1950s

Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1920s 1930s 1940s - 1950s - 1960s 1970s 1980s
Years: 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

1 Events and trends
2 People
3 See also
4 External Links

Events and trends

The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the baby-boom from returning GIs who went to college under the Montgomery GI Bill and settled in Suburbia America. Most of the internal conflicts that had developed in earlier decades like women's rights, civil rights, imperialism, and war were relatively suppressed or neglected during this time as a returning world from the brink hoped to see a more consistent way of life as opposed to liberalism and radicalism. The effect of suppressing social problems in the 50s would backfire in the 60s with the counter-culture movement.

The 1950s were also marked with a rapid rise in conflict with the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union that would heighten the Cold War to an unprecedented level which would include the Arms Race, Space Race, McCarthyism, and Korean War. The rise of Suburbia as well as the growing conflict with the East are the two generally accepted reasons for the Conservative domination of this decade.

Technology

United States tests the first fusion bomb. See History of nuclear weapons
Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, and thus the Sputnik crisis
The De Havilland Comet enters service as the world's first jet airliner
Charles Townes builds a maser in 1953 at Columbia University.

Science

Urey-Miller experiment shows that under simulated conditions resembling those thought to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted, many of the basic organic molecules that form the building blocks of modern life are able to spontaneously form
Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the helical structure of DNA at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge
Bruce Heezen discovers the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Polio vaccine

War, peace, and politics

Korean War
Red Scare, McCarthy Hearings
Suez Crisis
European Common Market founded.
Warsaw pact founded.
Most aboveground nuclear test explosions happened during this decade.
The United States CIA orchestrated the overthrow of the Guatemalan government.
Hungarian revolution of 1956 brutally suppressed by Soviet Union's troops.
Fidel Castro gains power in Cuba.
Mahmoud Abbas becomes involved in Palestinian politics in Qatar.
Decolonization: Algeria, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
Early history of the People's Republic of China, of the state of Israel, and of the Indonesian state.

Economics

"Economic miracle" in West Germany.

Culture, religion

Brylcreem and other hair tonics have a period of popularity
Television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries.
In the West, the generation traumatized by the Great Depression and World War II creates a culture with emphasis on normality and calm conformity.
Juvenile delinquency said to be at unprecedented epidemic proportions in USA
Traditional pop music reaches its climax; early rock and roll music embraced by teenagers/youth culture while generally dismissed or condemned by older generation.
Beatnik culture/ The Beat Generation
Optimistic visions of semi-Utopian technological future including such devices as the flying car.
The Day the Earth Stood Still hits movie theaters.
Along with the appearance of the sentence Kilroy was here across the United States, graffiti as an art form develops, especially among urban African Americans; graffiti eventually becomes one of the four elements of hip hop
The Catcher in the Rye
The Twilight Zone premiers as the first major science-fiction show.