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Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s - 1950s - 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Years: 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959
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.
- Anti-Communist uprising in Hungary brutally surpressed.
- 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 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)
Entertainers