1950s


Events and Trends

   * Bruce Heezen discovers the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
   * Korean War
   * Polio Vaccine
   * Sputnik
   * Brylcreem and other hair tonics have a period of popularity
   * Television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized
     countries.
   * In West, generation traumatized by Great Depression and World War II
     creates culture with emphasis on normality and calm conformity
   * "Economic miracle" in West Germany.
   * Red Scare, McCarthy Hearings
   * Hydrogen Bomb
   * Wartime Rationing ends in the United Kingdom
   * Suez Crisis
   * European Common Market founded.
   * Warsaw pact founded.
   * Hungarian revolution of 1956 brutally surpressed by Soviet Union's
     troops.
   * Fidel Castro gains power in Cuba.
   * Juvenile Deliquency said to be at unprecedented epidemic proportions in
     USA
   * Traditional pop music reaches its climax; early Rock and roll music
     embraced by teenagers/youth culture while generally dismissed or
     condemned by older generation.
   * Beatnik culture/ The Beat Generation
   * Optimistic visions of semi-Utopian technological future including such
     devices as the flying car.
   * The Day the Earth Stood Still hits movie theaters.
   * Along with the appearance of the sentence Kilroy was here across the
     United States, graffiti as an art form develops, especially among urban
     African Americans; graffiti art eventually becomes one of the four
     elements of hip hop

World Leaders

   * Chairman Mao Zedong (People's Republic of China)
   * President Chiang Kai-shek (Republic of China on Taiwan)
   * President Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt)
   * Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (India)
   * Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Israel)
   * Emperor Hirohito (Japan)
   * Pope Pius XII
   * Pope John XXIII
   * Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union)
   * Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union)
   * King George VI (United Kingdom)
   * Queen Elizabeth II (United Kingdom)
   * Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)
   * Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden (United Kingdom)
   * Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (United Kingdom)
   * President Harry S. Truman (United States)
   * President Dwight D. Eisenhower (United States)
   * Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (West Germany)
   * Taoiseach John A. Costello (Republic of Ireland)
   * Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Republic of Ireland)
   * Taoiseach Sean Lemass (Republic of Ireland)

Entertainers

   * Abbott and Costello
   * Chuck Berry
   * Marlon Brando
   * Jimmy Dean
   * Ava Gardner
   * Audrey Hepburn
   * Alfred Hitchcock
   * Buddy Holly
   * Jerry Lewis
   * Dean Martin
   * Groucho Marx
   * Marilyn Monroe
   * Paul Newman
   * Elvis Presley
   * Little Richard
   * James Stewart
   * Elizabeth Taylor
   * John Wayne