1955 in the United States
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Events from the year 1955 in the United States.
Incumbents
Federal Government
- President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-Kansas/New York)
- Vice President: Richard Nixon (R-California)
- Chief Justice: Earl Warren (California)
- Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph William Martin Jr. (R-Massachusetts) (until January 3), Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) (starting January 3)
- Senate Majority Leader: William F. Knowland (R-California) (until January 3), Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas) (starting January 3)
- Congress: 83rd (until January 3), 84th (starting January 3)
Events
January
- January 7 – Marian Anderson is the first African-American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
- January 22 – The Pentagon announces a plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) armed with nuclear weapons.
- January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Formosa from the People's Republic of China.
February
- February 1 – Major tornadoes in Mississippi.
- February 10 – The Seventh Fleet of the United States Navy helps the Republic of China evacuate Chinese Nationalist army and residents from the Tachen Islands to Taiwan.
- February 12 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam.
- February 22 – In Chicago's Democratic primary, Mayor Martin H. Kennelly loses to the head of the Cook County Democratic Party, Richard J. Daley, 364,839 to 264,77.
March
- March 2 – Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old African-American girl, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards whilst being kicked and handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station. She becomes a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle (1956), which rules bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
- March 5 – WBBJ signs on the air in the Jackson, Tennessee as WDXI, to expanded U.S. commercial television in rural areas.
- March 7 – The 1954 Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by NBC (also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV exactly as performed on stage). The program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time and becomes one of the first great television classics.
- March 12 – African-American jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker dies in New York City at age 34.
- March 19 – KXTV of Stockton, California signs on the air as the 100th commercial television station in the U.S.
- March 20 – The film adaptation of Evan Hunter's Blackboard Jungle premieres, featuring the famous single "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song. On July 9 it becomes the first Rock and roll single to reach Number One on the U.S. charts.
- March 26 – Bill Hayes tops the U.S. charts for five weeks with "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" and starts a (fake) coonskin cap craze.
- March 28 – The important income tax case of Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co. is decided in the Supreme Court.[1]
April 15: McDonald's
April
- April – Theresa Meikle becomes the presiding judge of San Francisco County Superior Court, the first woman elected to such a position in any major U.S. city.
- April 5 – Richard J. Daley defeats Robert Merrian to become mayor of Chicago by a vote of 708,222 to 581,555.
- April 10 – In the National Basketball Association championship, the Syracuse Nationals defeat the Fort Wayne Pistons 92-91 in Game 7 to win the title.
- April 12 – Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials earlier in the U.S., receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
- April 14 – The Detroit Red Wings win the Stanley Cup in ice hockey for the 7th time in franchise history, but will not win again until 1997.
- April 15 – Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois.
May
- May 9 – A young Jim Henson introduces the earliest version of Kermit the Frog (made in March), in the premiere of his puppet show Sam and Friends, on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.
- May 21 – Chuck Berry records his first single, "Maybellene", for Chess Records in Chicago.
June
- June 7 – The $64,000 Question premieres on CBS television, with Hal March as the host.
- June 16 – Lady and the Tramp, Walt Disney's 15th animated film, premieres in Chicago.
July 17: Disneyland opens
July
- July 17 – The Disneyland theme park opens in Anaheim, California, an event broadcast on the ABC television network.
- July 18
- The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially, powering Arco, Idaho.
- Illinois's Governor William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act, that mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath or lose their jobs.
- The Geneva Summit between the U.S., Soviet Union, United Kingdom and France begins.
- July 23 – The Geneva Summit ends.
August
- August 1 – The prototype Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft first flies, in Nevada.
- August 4 – American Airlines Flight 476, a Convair CV-240-0 attempting an emergency landing at Forney Army Airfield, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri following an engine fire, crashes just short of the runway; all 27 passengers and three crew members are killed.
- August 19 – Hurricane Diane hits the northeast, killing 200 and causing over $1 billion in damage.
- August 22 – Eleven schoolchildren are killed when their school bus is hit by a freight train in Spring City, Tennessee.[2]
- August 28 – Black 14-year-old Emmett Till is lynched and shot in the head for allegedly grabbing and threatening a white woman in Money, Mississippi; his white murderers, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, are acquitted by an all-white jury.
September
- September 3 – African American rock singer Little Richard records "Tutti Frutti" in New Orleans; it is released in October.
- September 10 – Western series Gunsmoke debuts on the CBS television network.
- September 24 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffers a coronary thrombosis while on vacation in Denver.
- September 26 – "America's Sweethearts", singers Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, marry.
- September 30 – Film actor James Dean, aged 24, is killed when his Porsche 550 Spyder collides with another automobile at a highway junction near Cholame, California.
October
- October – First meeting of the lesbian group that becomes the Daughters of Bilitis.
- October 3 – The Mickey Mouse Club airs on the ABC television network.
- October 4 – The Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees 2–0 in Game 7 of the 1955 Fall Classic.
- October 11 – 70-mm film is introduced with the theatrical release of Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece Oklahoma!.
- October 20 – Disc jockey Bill Randle of WERE (Cleveland) is the key presenter of a concert at Brooklyn High School (Ohio), featauring Pat Boone and Bill Haley & His Comets and opening with Elvis Presley, not only Elvis's first performance north of the Mason–Dixon line, but also his first filmed performance, for a documentary on Randle titled The Pied Piper of Cleveland.
- October 27 – The film Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean, is released.
December 1: Rosa Parks, with Martin Luther King in 1955
November
- November 1 – A time bomb explodes in the cargo hold of United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B airliner flying above Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and five crew members.
- November 5 – Racial segregation is forbidden on trains and buses in U.S. interstate commerce.
- November 12 – The Bugs Bunny cartoon Roman-Legion Hare debuts.
- November 20 – Bo Diddley makes his television debut on Ed Sullivan's Toast Of The Town show for the CBS network.
- November 27 – Fred Phelps establishes the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.
December 14: Tappan Zee Bridge
December
- December 1 – Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a bus to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama.
- December 5
- The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge to become the AFL-CIO.
- The Montgomery Improvement Association is formed in Montgomery, Alabama by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black ministers to coordinate the Montgomery bus boycott by Black people.
- December 14 – Tappan Zee Bridge in New York opens to traffic.
- December 15 – Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", recorded on July 30, is released by Sun Records.
- December 22 – Cytogeneticist Joe Hin Tjio discovers the correct number of human chromosomes (46).
- December 31
- General Motors becomes the first American corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.
- Michigan J. Frog, a Warner Bros. cartoon character, makes his debut in One Froggy Evening.
Ongoing
- Cold War (1947–1991)
- Second Red Scare (1947–1957)
Births
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Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
January–June
- January 4 – Cecilia Conrad, economist and academic
- January 11 – Max Lucado, writer on Christian themes
- January 12 – Rockne S. O'Bannon, writer and producer
- January 13 – Jay McInerney, novelist
- January 18 – Kevin Costner, film actor, producer and director
- January 21 – Jeff Koons, "kitsch" artist
- January 27 – John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S. from 2005
- January 29 – Eddie Jordan, basketball player and coach and politician
- February 8 – John Grisham, writer of legal thrillers
- February 12 – Bill Laswell, bass player and producer (Massacre, Material, Tabla Beat Science, Painkiller and Praxis)
- February 21 – Kelsey Grammer, TV actor
- February 24 – Steve Jobs, entrepreneur and inventor (d. 2011)
- March 2 – Ken Salazar, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 2005 to 2009
- March 5 – Penn Jillette, magician
- March 17 – Gary Sinise, film & TV actor
- March 19 – Bruce Willis, actor
- April 6 – Michael Rooker, actor
- April 7
- Grace Hightower, philanthropist, actress and singer
- Gregg Jarrett, lawyer-journalist
- April 8
- Ron Johnson, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 2011
- Barbara Kingsolver, novelist, essayist and poet
- April 26 – Mike Scott, baseball player
- April 29 – Kate Mulgrew, TV actress
- May 2 – Ed Murray, Democrat politician and former mayor of Seattle
- May 6 – Tom Bergeron, TV game-show host
- May 9 – Kevin Reed, theologian and author
- May 10 – Mark David Chapman, murderer
- May 16 – Debra Winger, film actress
- May 17 – Bill Paxton, film actor (d. 2017)
- May 29 – John Hinckley Jr., attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan
- May 31
- Bruce Adolphe, pianist, composer, and scholar
- Marty Ehrlich, multi-instrumentalist (saxophone, clarinet, and flute)
- June 7 – Joey Scarbury, singer-songwriter
- June 16 – Laurie Metcalf, TV actress
- June 25 – Patricia Smith, African-American poet, "spoken-word performer", playwright, author and writing teacher
July–December
- July 1
- Lisa Scottoline, writer of legal thrillers
- Keith Whitley, country music singer (d. 1989)
- July 8 – Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 2003
- July 18 – Nancy Garrido, kidnapper
- July 21 – Howie Epstein, bass player, songwriter and producer (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) (d. 2003)
- July 22 – Willem Dafoe, actor
- August 2
- Caleb Carr, novelist and military historian
- PHASE 2 (Lonny Wood), graffiti artist (d. 2019)
- August 4
- Billy Bob Thornton, film actor, director, screenwriter, producer and singer-songwriter
- Alberto Gonzales, 80th United States Attorney General
- August 13 – Daryl, magician (d. 2017)
- August 24 – Mike Huckabee, Governor of Arkansas
- August 29 – Jack Lew, 76th United States Secretary of the Treasury
- August 31 – Edwin Moses, track & field athlete
- September 17 – Charles Martinet, actor and voice actor
- September 29 – Joe Donnelly, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 2013 to 2019
- October 17 – Tyrone Mitchell, murderer (suicide 1984)
- October 20 – Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 2007
- October 26 – Michelle Boisseau, poet (d. 2017)[3]
- October 28 – Bill Gates, software designer and entrepreneur
- October 30 – Heidi Heitkamp, U.S. Senator from North Dakota from 2013 to 2019
- November 5 – Kris Jenner, TV personality
- November 7 – Paul Romer, economist, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
- November 13 – Whoopi Goldberg, African American comic actress
- November 23
- Steven Brust, fantasy author and musician
- Peter Douglas, television and film producer
- Mary Landrieu, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1997 to 2015
- November 27 – Bill Nye, science communicator, television presenter and mechanical engineer
- November 30
- Richard Burr, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 2005
- Kevin Conroy, stage, screen and voice actor
- December 11
- Gene Grossman, economist and academic
- Stu Jackson, basketball player, coach and manager
- December 19 – Rob Portman, U.S. Senator from Ohio from 2011
- December 21 – Jane Kaczmarek, TV actress
- December 26 – Evan Bayh, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1999 to 2011
Deaths
January
- January 1 – Arthur C. Parker, part-Seneca archeologist and ethnographer of Native Americans (b. 1881)
- January 20 – Robert P. Tristram Coffin, poet, essayist and novelist (b. 1892)
- January 21 – Archie Hahn, sprinter (b. 1880)
- January 24 – Ira Hayes, Native American U.S. Marine flag raiser on Iwo Jima (b. 1923)
- January 31 – John Mott, YMCA leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1865)
February
- February 11 – Ona Munson, actress (b. 1903)
- February 12 – Thomas J. Moore, Irish-American film actor (b. 1883)
- February 20 – Oswald Avery, physician and medical researcher (b. 1877)
- February 22 – John T. Walker, Marine Corps lieutenant general (b. 1893)
- February 27 – Trixie Friganza, actress (b. 1870)
March
- March 3 – Katharine Drexel, Roman Catholic saint (b. 1858)
- March 8 – William C. deMille, screenwriter and director (b. 1878)
- March 9 – Matthew Henson, African-American explorer (b. 1866)
- March 12 – Charlie Parker, African-American jazz saxophonist (b. 1920)
April
- April 1 – Robert R. McCormick, newspaper publisher (Chicago Tribune) (b. 1880)
- April 7 – Theda Bara, silent film actress (b. 1885)
- April 14 – Cleveland L. Abbott, African-American football player and coach (b. 1892)
- April 18 – Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, developer of theory of relativity (b. 1879 in Germany)
May
- May 2 – Truman Abbe, surgeon who received awards for his research on radium in medicine (b. 1873)
- May 10 – Tommy Burns, boxer (b. 1881)
- May 11 – Bradley Walker Tomlin, painter (b. 1899)
- May 14 – Charles Pelot Summerall, general (b. 1867)
- May 16 – James Agee, writer (b. 1909)
- May 18 – Mary McLeod Bethune, educator (b. 1875)
- May 22 – Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, actor (b. 1891)
- May 30 – Bill Vukovich, race-car driver (b. 1918)
June
- June 5 – Pattillo Higgins, oil pioneer and businessman (b. 1863)
- June 10 – Margaret Abbott, golfer, first American woman to take first place in the Olympics (b. 1876)
- June 11 – Walter Hampden, film actor (b. 1879)
- June 17 – Carlyle Blackwell, actor (b. 1884)
July
- July 13 – Stanley Price, film and television actor (b. 1892)
- July 23 – Cordell Hull, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1871)
- July 31 – Robert Francis, actor (b. 1930)
August
- August 2 – Wallace Stevens, poet (b. 1879)
- August 5 – Carmen Miranda, Portuguese-born Brazilian singer and actress (b. 1909)
- August 8 – Grace Hartman, actress (b. 1907)
- August 11 – Robert W. Wood, optical physicist (b. 1868)
- August 12 – James B. Sumner, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1887)
- August 14 – Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress (b. 1861)
- August 22 – Olin Downes, music critic (b. 1886)
- August 28 – Emmett Till, murder victim (b. 1941)
September
- September 1 – Philip Loeb, actor (b. 1891)
- September 20 – Robert Riskin, screenwriter (b. 1897)
- September 23 – Martha Norelius, Olympic swimmer (b. 1808)
- September 27 – Leslie Garland Bolling, African-American sculptor (b. 1898)
- September 30
- James Dean, film actor (b. 1931)
- Louis Leon Thurstone, pioneer of psychometrics and psychophysics (b. 1887)
October
- October 1 – Charles Christie, film studio owner (b. 1880)
- October 8 – Iry LeJeune, Cajun musician (b. 1928)
- October 9 – Alice Joyce, actress (b. 1890)
- October 19 – John Hodiak, film actor (b. 1914)
- October 31 – William Woodward Jr., banker and horse breeder, shot in mariticide (b. 1920)
November
- November 1 – Dale Carnegie, writer and lecturer (b. 1888)
- November 4 – Cy Young, baseball player (Cleveland Spiders), member of MLB Hall of Fame (b. 1867)
- November 7 – Tom Powers, actor (b. 1890)
- November 11 – Jerry Ross, lyricist and composer (b. 1926)
- November 14 – Robert E. Sherwood, playwright (b. 1896)
- November 15 – Lloyd Bacon, actor and film director (b. 1889)
- November 22 – Shemp Howard, film actor and comedian (The Three Stooges) (b. 1895)
- November 29 – Rene Paul Chambellan, sculptor (b. 1893)
December
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- December 1 – Chief Thundercloud, character actor (b. 1899)
- December 6
- George Platt Lynes, photographer (b. 1907)
- Honus Wagner, baseball player (Pittsburgh Pirates), member of MLB Hall of Fame (b. 1874)
- December 22 – Otto Eppers, cartoonist (b. 1893)
- December 25
- Thomas J. Preston Jr., professor of archeology at Princeton University; second husband of Frances Cleveland (widow of President Grover Cleveland) (b. 1862)
- Elizabeth Harrison Walker, daughter of President Benjamin Harrison and Mary Dimmick Harrison (b. 1897)
See also
- 1955-56 in American soccer
- List of American films of 1955
- Timeline of United States history (1950–1969)
References
- 348 U.S. 426 (1955).
- "School Bus, Train Wreck Memorial Set For Aug. 21". Chattanoogan.com. 2004-08-18. Archived from the original on 2011-05-22. Retrieved 2010-10-13.
- "Michelle Boisseau". Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
External links
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