U.S. plan to explore space near the moon
https://youtu.be/38pfWCaSZ9Y During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union began to build powerful new rockets—which they would eventually use to send humans into space and, ultimately, to the moon. In 1958 NASA launched Project Mercury with three...
The Bridge on the River Kwai
https://youtu.be/RlC7XBayj0s At the 30th Academy Awards in 1958, The Bridge on the River Kwai won seven awards, including best picture of 1957. Its director, David Lean, and star Alec Guinness also received Oscars. The Bridge on the River Kwai was based on...
Elvis Joins the US Army
Elvis Aron Presley entered the United States Army at Memphis, Tennessee in March 1958. During his active military career Presley served as a member of two different armor battalions. At the 2d Medium Tank Battalion, 37th Armor in Fort Hood, Texas he completed basic...
Venezuelan Protesters Attack Nixon Cavalcade
In April-May1958, on a goodwill trip to Latin America, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in angry debates with student groups in Peru and Uruguay. Then, in Caracas, Venezuela, a large crowd pelted his car, smashing the windows. Nixon escaped from the crowd and...
Van Cliburn wins Moscow Competition
In April 1958, at the height of the Cold War, the Texan pianist, Van Cliburn won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Because the contest was intended to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority, the judges asked permission of Soviet leader Nikita...
USSR Declares Atomic Testing Halt
https://youtu.be/QrNN5ZhsC1I In March 1958 the Soviet Union declared it was halting tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs. It called on the other nuclear powers, the United States and Britain, to do the same. Moscow warned that it would resume testing if their example...
Unarmed Nuclear Bomb Dropped on South Carolina
https://youtu.be/u1s46O9FK-E In March 1958 a B-47 pilot accidentally grabbed the bomb bay door lever and released an unarmed nuclear bomb at 15,000 feet over the suburbs of Florence, South Carolina. The bomb's high explosives exploded on impact, wrecking a house and...
Teenage Fashion
https://youtu.be/zlJFOZMEIGI In the 1950s many teenage girls wore circle skirts with fitted blouses, wide belts, bobby socks and flat shoes emphasizing the hourglass shape... ETSY Casual girl's wear 1950s Pinterest Some teen boys were inspired by...
US Launches Explorer 1
https://youtu.be/NfMIrKkzRx8 In January 1958 the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency successfully launched a satellite using a Jupiter C rocket developed by Dr. Wernher von Braun. The satellite carried a cosmic ray detector designed to measure the radiation environment...
John Birch Society
https://youtu.be/mide9z5q_3c In 1958 the John Birch Society, an American ultraconservative political advocacy group was founded by retired candy manufacturer Robert Welch to promote anti-communism and social conservatism. At its height,...
The Stroll
https://youtu.be/UrGLNtZ0rEg The Stroll was a slow rock 'n' roll dance and a song popular in the late 1950s. Performed by The Diamonds, the Stroll reached No. 1 on the Cashbox chart, #4 on the U.S. pop chart, and #5 on the U.S. R&B...
Eisenhower Warns of Communist Threat
Text of January 1958 address: The threat to our safety, and to the hope of a peaceful world, can be simply stated. It is communist imperialism. This threat is not something imagined by critics of the Soviets. Soviet spokesmen, from the beginning, have publicly and...
Bobby Fischer US Chess Champion
The chess prodigy Bobby Fischer won the 1958 U.S. Championship at age 14. In the 1972 World Championship Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold...
Mao’s Great Leap Forward
https://youtu.be/60_Q-kAZbXA The Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign from 1958 to 1962 that was launched by Chairman Mao Zedong in an attempt to restructure the country from an...
SPUTNIK 1 ~ Fellow Traveler
https://youtu.be/xKuz7JmENek In October 1957 Sputnik 1 was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union. The satellite orbited for three weeks before its batteries ran out. It continued to orbit the planet for two months before it...
Tonight – Starring Jack Paar
https://youtu.be/c2m5kZ0p5x4 Although, as my fried Rodney pointed out, the YouTube picture above is NOT Jack Paar - the video actually is. Jack Harold Paar (1918 –2004) was an American talk show host, author, radio and television comedian, and film actor. After...
Arkansas National Guard Prevents School Desegregation
In September 1957, as a test of Brown v. Board of Education, nine Black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the Black students’ entry into the high...
Miss USA (a mother) Loses Her Title
After 18 year old Mary Leona Gage was crowned Miss USA in 1957, she was stripped of her title when it was revealed that she was married and the mother of two children.
John Glenn Sets Airspeed Record
In July 1957 Marine Corps Major John Glenn flew a Vought F8U Crusader, from Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in California to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York in three hours, 23 minutes, setting a transcontinental speed record: 725.55 mph.
Distant Early Warning Line
The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was the northernmost of three radar lines in Canada and Alaska. Designed to provide enough warning time of a nuclear attack to enable launching an effective counterattack, the DEW line was placed far north of the joint...
Have Gun – Will Travel
https://youtu.be/HYl20fyIptM Have Gun – Will Travel was an American Western series that was originally broadcast by CBS on both television and radio from 1957 through 1963. The television version of the series starring Richard Boone was rated number three or...
President Eisenhower Illness
Although Dwight Eisenhower was the first American president to release information about his health while in office, his physicians and staff often misled the public about his condition. Eisenhower began chain smoking cigarettes at West Point. As...
WEST SIDE STORY
https://youtu.be/C_IvknEFZGs The musical West Side Story, conceived by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, was inspired by William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Set in the mid-1950s in...
Hurricane Audrey
Hurricane Audrey, one of the srongest tropical storms ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, was also among the deadliest tropical cyclones in U.S. history, killing at least 416 people in its devastation of the southwestern Louisiana coast in...
American Bandstand
American Bandstand premiered locally in late March 1952 as Bandstand on Philadelphia television station WFIL-TV as a television adjunct to a radio show of the same name on WFIL radio,. In August 1957, the show was picked up...