US Minimum Wage Raised to $1 an Hour
https://youtu.be/ZvuujSUYamc The minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees. Most countries introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Supporters of the minimum...
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...
Assassination Attempt on Zhou Enlai
https://youtu.be/IWx6Q_qT9bU In April 1955, the Kashmir Princess, a chartered aircraft owned by Air India was damaged in midair by a bomb explosion and crashed into the South China Sea while en route to Jakarta, Indonesia. Sixteen of...
Microwave Oven
https://youtu.be/Fuo6bw5wyf8 American engineer Percy Spencer invented the modern microwave oven from radar technology developed during WWII. Named "Radarange," the oven went on sale in 1946. A microwave oven introduced by Tappan in 1955...
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...
Fall of French Indochina
https://youtu.be/ZMPNY9w8OmQ In May 1954 communist Viet Minh forces won a decisive victory over the French colonial army in the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ. The war ended shortly afterward with signing of the 1954 Geneva Accords in which France agreed to withdraw its...
Music Soothes the Post-War Soul
Popular music often seemed soft and soothing in 1954, the year after the tragic Korean War. https://youtu.be/BTIERquza6Q https://youtu.be/nVGt-qNQ4Os
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...
How Much is that Doggie in the Window?
How Much is that Doggie in the Window, written by the novelty tune specialist Bob Merrill and sung by Patti Paige, reached No. 1 on both the Billboard and Cash Box charts in 1953, and sold over two million copies.
Coup d’etat in British Guiana
https://youtu.be/b61zp4lQCHk In October 1953, the democratically elected People's Progressive Party (PPP) of British Guyana was removed from power by the British Government—its colonial ruler at that time. The overthrow of the PPP, which had won a landslide...
Post-Korean War Recession
https://theeconreview.com The recession of 1953 was the first recession occurring in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. With high expenditures to purchase equipment during the Korean War, the inflation rate in the U.S. soared up to 10%,...
American War Deaths Through History
Source: American war deaths through history CONFLICT SPAN CASUALTIES Revolutionary War 1775-1783 25,000 Northwest Indian War 1785-1795 ~1,056 Quasi-War 1798-1800 514 War of 1812 1812-1815 ~20,000 1st Seminole War 1817-1818 36 Black Hawk War 1832 305 2nd Seminole War...
Iranian Coup d’état
https://youtu.be/VlbRUwgASAQ In August 1953 a coup d'état overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favor of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The coup was...
Armistice Ends Korean War
The armistice signed on July 27, 1953, formally ended the war in Korea. North and South Korea remained separate and occupied almost the same territory they had when the war began. https://youtu.be/K1otXThthbk
Battle of Pork Chop Hill
The Battle of Pork Chop Hill comprised a pair of related Korean War battles fought between United Nations forces and the Chinese and North Korean armies from April through July 1953. Fought while the UN and the Chinese and North Koreans were negotiating...