147 Fun Facts About The 1950s

Which 1956 single gave Elvis Presley his first number one on the US pop chart?

Heartbreak Hotel struck Sam Phillips, Presley's first producer, as 'a morbid mess'; it topped the pop and country charts anyway and became his first million-seller.

Which Bill Haley & His Comets record became a number-one hit in 1955 after it opened the film Blackboard Jungle?

Rock Around the Clock first came out in 1954 as a B-side and sold slowly; a year later the film's opening credits turned it into the first rock and roll record to top the American pop chart.

Which milkshake-mixer salesman opened his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois, in April 1955?

Ray Kroc first visited the McDonald brothers' California stand because it had ordered eight of his mixers at once; in 1961 he bought the brothers out for $2.7 million.

Who developed the first effective polio vaccine in the 1950s?

Jonas Salk's vaccine was declared safe and effective in April 1955; asked on television who owned the patent, he answered, 'Could you patent the sun?'

What did the Soviet Union name the first artificial Earth satellite, launched in October 1957?

Sputnik 1 was a polished sphere about the size of a beach ball that beeped by radio for three weeks; the alarm it caused in the United States set off the Space Race.

Which city changed hands four times during the Korean War of 1950 to 1953?

Seoul fell to the North within days of the June 1950 invasion and was retaken for the last time in March 1951; the armistice that stopped the fighting in 1953 was never followed by a peace treaty.

Which campaign slogan helped Dwight D. Eisenhower win the White House in 1952?

I Like Ike played on his nickname and spread from campaign buttons to a 1952 television cartoon, animated by Disney studio volunteers to music by Irving Berlin.

Which pastor was chosen to lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott?

Martin Luther King Jr., then 26, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which kept the boycott going for 13 months until the Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation; it made him a national figure.

Which sitcom, first aired in 1951, was filmed before a live studio audience with three cameras running at once?

I Love Lucy was shot on film instead of going out live, so its prints looked far better than the fuzzy kinescopes of the day; Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are credited with pioneering the syndicated rerun.

Which actor, famous for his rebellious persona, starred in the 1955 film 'Rebel Without a Cause'?

James Dean cemented his iconic status with his role as Jim Stark in 'Rebel Without a Cause', though he tragically died before the film's release.

Which American marque introduced the Corvette two-seat sports car in 1953?

Chevrolet unveiled the Corvette at GM's Motorama in January 1953, then hand-built just 300 that year on a makeshift line in a Flint truck plant, every one Polo White with a red interior.

What famous doll, created by Ruth Handler, was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in 1959?

Barbie was named after Ruth Handler's daughter Barbara and modelled on Bild Lilli, a German doll first sold to adult men as a gag gift.

Which author's seminal Beat Generation novel 'On the Road' was published in 1957?

Jack Kerouac typed the first draft in three weeks in April 1951 on a 120-foot scroll of taped-together tracing paper; Viking published the novel six years later.

What major musical, featuring songs like 'Tonight' and 'Maria', premiered on Broadway in 1957?

West Side Story moved Romeo and Juliet to the gang streets of New York and gave Stephen Sondheim his Broadway debut as lyricist; it lost the Tony for Best Musical to The Music Man.

Which game show featuring Charles Van Doren was embroiled in a rigged-answers scandal in the 1950s?

Twenty-One's producers coached Charles Van Doren to unseat champion Herb Stempel, who was told to lose and later exposed the fix; Van Doren confessed to Congress in November 1959.

Which California city has been home to Disneyland since it opened in July 1955?

Anaheim's park opened to invited guests on 17 July 1955, but counterfeit passes let in thousands more and food and drink ran out; staff remembered the day as 'Black Sunday'.

Who was the leader of the Soviet Union for most of the latter half of the 1950s?

Nikita Khrushchev stunned the 1956 party congress with a 'Secret Speech' denouncing his predecessor's purges, and led the country until his colleagues removed him in October 1964.

Which road network did the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act create?

The Interstate Highway System was budgeted at $25 billion for 41,000 miles, with Washington paying 90 percent of the cost; the original network was not declared complete until 1992.

Which fantasy epic by J. R. R. Tolkien was published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955?

The Lord of the Rings was written as a single novel; its publisher issued it in three parts for economic reasons, between July 1954 and October 1955.

Which 1950s American youth subculture is associated with leather jackets, hot rods and rock and roll?

Greasers were working-class teenagers in the United States and Canada; the slicked-back hairstyles required constant combing to keep in shape.

Which genre of crooners backed by lush orchestras dominated the early 1950s before rock and roll?

Traditional pop put singers such as Perry Como and Patti Page in front of string orchestras; Page's 1950 'Tennessee Waltz' went out as the B-side of a Christmas novelty, then became one of the era's biggest sellers.

Which 1954 film features a giant monster awakened by nuclear testing?

Godzilla was inspired in part by a real event months earlier: fallout from an American nuclear test fell on the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5, contaminating its crew of 23.

Which organ was first successfully transplanted between two people, identical twins in Boston, in December 1954?

A kidney from Ronald Herrick went to his dying identical twin Richard, whose body accepted it and who lived eight more years; surgeon Joseph Murray later shared a Nobel Prize for the work.

Which 1957 TV show depicted the lives of the suburban Cleaver family?

CBS dropped Leave It to Beaver after one season; ABC picked it up and ran it for another five years, and it became far more popular in reruns.

Who began hosting 'American Bandstand' in 1956, becoming a major influence on teenage culture?

Dick Clark was the regular stand-in who got the job when original host Bob Horn was dismissed after a drunk-driving arrest; a year later ABC took the Philadelphia show national.

What mutual defense treaty did the Soviet Union and its satellites form in 1955?

The Warsaw Pact was signed in May 1955, days after West Germany joined NATO; Moscow feared a rearmed Germany and wanted its seven allies bound more tightly to it.

Which two U.S. states, the 49th and 50th, were admitted to the Union in 1959?

Alaska and Hawaii entered seven months apart, in January and August 1959, so a 49-star flag was official for just one year before the 50-star design replaced it in July 1960.

Which Beat Generation poet published the influential collection 'Howl and Other Poems' in 1956?

Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' became a landmark work of the Beat Generation, leading to an obscenity trial that challenged censorship.

Which children's TV show launched in October 1955 with a cast of young performers that included Annette Funicello?

The Mickey Mouse Club's young cast, the Mouseketeers, opened each show with a roll call in mouse-ear caps; Funicello, who joined at 12, became one of its most popular members and later a pop singer.

Which English medical student became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, in May 1954?

Roger Bannister ran 3:59.4 at Oxford's Iffley Road track with two friends pacing him; his record lasted just 46 days before Australia's John Landy beat it.

Which 1950s artistic movement is associated with Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko?

Abstract Expressionism was the first American movement to win international influence, and it made New York, where most of its painters worked, the centre of the Western art world.

Which kitchen appliance did Tappan first sell for home use in the mid-1950s?

The microwave oven reached homes when Tappan licensed Raytheon's patents, but its wall unit was still too large and expensive for most kitchens; the countertop model arrived only in 1967.

Which restaurant chain did brothers Dan and Frank Carney found in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958?

Pizza Hut began with $600 the Carney brothers borrowed from their mother; both were Wichita State students, talked into the idea by an estate agent with an empty building to fill.

Which European country's 1956 uprising against Soviet influence was crushed by Soviet tanks within weeks?

Hungary's reformist prime minister Imre Nagy was arrested after Soviet tanks retook Budapest in November 1956 and was executed two years later; about 200,000 Hungarians fled abroad.

Which 1950s sex symbol starred in 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'?

Marilyn Monroe's pink-gowned 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' number became so famous that Madonna recreated it, tuxedoed dancers and all, for her 'Material Girl' video.

Which company introduced the 'TV Dinner' brand of frozen packaged meals in 1953?

Swanson cautiously made just 5,000 of its first TV Dinners, sold in an aluminium tray for 98 cents; a year later it had sold more than 10 million.

What major sporting event was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956?

The Summer Olympics reached the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, but Australia's strict quarantine rules kept horses out, so the equestrian events were held in Stockholm five months earlier.

Which Memphis mansion did Elvis Presley buy in March 1957, at the age of 22?

Graceland cost him $102,500 and stayed his home for the rest of his life; he is buried in its grounds, and the house has been open to the public as a museum since 1982.

Which type of weapon did the United States test for the first time with 'Ivy Mike' in November 1952?

The hydrogen bomb tested as Ivy Mike yielded about 10 megatons and erased the Pacific island of Elugelab; the device stood over 20 feet tall and was a proof of concept, not a usable weapon.

Which landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional?

Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous and partially overturned Plessy v. Ferguson's 'separate but equal' doctrine.

Which architect designed New York's Guggenheim Museum, begun in 1956?

Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned for the Guggenheim in 1943; the spiral museum opened on Fifth Avenue in October 1959, six months after his death in April 1959.

Which toy, launched by Hasbro in 1952, was the first ever advertised on television?

Mr. Potato Head, launched by Hassenfeld Brothers in 1952, was the first toy advertised on television; the original kit was plastic parts with pins to stick into a real potato.

Which two climbers made the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest, on 29 May 1953?

Hillary and Tenzing spent about 15 minutes on the summit; Hillary photographed Tenzing holding his ice-axe aloft, but no picture exists of Hillary on top.

What famous scientists published their paper detailing the double helix structure of DNA in 1953?

James Watson and Francis Crick took little more than a page of Nature and ended on an understatement: their structure 'immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material'.

Which 1950s dance, later revived in Grease, gave Johnny Otis a 1958 hit about a man named Willie?

The Hand Jive began in the basement of a Soho coffee bar in England, all claps and thigh slaps; Otis's 'Willie and the Hand Jive' then carried it to America.

What was the first commercial passenger jet, put into service by BOAC in 1952?

The De Havilland Comet flew its first fare-paying passengers in May 1952, but within two years fatal crashes traced to metal fatigue grounded the fleet, and its sales never fully recovered.

In which city did federal troops escort nine Black students into Central High School in September 1957?

Little Rock's nine students were first blocked by National Guardsmen on the governor's orders; three weeks later an executive order sent federal troops to walk them into school.

Which toy became the craze of 1958, selling about 25 million in under four months?

The Hula Hoop was Wham-O's plastic take on the bamboo hoops Australian children played with; priced at $1.98, it passed 100 million sales within two years.

Where was Elizabeth II crowned on 2 June 1953?

Westminster Abbey has been England's coronation church since 1066; television cameras had been kept out of it for the previous coronation in 1937, so hers was the first to be televised in full.

Which Egyptian leader announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in July 1956?

Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalisation in a speech in Alexandria on 26 July 1956, triggering the British, French and Israeli invasion that autumn.

Which Cuban dictator fled the country as Castro's rebels triumphed at the end of 1958?

Fulgencio Batista resigned in the first hours of 1 January 1959 and flew out of Havana to the Dominican Republic, where fellow dictator Rafael Trujillo took him in.

Explorer 1, the first US satellite, made which discovery in 1958?

The Van Allen radiation belt gave itself away by swamping Explorer 1's cosmic-ray counter, built by James Van Allen's team at the University of Iowa, for most of each orbit.

Which 'La Bamba' singer died with Buddy Holly in the February 1959 plane crash?

Ritchie Valens was 17 and won his seat on the chartered plane in a coin toss with Holly's guitarist Tommy Allsup; the crash of 3 February 1959 became known as 'The Day the Music Died'.

The Regency TR-1 of 1954 was the first commercially sold example of which device?

The transistor radio was Texas Instruments' way to create demand for its transistors; the big radio makers turned the idea down, so a small firm built the Regency TR-1, which sold about 150,000.

In which country was the patent for the modern Lego brick first filed in January 1958?

Lego, based in Billund, Denmark, patented its stud-and-tube brick in 1958 and has kept the design compatible ever since: bricks from that year still lock onto ones made today.

Which country both hosted and won the very first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956?

Switzerland staged the contest in Lugano and Lys Assia won with 'Refrain'; each of the seven countries sang two songs, and only the winner was announced, so the other placings remain unknown.

Which team stunned host nation Brazil to win the deciding match of the 1950 World Cup?

Uruguay won 2–1 before an official crowd of 173,850 in the Maracanã, a shock Brazilians call the Maracanazo; Brazil's white kit was criticised as unpatriotic afterwards and gave way to the yellow shirt first worn in 1954.

Which football club's young squad was devastated by the 1958 Munich air disaster?

Manchester United's 'Busby Babes' were flying home from a European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade when the plane crashed at Munich on its third take-off attempt, 6 February 1958.

Who pitched a perfect game for the Yankees in the 1956 World Series?

Don Larsen had been pulled in the second inning of Game 2, yet in Game 5 he retired all 27 Dodgers on just 97 pitches, with only one batter reaching a three-ball count.

Who in 1956 became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam tennis title?

Althea Gibson won the French title in 1956, then Wimbledon and the US Nationals in both 1957 and 1958, before becoming the first Black player on the women's professional golf tour.

At which English circuit was the first Formula One World Championship race held, in May 1950?

Silverstone, laid out on a wartime RAF bomber station, staged the race on 13 May 1950; Giuseppe Farina won it for Alfa Romeo and ended the season as the sport's first world champion.

At which prison were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed in June 1953?

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died in the electric chair at Sing Sing still proclaiming their innocence, the first American civilians executed for espionage in peacetime.

Which nation's forces were defeated by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu in 1954?

France built the base in a remote valley to be supplied by air, sure the Viet Minh had no anti-aircraft guns; they hauled heavy artillery up the surrounding heights, and the garrison fell on 7 May 1954.

Which became the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence, in March 1957?

Ghana was born at midnight on 6 March 1957 when the Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland merged into one dominion under Kwame Nkrumah.

What did the Treaty of Rome, signed by six nations in 1957, create?

The European Economic Community bound its six founders into a common market from 1958; through later treaties it grew into today's European Union.

The 1955 Asian–African Conference of newly independent states met in which country?

The conference met in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, in April 1955 with 29 Asian and African states, helping lay the groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement.

What was the name of the cocker spaniel Richard Nixon vowed to keep in his televised speech of September 1952?

Checkers was a puppy sent by a Texas salesman and named by Nixon's six-year-old daughter; his vow to keep the dog turned a fund scandal into a flood of support that kept him on the ticket.

Which senator did the Senate censure in December 1954 after the televised Army hearings?

Joseph McCarthy was condemned by the Senate 67–22 on 2 December 1954; televised coverage of the Army–McCarthy hearings that spring is widely credited with puncturing his popularity.

Who directed the 1954 Japanese epic Seven Samurai?

Akira Kurosawa shot Seven Samurai over 148 working days; the Japanese release ran 207 minutes, and it inspired the 1960 western The Magnificent Seven.

Which 1953 biblical epic was the first release in the widescreen CinemaScope process?

The Robe premiered in September 1953 as the first CinemaScope release; because many cinemas lacked the new lenses, every scene was also shot 'flat', so two versions exist.

Which 1952 film about the Tsavo man-eaters set off Hollywood's first 3D craze?

Bwana Devil, released in November 1952 to audiences wearing grey Polaroid glasses, was the 3D hit that set off Hollywood's boom; House of Wax followed in 1953.

Who produced, co-wrote and directed the 1959 cross-dressing comedy Some Like It Hot?

Billy Wilder borrowed the plot of an earlier film about out-of-work musicians in drag, then gave his pair a deadlier motive: they have witnessed a gangland massacre and must hide from the killers.

Which David Lean war film was the highest-grossing movie of 1957?

The Bridge on the River Kwai topped 1957's box office and won seven Oscars; its screenplay award went to novelist Pierre Boulle because blacklisted writers Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson could not be credited.

Who created and hosted The Twilight Zone, which premiered on CBS in October 1959?

Rod Serling wrote or co-wrote 92 of the show's 156 episodes; known as television's 'angry young man', he had fought sponsors and executives over the censorship of his earlier dramas.

Which submarine, the first with nuclear power, crossed the North Pole under the ice in August 1958?

USS Nautilus was turned back by ice in June 1958; weeks later she dived in the Barrow Sea Valley, passed the Pole on 3 August and came up near Greenland.

What was the name of the stray dog the Soviet Union sent into orbit in November 1957?

Laika, a stray from the streets of Moscow, flew in a craft built in under four weeks to mark the October Revolution's 40th anniversary; there was no way to bring her back.

What does the first A stand for in NASA, the space agency the United States created in 1958?

Aeronautics comes first because NASA was built on NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which had run American flight research since 1915 and was absorbed whole on 1 October 1958.

Which storage device did IBM introduce with its 305 RAMAC computer in 1956?

The hard disk drive let the RAMAC jump straight to any record instead of reading through tape or cards; its cabinet, the size of two kitchen refrigerators, held about 5 million characters on fifty 24-inch platters.

TAT-1, opened in September 1956, was the first cable under the Atlantic to carry which kind of traffic?

Telephone calls had crossed the Atlantic only by radio since 1927; TAT-1's cable from Scotland to Newfoundland carried 35 at a time and handled more than 700 in its first 24 hours.

Which computer famously predicted a 1952 US presidential landslide live on CBS?

UNIVAC I, with only about 5% of returns counted, put the odds of a landslide at 100 to 1; CBS did not trust the machine and held the call back until the result was obvious.

Which city was smothered by the deadly 'Great Smog' in December 1952?

London's Great Smog of 5–9 December 1952 formed when windless weather trapped coal smoke over the city; about 4,000 deaths were counted at the time, and the disaster led to the Clean Air Act of 1956.

The 1953 North Sea flood led which country to build the Delta Works?

The Netherlands lost 1,836 people when the surge of 31 January–1 February 1953 breached dikes in Zeeland and South Holland; the Delta Works that followed were completed in 1997 with the Maeslantkering.

Which race's 1955 running saw a Mercedes fly into the crowd, killing more than 80 spectators?

At the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans, wreckage from Pierre Levegh's Mercedes killed him and more than 80 spectators, motorsport's deadliest crash; Mercedes withdrew from racing at the end of the season.

Which electric guitar did Fender put on sale in 1954?

The Stratocaster gave Fender its first contoured body, three pickups and spring vibrato; taken up by players from Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix, it became one of the most copied guitar shapes of all.

Which humor title debuted as an EC comic book in 1952?

Mad began as an EC comic book in 1952, its first issue written almost entirely by editor Harvey Kurtzman; it turned into a magazine in 1955, which also took it beyond the reach of the Comics Code.

Which comic-strip hero first appeared in the French magazine Pilote in October 1959?

Asterix began in the very first issue of Pilote, a magazine his creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo had helped to found; all 300,000 copies sold out in a single day.

Which Soviet author of Doctor Zhivago was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Boris Pasternak was forced by Soviet pressure to decline the 1958 prize; the CIA had quietly printed a Russian-language Doctor Zhivago and handed copies out at that year's Brussels world's fair.

Nabokov's Lolita was first published in 1955 in which city?

Paris publisher Olympia Press issued Lolita in September 1955 as a pair of green paperbacks riddled with typographical errors after American houses turned it down.

Which 1952 Hemingway novella won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

The Old Man and the Sea appeared in full in a single issue of Life in September 1952, and it was the only work named in Hemingway's 1954 Nobel Prize citation.

Which Miles Davis album, with 'So What' as its opener, was released in August 1959?

Kind of Blue was recorded in just two sessions; instead of chord charts, Davis handed Bill Evans, John Coltrane and the rest of the band sets of scales to improvise on.

Under what name did Berry Gordy found his Detroit record label in January 1959?

Berry Gordy founded Tamla Records in Detroit on 12 January 1959 with an $800 family loan; the company was only incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in April 1960.

Which singer's NBC variety show, launched in November 1956, struggled to find a national sponsor?

Nat King Cole's NBC variety show ran from November 1956 to December 1957 but never found a national sponsor; Cole remarked that 'Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark'.

Which Ford brand, launched with huge fanfare in September 1957, became a byword for commercial flops?

The Edsel arrived on 'E Day', 4 September 1957, but a recession and a vertical grille likened to a horse collar sank it; Ford dropped the brand in November 1959 after losing over $250 million.

The Dalai Lama fled Lhasa in March 1959 and found refuge in which country?

The uprising began on 10 March 1959 amid fears the Chinese planned to arrest him; the Dalai Lama reached India at the end of the month and later set up a government in exile at Dharamshala.

Which region did twelve nations reserve for peaceful research in a 1959 treaty?

Antarctica's treaty banned military bases and weapons tests on the continent; its twelve signers were the countries whose scientists had worked there during the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58.

Which city gave its name to the 1954 accords that divided Vietnam?

Geneva's conference agreed a ceasefire and a 'temporary' division at the 17th parallel pending general elections in 1956; instead the line hardened into a border and led on to the Vietnam War.

Which 1954 book by Fredric Wertham fuelled the panic that produced the Comics Code?

Seduction of the Innocent blamed comics for juvenile delinquency; publishers formed the Comics Magazine Association of America in September 1954 and adopted a code banning sympathetic portrayals of criminals.

Which British prime minister was awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature while serving at 10 Downing Street?

Winston Churchill won for his histories and oratory, though his private secretary said he had hoped for the Peace Prize. His wife Clementine collected the award in Stockholm.

Which children's modeling compound, reworked for schools in the mid-1950s, was first made as a wallpaper cleaner?

Play-Doh was a Cincinnati soap maker's cleaning putty until nursery school teacher Kay Zufall read that children could make art projects with it.

What kind of animal was Bert, the cartoon star of the 1952 civil defense film Duck and Cover?

Bert the Turtle ducks into his shell when a monkey sets off a firecracker, a lesson meant to teach schoolchildren how to shield themselves from an atomic flash.

Which comic strip did Charles Schulz launch in seven newspapers in October 1950 under a title he hated?

Peanuts was a name the syndicate chose after an older strip objected to Li'l Folks. Schulz said it had no dignity and resented it for the rest of his life.

Which carmaker fitted engineer Nils Bohlin's modern three-point seat belt as standard equipment starting in 1959?

Volvo hired Bohlin in 1958 after he had worked on ejection seats at Saab, then backed his design with a study of 28,000 Swedish road accidents.

Which future film star played cattle-drive ramrod Rowdy Yates on the CBS western Rawhide from January 1959?

Clint Eastwood played Rowdy for seven seasons, then took over as trail boss for the eighth and last.

Which Montgomery seamstress and NAACP secretary was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus?

Rosa Parks was not the first to refuse: 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had been arrested earlier, but local leaders saw Parks as the stronger test case against segregation.

Which Wham-O toy was sold as the Pluto Platter until the company renamed it in June 1957?

Frisbee came from Yale students, who had long tossed empty pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Company and used the baker's name for the new plastic disc.

In which state did restaurateur Pete Harman open the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1952?

Utah got there first because Harland Sanders franchised his recipe to a friend in South Salt Lake, whose sign painter coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Which Oscar-winning actress retired from Hollywood at 26 to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco in April 1956?

Grace Kelly had won her Academy Award only a year earlier, for The Country Girl, and first met the prince at a photo session in his palace.

Which 17-year-old striker scored twice in the 1958 World Cup final to help Brazil win a first title?

Pelé had arrived in Sweden with a knee injury and sat out the first two matches, then hit a hat-trick in the semi-final before his two goals in the final.

To which West Coast city did owner Walter O'Malley move baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers at the end of 1957?

Los Angeles gained the Dodgers in the same year that their old rivals, the New York Giants, left for San Francisco.

Which 1951 J. D. Salinger novel follows Holden Caulfield through New York after his expulsion from Pencey Prep?

The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in American high schools for two decades, and in 1981 it was also the second most taught.

Which rock and roll pioneer wrote and sang 'Johnny B. Goode', a 1958 hit later sent into space on Voyager?

Chuck Berry admitted the song was partly about himself, and changed the lyric 'colored boy' to 'country boy' so that radio stations would air it.

Which frontiersman, played on TV by Fess Parker, set off a 1955 children's craze for coonskin caps?

Davy Crockett merchandise worth more than $300 million was sold by the end of 1955, a craze that sprang from just three Walt Disney television episodes.

Which actor won the role of Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956) partly by resembling Michelangelo's statue?

Charlton Heston also supplied the voice of God at the burning bush, and his three-month-old son Fraser played the infant Moses in the basket.

At a 1950s high school sock hop, why were teenage dancers made to take off their shoes?

To protect the gym floor, or rather its varnish, schools banned street shoes at dances. The custom faded once soft-soled sneakers became everyday wear.

Which general did President Harry Truman relieve of command in April 1951 during the Korean War?

Douglas MacArthur had publicly contradicted the administration's policies, and his dismissal became a landmark assertion of civilian control over the military.

Which fastener, patented in 1955, was inspired by burs that clung to engineer George de Mestral's dog?

Velcro came from a hunting trip in the Alps: de Mestral looked closely at the burdock burs sticking to his clothes and set out to copy their grip.

Ian Fleming named James Bond, who debuted in 1953's Casino Royale, after a real-life expert on which animals?

Birds were the real James Bond's field: he wrote the guide Birds of the West Indies, and Fleming borrowed the name after first calling his spy James Secretan.

Which TV western, adapted from a radio drama in 1955, starred James Arness as Dodge City marshal Matt Dillon?

Gunsmoke ran for 20 seasons and 635 episodes, lasting until 1975, while on radio the same marshal was voiced by William Conrad.

Which singer's first major hit was 1955's 'Tutti Frutti', with the shouted refrain 'A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom'?

Little Richard said the famous refrain was his spoken version of a drum pattern, and the record became a model for rock and roll itself.

Which NAACP lawyer won the 1954 school desegregation case and later became a Supreme Court justice?

Thurgood Marshall won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Court, then joined it as its first African-American justice.

Which Soviet dictator, in power since the 1920s, died after a stroke at his Kuntsevo dacha in March 1953?

Joseph Stalin's funeral drew hundreds of thousands of mourners to the capital, and at least 109 were later acknowledged to have died in a crowd crush.

Which 1950 animated feature was Walt Disney's biggest hit since Snow White, rescuing a company deep in debt?

Cinderella arrived after the company had been more than $4 million in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy, and its box office reversed those fortunes.

Which New York Yankees center fielder won baseball's Triple Crown in 1956, hitting .353 with 52 home runs?

Mickey Mantle had been trained since boyhood to switch-hit, batting left-handed against his father and right-handed against his grandfather.

Which campaign did Mao Zedong launch in 1958 to industrialize China through people's communes and backyard furnaces?

The Great Leap Forward backfired: shortages of supply collided with soaring demand, and millions died in the famine that followed.

Which Agatha Christie whodunit opened in the West End in 1952 and became the longest-running play in the world?

The Mousetrap began as a radio play called Three Blind Mice, written as a birthday present for Queen Mary, and audiences are asked not to reveal its twist.

Which piano-pounding rocker nicknamed 'The Killer' scored a 1957 smash with 'Great Balls of Fire'?

Jerry Lee Lewis kicked the piano bench aside and played standing, sometimes with his heel, earning a name as rock and roll's first great wild man.

Which 1950s police drama starred its creator, Jack Webb, as the deadpan, by-the-book Sergeant Joe Friday?

Dragnet reruns were syndicated as Badge 714, after Friday's badge number, to keep them apart from the new episodes running on the network.

Which two words did Congress add to the Pledge of Allegiance on Flag Day 1954, during the Cold War?

Under God was first suggested by Illinois attorney Louis Bowman, who led a meeting in reciting the altered pledge as early as 1948.

Which world heavyweight champion of 1952 to 1956 finished his boxing career without a single professional defeat?

Rocky Marciano won each of his first 16 professional fights by knockout, every one of them before the fifth round.

Which newcomer won the Best Actress Oscar as a runaway princess touring Rome by Vespa in Roman Holiday (1953)?

Audrey Hepburn was so little known that Gregory Peck's contract gave him solo star billing, until Peck himself suggested that she share it.

Which two-seat Ford convertible entered production for 1955 as an upscale answer to the Corvette?

The Thunderbird was sold as a sporty personal car, not a sports car, and when Ford added a rear seat for 1958 it opened up the personal luxury market.

Which NASA program introduced its first seven astronauts, all military test pilots, to the press in April 1959?

Mercury's astronauts created a new profession and set the image of the American spaceman for decades, and all seven eventually flew in space.

Which New York newspaper columnist hosted the CBS Sunday-night variety show first titled Toast of the Town?

Ed Sullivan's name was what viewers already called the program, and CBS made it official in September 1955. He stayed on the air every Sunday until 1971.

Which planned community, built on Long Island potato fields by 1951, became the model for mass-produced 1950s suburbs?

Levittown's builder had learned mass production in the Navy's Seabees, putting up military housing from uniform, interchangeable parts.

Which Memphis label, founded by producer Sam Phillips in 1952, released Carl Perkins's original 'Blue Suede Shoes'?

Sun Records caught a famous rewrite on tape: between takes, Phillips persuaded Perkins to change the lyric 'go, boy, go' to 'go, cat, go'.

Which Illinois governor was the Democratic presidential nominee in both 1952 and 1956, losing in a landslide each time?

Adlai Stevenson never reached the White House, but he went on to serve as ambassador to the United Nations through the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Which director made Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest in the 1950s while hosting a weekly TV anthology?

Alfred Hitchcock slipped a cameo of himself into most of his films, and in 2012 a British Film Institute critics' poll named Vertigo the greatest film ever made.

Which singer's 1956 album Calypso, featuring 'Day-O', is often called the first million-selling LP by a solo artist?

Harry Belafonte's album stayed at number one for 31 weeks, and its opening track, the 'Banana Boat Song', became his signature.

Which small British car, designed by Alec Issigonis and announced in August 1959, was a response to petrol rationing?

The Mini was ordered up after the 1956 Suez Crisis brought petrol rationing back and sent buyers flocking to tiny imported bubble cars.

Which NBA rule, first tried out by Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone in 1954, was brought in to end stalling?

The shot clock got its 24 seconds from Biasone's arithmetic: he studied the box scores of games he had enjoyed and worked out how often the teams had shot.

Which NASCAR race was first run in February 1959, with Lee Petty named the winner three days after a photo finish?

The Daytona 500 first had Johnny Beauchamp as its unofficial winner, and he drove to victory lane before photographs and newsreel footage reversed the result.

Which 1950s British youth subculture paired rock and roll with drape jackets, drainpipe trousers and crepe-soled shoes?

Teddy Boys got their name in September 1953, when a Daily Express article shortened 'Edwardian' to 'Teddy'.

Which Cleveland disc jockey popularized the phrase 'rock and roll' on radio before the payola scandal ended his career?

Alan Freed helped stage the Moondog Coronation Ball at the Cleveland Arena in March 1952, an event regarded as the first major rock and roll concert.

Which Italian ocean liner sank off Nantucket in July 1956 after colliding in fog with the Swedish liner Stockholm?

The Andrea Doria stayed afloat for more than 11 hours, long enough for 1,660 of the 1,706 people aboard to be rescued.

Which comedian and pianist was the first host of NBC's Tonight, launched nationwide as a late-night talk show in 1954?

Steve Allen had created the program a year earlier as a local New York show, and joked on the first network night that it was going to go on forever.

Which driver won five Formula One world titles in the 1950s, taking them with four different teams?

Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina won with Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari and Maserati, and his five championships stood as the record for 46 years.

Which 1956 Broadway musical, based on Shaw's Pygmalion, starred Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews as Higgins and Eliza?

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