956, five are his.
• Bob Dylan gets his first motorcycle (a Harley-Davidson 74) at age 15.
• World's first large scale nuclear power plant (50 megawatts) begins operation at Calder Hall in England.
• First fully enclosed shopping mall opens in Edina, Minnesota.
• Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev publicly denounces Stalin, begins official policy of "de-Stalinization" in the Soviet Union. Coins phrase "peaceful coexistence".
• Khrushchev tells Western diplomats: "Whether you like it our not, history is on our side. We will bury you."
• Soviet tanks and troops crush a popular democratic uprising against the communist regime in Hungary.
• Rioting in London and Sydney associated with the movie Rock Around the Clock.
• Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson told: "You have all the thinking people on your side". Replies: "Fine, but I need a majority."
• Dwight Eisenhower, along with his vice president, Richard Nixon, re-elected for second term.
• Marilyn Monroe marries Arthur Miller.
• Congress approves Highway Act, which authorizes construction of the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
• First ground based measurements of ozone begun at Halley Bay, Antarctica.
• Artist Jackson Pollock dies at age 44.
• IBM founder Thomas J. Watson dies at age 82.
• IBM debuts the 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), a disk storage system for computers. It sports fifty 24-inch platters and can store up to five megabytes of data. Price $50,000.
• First transatlantic telephone cable goes into operation.
• Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria sinks after colliding with another vessel.
• William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain share the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect".
• John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky organize a conference at Dartmouth College on the concept of "Artificial Intelligence", a term they coined.
• A U.S. bomber crashes into a storage igloo containing three Mark 6 nuclear bombs at Lakenheath Royal Air Force base in the United Kingdom. Oops.
• Ampex releases the first practical videotape recorder for commercial use.
• Suez Canal Crisis unfolds - US backs out of deal with Egypt to bankroll Aswan Dam. Egypt seizes Suez Canal. Israel invades Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, and British and French forces attack Egyptian bases around the Suez Canal. U.S. Chief of Naval Operations tells Sixth Fleet: “Situation tense; prepare for imminent hostilities.” Sixth Fleet commander responds: “Am prepared for imminent hostilities, but whose side are we on?” US and Soviet Union help negotiate a cease-fire, but continue to advance naval firepower into the area. Canadian external affairs minister, Lester Pearson, suggests creation of UN Emergency Force to keep peace. Pearson will win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for this idea.
• Supreme Court declares Alabama's segregation law unconstitutional. Montgomery Bus Boycott ends.
• Steve Buscemi, Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks born. Clint Eastwood appears in his fifth through eighth movies. Stanley Kubrick directs his sixth - The Killing.
• Giant, with James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor is released a year after Dean's death at age 24. Dean's most famous quote is "Live fast; die young; leave a good-looking corpse", but he also said "Dream as though you'll live forever; live as though you'll die today."
• Released from jail in Mexico, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara return to Cuba, where the Revolution now begins.
• Pakistan becomes Islamic Republic with the adoption of a constitution. This will last only two years, as martial law is declared and the constitution abrogated in 1958.
• Professional wrestler Lou Thesz loses, then regains the National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight Title that he had held for the previous eight years.
• Profiles in Courage, by John F. Kennedy published.
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti, of City Lights Bookstore, charged with obscenity for publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems.
• Albert Camus publishes The Fall.
• Jack Kerouac signs publishing deal for On the Road.
• The pager is invented.