Topps Company started it's first baseball card series. The series consisted of two individual sets of 52 cards each.
The 1950s 20 year old outfielder Willie Mays joins N.Y. Giants Baseball team, while Joe DiMaggio retires from baseball.
Fifties Pop History 11,000 new books will debut this year. James Jones novel, From Here to Eternity is published.Buy the Book or Buy the Movie.Also popular this year: Look Younger, Live Longer by Gayelord Hauser.
The 1950s J.D. Salinger published Catcher in the Rye. More Info
Herman Wouk's Caine Mutiny, for which he will win the Pulitzer Prize, is published. Buy the Book or Buy the Movie
Also Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki Buy the Book or Buy the Documentary and Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. Buy the Book
Fifties Pop History Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his duties by President Truman, bade farewell to Congress. The MacArthur story.
The 1950s UNIVAC 1 First commercial computer. You've Got mail!
Fifties Pop History Florence Chadwick swims the English Channel from England to France in 16 hours.
The 1950s Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey called his counterpart mayor Frank Osborn in Alameda, California.
Fifties Pop History A.E.C. produces electricity from atomic energy.
The 1950s Swanson introduces beef, chicken, turkey pot pies. Hard to imagine there was life before this feast of gourmet treats.
Fifties Pop History The U.S. produced 100 million tons of steel and 400,000 lbs. of penicillin
The 1950s Maureen Connolly becomes the youngest woman to win the U.S. Open in tennis.
Fifties Pop History J. Andre-Thomas invents the first heart-lung machine, allowing advanced life-support during open-heart surgery.
The 1950s Oscar stuff Marlon Brando puts on an undershirt and stars in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in a big year for movies.
A cult classic debuts. The Day the Earth Stood Still. Buy the Movie DVD VHSThe robot was Gort and Michael Rennie communicated with him by saying Klaatu Barata Nikto.
Fifties Pop History American automobile manufacturer Chrysler Corporation introduces power steering., which they called Hydraguide.
The 1950s Yes! Tupperware!
Fifties Pop History Gerber Products starts using MSG (monsodium glutamate) in its baby foods to make them taste better.
The 1950s The first Jack-in-the-Box opens in San Diego.
Fifties Pop History There are 15,500,000 TV sets in 15,750,000 homes.
The 1950s In Sports... - Tom Fears, Otto Graham, Johnny Lujack, (football) and George Kell,Bob Lemon and Ralph Kiner (baseball) get their own Wheaties boxes!
Fifties Pop History American casualties in Korea by the end of 1951 - 15,000 dead and 75,000 wounded.
The 1950s Walt Disney's "Alice In Wonderland" released.Buy the VHS Buy the DVD
Fifties Pop History S&H Green Stamps get their start at the Denver store chain King Sooper.
The 1950s Taco holder thingee enables fast tacos! I'll explain
Fifties Pop History The U.S. Congress ratifies the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting presidents to two terms in office. (Some say that's still one too many.)
The 1950s Still camera gets built-in flash units.
Fifties Pop History The Temple Beth Israel of Meridian, Mississippi became the first Jewish congregation to allow women to perform the functions of a rabbi.
The 1950s A Crosley automobile with a steering wheel on the right side became the first such vehicle placed in service for mail delivery - in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Fifties Pop History The comic strip, Dennis the Menace, written by Hank Ketchum, debuts and is picked up by 750 newspapers.
The 1950s There are 900 fewer inmates in prison than the previous year. Although that still leaves 164,896 of 'em in jail.
Fifties Pop History Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted of selling atomic secrets to the Soviets.
The 1950s There are now 8.2 million trucks in the U.S.
Fifties Pop History The first section of the New Jersey Turnpike opens.
The 1950s 17 million Americans now own TV sets. Just in time for I Love Lucy and the Cisco Kid to debut.
Fifties Pop History Citation becomes the first race horse to earn more than one million dollars.
The 1950s There was a 30.7% business failure rate. Chart for 1946-1964
Fifties Pop History There were 36,996 motor vehicle related deaths.While in the air, there were 11 accidents resulting in 185 fatalities.
The 1950s Unemployment: 3.3%
Fifties Pop History Fifties Web contributor Tony Rogerson was born on 21/01/51 in a small industrial town called Widnes on the outskirts of Liverpool, England.
The 1950s US GNP (Gross National Product) is $329.6 billion
