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...
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...
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...
Humphrey Bogart Dies
https://youtu.be/KIHPx-Pj15s Humphrey DeForest Bogart - December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957 Bogart’s breakthrough to stardom came with High Sierra (1941) and The Maltese Falcon (1941). His private detectives, Sam Spade (in The Maltese Falcon) and Phillip Marlowe in...
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....
War for Algerian Independence
https://youtu.be/10gK2Gbfbp4 The Algerian War was fought between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) from 1954 to 1962 with Algeria ultimately winning independence. The war was characterized by guerrilla...
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...
Big Four Meeting in Geneva Reduces International Tension
https://youtu.be/1KURFzVpqm4 The stated mission of the November 1955 Geneva summit was to reduce international tensions between the leaders of "Big Four" nations France, Great Britain, USA and USSR. The world leaders discussed issues on security,...
President Eisenhower’s Open Skies Proposal Rejected
https://youtu.be/4DH3c9WJMQU The concept of "mutual aerial observation" initially proposed to Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin at the Geneva Conference of 1955 by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was promptly rejected by the USSR...
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...