This Year in History:
1956
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 24, 1956, Look magazine publishes the confessions of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, two white men from Mississippi who were acquitted in the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till, an African American teenager from Chicago. In the Look article, titled “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,” the men detailed […]
On January 30, 1956, an unidentified suspected white supremacist terrorist bombed the Montgomery home of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. No one was harmed, but the explosion outraged the community and was a major test of King’s steadfast commitment to non-violence. King was relatively new to Montgomery, Alabama but had quickly involved himself in the civil […]
On February 25, 1956, Sylvia Plath meets her future husband, Ted Hughes, at a party in Cambridge, UK. The two poets fell in love at first sight and married four months later. Plath was born in 1932, the daughter of an autocratic German father who taught biology and was a leading expert on bumblebees. Plath’s father […]
American actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco in a spectacular ceremony on April 18, 1956. Kelly, the daughter of a former model and a wealthy industrialist, began acting as a child. After high school, she attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts in New York. While she auditioned for Broadway plays, she supported […]
On April 27, 1956, world heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano retires from boxing at age 31, saying he wants to spend more time with his family. Marciano ended his career as the only heavyweight champion with a perfect record–49 wins in 49 professional bouts, with 43 knockouts. Rocco Francis Marchegiano was born into a working-class family […]
When a music critic wants to indicate that a song lacks lyrical sophistication, he or she will often refer to its lyrics as being of the “moon in June” sort. It’s a label left over from the Tin Pan Alley era, when even great composers like Irving Berlin churned out a hundred uninspired Moon/June tunes […]
The United States conducts the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on May 21, 1956. (Because of the time difference, it was still May 20 in the U.S.) The successful test indicated that hydrogen […]
Santa Cruz, California, a favorite early haunt of author Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, was an established capital of the West Coast counterculture scene by the mid-1960s. Yet just 10 years earlier, the balance of power in this crunchy beach town 70 miles south of San Francisco tilted heavily toward the older side of […]
By the end of 1955, Elvis Presley had nearly 18 months of nonstop touring behind him and two dozen singles already under his belt, though his only hits were on the Country and Western charts. He was a hardworking and hard-to-categorize up-and-comer, but the next six months would make him a superstar. It was his […]
On June 9, 1956, one of the world’s top-selling crime novelists, Patricia Cornwell, best known for her forensic pathologist character Dr. Kay Scarpetta, is born in Miami, Florida. Cornwell, whose maiden name is Daniels, had a difficult childhood: When she was 5, her father, a lawyer, left the family. Afterward, Cornwell moved with her mother […]
Playwright Arthur Miller defies the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refuses to name suspected communists. Miller’s defiance of McCarthyism won him a conviction for contempt of court, which was later reversed by the Supreme Court. His passport had already been denied when he tried to go to Brussels to attend the premiere of his […]
On June 23, 1956, 99.95 percent of Egyptian voters mark their ballots to elect Gamal Abdel Nasser as the first president of the Republic of Egypt. Nasser, who toppled the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 in a military coup, was the only presidential candidate on the ballot. In the same ballot, Nasser’s new constitution, under which […]
The last Packard—the classic American luxury car with the famously enigmatic slogan “Ask the Man Who Owns One”—rolls off the production line at Packard’s plant in Detroit, Michigan on June 25, 1956. Mechanical engineer James Ward Packard and his brother, William Dowd Packard, built their first automobile, a buggy-type vehicle with a single cylinder engine, […]
On June 26, 1956, the U.S. Congress approves the Federal Highway Act, which allocates more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways; it will be the largest public construction project in U.S. history to that date. Among the pressing questions involved in passing highway legislation were where exactly the […]
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces that the United States is withdrawing its offer of financial aid to Egypt to help with the construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River. The action drove Egypt further toward an alliance with the Soviet Union and was a contributing factor to the Suez Crisis later […]
At 11:10 p.m., 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish ocean liner Stockholm collide in a heavy Atlantic fog. Fifty-one passengers and crew were killed in the collision, which ripped a great hole in the broad side of the Italian vessel. Miraculously, all 1,660 survivors on the […]
The Suez Crisis begins when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the British and French-owned Suez Canal. The Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas across Egypt, was completed by French engineers in 1869. For the next 87 years, it remained largely under British and French control, and Europe depended on it as […]
On July 30, 1956, two years after pushing to have the phrase “under God” inserted into the pledge of allegiance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be the nation’s official motto. The law, P.L. 84-140, also mandated that the phrase be printed on all American paper currency. […]
Seven army ammunition trucks explode in Cali, Colombia, killing more than 1,000 people and injuring thousands more on August 7, 1956. The cause of the explosions remains a mystery. The previous day, 20 trucks fully loaded with dynamite departed the Colombian city of Buenaventura. The trucks stopped in Cali and then 13 of the trucks […]
The King of Rock and Roll teams up with TV’s reigning variety program, as Elvis Presley appears on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time on September 9, 1956. After earning big ratings for “The Steve Allen Show,” the Dorsey Brothers “Stage Show” and “The Milton Berle Show,” Sullivan finally reneged on his Presley […]
