1955

1955

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Events of 1955

January 2 - José Antonio Remón Cantera, president of Panama, is assassinated at a race track in Panama City.
January 7 - Marian Anderson is the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
January 18 - Battle of Yijiangshan started in China. Fighting lasted until January 20 with a Communist victory.
January 22 - Pentagon announces plan to develop ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) armed with nuclear weapons.
January 23 - The Sutton Coldfield rail crash.
January 25 - The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union announces end of the war between the USSR and Germany, which began during World War II in 1937. Until then, despite the end of World War II, the USSR was formally at war with Germany.
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 10 - The seventh fleet of the United States Navy helps the Republic of China evacuate Chinese Nationalist army and residents from Tachen Islands to Taiwan.
February 12 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam.
February 16 - Nearly 100 die in fire at a home for the elderly in Yokohama, Japan.
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 264,775.

March 5 - WBBJ signs on the air in the United States as WDXI.
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 that time, and becomes one of the first great television classics.
March 17 - The Richard Riot occurs in Montreal.
March 19 - KXTV signs on the air in the United States
March 20 - Blackboard Jungle opens in movie theaters featuring the song "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and his Comets, thus propelling Rock and Roll as a musical genre. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song.

April 5 - Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
April 5 - Richard J. Daley defeats Robert Merrian to become mayor of Chicago by a vote of 708,222 to 581,555.
April 6 - Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
April 11 - The Taiwanese Kuomintang sabotaged the "Kashmir Princess", killing 16 but fails to assassinate People's Republic of China leader Zhou Enlai.
April 12 - The Salk polio vaccine is introduced.
April 15 - Ray Kroc opens a McDonald's fast food restaurant; it is the company's ninth since it was founded in 1940, but Kroc would later take over the company and oversee its worldwide expansion.
April 16 - The Burma-Japanese peace treaty signed in Rangoon on November 5, 1954 comes into force, formally ending the state of war.
April 17 - Imre Nagy, Premier of Hungary, is ousted for being too moderate.

May 5 - West Germany becomes a sovereign state.
May 9 - West Germany joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
May 11 - Japanese ferry Shiun Maru sinks off of Takamatsu, Shikoku. 168 are killed.
May 14 - Eight communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defence treaty called the Warsaw Pact.

June 7 - The $64,000 Question premieres on CBS television, with Hal Marks as the host.
June 11 - Eighty-three are killed and at least 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide in the 1955 Le Mans disaster.
June 13 - Mir Mine, the first diamond mine of the USSR, is discovered.
June 16 - Lady and the Tramp, Walt Disney's fifteenth animated feature film, debuts in U.S. movie theaters.

July 7 - The New Zealand Special Air Service was formed.
July 13 - Ruth Ellis (b. 1926) is hanged for murder in London - the last woman ever to be executed in the United Kingdom.
July 17 - Disneyland opens, in Anaheim, California.
July 18 - The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially.
July 18 - Illinois's Governor William Stratton signs Loyalty Oath Act that mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath or lose their jobs.
July 18 - Beginning of Geneva Summit between US, USSR, UK, and France.
July 19 - Estonian Television (ETV) begins broadcasting.
July 23 - Geneva Summit between US, USSR, UK, and France ends.
July 27 - El Al Airlines Flight 402 from Vienna to Tel Aviv-Yafo via Istanbul shot down over Bulgaria. All passengers and crew aboard the Lockheed Constellation were killed.
July 28 - The first Interlingua congress in Tours, France, leads to the founding of the Union Mundial pro Interlingua.

August 19 - Hurricane Diane hits the northeast United States, killing 200 and causing over $1 billion in damage.
August 20 - Hundreds are killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
August 22 - Eleven schoolchildren are killed when their school bus is hit by a freight train in Spring City, Tennessee.
August 25 - The last Soviet forces leave Austria.
August 27 - The first copy of a Guinness World Records book is published.
August 28 - Emmett Till is killed in Money, Mississippi.

September 6 - Istanbul Pogrom: Istanbul's Greek minority is the target of a government-sponsored pogrom.
September 10 - Gunsmoke debuts on the CBS television network.
September 15 - Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is published in Paris by Olympia Press.
September 19 - President of Argentina Juan Peron is ousted in a military coup.
September 19 - Hurricane Hilda kills 200 in Mexico.
September 22 - Independent (Commercial) Television begins broadcasting in UK .
September 24 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffers coronary thrombosis while on vacation in Denver.
September 30 - Actor James Dean is killed when his Porsche 550 Spyder collides with another automobile at a highway junction near Cholame, California.

October 3 - The Mickey Mouse Club premieres on the ABC television network.
October 4 - The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is released from prison in Seoul, Korea.
October 4 - The Brooklyn Dodgers finally 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 Oklahoma!
October 20 - First film footage of Elvis Presley in a planned film short about Cleveland disc jockey Bill Randle.
October 20 - Cardiff is proclaimed as the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom.
October 26 - After the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares its permanent neutrality.
October 26 - Ngo Dinh Diem proclaims Vietnam a republic with himself as president.

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 on board the aircraft.
November 3 - The five-and-a-half-mile Rimutaka Railway tunnel opens in New Zealand.
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 in the USA.
November 20 - Bo Diddley makes his television debut on Ed Sullivan's Toast Of The Town show for the CBS network.
November 23 - The Cocos Islands are transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia.
November 27 - Fred Phelps establishes the Westboro Baptist Church, an anti-gay church, in Topeka, Kansas.