1950s

Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s - 1950s - 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Years: 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

• 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 suppressed by Soviet Union's troops.
• Fidel Castro gains power in Cuba.
• Juvenile Delinquency 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
• Prime Minister Basil Brooke (Northern Ireland)
• Taoiseach John A. Costello (Republic of Ireland)
• Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Republic of Ireland)
• Taoiseach Sean Lemass (Republic of Ireland)
• 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)

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
• Gale Storm
• Elizabeth Taylor
• John Wayne

See also: List of rock and roll albums in the 1950s

Sports Figures

• Willie Mays
• Mickey Mantle
• Stan Musial
• Yogi Berra
• Otto Graham
• Johnny Unitas
• Jim Brown
• George Mikan
• Gordie Howe
• Maurice Richard
• Rocky Marciano
• Sugar Ray Robinson
• Stanley Matthews
• Lev Yashin

Referenced By