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Sixth of 12 posts with an illustrated decade-by-decade timeline for the years 1900 to 2021. For more on the timeline and a link to the book on Amazon, see here. This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/yLiLRfvH78U.

1950-1959

This post is a teaser, not the full text for 1950-1959.

Among the events of this decade:

• Post-WW2 (1946-1964): US birth rate rises sharply; the “Baby Boomer” generation.
• Post-WW2 economic boom. GDP increases from $228 billion in 1945 to $1.7 trillion in 1975.
• Ca. 1947 Cold War begins, ramping up in the 1950s. USSR, China, and other Communist countries vs. US and its allies. Capitalism vs. communism, individualism vs. collectivism.
• 1950-1953 Korean War: in an attempt to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia, a coalition of UN troops (mostly Americans) fights North Korea, which is aided by USSR and China.
• 1951 US sharply increases its aid to the French in Vietnam (part of their former colony of Indochina), hoping to prevent the spread of Communism. After the French withdraw in 1954, Vietnam is split in two, and the US supports expatriate Ngo Dinh Diem as leader of South Vietnam.
• 1951 Iranian parliament nationalizes the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. 1953 CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service orchestrate the ousting of Iran’s prime minister, and US begins funding Iran’s ruler, the Shah.

• 1954 Civil Rights movement begins with Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling against “separate but equal” in schools. 1955 Arrest of Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, is followed by bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• 1957 Space Age begins with launch of USSR’s Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth.
• Books include Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale,1953, the first James Bond novel; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1955; and J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye,1951.
• Architecture: the International Style, with rectilinear, flat-roofed buildings of steel, glass, reinforced concrete, and chrome. Famous example: Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, NYC.
• Cutting-edge painters: Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. In a 1959 interview with Rothko after he was commissioned to create a set of paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in NYC, Rothko said: “I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.”

• Movies include White Christmas, 1954 (Bing Crosby), The Seven-Year Itch, 1955 (Marilyn Monroe), Blackboard Jungle,1955 (incl. “Rock Around the Clock”), and Jailhouse Rock, 1957 (Elvis Presley). TV: I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Twilight Zone, and early soap operas (Guiding Light, As the World Turns).
• Music includes Elvis, “All Shook Up,” 1957. Popular styles: crooners, doo wop, soul, rock-n-roll, country, Latin. American Bandstand debuts in 1956, featuring teenagers dancing to Top 40 hits; it gains more viewers than any other show on daytime TV.

Feedback I’d appreciate from you on the PDF of 1950-1959

• Have I listed all the most significant events for this decade? Space is limited and there’s room for disagreement, but do tell me if you think anything important is missing. In case you want to add events important to you, I’ve allowed some blank space on every set of facing pages.
• I have not read all the books I mention nor listened to all the musical styles. Are any of the facts or descriptions wrong? Corrections welcome.
• I’d like to include major events in areas such as education, psychology, Supreme Court decisions, and sports. If you can boil down those or similar fields to a half-dozen significant events from 1900 to 2021, send them to me and I’ll try to work them in.
• Of course, point out typos, bad grammar, messy syntax, and so on.

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