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...
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...
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...
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...
Eisenhower Doctrine
https://youtu.be/1N1_JGG4XX8 In January 1957 President Eisenhower declared that US forces could be deployed to protect the territorial integrity and political independence of nations from overt armed aggression by any nation controlled by international communism....
Suez Canal Crisis
In June 1956 the 74-year British occupation of the Suez Canal ended. In July 1956 the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. In October 1956 Israeli brigades invaded Egypt and advanced toward the canal, routing Egyptian forces....
US Hydrogen Bomb Dropped Over Bikini Atoll
In May 1956 the United States conducted the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb. Dropped from a B-52 bomber over the island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons...
Selective Service Act extended
https://youtu.be/wGQzbDyty2A The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 was passed by Congress in September 1940, establishing the first peacetime conscription in United States history The Selective Service Act of 1948 created the basis...
Britain Decides to Develop Thermonuclear Weapons
https://youtu.be/0RNwR1Sewh8 Great Britain successfully tested an atomic bomb in Operation Hurricane in October 1952, becoming the world's third nuclear power. However, in November 1952, the United States conducted Ivy Mike, the first successful...
First US Advisors Sent to South Vietnam
https://youtu.be/qtaX8MIimwE After WWII, American Cold War policy was based on the "domino theory”— if one country fell to communism, the surrounding countries would fall, like dominoes. The Eisenhower administration was worried that the potential fall of Vietnam...
President Eisenhower upholds use of atomic weapons
https://youtu.be/DqFhDplE1PI In March 1955 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told reporters “... in the event of [a] general war in the Far East, we would probably make use of some tactical small atomic weapons.” When asked to comment the following day at a press...
West Germany joins North Atlantic Treaty Organization
https://youtu.be/0rICHFt7Gg4 In 1949, the Americans, British, and French combined their zones of occupation in West Germany to establish the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany). The Soviets responded by forming the Deutsche Demokratische Republik...
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization – SEATO
https://youtu.be/6_Hb8IDU4Tk Wikipedia In September 1954 the United States, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Although most of the SEATO member states were...
Coup D’état in Guatemala
https://youtu.be/uVkthJcKQxg In June 1954, Operation PBSuccess (a covert operation directed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) orchestrated the invasion of Guatemala from Honduras by a force of Guatemalan mercenaries. The successful coup d'état deposed...
First Taiwan Strait Crisis
In August 1954 the Communist People's Republic of China attacked several islands located a few miles from mainland China in the Taiwan Strait that were held by the Nationalist Republic of China. Wikipedia In January 1955, the Formosa Resolution was...
Eisenhower Describes Domino Theory
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower described the domino theory during an April 1954, news conference, when referring to communism in Indochina. The geopolitical theory stated that if one country fell to a communist takeover, the surrounding...
Edward R. Murrow vs. Joseph McCarthy
Edward Roscoe Murrow was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent who first gained radio prominence with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe during WWII. In the spring of 1954 the US Senate held a series of hearings to investigate...
USS Nautilus – First Nuclear-Powered Submarine
Named after both Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the WWII submarine USS Nautilus (SS-168) ,the new nuclear-powered Nautilus was launched in 1954. Because the USS Nautilus nuclear propulsion allowed prolonged submersion...
Nationwide Atom Bomb Drills
The development of the H-bomb committed the United States to an arms race with the Soviet Union. Despite the specter of nuclear holocaust, both the United States and the Soviet Union vied to build ever more powerful nuclear weapons. The Federal Civil Defense...
Atoms for Peace
https://youtu.be/CQ0bd4cShs8 In December 1953 , Preident Eisenhower delivered his "Atoms for Peace" address to the UN. He called on both the US and Soviet Union to abandon their nuclear arsenals. The "Atoms for Peace" program spread nuclear technology to nations that...
Memorial Day
Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 1953 May 21, 1953By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation Whereas the bodies of our war dead lie buried in hallowed plots throughout the land, and it has long been our custom to decorate their graves on...
Transcontinental Non-stop Flight
https://youtu.be/sfwb9piy9WQ In November 1953 American Airlines began the 1st regular non-stop commercial NY-LA air service with the Douglas DC7 . yesterdays airlines.com 1932 First scheduled cross-country passenger flights with no change of plane 1933...
MiG-15 Pilot Flees to South Korea
https://youtu.be/bFzEp0vuC7Y Operation Moolah - in 1953 U.S forces in Korea offered $100,00 and political asylum to the first pilot who defected to South Korea with a combat-capable MiG-15. In September 1953, a MiG- 15 piloted by Senior Lt. No Kum-Sok of the North...