The Summer of 1955 - A Timeline

The Summer of 1955 - A Timeline

1955        May 20, Argentine parliament accepted the separation of church & state.

1955        May 21, the first transcontinental round-trip solo flight was completed.

1955        May 25, Connie Selleca, actress (Hotel, Captain America II), was born in  Bronx, NY.

1955        May 25, Series of 19 twisters destroyed Udall, KS., and most of Blackwell, OK.

1955        May 26, Khrushchev arrived in Belgrade.

1955        May 29, Jerry Dengler, singer (Mason Dixon-Karen Comes Around), was born in Colorado Springs, CO.

1955        May 29, John Hinckley Jr., attempted assassin of President Reagan, was born.

1955        May 29, Mike Porcaro, rock bassist (Toto-Roseanna, Africa), was born.

1955        May 29, Jordan government of Tewfik Abdul Huda resigned.

1955        May 31, The US Supreme Court ordered that states must end racial segregation "with all deliberate speed."

1955        May 31, Great Britain proclaimed emergency crisis due to railroad strike.

1955        May, The first leveraged buy-out deal took place. The first LBO may have been the purchase by McLean Industries, Inc. of Waterman Steamship Corporation.

1955        May, Bill Vukovich, 2-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, was killed while going for his 3rd win.

1955        Jun 1, "Front Row Center", TV Anthology; debut on CBS.

1955        Jun 1, "The Sky’s The Limit", TV Game Show; last aired on NBC. Low ratings were the limit there.

1955        Jun 2, Dana Carvey, comedian (Sat Night Live-Church Lady, George Bush), was born.

1955        Jun 2, Garry Grimes, actor (Summer of '42, Class of '44), was born in SF.

1955        Jun 7, Pres. Eisenhower became the 1st president to appear on color TV.

1955        Jun 7, "The $64,000 Question" premiered on CBS TV. It was the top ranking network show on television with a ranking of 47.5%. It featured Art Carney and Jackie Gleason and was in part created by Joseph Cates (d.1998 at 74).

1955        Jun 11, the 1st jet magnesium airplane was flown.

1955        Jun 11, In Le Mans, France, a Mercedes-Benz racer crashed killing its driver and some 81 spectators. Pierre Levegh’s car hit the bank by the grandstand and immediate-ly exploded. Parts of the wreckage were blown into the enclosure, killing scores of mostly-French spectators. Levegh was speeding down the straightaway in front of the pits when he clipped an Austin-Healey driven by British driver Lance Macklin.

1955        Jun 16, The U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend Selective Service until 1959.

1955        Jun 16, Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron. The ban was lifted eight years later.

1955        Jun 20, Michael Anthony, (bassist for Van Halen), was born.

1955        Jun 20, the 10th commemorative session of the UN opened in SF with dele-gates from 60 nations. Pres. Eisenhower pledged a US policy of “peaceful and reason-able negotiations” with all other powers.

1955        Jun 20, The AFL and CIO agreed to combine names for a merged group.

1955        Jun 21, The David Lean movie "Summertime" starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi had its world premiere in New York.

1955        Jun 23, Walt Disney's "Lady and the Tramp," the first animated feature filmed in CinemaScope, opened in theaters.

1955        Jun 24, Soviet MIG’s down a lightly armed US Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait. Russia’s foreign minister V.M. Molotov expressed his country’s regrets the next day.

1955        Jun 25, "Can Can" closed at Shubert Theater NYC after 892 performances.

1955        Jun 26, South Africa’s congress of the People adopted a Freedom Charter. It called for the mineral wealth beneath the soil to be transferred to the people as a whole.

1955        Jun 27, Isabelle Adjani, actress (Story of Adele H, Driver, Ishtar), was born in Paris.

1955        Jun 27, 1st automobile seat belt legislation was enacted in Illinois.

1955        Jun 29, The Soviet Union sent tanks to Pozan, Poland, to put down anti-Communist demonstrations.

1955        Jun 30, The "Johnny Carson Show," debuted on CBS-TV.

1955        Jun 30, The U.S. began funding West Germany’s rearmament.

1955        Jun, the Detroit centered 12 O’clock Comics with Soupy Sales went national on the ABC network for 8-weeks.

1955        June, Gordon Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, traveled to Mexico and became one of the first outsiders to eat the hallucinogenic psilocybin mushroom.

1955        Jul 1, Singapore’s government started the Central Provident Fund, a compulsory comprehensive social security savings plan. It required contributions from both employ-ees and employers.

1955        Jul 2, "The Lawrence Welk Show" premiered on ABC television.

1955        Jul 5, By this day, a day before Bill Haley’s 30th birthday, "Rock Around the Clock" topped the US billboards chart and stayed there for 8 weeks. The film “Black-board Jungle,” released in March, helped propel it to the top.

1955        Jul 9, Jimmy Smits, actor (Victor-LA Law, Running Scared, NYPD Blue), was born in Brooklyn.

1955        Jul 9, Scientists in London issued a manifesto declaring that researchers must take responsibility for their creations, such as the atomic bomb. Bertrand Russel, British pacifist philosopher, drafted the manifesto, which served as the philosophical origin for the 1997 Pugwash Conference (Nova Scotia) against nuclear arms. It was signed by ten other scientists that included as Joseph Rotblat (1995 Nobel Peace Prize), Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling and Frederic Joliot-Curie.

1955        Jul 11, The Air Force Academy was dedicated at its temporary quarters, Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado.

1955        Jul 13, Ruth Ellis, last English woman (murderess), was executed by hanging. Ten days before she had shot her husband, Ellis suffered a miscarriage after Blakely, the baby's father, punched her in the stomach

1955        Jul 17, Walt Disney’s Disneyland opened to the public in Anaheim, Calif.

1955        Jul 18, a summit opened in Geneva, Switzerland, attended by Pres. Eisenhower, Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, British PM Anthony Eden and French Premier Edgar Faure.

1955        Jul 18, 1st electric power generated from atomic energy was sold commercially.

1955        Jul 20, The body of Stephanie Bryan was found in Trinity County, Ca., where Burton Abbott owned a fishing cabin. Burton W. "Bud" Abbott, an ex-GI, was later con-victed and executed for her murder. The story is covered in the 1997 book: "Shallow Grave in Trinity County" by Harry Farrell. [see Apr 28]

1955        Jul 21, During the Geneva summit, President Eisenhower presented his "open skies" proposal under which the United States and the Soviet Union would trade infor-mation on each other's military facilities and allow aerial reconnaissance.

1955        Jul 21, First sub powered by liquid metal cooled reactor launched - Seawolf.

1955        Jul 25, Iman, model, David Bowie's girlfriend, actress (Star Trek VI), was born.

1955        Jul, Mad Magazine introduced a new format under William M. Gaines. [See 1952] In 1972 Frank Jacobs wrote "The Mad World of William M. Gaines.