This Year in History:
1955
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On the evening of January 7, 1955, the curtain at the Metropolitan Opera in New York rises to reveal Marian Anderson, the first African American to perform with the Met. By then, Anderson was in the twilight of a career that was equal parts acclaimed and hamstrung by racism. First noticed by an aunt, who […]
A full nine months before Rosa Parks‘s famous act of civil disobedience, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin is arrested on March 2, 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus. Colvin was traveling home from school when the bus’ driver ordered her, along with three fellow Black students, to give up their row of seats to […]
On March 16, 1955, NHL president Clarence Campbell suspends Montreal Canadiens star Maurice “Rocket” Richard for the remainder of the regular season and playoffs after he attacks an opponent with his stick and slugs a referee in the head. Riots erupt the following day at the Red Wings-Canadiens game in Montreal, causing the game to […]
Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens in New York, two days before his 44th birthday. The play would win Williams his second Pulitzer Prize. Williams had been an award-winning playwright since 1945, when his first hit play, The Glass Menagerie, opened, winning the Drama Critics Circle Award. Two years later, he […]
On March 26, 1955, white pop singer Georgia Gibbs scores a hit with “Dance With Me Henry (Wallflower),” setting off a dubious trend in the music industry known as “whitewashing.” For its time, the mid-1950s, the lyrical phrase “You got to roll with me, Henry” was considered risqué just as the very label “rock and […]
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, retires as prime minister of Great Britain. Born at Blenheim Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father’s death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an […]
The Afro-Asian Conference—popularly known as the Bandung Conference because it was held in Bandung, Indonesia—comes to a close on this day. During the conference, representatives from 29 “non-aligned” nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East met to condemn colonialism, decry racism and express their reservations about the growing Cold War between the United States […]
On May 1, 1955, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, one of the greatest athletes in sports history, wins the Peach Blossom LPGA Tournament in Spartanburg, S.C. The victory, the 41st LPGA title of her career, comes as a Didrikson Zaharias continues her battle with colon cancer. After a strong start to the tournament, Didrikson falters in the […]
The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) becomes a sovereign state when the United States, France and Great Britain end their military occupation, which had begun in 1945. With this action, West Germany was given the right to rearm and become a full-fledged member of the western alliance against the Soviet Union. In 1945, the […]
Ten years after the Nazis were defeated in World War II, West Germany formally joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense group aimed at containing Soviet expansion in Europe. This action marked the final step of West Germany’s integration into the Western European defense system. Germany had been a divided nation since […]
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East […]
On June 11, 1955, a racing car in Le Mans, France, goes out of control and crashes into stands filled with spectators, killing 83 people, including the driver, Frenchman Pierre Levegh. The tragedy in the famous 24-hour endurance race led to a ban on racing in several nations. The Le Mans race, organized by France’s […]
Nightclub owner Ruth Ellis is convicted of murdering boyfriend David Blakely on July 13, 1955. Ellis was later executed by hanging and became the last woman in Great Britain to be put to death. Ellis was born in Rhyl, Wales, in 1926. She left school as a young teenager, had a child and worked a […]
Disneyland, Walt Disney’s metropolis of nostalgia, fantasy and futurism, opens on July 17, 1955. The $17 million theme park was built on 160 acres of former orange groves in Anaheim, California, and soon brought in staggering profits. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 18 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion. Walt Disney, […]
President Dwight D. Eisenhower presents his “Open Skies” plan at the 1955 Geneva summit meeting with representatives of France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The plan, though never accepted, laid the foundation for President Ronald Reagan’s later policy of “trust, but verify” in relation to arms agreements with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower met with […]
On August 27, 1955, the first edition of “The Guinness Book of Records” is published in Great Britain; it quickly proves to be a hit. Now known as the “Guinness World Records” book, the annual publication features a wide range of feats related to humans and animals. The inspiration for the record book can be […]
On August 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants—the white woman’s husband and his brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered […]
On August 31, 1955, William G. Cobb of the General Motors Corp. (GM) demonstrates his 15-inch-long “Sunmobile,” the world’s first solar-powered automobile, at the General Motors Powerama auto show held in Chicago, Illinois. Cobb’s Sunmobile introduced, however briefly, the field of photovoltaics–the process by which the sun’s rays are converted into electricity when exposed to […]
After a decade of rule, Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón is deposed in a military coup. Perón, a demagogue who came to power in 1946 with the backing of the working classes, became increasingly authoritarian as Argentina’s economy declined in the early 1950s. His greatest political resource was his charismatic wife, Eva “Evita” Perón, but she died in 1952, […]
On September 21, 1955—during an era when most homosexual people are deeply closeted—four lesbian couples meet at a private San Francisco house and launch America’s first lesbian-rights group. The eight women, including host Rosalie “Rose” Bamberger and her partner, Rosemary Sliepen, founded the Daughters of Bilitis initially as a social alternative to the frequently raided […]
