50 Fun Facts About 1956

Which tiny European state gained a Hollywood princess when Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III in April 1956?

Monaco's new princess gave up Hollywood for the role: Grace Kelly retired from acting at age 26 to marry Rainier III.

Which Elvis Presley single, inspired by a news story of a lonely man's death, was his first million-seller in 1956?

Heartbreak Hotel topped the Billboard Top 100 for seven weeks. It was Presley's first single for his new label, RCA Victor.

Which waterway did Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalise in 1956, prompting an invasion by Britain, France and Israel?

The Suez Canal stayed closed from October 1956 to March 1957, and the crisis brought international humiliation for Britain and France.

Which Australian city hosted the 1956 Summer Olympics, the first Games ever staged in the Southern Hemisphere?

Melbourne staged the only Summer Games ever held in November and December, timed to catch the warm weather of the southern spring.

Which Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright left his first wife to marry film star Marilyn Monroe in June 1956?

Arthur Miller was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee that same month and refused to name names, earning a contempt conviction that was later overturned.

Which actor played Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic The Ten Commandments, then the costliest film ever made?

Charlton Heston won the part partly for his resemblance to Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses. His three-month-old son Fraser played the baby in the basket.

Which president, a veteran of a 1919 Army road convoy, signed the 1956 act that created the Interstate Highway System?

Dwight D. Eisenhower approved 41,000 miles of interstates, at the time the largest public works project in American history.

Which modeling compound, first made as a wallpaper cleaner, reached department stores as a children's toy in 1956?

Play-Doh was devised to lift coal soot off wallpaper. When demand for the cleaner shrank after the war, it was reworked for Cincinnati schools.

Whose Sunday-night variety show drew about 60 million viewers when Elvis Presley first appeared on it in September 1956?

Ed Sullivan was not there to see it. He was recovering from a car accident, so actor Charles Laughton hosted the night.

Which phrase, first stamped on a two-cent coin in 1864, became the official national motto of the United States in 1956?

In God We Trust displaced E pluribus unum, which had served as the unofficial motto ever since the Great Seal was first designed.

Which team's Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956?

New York Yankees pitcher Larsen needed just 97 pitches to retire all 27 batters, and only one Dodger even reached a three-ball count.

Which heavyweight boxing champion retired in April 1956 aged 32, with a perfect record of 49 wins and no defeats?

Rocky Marciano walked away as an undefeated champion, and 43 of his 49 wins ended in knockouts.

Which switch-hitting slugger won baseball's Triple Crown in 1956, leading the majors in average, home runs and RBIs?

Mickey Mantle hit .353 with 52 home runs and 130 RBIs, and he later called that season his favorite summer.

Which Spanish club beat Stade de Reims 4-3 in Paris in June 1956 to win the first European Cup final?

Real Madrid trailed 2-0 inside ten minutes before fighting back, and the club went on to win the first five European Cups in a row.

Which European capital staged the 1956 Olympic equestrian events because Australia would not relax its horse quarantine?

Stockholm held the riding events in June, five months before the rest of the Games began on the far side of the globe.

Which Soviet leader denounced Joseph Stalin's purges in a closed-door speech to a party congress in February 1956?

Nikita Khrushchev's address became known as the Secret Speech because the session was shut to journalists and classified as not for publication.

Which Central European capital saw an uprising against communist rule crushed by Soviet tanks in November 1956?

Budapest's street fighters met the tanks with small arms and Molotov cocktails. Nearly a quarter of a million people fled the country afterwards.

Which Alabama city's buses were desegregated in December 1956, ending a boycott sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks?

Montgomery's boycotters ran their own carpools. When local insurers were pressured to drop the cars, the leaders arranged cover at Lloyd's of London.

Which Italian ocean liner sank off Nantucket in July 1956 after colliding with a Swedish ship in thick fog?

Andrea Doria stayed afloat for over 11 hours after the collision, long enough for 1,660 of the 1,706 people on board to be rescued.

Which Democrat, a former governor of Illinois, lost the 1956 presidential election in a landslide rematch of 1952?

Adlai Stevenson won a tight primary battle against Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver, who then joined the ticket as his running mate.

Which musical based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion opened on Broadway in 1956 with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews?

My Fair Lady won six Tony Awards and set a record for the longest run of any Broadway musical up to that time.

Which country hosted the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 and also won it, with singer Lys Assia?

Switzerland was one of only seven countries taking part, and each sent two songs, something no later contest has repeated.

Which actress and author was born in October 1956 to Hollywood star Debbie Reynolds and a chart-topping singer?

Carrie Fisher grew up to star as Princess Leia in Star Wars, and later appeared with her mother in the documentary Bright Lights.

Which actor, born in Concord, California, in July 1956, later won back-to-back Best Actor Oscars in the 1990s?

Tom Hanks won for Philadelphia and then for Forrest Gump a year later, playing a lawyer with AIDS and then the film's title character.

Which Boston Celtics great, born in Indiana in December 1956, was nicknamed the Hick from French Lick?

Larry Bird was born in West Baden Springs and raised in nearby French Lick, where his mother worked two jobs to support her six children.

Which Swedish tennis star, born in June 1956, won five straight Wimbledon titles and quit the sport in his mid-twenties?

Björn Borg also won six French Opens, and his 1980 Wimbledon final against John McEnroe is considered one of the greatest matches ever played.

Which 1956 adventure film, produced by Broadway showman Mike Todd, won the Academy Award for Best Picture?

Around the World in 80 Days was the first film its producer had ever made, and it won five Academy Awards.

Which actor won an Oscar for the 1956 film The King and I after playing the same role in the Broadway musical?

Yul Brynner played the king 4,625 times on stage, and kept the shaved head he adopted for the part as a personal trademark.

Which country singer wrote I Walk the Line backstage in Texas in 1956 and scored his first number-one hit with it?

Johnny Cash hummed between the verses to find his pitch, because the song made him change key several times.

Which singer's 1956 album Calypso, home of the Banana Boat Song, spent 31 weeks at number one in America?

Harry Belafonte's Calypso is credited as the first long-playing album to sell one million copies.

Which Texas ranching epic, released in 1956 with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, was James Dean's final film?

Giant earned Dean a second, posthumous Oscar nomination, because he was killed in a car crash before the film was released.

Which 1956 John Ford Western stars John Wayne as a Confederate veteran whose niece is abducted by Comanches?

The Searchers was named the greatest American Western by the American Film Institute in 2008.

Which 1956 science-fiction film introduced Robby the Robot and loosely echoes Shakespeare's The Tempest?

Forbidden Planet was also the first film of any genre to use an entirely electronic musical score.

In the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, emotionless copies of a town's residents emerge from what?

Seed pods grown from alien spores copy the people sleeping nearby, and the film gave American slang the phrase pod people.

Which 1956 Civil War-era Western, first titled The Reno Brothers, gave Elvis Presley his acting debut?

Love Me Tender was renamed after advance sales of his ballad of that name passed one million. It was the only film in which he lacked top billing.

Which MGM musical starring Judy Garland was shown on American television for the first time in November 1956?

The Wizard of Oz aired as the last installment of the CBS anthology series Ford Star Jubilee, and it was not rebroadcast until 1959.

Which game show premiered on NBC in November 1956 with host Bill Cullen and contestants bidding on merchandise prizes?

The Price Is Right had four players bid auction-style, each trying to come closest to a prize's retail value without going over it.

Which star sang the Oscar-winning Que Sera, Sera in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much?

Doris Day starred opposite James Stewart, and the tune became her signature song and later the theme of her own television show.

Which horror star, who died in August 1956, was buried wearing his full Dracula costume, cape and ring?

Bela Lugosi never asked for the cape. His son and former wife Lillian made the choice, believing it was what he would have wanted.

Which French actress became an overnight sensation in Roger Vadim's 1956 film And God Created Woman?

Brigitte Bardot was married to the director at the time, and most American prints of the film were heavily edited to satisfy the censors.

Which Beat poet's 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems led to an obscenity trial for its San Francisco publisher?

Allen Ginsberg's publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights, was arrested with his bookstore manager for selling obscene literature.

Which 1956 novel by Grace Metalious about a small town's scandalous secrets spent 59 weeks on the bestseller list?

Peyton Place sold 60,000 copies in its first ten days, and its title became American shorthand for any town hiding scandal.

Which American painter, famous for his drip technique, died aged 44 in a single-car crash in August 1956?

Jackson Pollock made his best-known paintings between 1947 and 1950, laying each canvas on the studio floor so he could work from all sides.

Which name did John McCarthy pick for a new field of study, launched at a 1956 summer workshop at Dartmouth College?

Artificial intelligence was named by a young mathematics professor planning a seminar for about ten people, now seen as the field's founding event.

Which country dropped the British monarch as head of state in 1956 to become an Islamic republic?

Pakistan was then made up of two separate wings, East and West, and its first constitution was suspended just two years later.

Which yacht carried Fidel Castro's band of 82 rebels from Mexico to Cuba in November 1956?

Granma is an affectionate English word for a grandmother, and the yacht is said to have been named for its previous owner's.

Which rockabilly singer wrote Blue Suede Shoes, which became Sun Records' first million-selling single in 1956?

Carl Perkins was injured in a road crash on his way to perform it on Perry Como's TV show, where he was due to be handed a gold record.

Which footballer won the first Ballon d'Or in 1956 at the age of 41?

Stanley Matthews played in England's top division until he was 50, and he is the only player to be knighted while still playing.

Which Italian resort, originally awarded the cancelled 1944 Games, finally hosted the Winter Olympics in early 1956?

Cortina d'Ampezzo saw Austrian skier Toni Sailer become the first person to sweep all three alpine events at a single Olympics.

Which elusive particle, predicted by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, did Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines detect in 1956?

Neutrino is Italian for little neutral one, a name coined as a joke to tell the lightweight particle apart from the heavy neutron.