50 Fun Facts About 1957

Which Soviet satellite, a polished sphere launched in October 1957, became the first artificial object to orbit Earth?

Sputnik 1 was only 58 cm across, yet its radio pulses were easily picked up by amateur operators, and its orbit carried it over virtually the entire inhabited Earth.

Which stray dog from the streets of Moscow became the first animal to orbit Earth in November 1957?

Laika died from overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit. Soviet scientists chose Moscow strays because they assumed such dogs had already learned to endure cold and hunger.

To which Southern state capital did President Eisenhower send the 101st Airborne in 1957 to escort nine Black students?

Little Rock became a test of federal power after Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to keep the students out of Central High. Eisenhower then took the Guard out of his control.

Which 1957 Dr. Seuss book was written with just 236 different words to replace dull school reading primers?

The Cat in the Hat grew out of a request from an education publisher for a more entertaining primer. Its author later said it was the book he was proudest of.

Which musical opened on Broadway in 1957, moving Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to rival New York street gangs?

West Side Story marked the Broadway debut of lyricist Stephen Sondheim. A backers' audition that spring failed to raise any money, and a producer pulled out two months before rehearsals.

Which toy got its name in 1957 after Wham-O learned students were tossing a Connecticut bakery's empty pie tins?

Frisbee was Wham-O's new name for the Pluto Platter, a plastic disc it had bought the rights to that January. The bakery was the Frisbie Pie Company, which supplied pies to Yale.

Which mansion did Elvis Presley buy in March 1957 for $102,500, after giving his parents a house-hunting budget?

Graceland was named after Grace Toof, daughter of the Memphis printer who once owned the land. Presley had asked his parents to find a farmhouse-like property with space around it.

Which food did a 1957 BBC April Fools' report show a Swiss family harvesting from trees after a mild winter?

Spaghetti was still an exotic delicacy in 1950s Britain, known mainly from tins. Hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC the next day, some asking how to grow a tree of their own.

Which national motto first appeared on United States paper money in 1957, on the one-dollar silver certificate?

In God We Trust had been on American coins since 1864, starting with the two-cent piece, so only the banknotes needed changing. Congress had declared it the national motto a year earlier.

Which fast-food burger did James McLamore create in 1957, after seeing a Florida rival succeed with a larger sandwich?

The Whopper first sold for 37 cents at Burger King, the chain McLamore co-founded. He got the idea from a restaurant in Gainesville that was thriving on bigger burgers.

Which sitcom about Ward and June Cleaver's two sons premiered on CBS in October 1957, then moved to ABC?

Leave It to Beaver was dropped by CBS after one season. Censors held back its intended pilot because the episode had to show a toilet, where the boys hide a pet alligator.

Which CBS sitcom ended in May 1957 as the first program to finish its run atop the Nielsen ratings?

I Love Lucy was the most-watched show in America in four of its six seasons. In the final season the Ricardos left their Manhattan apartment for Westport, Connecticut.

Which courtroom drama starring Raymond Burr as a Los Angeles defense lawyer began its CBS run in September 1957?

Perry Mason first appeared in the detective fiction of Erle Stanley Gardner, and many of the television episodes were based on stories he had written.

Which host fronted American Bandstand when ABC took the Philadelphia teen dance show national in August 1957?

Dick Clark went on to present the show for over three decades. It had begun in 1952 as a local programme called Bandstand, and it left Philadelphia for Los Angeles in 1964.

Which actor won an Oscar as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, the highest-grossing film of 1957?

Alec Guinness thought about flying straight home when director David Lean greeted him in Ceylon with a reminder that he was not the first choice. The two later rowed over how to play the part.

Which 1957 film, produced by its star Henry Fonda, follows a jury deliberating over a teenager charged with murder?

12 Angry Men was shot in 21 days and came in under its modest budget, helped by two weeks of rehearsal before the cameras rolled.

Which Elvis Presley film premiered in Memphis in October 1957, months after co-star Judy Tyler died in a road accident?

Jailhouse Rock left its star so devastated by Tyler's death that he refused to watch it. He had devised his own moves for the title dance sequence after disliking the choreographer's steps.

Where do Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr agree to reunite in the 1957 romance An Affair to Remember?

The Empire State Building meeting never happens on the day: Terry is struck by a car as she hurries there. Director Leo McCarey was remaking his own 1939 film Love Affair.

Which Disney film released on Christmas Day 1957 follows a boy and a stray dog in post-Civil War Texas?

Old Yeller became the fifth highest-grossing film of 1957. It was based on a 1956 novel by Fred Gipson, who co-wrote the screenplay, and it led to the 1963 sequel Savage Sam.

Which game does a crusader play against Death to delay his fate in Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal?

Chess buys the knight time as plague sweeps Sweden: he believes he can survive as long as the game continues. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes that year.

Which country, formerly the Gold Coast, became the first sub-Saharan colony to win independence in March 1957?

Ghana took its new name at midnight on 6 March, when the Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland were unified as a single independent dominion.

Which agreement, signed by six countries in March 1957, created the European Economic Community, forerunner of the EU?

The Treaty of Rome was signed on Capitoline Hill by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. It survives under a new name as one of the EU's two core treaties.

Which Conservative became British prime minister in January 1957 when Anthony Eden resigned after the Suez Crisis?

Harold Macmillan had been Eden's Chancellor of the Exchequer. A cartoonist nicknamed him Supermac the following year, meaning to suggest he was setting himself up as a Superman figure.

Which South Carolina senator spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in August 1957 to stall a civil rights bill?

Strom Thurmond took steam baths beforehand to dehydrate himself, so that his body could absorb fluids for longer during the speech. He opened by reading the election laws of each of the 48 states.

Which labor leader became president of the Teamsters union in 1957 and vanished under mysterious circumstances in 1975?

Jimmy Hoffa led the Teamsters until 1971 and was declared dead in 1982, seven years after he disappeared. He had been the union's national vice-president since 1952.

Which Wisconsin senator, censured in 1954 after his anti-communist crusade, died in office in May 1957 at age 48?

Joseph McCarthy kept railing against communism until his death at Bethesda Naval Hospital. His doctors had not reported him to be seriously ill, and the death certificate listed acute hepatitis.

Which Caribbean country elected François Duvalier, known to his patients as Papa Doc, as president in 1957?

Haiti chose Duvalier on a populist platform, and his rule soon turned brutal. His undercover death squad, the Tonton Macoute, left people fearful of voicing dissent even in private.

Which Ford brand, named after Henry Ford's son, was launched with fanfare in September 1957 and scrapped in 1959?

The Edsel became a byword for a costly flop: buyers found it overhyped, and its vertical grille was said to resemble a horse collar. Ford lost more than $250 million on the line.

Which US state's two peninsulas were first linked by road in November 1957, when the five-mile Mackinac Bridge opened?

Michigan had relied on ferries across the Straits of Mackinac until then. At its opening the crossing was the world's longest suspension bridge between anchorages.

Which pandemic, caused by an H2N2 influenza virus that emerged in southern China, spread around the world during 1957?

The Asian flu caused an estimated one to four million excess deaths worldwide. Its virus kept circulating until 1968, when it shifted into the H3N2 strain behind the next pandemic.

Which Texan singer and his band the Crickets topped the US chart in September 1957 with That'll Be the Day?

Buddy Holly took the song's title from a phrase John Wayne keeps repeating in the western The Searchers, which he and his friends went to see in 1956.

Which Jerry Lee Lewis single, recorded at Sun Studio in October 1957, sold a million copies in its first ten days?

Great Balls of Fire was cut with just three musicians: Lewis on piano and vocals, a bassist and a session drummer. It also featured in the movie Jamboree that year.

Which future Beatle first met John Lennon at a church garden fête in Woolton, Liverpool, on 6 July 1957?

Paul McCartney was introduced by a mutual friend in the Scout hut after Lennon's skiffle group, the Quarrymen, had played. Within weeks he had been invited to join them.

Which Beat writer's novel On the Road, first typed on a 120-foot scroll of paper, was published in 1957?

Jack Kerouac wrote the first draft in three weeks in April 1951, on sheets of tracing paper taped together. The published book was shorter and gave every major character a pseudonym.

Which novelist published Atlas Shrugged in 1957, her last completed work of fiction, about a strike by business leaders?

Ayn Rand had no trouble finding a publisher after the success of The Fountainhead in 1943. Her plot turns on a mysterious figure, John Galt, who persuades industrialists to disappear.

Which Boris Pasternak novel was first published in Italy in 1957 after being smuggled out of the Soviet Union?

Doctor Zhivago reached Milan at the instigation of publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Its author was awarded the Nobel Prize a year later, which embarrassed and enraged the Communist Party.

Which French author of The Stranger, born in Algeria, won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at age 44?

Albert Camus was the first literature laureate born in Africa. At the time only Rudyard Kipling, honoured at 41, had received the prize at a younger age.

Which programming language, built at IBM by John Backus and his team, had its first compiler delivered in April 1957?

Fortran was proposed as a more practical alternative to assembly language for the IBM 704 mainframe. Its first manual described it as a Formula Translating System.

Which sans-serif typeface, drawn by Max Miedinger, was released in 1957 under the name Neue Haas Grotesk?

Helvetica got its present name in 1959, from the Latin for Swiss. Helvetia was proposed first, but a sewing machine maker and an insurance company were already using it.

Which packaging material was invented in 1957 by two inventors who were trying to create a textured plastic wallpaper?

Bubble wrap began as Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes's attempt at three-dimensional wallpaper. One of its first widespread uses came in 1960, protecting IBM's new 1401 computers in shipping.

Which director of Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in March 1957?

Spike Lee moved with his family from Atlanta to Brooklyn as a child. He later named his production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks.

Which English actor, born in April 1957 to a future Poet Laureate, went on to win three Best Actor Oscars?

Daniel Day-Lewis won for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln. His father, the poet Cecil, was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968, and his mother was the actress Jill Balcon.

Which singer, born in Havana in September 1957, found fame fronting Miami Sound Machine with the 1985 hit Conga?

Gloria Estefan began as lead singer of a band called Miami Latin Boys before it was renamed. In 1990 she fractured her spine when her tour bus crashed in Pennsylvania.

Which designer, aged just 21, became head of the House of Dior after Christian Dior died in October 1957?

Yves Saint Laurent won acclaim with his debut Trapeze collection in 1958, a wedge-shaped variation on his late mentor's A-line. Dior had died of a heart attack while on holiday in Italy.

Which Kansas center was named Most Outstanding Player of the 1957 NCAA tournament despite losing the final by one point?

Wilt Chamberlain and the favoured Jayhawks fell 54–53 in overtime to a North Carolina team that came into the game 31–0. He was criticized afterwards for failing to win a national title.

Which Argentine driver won his fifth Formula One world title in 1957, taking his last Grand Prix win in Germany?

Juan Manuel Fangio won his titles with four different teams, the last of them Maserati. Months later he was kidnapped from a Havana hotel by gunmen from Fidel Castro's movement.

Which rocket, carrying America's first satellite attempt, exploded seconds after liftoff in Florida in December 1957?

Vanguard rose about four feet, lost thrust and fell back onto the launch pad, where its fuel tanks ruptured. American newspapers mocked the failure in their headlines.

Which 1957 Nevil Shute novel follows people in Melbourne awaiting deadly radiation from a nuclear war far to the north?

On the Beach takes its title from a Royal Navy term for retirement from service. The story first ran that April as a four-part serial in a London weekly paper.

Which Canadian diplomat won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for proposing a United Nations force to defuse the Suez Crisis?

Lester Pearson later became prime minister of Canada, where his government introduced the Maple Leaf flag after a long national debate.

Which nuclear site in north-west England suffered a reactor fire in October 1957, Britain's worst nuclear accident?

Windscale, now called Sellafield, released iodine-131, and milk from about 500 square kilometres of nearby countryside was destroyed for a month. Nobody was evacuated.