1953

Related subjects: Years

Background Information

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Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1920s 1930s 1940s – 1950s – 1960s 1970s 1980s
Years:	1950 1951 1952 – 1953 – 1954 1955 1956

1953 by topic:
Subject
Archaeology Architecture Art Aviation Awards Comics Film Literature ( Poetry) Meteorology Music ( Country) Rail transport Radio Science Spaceflight Sports Television
By country
Australia Canada People's Republic of China Ecuador France Germany Greece India Ireland Israel Italy Japan Luxembourg Malaya Mexico New Zealand Norway Pakistan Philippines Singapore South Africa Soviet Union United Kingdom United States
Leaders
Sovereign states State leaders Religious leaders Law
Birth and death categories
Births Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments Disestablishments
Works and introductions categories
Works Introductions

1953 in other calendars
Gregorian calendar	1953 MCMLIII
Ab urbe condita	2706
Armenian calendar	1402 ԹՎ ՌՆԲ
Assyrian calendar	6703
Bahá'í calendar	109–110
Bengali calendar	1360
Berber calendar	2903
British Regnal year	1 Eliz. 2 – 2 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2497
Burmese calendar	1315
Byzantine calendar	7461–7462
Chinese calendar	壬辰年十一月十六日 (4589/4649-11-16) — to — 癸巳年十一月廿六日 (4590/4650-11-26)
Coptic calendar	1669–1670
Ethiopian calendar	1945–1946
Hebrew calendar	5713–5714
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2009–2010
- Shaka Samvat	1875–1876
- Kali Yuga	5054–5055
Holocene calendar	11953
Igbo calendar
- Ǹrí Ìgbò	953–954
Iranian calendar	1331–1332
Islamic calendar	1372–1373
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 28 (昭和28年)
Juche calendar	42
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4286
Minguo calendar	ROC 42 民國42年
Thai solar calendar	2496

Year 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

34th President Dwight D. Eisenhower

January 5 – Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot has its first public stage première in French as En attendant Godot at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris.
January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma.
January 7 – President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.
January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a government in exile in Oslo.
January 14
- Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen President of Yugoslavia.
- The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon.
January 15 – Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying.
January 19 – 71.1% of all television sets in the United States are tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth.
January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeds Harry S. Truman as the 34th President of the United States.
January 22 – The Crucible, a drama by Arthur Miller, opens on Broadway.
January 24
- Mau Mau Uprising: Rebels in Kenya kill the Ruck family (father, mother and six-year-old son).
- Walter Ulbricht announces that the agriculture will be collectivized in East Germany.
January 28 – Derek Bentley is executed for murder at Wandsworth Prison in London.
January 31– February 1 – The North Sea flood of 1953 kills 1,836 people in the southwestern Netherlands (especially Zeeland), 307 in the United Kingdom and several hundred at sea, including 133 on the ferry MV Princess Victoria in the Irish Sea.

February

February 1 – The surge of the North Sea Flood continues from the previous day.
February 5 – Walt Disney's feature film Peter Pan, premieres.
February 11
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower refuses a clemency appeal for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
- The Soviet Union breaks diplomatic relations with Israel after a bomb explosion at the Soviet embassy in reaction to the ' Doctors' plot'.
February 12 – Nordic Council inaugurated.
February 13 – Transsexual Christine Jorgenson returns to New York after successful sexual reassignment surgery in Denmark.
February 16 – The Pakistan Academy of Sciences is established in Pakistan.
February 19 – Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.
February 25 – Release, in France, of Jacques Tati's film Les vacances de M. Hulot, introducing the gauche character of Monsieur Hulot.
February 28
- James D. Watson and Francis Crick of the University of Cambridge announce their discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule.
- Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia sign the Balkan Pact.

March

March 1
- Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke after an all-night dinner with Soviet Union interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev. The stroke paralyzes the right side of his body and renders him unconscious until his death on March 5.
- Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg is made deputy constable and lieutenant governor of Windsor Castle.
March 6 – Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin as Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
March 8 - The Russian Mafia are freed from prisons by the Malenkoy regime which ends the Bitch Wars.
March 13 – The United Nations Security Council nominates Dag Hammarskjöld as United Nations Secretary General.
March 14 – Nikita Khrushchev is selected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
March 17 – The first nuclear test of Operation Upshot-Knothole is conducted in Nevada, with 1,620 spectators at 3.4 km (2.1 mi).
March 18 – An earthquake hits western Turkey, killing 250.
March 19 – The 25th Academy Awards ceremony is held (the first one broadcast on television).
March 25– 26 – Lari Massacre in Kenya: Mau Mau rebels kill up to 150 Kikuyu natives.
March 26 – Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.
March 29 - A fire at the Littlefield Nursing Home in Largo, Florida kills 33 persons, including singer-songwriter Arthur Fields.

April

April 7 – Dag Hammarskjöld is elected United Nations Secretary General.
April 8 – Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced to seven years in prison for the alleged organization of the Mau Mau Rebellion.
April 10 – Melbourne Knights is founded as Croatia SC in Melbourne.
April 13
- Ian Fleming publishes his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale in the United Kingdom.
- The German football team SG Dynamo Dresden is founded.
April 16
- President Eisenhower delivers his "Chance for Peace" speech to the National Association of Newspaper Editors.
- A four-story building in Chicago belonging to the Habar Corporation catches fire, killing 35 employees.
April 17 – Mickey Mantle hits a 565 foot (172 m) home run at Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. Mantle's home run is believed to be the longest home run in baseball history by many historians.
April 25 – Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish " Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid", their description of the double helix structure of DNA.

May

Mount Everest.

May 2 – Hussein is crowned King of Jordan.
May 5 – Aldous Huxley first tries the psychedelic hallucinogen mescaline, inspiring his book The Doors of Perception.
May 9 – France agrees to the provisional independence of Cambodia with King Norodom Sihanouk.
May 10 – The town of Chemnitz in East Germany becomes Karl Marx Stadt.
May 11 – The Waco tornado outbreak: A F5 tornado hits in the downtown section of Waco, Texas, killing 114.
May 15 – The Standards And Recommended Practices (SARPS) for Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) were adopted by the ICAO Council. These SARPS are in Annex 15 to the Chicago Convention and 15 May is celebrated by the AIS community as “World AIS Day”.
May 18 – At Rogers Dry Lake, Californian Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier (in a F-86 Sabrejet at an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour).
May 25 – Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its only nuclear artillery test: Upshot-Knothole Grable.
May 29 – Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

June

June 1 – Uprising in Plzeň: Currency reform causes riots in Czechoslovakia.
June 2 – Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey.
June 7 – Italian general election: the Christian Democracy party wins a plurality in both legislative houses.
June 8
- Flint-Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: A tornado kills 115 in Flint, Michigan (the last to claim more than 100 lives until the 2011 Joplin tornado).
- Austria and the Soviet Union form diplomatic relations.
June 9
- CIA Technical Services Staff head Sidney Gottlieb approves of the use of LSD in a MKULTRA subproject.
- Flint-Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: A tornado spawned from the same storm system as the Flint tornado hits in Worcester, Massachusetts, killing 94.
June 13 – Hungarian Prime Minister Mátyás Rákosi is replaced by Imre Nagy.
June 16 – The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia form diplomatic relations.
June 17 – Workers Uprising in East Germany: The Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.
June 18 – Egypt declares itself a republic.
June 30
- The first Chevrolet Corvette is built at Flint, Michigan.
- First roll-on/roll-off ferry crossing of the English Channel, Dover– Boulogne.

July

July 3 – First ascent of Nanga Parbat in the Pakistan Himalayas, the world's ninth highest mountain, is made by Austrian climber Hermann Buhl alone.
July 4 – Strikes and riots hit coal mining regions in Poland.
July 5 – The European Economic Community holds its first assembly in Strasbourg, France.
July 9 – The US Treasury formally renames the Bureau of Internal Revenue; the new name (which had previously been used informally) is the Internal Revenue Service.
July 10 – The Soviet official newspaper Pravda announces that Lavrenti Beria has been deposed as head of the NKVD.
July 23 – Howard Hawks's musical film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, is released by 20th Century Fox.
July 26
- Fidel Castro and his brother lead a disastrous assault on the Moncada Barracks, preliminary to the Cuban Revolution.
- The Short Creek Raid is carried out on a polygynous Mormon sect in Arizona.
July 27 – The Korean War ends: United Nations Command (Korea) (United States), People's Republic of China, North Korea sign an armistice agreement at Panmunjom and the north remains communist while the south remains capitalist.

August

August 5 – Operation Big Switch: Prisoners of war are repatriated after the Korean War.
August 8 – Soviet prime minister Georgi Malenkov announces that the Soviet Union has a hydrogen bomb.
August 12 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake totally devastates most of the Ionian Sea islands in Greece's worst natural disaster in centuries.
August 13 – Four million workers go on strike in France to protest against austerity measures.
August 17 – The first planning session of Narcotics Anonymous is held in Southern California (see October 5).
August 18 – The second Kinsey Report, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, is published in the US.
August 19 – Cold War: The CIA helps to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, and retain Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne (see Operation Ajax).
August 20
- The French government ousts King Mohammed V of Morocco and exiles him to Corsica.
- The United States returns to West Germany 382 ships it had captured during World War II.
August 25 – The general strike ends in France.

September

September 4 – The discovery of REM sleep is first published by researchers Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman.
September 5 – The United Nations rejects the Soviet Union's suggestion to accept China as a member.
September 7 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes head of the Soviet Central Committee.
September 12 - U.S. Representative John Fitzgerald Kennedy marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island.
September 25
- A hurricane in South-East Asia kills over 1,000 people.
- The first German prisoners of war return from the Soviet Union to West Germany.
September 26 – Rationing of cane sugar ends in the UK.

October

October – The UNIVAC 1103 is the first commercial computer to use random access memory.
October 5
- Earl Warren is appointed Chief Justice of the United States by U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- The first meeting of Narcotics Anonymous is held (the first planning session was held August 17).
October 6 – United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) made a permanent specialized agency of the United Nations.
October 9
- Konrad Adenauer is re-elected as German chancellor.
- The Guyanese constitution is suspended.
October 10 – Roland (Monty) Burton wins New Zealand air race in under 23 hours.
October 12 – The play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York.
October 23 – The Philippines' DZAQ-TV3 (now ABS-CBN) makes its initial telecast, becoming Asia's first commercial television broadcaster.
October 30 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document of the United States National Security Council NSC 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.

November

November 5 – David Ben-Gurion resigns as prime minister of Israel.
November 9 – The Laotian Civil War begins between the Kingdom of Laos and the Pathet Lao.
- The Kingdom of Laos gains its independence from the French Army.
- In Cambodia the Khmer Issarak begins to fight the French Army and the nation joins the First Indochina War but the Kingdom is established.
November 20 - The Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, piloted by Scott Crossfield, becomes the first manned aircraft to reach Mach 2.
November 21
- Puerto Williams is founded in Chile as the southernmost settlement of the world.
- Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the skull of the Piltdown Man, one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, is a hoax.
November 25 – England lose 6–3 to Hungary at Wembley Stadium, their first ever loss to a continental team at home.
November 29 – French paratroopers take Dien Bien Phu.
November 30 – Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda, is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Benjamin Cohen, Governor of Uganda.

December

December – Hugh Hefner publishes the first issue of Playboy magazine in the United States, featuring a centerfold nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe; it sells 54,175 copies at $.50 each.
December 2 – The United Kingdom and Iran reform diplomatic relations.
December 6 – With the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Arturo Toscanini performs what he claims is his favorite Beethoven symphony, Eroica, for the last time. The live performance is broadcast nationwide on radio, and later released on records and CD.
December 7 – A visit to Iran by American Vice President Richard Nixon sparks several days of riots. Three students are shot dead by police in Tehran. This event would become an annual commemoration. See August 19.
December 8 – U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his Atoms for Peace address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
December 10 – Albert Schweitzer is given the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.
December 17 – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves colour television (using the NTSC standard).
December 23 – The Soviet Union announces officially that Lavrenti Beria has been executed.
December 24 – Tangiwai disaster: A railway bridge collapses at Tangiwai, New Zealand, sending a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River; 151 are killed.
December 25 – The Amami Islands are returned to Japan after 8 years of United States Military occupation.
December 30 – The first colour television sets go on sale for about $1,175 (American dollars).

Date unknown

The Japanese 10 yen coin is issued with serrated edges for a 5-year period, beginning in 1953. All 10 yen coins since have had smooth edges.
Heavy massive rain, landslides, and flooding in western and southwestern Japan kill an estimated 2,566, and injure 9,433, mainly at Kizugawa, Wakayama, Kumamoto and Kitakyushu (June–August).