50 Fun Facts About 1959

Which doll, based on a German toy called Bild Lilli, debuted at a New York toy fair in March 1959?

Barbie was named after creator Ruth Handler's daughter Barbara and first sold for $3. A mint boxed 1959 original fetched over $3,500 on eBay in 2004.

Which territory, a kingdom until an 1893 coup, became the 50th US state in August 1959?

Hawaii voted 94.3 percent for statehood in a June 1959 referendum. It was admitted on August 21, less than eight months after Alaska.

Which 'Peggy Sue' singer died with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in an Iowa plane crash in February 1959?

Buddy Holly chartered the plane out of frustration with the tour's freezing buses. Bandmate Waylon Jennings gave his seat to the flu-stricken Big Bopper and survived.

Which leader of Cuba's 26th of July Movement reached Havana a week after Batista fled on New Year's Day 1959?

Fidel Castro took a long victory march across the island and arrived on 8 January. Batista had flown to the Dominican Republic hours into the new year.

Which CBS anthology series, introduced each week by its creator Rod Serling, premiered in October 1959?

The Twilight Zone ran for 156 episodes, and Serling wrote or co-wrote 92 of them himself while also serving as executive producer.

Which 1959 Charlton Heston epic won a record eleven Academy Awards and features a nine-minute chariot race?

Ben-Hur had the largest budget of any film made up to that time. Its eleven Oscars went unmatched until Titanic nearly four decades later.

Which California attraction was Nikita Khrushchev barred from visiting on security grounds in September 1959?

Disneyland was cut from his Los Angeles schedule on 19 September, which added to his anger. On the same stop he met Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor on a 20th Century Fox film set.

Which carmaker introduced the modern three-point seat belt, designed by its engineer Nils Bohlin, in 1959?

Volvo delivered the first car with the belt, a PV 544, to a dealer in Kristianstad in August 1959. Bohlin had earlier helped develop aircraft ejection seats.

Which British car, designed by Alec Issigonis after the Suez fuel shortage, was unveiled in August 1959?

The Mini was announced to the public on 26 August 1959. In 1999 it was voted the second-most influential car of the 20th century, behind only the Ford Model T.

Which country gave the Dalai Lama asylum after he fled Lhasa in March 1959 during an uprising against Chinese rule?

India took him in at the end of March 1959. He had slipped out of Lhasa by night after two artillery shells landed near his palace.

Which Lakers legend, born in Lansing, Michigan, in August 1959, won the NBA Finals MVP award as a rookie?

Magic Johnson got the nickname at 15 from a Lansing sportswriter after a game of 36 points, 18 rebounds and 16 assists. His devout mother thought it sacrilegious.

Which tennis player, born in Wiesbaden in February 1959, turned 'You cannot be serious' into a catchphrase?

John McEnroe shouted the line at umpires and later made it the title of his 2002 autobiography. He was born in West Germany to American parents.

Which English actress, born in April 1959, became the first person to win Oscars for both acting and screenwriting?

Emma Thompson won Best Actress for Howards End, then the screenplay award for Sense and Sensibility, a script she spent five years developing.

Which actor, born in Oxford in June 1959 to an Olympic rowing champion, played the American doctor Gregory House?

Hugh Laurie rowed as well: he won a British junior title in 1977 and earned a Blue in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race before turning to comedy.

Which TV talent-show judge, born in London in October 1959, started out in the mail room at EMI Music Publishing?

Simon Cowell got the mail room job through his father, an EMI executive. His brother says he had earlier been a runner on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Which instrument did 'Weird Al' Yankovic, born in October 1959, take up after a door-to-door salesman offered lessons?

Accordion won out over guitar lessons, and he had his first one the day before his seventh birthday. It became the trademark of his polka medleys of pop hits.

Which Canadian singer, born in November 1959, later spent 16 consecutive weeks at number one on the UK singles chart?

Bryan Adams set the record with '(Everything I Do) I Do It for You'. A diplomat's son born in Kingston, Ontario, he spent part of his childhood in Lisbon.

Which actor, born in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve 1959, played Iceman in Top Gun and Jim Morrison in The Doors?

Val Kilmer was the youngest person accepted into Juilliard's drama division at the time. He later played Doc Holliday in Tombstone and Batman in Batman Forever.

Which singer, born in Utah in October 1959 as the only daughter among nine children, topped the country chart at 14?

Marie Osmond did it with her debut single 'Paper Roses' in 1973. She was born in Ogden on her father's 42nd birthday.

Which British comedian, born in December 1959, hosted the Fox sketch show where The Simpsons began as animated shorts?

Tracey Ullman fronted the first Fox primetime series to win an Emmy. Earlier, as a pop singer, she reached number two in Britain with 'They Don't Know'.

Which 1959 Billy Wilder comedy, with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag, ends on the line 'Well, nobody's perfect'?

Some Like It Hot was shot in black and white because Lemmon and Curtis looked 'ghoulish' in drag in colour tests, even though Marilyn Monroe's contract called for colour.

Which monument does Cary Grant's ad man climb across at the climax of the 1959 thriller North by Northwest?

Mount Rushmore was the idea the film grew from: Alfred Hitchcock told his writer he had always wanted to do a chase across the monument, and the plot was built to end there.

Which 1959 Disney film, scored with music from a Tchaikovsky ballet, introduced the villain Maleficent?

Sleeping Beauty took nearly a decade and $6 million to make, the studio's most expensive animated feature up to then, and opened to mixed reviews.

Which NBC western about the Cartwright family of the Ponderosa ranch premiered in September 1959?

Bonanza ran for 14 seasons and 431 episodes. Its title is a miners' term for a rich vein of ore, a nod to the Comstock Lode near the show's Nevada setting.

Which future film star played ramrod Rowdy Yates when the western Rawhide began on CBS in January 1959?

Clint Eastwood was billed second to Eric Fleming's trail boss for seven seasons. The theme song, sung by Frankie Laine, later turned up in The Blues Brothers.

Which cartoon duo began outwitting the spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale on ABC in November 1959?

Rocky and Bullwinkle, a flying squirrel and a moose, first aired as Rocky and His Friends. The show's puns and topical satire appealed to adults as well as children.

Which 1959 John Wayne western did Howard Hawks make as a response to High Noon?

Rio Bravo has Wayne's sheriff hold a jail with help from Dean Martin and teen idol Ricky Nelson. Wayne later called High Noon 'un-American'.

Which French director won the Best Director award at Cannes in 1959 for his debut feature, The 400 Blows?

François Truffaut followed the film's young hero through four more films, all with the same actor. The 400 Blows became a defining work of the French New Wave.

Which NASCAR race, first run in February 1959, took three days of studying photographs to decide its winner?

Daytona 500 officials first sent Johnny Beauchamp to victory lane. Photographs and newsreel footage then showed Lee Petty had edged him, and Petty was declared the winner.

Which NFL team, 1–10–1 a year earlier, hired Vince Lombardi as head coach in February 1959?

Green Bay Packers fortunes turned at once: the 7–5 record of 1959 was the team's first winning season in a dozen years. Lombardi never had a losing NFL season.

Which record company grew out of Tamla, the label Berry Gordy started in January 1959 with an $800 family loan?

Motown was the name the company took when it incorporated in 1960. The first Tamla single, 'Come to Me', came out regionally the month the label began.

Which trumpeter recorded Kind of Blue over two sessions in spring 1959 with John Coltrane and Bill Evans in his band?

Miles Davis based the album on modal scales rather than chord changes, handing each player a set of scales to improvise on. It was released that August.

Which singer took 'Mack the Knife', a song from the 1928 German stage work The Threepenny Opera, to number one in 1959?

Bobby Darin topped the charts with it in both the US and the UK and won two Grammys. Louis Armstrong had recorded the same English translation four years earlier.

Which jazz singer, nicknamed 'Lady Day' by saxophonist Lester Young, died in a New York hospital in July 1959?

Billie Holiday spent her final weeks under arrest: charged with narcotics possession as she lay ill, she was handcuffed to her hospital bed and put under police guard.

Which musical opened on Broadway in November 1959 with Mary Martin as a novice nun turned governess?

The Sound of Music was the last Rodgers and Hammerstein show: Oscar Hammerstein died nine months after it opened. It shared the Tony for Best Musical with Fiorello!

Which playwright's A Raisin in the Sun, opening in March 1959, was the first Broadway play written by a Black woman?

Lorraine Hansberry was pulled onto the stage by star Sidney Poitier on opening night after the audience called for the author. The title comes from a Langston Hughes poem.

Which pianist's quartet released Time Out in 1959, the first jazz album to sell a million copies?

Dave Brubeck built the album on odd rhythms he had heard abroad, including Turkish street music. Its hit 'Take Five' was the one track he did not write.

Which James Bond novel, published in March 1959, borrowed its villain's name from an architect who threatened to sue?

Goldfinger has its villain plot to steal the US gold reserves from Fort Knox. It was the seventh Bond novel, and Ian Fleming wrote it in two months in early 1958.

Which center debuted for the Philadelphia Warriors in October 1959 after a year touring with the Harlem Globetrotters?

Wilt Chamberlain had left college early, and the NBA would not take players before their class graduated. His $30,000 rookie deal made him the league's highest-paid player.

Which Montreal goaltender defied his coach in November 1959 by refusing to play on without a face mask?

Jacques Plante had just had his nose broken by an Andy Bathgate shot. Stitched up, he returned in the homemade mask he used in practice, and coach Toe Blake was livid.

Which US vice president argued with Nikita Khrushchev in a model kitchen at a Moscow exhibition in July 1959?

Richard Nixon and his host were recorded on colour videotape, a novelty Nixon pointed out mid-argument, and the exchange was later broadcast in both countries.

Which continent was covered by the Cold War's first arms control agreement, signed by twelve nations in December 1959?

Antarctica was set aside as a scientific preserve with all military activity banned. The signatories were the countries that had run research there in 1957–58.

Which future British prime minister first entered Parliament at the 1959 general election, as the member for Finchley?

Margaret Thatcher used her maiden speech to back her own bill, which required local councils to hold their meetings in public. It became law in 1960.

Which architect died in April 1959, six months before his spiral Guggenheim Museum opened in New York?

Frank Lloyd Wright wrapped the main gallery in a six-story helical ramp beneath a central skylight. It was his last major work.

Which animals were Able and Baker, who survived a US rocket flight into space in May 1959?

Monkeys had been launched before, but Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey from Peru, was the first to survive the whole ordeal. She lived until 1984.

Which Marine pilot, named one of NASA's Mercury Seven in April 1959, later became the first American to orbit Earth?

John Glenn outlived the rest of the group and flew again on the Space Shuttle at 77. All seven had been picked from the ranks of military test pilots.

Which Cambridge-educated lawyer became Singapore's first prime minister in June 1959 and held the post until 1990?

Lee Kuan Yew led the People's Action Party to its first election win as Britain conceded self-government to the colony. He stayed in office for 31 years.

Which programming language, based partly on Grace Hopper's FLOW-MATIC, grew out of a May 1959 Pentagon meeting?

COBOL was meant to let the same data-processing programs run on different makes of computer, a worry for the US Department of Defense, which sponsored the effort.

Which scientist found the 'Nutcracker Man' skull at Olduvai Gorge in July 1959 while her husband lay ill in camp?

Mary Leakey made the find in a gully in what is now Tanzania, and her husband Louis described it within a month. The nickname came from its huge back teeth and jaws.

Which 5–1 underdog won the world heavyweight title at Yankee Stadium in June 1959, flooring Floyd Patterson seven times?

Ingemar Johansson called his right fist 'toonder and lightning'. Back home in Gothenburg he landed by helicopter in the football stadium, where 20,000 people cheered him.