98 Fun Facts About 50s and 60s

Which Soviet satellite, launched in October 1957, started the Space Race?

Sputnik 1: the first US attempt to answer it, a Vanguard rocket in December 1957, rose only a few feet, fell back and exploded, and the press dubbed it Flopnik.

Which war lasted from June 1950 until an armistice in July 1953?

Korean War: armistice talks dragged on for two years, largely because many captured Chinese and North Korean soldiers refused to be sent home.

Whose nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956 triggered an invasion by Britain, France and Israel?

Gamal Abdel Nasser: the invaders hoped to topple him, but pressure from the US and the Soviet Union forced them to withdraw, and he stayed in power.

Who overthrew Fulgencio Batista in Cuba in 1959?

Fidel Castro: Batista's government jailed him after a failed 1953 attack on an army barracks, then freed him in an amnesty two years later.

The Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56 was sparked by the arrest of which activist?

Rosa Parks: she was fired from her job as a department store seamstress after her arrest, and she received death threats.

Which disease saw a turning point in the 1950s with a successful vaccine?

Polio: soon after Jonas Salk's vaccine was licensed in 1955, faulty batches from Cutter Laboratories that still contained live virus caused thousands of infections.

Which pair announced the double-helix structure of DNA in the early 1950s?

Crick and Watson: they shared the 1962 Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins, but Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray images were key evidence, had died in 1958.

What was the first multipurpose charge card, launched in New York in 1950?

Diners Club: company lore says Frank McNamara came up with the idea after he forgot his wallet when the bill arrived at a New York restaurant.

Which company that had invented the transistor went on to create the MOSFET in 1959?

Bell Labs: the device seemed slow and met no pressing need of the telephone system, so Bell did not pursue it at first.

Which product did Dallas secretary Bette Nesmith Graham invent?

Liquid Paper: she began by painting over her typing errors with tempera paint, and she sold the company to Gillette for nearly $48 million.

What name was given to the first immortal human cell line, cultured in 1951?

HeLa: doctors took the cells from cancer patient Henrietta Lacks without her consent, and decades later her family sued companies that had profited from them.

Which singer died in the 1959 plane crash that became known as 'the Day the Music Died'?

Buddy Holly: tired of broken-down tour buses in freezing weather, he chartered the small plane to reach the tour's next concert in Minnesota.

Which comic strip, launched in 1950, did one cartoonist write and draw alone for nearly 50 years?

Peanuts: Schulz hated the title, which his syndicate imposed after another cartoonist objected to the strip's original name, Li'l Folks.

Which 1959 epic won a record 11 Academy Awards?

Ben-Hur: at about $15 million it was then the most expensive film ever made, a make-or-break gamble for MGM, and its success saved the studio.

Audrey Hepburn won her Best Actress Oscar for which 1953 film?

Roman Holiday: its story Oscar went to Ian McLellan Hunter, a front for the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, who was only given the award after his death.

Which 1955 film opened with Bill Haley's 'Rock Around the Clock', helping send the song to No. 1?

Blackboard Jungle: the US ambassador to Italy, Clare Boothe Luce, had it pulled from competition in Venice, fearing it would harm America's image abroad.

Which company first sold frozen meals under the name TV Dinner in the 1950s?

Swanson: a former executive claimed the idea came from a huge surplus of unsold Thanksgiving turkeys, but members of the Swanson family disputed his story.

Which 1950s sitcom topped the US TV ratings in four of its six seasons?

I Love Lucy: to film the show instead of airing it live, Ball and Arnaz took a pay cut, and in return they won ownership of the episodes.

Which president inaugurated transcontinental US television service in 1951?

Harry S. Truman: his speech crossed the country on a new chain of microwave relay towers, most of which were later abandoned as fibre-optic lines replaced them.

Where were the 1956 Summer Olympics held?

Melbourne: Australia's strict animal health rules meant the Games' horse-riding events had to be held on the other side of the world, in Stockholm.

In September 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to do what?

Crash into the Moon: eight months earlier Luna 1 had been meant to do the same, but it missed by about 6,000 km and ended up orbiting the Sun.

Which synthetic fibre was introduced in 1959?

Spandex: DuPont set out to make a better fibre for women's girdles, which were then made of rubber.

Who became the first human in space on 12 April 1961?

Yuri Gagarin: rather than landing inside his capsule, he ejected about 7 km above the ground and came down separately by parachute.

Who became the first woman in space in June 1963?

Valentina Tereshkova: the women's cosmonaut group was later disbanded, and no other woman flew in space until Svetlana Savitskaya, 19 years later.

Who stayed in orbit as Command Module Pilot while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?

Michael Collins: each time Columbia passed behind the Moon, he was cut off from all radio contact with Earth.

Which 1962 book by Rachel Carson warned of the harm done by pesticides such as DDT?

Silent Spring: it stirred widespread public alarm over pesticides, and in 1972 the new Environmental Protection Agency ordered an end to most uses of DDT.

Which volunteer programme did President Kennedy establish in 1961?

Peace Corps: Kennedy first challenged students to serve abroad in a late-night campaign speech at the University of Michigan.

In October 1962, what word did President Kennedy use instead of 'blockade' for the US naval action around Cuba?

Quarantine: a blockade was legally treated as an act of war, and the softer word also helped win the backing of the Organization of American States.

Which Berlin landmark saw a US-Soviet tank standoff in 1961?

Checkpoint Charlie: the standoff began after East German police stopped a senior US diplomat driving to the theatre in East Berlin and demanded his papers.

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech at which 1963 event?

March on Washington: the famous 'I have a dream' passage was not in King's prepared text; he left his script and drew on lines he had used in earlier speeches.

Which president signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Lyndon B. Johnson: Kennedy had proposed the bill in 1963, and it became law only after Johnson took over and supporters broke a months-long Senate filibuster.

The June 1969 riots seen as the birth of the gay rights movement happened at which New York bar?

Stonewall Inn: the bar was owned by the Mafia, and a year after the riots the first pride parades were held to mark the anniversary.

Which campaigner championed the research that produced the birth control pill?

Margaret Sanger: she brought the biologist Gregory Pincus together with the heiress Katharine McCormick, whose donations then paid for his research.

Who performed the first human heart transplant in 1967?

The operation took place in South Africa.

ARPANET, the 1969 forerunner of the Internet, was funded by which part of the US government?

Department of Defense: the network's first message, sent from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute, was meant to be 'login', but the system crashed after two letters.

Which Ford car, unveiled at the 1964 New York World's Fair, sold about a million within two years?

Mustang: for all its American swagger, the very first one sold went to a buyer in Newfoundland, Canada, three days before the official launch.

The Beatles' US breakthrough exploded after their 1964 appearance on which TV programme?

The Ed Sullivan Show: its host grew keen to book the Beatles after seeing crowds of fans greet them at London's airport in late 1963.

Which record label, founded by Berry Gordy, turned the Supremes and the Jackson 5 into stars?

Motown: Berry Gordy started the business in 1959 with just $800 borrowed from his family.

At which 1965 event did Bob Dylan famously 'go electric'?

Newport Folk Festival: Pete Seeger later said he wished he had an axe to cut the cables, though he blamed the harsh sound rather than the electric guitar.

Which 1966 Beach Boys album heavily influenced the Beatles' 'Sergeant Pepper' album?

Pet Sounds: Brian Wilson traded songs about surfing and cars for orchestral pop, and in the US it charted lower than most of the band's earlier albums.

At which festival did Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire during his first major American show?

Monterey Pop Festival: Hendrix and the Who both refused to go on after each other, so a coin toss settled it, and the Who went first.

Which free concert, four months after Woodstock, marked a dark end to 1969?

Altamont: the Rolling Stones' show was moved to the speedway at the last minute, after a deal to hold it at another racetrack, Sears Point, collapsed.

What was the highest-grossing film of the 1960s?

The Sound of Music: for a time it overtook Gone with the Wind as the highest-grossing film ever made, even though many critics dismissed it as saccharine.

Which 1962 film launched the James Bond series with Sean Connery?

Dr. No: as a joke, the villain's lair displayed a copy of Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, which had been stolen from London's National Gallery the year before.

Which designer popularised the miniskirt in the 1960s?

Mary Quant: she named it after her favourite make of car, the Mini, yet she said it was really the girls on London's King's Road who invented the miniskirt.

Which comics publisher introduced Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Hulk in the 1960s?

Marvel: in 1971 it published a Spider-Man story about drug addiction without the Comics Code seal of approval, and the industry's code was soon revised.

Which team won the first Super Bowl?

Green Bay Packers: the game was far from a sellout, with about a third of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum's 94,000 seats left empty.

Where were the 1964 Summer Olympics held?

Tokyo: a satellite launched that August, Syncom 3, carried live television pictures of the Games across the Pacific to viewers in the United States.

Which toy became the first ever advertised on television in 1952, with a campaign aimed directly at children?

Mr. Potato Head was at first just a box of plastic parts to push into a real potato. A plastic body was only added in 1964, after complaints about rotting vegetables.

Which modeling compound, sold as a children's toy from 1956, was first made as a wallpaper cleaner?

Play-Doh lost its cleaning market when gas heating and washable vinyl wallpaper arrived. A nursery school teacher's art projects gave the putty its second life.

Which stray dog from the streets of Moscow became the first animal to orbit Earth in November 1957?

Laika means 'Barker' in Russian, and by some accounts technicians renamed her for her loud barking. Strays were chosen as already hardened to cold and hunger.

Which Wham-O toy became a 1958 craze, selling about 25 million within months of going on sale?

Hula hoop mania began with Australian children swinging bamboo rings, a game Wham-O copied in plastic. Sales passed 100 million within two years.

Which fastener did Swiss engineer George de Mestral patent in 1955 after studying burrs stuck in his dog's fur?

Velcro takes its name from two French words, velours for velvet and crochet for hook. Weavers in Lyon turned the idea down when the inventor first showed it to them.

Which singer was drafted into the US Army in 1958 at the height of his fame and served in West Germany?

Elvis Presley could have joined Special Services and kept performing, but his manager persuaded him that serving as a regular soldier would win public respect.

Which Hanna-Barbera cartoon, launched in 1960, was the first animated series to air in a prime-time slot?

The Flintstones took its inspiration from the live-action sitcom The Honeymooners, whose star Jackie Gleason later said he had considered suing over the likeness.

Which restaurant chain did milkshake-mixer salesman Ray Kroc franchise in the 1950s and buy outright in 1961?

McDonald's caught Ray Kroc's eye in 1954, when he visited to see why one restaurant was making so many milkshakes. He later paid the founding brothers $2.7 million for the company.

Which doll, launched by Mattel in 1959, did Ruth Handler name after her own daughter?

Barbie was modeled on Bild Lilli, a German doll first sold to adults, which Ruth Handler came across on a family trip to Switzerland.

Which territory became the 50th US state in August 1959, just months after Alaska was admitted?

Hawaii voted on statehood in a June 1959 plebiscite that drew the highest turnout the islands had ever seen, and it joined the Union that August.

Which drug did FDA reviewer Frances Kelsey refuse to approve in the early 1960s, before it was tied to birth defects?

Thalidomide had been submitted as a remedy for morning sickness in pregnant women. Blocking it earned Kelsey a presidential award for federal service from John F. Kennedy.

Which mountain did Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first climbers confirmed to summit in May 1953?

Everest made a perfectly timed headline: word of the climb reached London in time to be released on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.

Which Oscar-winning actress retired from Hollywood at 26 to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956?

Grace Kelly met the prince because of a photo shoot: she was invited to pose with him at his palace while leading the US film delegation at Cannes.

Which dance craze took off after Chubby Checker's 1960 cover of a Hank Ballard B-side reached number one?

The Twist was written after Hank Ballard saw teenagers in Tampa doing the dance. Chubby Checker's version returned to number one in 1962, once fashionable society caught on.

Which country's Abebe Bikila won the marathon at the 1960 Summer Olympics while running barefoot?

Ethiopia had its first Olympic champion thanks to a late change of plan: his new running shoes gave him blisters, so he decided to race without them.

Which giant movie monster, a metaphor for nuclear weapons, first rampaged through Japanese cinemas in 1954?

Godzilla was filmed only months after fallout from a US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll showered a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon No. 5.

Which medical student ran the first sub-4-minute mile at Oxford's Iffley Road track in May 1954?

Roger Bannister could train for only about an hour a day around his medical studies, and went on to a career as a neurologist rather than an athlete.

In which Southern state capital did soldiers protect nine Black students entering Central High School in 1957?

Little Rock became a showdown when the Arkansas governor used the National Guard to keep the students out. The president answered by sending in the 101st Airborne and taking over the Guard.

On which rigged 1950s TV quiz show did college professor Charles Van Doren dethrone champion Herb Stempel?

Twenty-One had its reigning champion, by then unpopular with viewers and the sponsor, give a wrong answer on instruction during his games against Van Doren.

Which pop artist first exhibited 32 paintings of Campbell's soup cans at a Los Angeles gallery in 1962?

Andy Warhol painted one canvas for each variety of soup Campbell's sold, then stayed away when the show opened in July 1962 without any formal launch.

Which car brand, named after Henry Ford's son, launched for 1958 and became a symbol of commercial failure?

Edsel was meant to win Ford a bigger slice of the mid-price market. Instead the company quietly dropped the brand in late 1959, after losing more than $250 million on it.

Which carmaker introduced Nils Bohlin's three-point seat belt in 1959 and later made the design free to use?

Volvo got the belt from an engineer who had spent years designing ejection seats for aircraft, and who took about a year to work out how to hold a driver safely in a crash.

Which powdered orange drink sold poorly until NASA began sending it into orbit with astronauts in 1962?

Tang reached shops in 1959 and struggled until it was picked for astronauts' eating experiments in orbit. It later flew on Gemini and Space Shuttle missions too.

Which housewares brand did saleswoman Brownie Wise turn into a 1950s success by selling it at home parties?

Tupperware made Brownie Wise the first woman to appear on the cover of BusinessWeek, yet the company's founder, Earl Tupper, fired her in 1958.

Which London teenager, born Lesley Hornby, was declared 'The Face of 1966' by the Daily Express?

Twiggy grew out of 'Twigs', her childhood nickname. Her hairdresser boyfriend, who became her manager, persuaded her to model under it.

Which star of 'Lilies of the Field' became the first Black winner of the Best Actor Oscar in 1964?

Sidney Poitier had already been the first Black man nominated for the award, for The Defiant Ones, and his win also made him the first Bahamian to take it.

Which band was put together in 1965 by television producers to star in an NBC sitcom of the same name?

The Monkees were cast from 437 applicants, and the producers had to rent instruments and a rehearsal space so the group could practice playing together.

Which Beat Generation writer typed his 1957 novel 'On the Road' on a continuous 120-foot scroll of paper?

Jack Kerouac cut sheets of tracing paper to size and taped them together, and his scroll draft used his friends' real names before pseudonyms replaced them in print.

Which 1957 Dr. Seuss book, written to replace dull school primers, uses just 236 different words?

The Cat in the Hat began, by its author's favorite account, with the first two rhyming words he spotted on the approved word list he found so frustrating.

Which Dallas nightclub owner shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television two days after Kennedy's assassination?

Jack Ruby fired in the basement of Dallas police headquarters as a pool camera broadcast the prisoner's transfer, so millions of NBC viewers saw the shooting as it happened.

Which country hosted the 1958 World Cup, where 17-year-old Pelé helped Brazil beat the home side in the final?

Sweden reached the final on home soil but lost it 5–2 in Solna, a suburb of Stockholm, as Brazil claimed the first of its world titles.

Which Philadelphia Warriors center scored 100 points in a single NBA game in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in 1962?

Wilt Chamberlain set the record unseen by television: the game was not broadcast and no film of it has been found, only an audio recording of the final quarter.

Which New York Yankee hit 61 home runs in 1961 to break Babe Ruth's long-standing single-season record?

Roger Maris felt the chase so keenly that his hair reportedly fell out in clumps, and baseball's commissioner wanted the record marked as set in a longer season.

Which heavyweight champion quit on his stool in February 1964, handing the title to 8–1 underdog Cassius Clay?

Sonny Liston had twice knocked out Floyd Patterson in the first round and looked unbeatable, but he blamed an injured shoulder when he stayed on his stool before round seven.

Dick Fosbury won gold at the 1968 Olympics with a back-first technique that transformed which athletics event?

High jump technique changed for good: Fosbury sprinted diagonally at the bar, then curved and leapt over it backward, keeping his center of mass lower in flight.

Which frontiersman's 1954–55 Disney television serial, starring Fess Parker, set off a craze for coonskin caps?

Davy Crockett merchandise, from caps to bubble gum cards, had taken more than $300 million from American shoppers by the end of 1955.

Which Hasbro soldier toy, launched in 1964, led to the coining of the term 'action figure'?

G.I. Joe was never called a doll by anyone at Hasbro, because the marketing wisdom of the day held that boys would not play with dolls and parents would not buy them one.

Which decorative light did Edward Craven Walker launch in 1963 after seeing an egg timer bubble on a pub stove?

Lava lamp was not its first name: it went on sale in Britain as the Astro, inspired by a homemade timer built from a cocktail shaker.

Which San Francisco district drew as many as 100,000 young people during the 1967 Summer of Love?

Haight-Ashbury had its own hippie newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, and a council was formed in 1967 in response to the young people converging on the district.

Which NASA mission carried the first humans to reach the Moon, broadcasting from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968?

Apollo 8's crew read the opening verses of the Book of Genesis during the broadcast, and became the first people to see an Earthrise with their own eyes.

Which electronics company unveiled the Compact Cassette in 1963, then licensed the format to rivals for free?

Philips gave way to pressure from Sony to share the format without charge, and the giveaway helped its cassette see off a rival design within a few years.

Which satellite, launched in July 1962, relayed the first live television pictures across the Atlantic?

Telstar was also the first privately sponsored space launch, and within weeks it was being used to synchronize clocks in Britain and America to within a microsecond.

Which company's 914 model, unveiled in 1959, became the first successful plain-paper office copier?

Xerox transformed office work with a machine that needed a large support force and had a tendency to catch fire when it overheated.

Which West African country, formerly the Gold Coast, became the first sub-Saharan colony to win independence in 1957?

Ghana was born on the stroke of midnight, uniting several British territories under Kwame Nkrumah, who led the new country as its first prime minister and president.

Which disc jockey popularized the phrase 'rock and roll' on 1950s radio before a payola scandal wrecked his career?

Alan Freed was fired in 1959 after refusing to sign a statement that he had never taken bribes from record companies, payments he later admitted accepting.

Which new kind of vehicle, devised by Christopher Cockerell, first crossed the English Channel in July 1959?

Hovercraft pioneer Cockerell rode along on the two-hour trip from Calais to Dover, made 50 years to the day after Louis Blériot first flew across the same water.

In the 1952 Cold War safety film 'Duck and Cover', what kind of animal is the cartoon character Bert?

Bert the Turtle ducks into his shell when a monkey dangles a lit firecracker over him, showing schoolchildren how to react to the flash of an atomic bomb.

Which towering hairstyle did a Chicago salon owner create in 1960 as a trade magazine's look for the new decade?

Beehive was a reporter's word for it, prompted by the bee-shaped hat pin that finished the design. It was also nicknamed the B-52, after the nose of the bomber.

Which author's 1963 book 'The Feminine Mystique' is widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in America?

Betty Friedan began with a reunion survey that found many of her old college classmates unhappy as housewives, and wrote a book only because no magazine would publish her article.

Which American pilot was shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a secret CIA U-2 spy mission?

Gary Powers came home in a prisoner exchange for a KGB colonel known as Rudolf Abel, a swap that the CIA's own counterintelligence chief had opposed.