1953
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From top to bottom, left to right: the Coronation of Elizabeth II is held in the United Kingdom; Joseph Stalin dies, ending an era of Soviet rule; the Korean Armistice Agreement ends the Korean War; the Attack on the Moncada Barracks launches the Cuban Revolution; the 1953 Iranian coup d'état topples Mohammad Mosaddegh; the East German uprising of 1953 is suppressed; the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition achieves the first ascent; the North Sea flood of 1953 devastates Western Europe; and the Tangiwai disaster kills 151 in New Zealand.
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1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1953rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 953rd year of the 2nd millennium, the 53rd year of the 20th century, and the 4th year of the 1950s decade.
Events
[edit]January
[edit]- January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma.
- January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a government-in-exile in Oslo.
- January 13
- At a magistrate's Court in West Virginia, 47-year-old Donzel McCray "turned himself into a "human bomb" with sticks of dynamite strapped to his waist.[1][a] He killed himself and injured his ex-wife and her lawyer.[2][4][5][1][6]
- January 14
- Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen President of Yugoslavia.[7]
- The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon.
- January 15
- Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying.
- British security forces in West Germany arrest 7 members of the Naumann Circle, a clandestine Neo-Nazi organization.
- January 19 – 71.1% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into I Love Lucy, to watch Lucy give birth to Little Ricky, which is more people than those who tune into Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration the next day. This record is never broken.
- January 24
- Mau Mau Uprising: Rebels in Kenya kill the Ruck family (father, mother, and six-year-old son).
- Leader of East Germany Walter Ulbricht announces that agriculture will be collectivized in East Germany.
- January 31–February 1 – The North Sea flood of 1953 kills 1,836 people in the southwestern Netherlands (especially Zeeland), 307 in the United Kingdom,[8][9] and several hundred at sea, including 133 on the ferry MV Princess Victoria in the Irish Sea.
February
[edit]- February 1 – The surge of the North Sea flood continues from the previous day.
- February 3 – Batepá massacre: Hundreds of native creoles, known as forros, are massacred in São Tomé, by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners.
- February 11
- United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower refuses a clemency appeal for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.[10]
- The Soviet Union breaks diplomatic relations with Israel, after a bomb explodes at the Soviet Embassy, in reaction to the 'Doctors' plot'.
- February 12 – The Nordic Council is inaugurated.
- February 13 – Transsexual Christine Jorgensen returns to New York after successful sex reassignment surgery in Denmark.
- February 19 – Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.
- February 28
- James Watson and Francis Crick of Britain's University of Cambridge announce their discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule.
- Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia sign the Balkan Pact.
March
[edit]- March 1
- Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke, after an all-night dinner with Soviet Union interior minister Lavrentiy Beria and future premiers Georgy Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin, and Nikita Khrushchev. The stroke paralyzes the right side of his body and renders him unconscious until his death on March 5.[11]
- Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg is made deputy constable and lieutenant governor of Windsor Castle.
- March 6 – Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin, as Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- March 8 – The Thieves World, which has been transformed into the Russian mafia, are freed from prisons by the Malenkov regime, ending the Bitch Wars.
- March 13 – The United Nations Security Council nominates Dag Hammarskjöld from Sweden as United Nations Secretary General.
- March 17 – The first nuclear test of Operation Upshot–Knothole is conducted in Nevada, with 1,620 spectators at 3.4 km (2.1 mi).
- March 18 – The Yenice–Gönen earthquake affects western Turkey, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (violent), causing at least 1,070 deaths, and $3.57 million in damage.
- March 19 – The 25th Academy Awards Ceremony is held (the first one broadcast on television).
- March 25–26 – Lari Massacre in Kenya: Mau Mau rebels kill up to 150 Kikuyu natives.
- March 26 – Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.
- March 29 – A fire at the Littlefield Nursing Home in Largo, Florida, kills 33 persons, including singer-songwriter Arthur Fields.
April
[edit]
- April 7 – Dag Hammarskjöld is elected Secretary-General of the United Nations.
- April 8 – Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced to 7 years in prison for the alleged organization of the Mau Mau Uprising in the British Kenya Colony.
- April 16
- President Eisenhower delivers his "Chance for Peace" speech, to the National Association of Newspaper Editors.[12]
- The Habar Corporation's building in Chicago, United States, catches fire, killing 35 employees.
- April 25 – Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid", their description of the double helix structure of DNA.[13]
May
[edit]
- May 2 – Hussein is crowned King of Jordan.[14]
- May 5 – Aldous Huxley first tries the psychedelic hallucinogen mescaline, inspiring his book The Doors of Perception.[15]
- May 9
- France agrees to the provisional independence of Cambodia, with King Norodom Sihanouk.
- Australian Senate election, 1953: The Liberal/Country Coalition Government, led by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, holds their Senate majority, despite gains made by the Labor Party, led by H. V. Evatt. This is the first occasion where a Senate election is held without an accompanying House of Representatives election.
- May 11 – Waco tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hits in the downtown section of Waco, Texas, killing 114.[16][17]
- May 15 – The Standards And Recommended Practices (SARPS) for Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) are adopted by the ICAO Council. These SARPS are in Annex 15 to the Chicago Convention, and 15 May is celebrated by the AIS community as "World AIS Day".[18]
- May 18 – At Rogers Dry Lake, Californian Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to exceed Mach 1, in a North American F-86 Sabre at 652.337 mph (566.865 kn; 1,049.835 km/h).[19]
- May 25 – Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its only nuclear artillery test: Upshot-Knothole Grable.[20]
- May 29 – 1953 British Mount Everest expedition: Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay from Nepal become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.[21]
June
[edit]
- June 1 – Uprising in Plzeň: Currency reform causes riots in Czechoslovakia.
- June 2 – Elizabeth II is crowned Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, at Westminster Abbey.
- June 7 – Italian general election: the Christian Democracy party wins a plurality in both legislative houses.
- June 7–9 – Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: A single storm-system spawns 46 tornadoes of various sizes, in 10 states from Colorado to Massachusetts, over 3 days, killing 246.
- June 8
- On the second day of the Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence, a tornado kills 116 in Flint, Michigan; it will be the last to claim more than 100 lives, until the 2011 Joplin tornado.
- Austria and the Soviet Union open diplomatic relations.
- June 9
- On the third day of the Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence, a tornado spawned from the same storm system as the Flint tornado the day before hits in Worcester, Massachusetts, killing 94.
- CIA Technical Services Staff head Sidney Gottlieb approves of the use of LSD in an MKUltra subproject.
- June 13 – Hungarian Prime Minister Mátyás Rákosi is replaced by Imre Nagy.
- June 17 – Workers' Uprising in East Germany: The Soviet Union orders a Division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.
- June 18
- Egypt declares itself a republic.
- Tachikawa air disaster: A United States Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashes just after takeoff from Tachikawa Airfield near Tokyo, Japan, killing all 129 people on board in the worst air crash in history up to this time, and the first with a confirmed death toll exceeding 100.
- June 30 – The first roll-on/roll-off ferry crossing of the English Channel, Dover–Boulogne, takes place.[22]
July
[edit]- July 3 – The first ascent of Nanga Parbat in the Pakistan Himalayas, the world's ninth highest mountain, is made by Austrian climber Hermann Buhl alone on a German–Austrian expedition.[23]
- July 9
- The U.S. Treasury formally renames the Bureau of Internal Revenue; the new name (which had previously been used informally) is the Internal Revenue Service.
- Inauguration of the south lane of the Rodovia Anchieta.
- July 10 – The Soviet official newspaper Pravda announces that Lavrentiy Beria has been deposed as head of the NKVD.
- July 17 – The greatest recorded loss of United States midshipmen in a single event results from an aircraft crash near NAS Whiting Field.[24]
- July 26 – Fidel Castro and his brother lead a disastrous assault on the Moncada Barracks, preliminary to the Cuban Revolution.
- July 27 – The Korean War ends, with the Korean Armistice Agreement: The United Nations Command (Korea) (United States), China and North Korea sign an armistice agreement at Panmunjom, and the north remains communist, while the south remains capitalist. No formal peace treaty is ever signed.
August
[edit]- August 5 – Operation Big Switch: Prisoners of war are repatriated to the United States after the Korean War.
- August 8 – Soviet prime minister Georgi Malenkov announces that the Soviet Union has a hydrogen bomb.
- August 12
- The 1953 Ionian earthquake of magnitude 7.2 totally devastates Cephalonia and most of the other Ionian Islands, in Greece's worst natural disaster in centuries.
- Soviet atomic bomb project: "Joe 4", the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon, is detonated at Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakh SSR.
- August 13 – Four million workers go on strike in France to protest against austerity measures.
- August 15–19 – Cold War: 1953 Iranian coup d'état – Overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, by Iranian military in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with the support of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (as "Operation Ajax") and the United Kingdom.
- August 17 – The first planning session of Narcotics Anonymous is held in Southern California (see October 5).
- August 20 – The French government ousts King Mohammed V of Morocco, and exiles him to Corsica.
- August 22 – The last prisoners are repatriated from Devil's Island to France.[25]
- August 25 – The French general strike ends.
- August – High Arctic relocation of Inuit families by the Government of Canada.
September
[edit]- September 4 – The discovery of REM sleep is first published, by researchers Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman.
- September 5 – The United Nations rejects the Soviet Union's suggestion to accept China as a member.
- September 7 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes head of the Soviet Central Committee.
- September 23 – The Pact of Madrid is signed by Francoist Spain and the United States of America, ending a period of virtual isolation for Spain.
- September 25 – The first German prisoners of war return from the Soviet Union to West Germany.
- September 26 – Rationing of sugar ends in the UK.
October
[edit]- October – The UNIVAC 1103 is the first commercial computer to use random-access memory.[26]
- October 1 – The Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea is concluded in Washington, D.C.[27]
- October 5
- Earl Warren is appointed Chief Justice of the United States, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- The first meeting of Narcotics Anonymous is held (the first planning session was held August 17).
- October 6 – UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, is made a permanent specialized agency of the United Nations.
- October 9
- West German federal election, 1953: Konrad Adenauer is re-elected as German chancellor.
- Fearing communist influence in British Guiana, the British Government suspends the constitution, declares a state of emergency, and militarily occupies the colony.
- October 10 – Roland (Monty) Burton wins the 1953 London to Christchurch air race, in under 23 hours flying time.
- October 12 – The play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial opens at the Plymouth Theatre, New York.
- October 22 – Laos becomes independent from France.
- October 23 – Alto Broadcasting System (ABS) in the Philippines makes the first television broadcast in southeast Asia, through DZAQ-TV. Alto Broadcasting System is the predecessor of what will later become ABS-CBN Corporation.
- October 30 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document of the United States National Security Council NSC 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
November
[edit]- November 5 – David Ben-Gurion resigns as prime minister of Israel.
- November 9
- Cambodia becomes independent from France.
- The Laotian Civil War begins between the Kingdom of Laos and the Pathet Lao, all the while resuming the First Indochina War against the French Army in a Two-front war.
- November 20
- The Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, piloted by Scott Crossfield, becomes the first manned aircraft to reach Mach 2.
- Authorities at the Natural History Museum, London announce that the skull of Piltdown Man (allegedly an early human discovered in 1912) is a hoax.[28][29]
- November 20–22 – First Indochina War: Operation Castor – In a massive airborne operation in Vietnam, French forces establish a base at Điện Biên Phủ.
- November 21 – Puerto Williams is founded in Chile, as the southernmost settlement of the world.
- November 25 – Match of the Century (1953 England v Hungary football match): The England national football team loses 6–3 to Hungary at Wembley Stadium, their first ever loss to a continental team at home.
- November 29 – First Indochina War: Battle of Dien Bien Phu – French paratroopers consolidate their position at Điện Biên Phủ.
- November 30 – Kabaka crisis: Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda, is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Benjamin Cohen, Governor of Uganda.
December
[edit]- December 2 – The United Kingdom and Iran reform diplomatic relations.
- December 6 – With the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Arturo Toscanini performs what he claims is his favorite Beethoven symphony, Eroica, for the last time. The live performance is broadcast across the United States on radio, and later released on records and CD.
- December 7 – A visit to Iran by American Vice President Richard Nixon sparks several days of riots, as a reaction to the August 19 overthrow of the government of Mohammed Mossadegh by the U.S.-backed Shah. Three students are shot dead by police in Tehran. This event becomes an annual commemoration.
- December 8 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his Atoms for Peace address, to the United Nations General Assembly.
- December 17 – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves color television (using the NTSC standard).
- December 23 – The Soviet Union announces officially that Lavrentiy Beria has been executed.
- December 24 – Tangiwai disaster: A railway bridge collapses at Tangiwai, New Zealand, sending a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River; 151 are killed.
- December 25 – The Amami Islands are returned to Japan, after 8 years of United States military occupation.
- December 30 – Ramon Magsaysay becomes the 7th President of the Philippines.
Date unknown
[edit]- Global meat packing industry JBS is founded in Anapolis, Goias, Brazil.[30]
- China First Building Corporation, a partial predecessor of China State Construction Engineering, is founded in Beijing.[31]
Births
[edit]Deaths
[edit]Nobel Prizes
[edit]
- Physics – Frits Zernike
- Chemistry – Hermann Staudinger
- Medicine – Hans Adolf Krebs, Fritz Albert Lipmann
- Literature – Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
- Peace – George Marshall
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b "HUMAN BOMB". Daily Examiner. January 14, 1953. Archived from the original on June 1, 2025 – via trove.nla.gov.au.
Police said the incident took place a few minutes after Donzel McGray, 47, and jobless, walked into a Magistrate's office. "Look what's going to happen here", he said as he unbuttoned his coat to display five or six sticks of explosive.
- ^ a b "MAN BECOMES HUMAN BOMB". "The News" (Adelaide, SA). January 13, 1953. Archived from the original on June 1, 2025.
Donzel McCray, 47
(The paper is simply called "The News": "News (Adelaide, SA: 1923 - 1954)". trove.nla.gov.au. National Library of Australia. Archived from the original on June 1, 2025.On 6 Feb. 1954 the title changed to 'The S.A. Sunday mail'.
) - ^ "Zanesville Times Recorder Archives, Jan 13, 1953, p. 1". Zanesville Times Recorder in Zanesville, Ohio. Zanesville, Ohio. January 13, 1953 – via newspaperarchive.com.
Don Mccray turned himself into a human bomb setting off several sticks of dynamite strapped to his Waist.
[verification needed] - ^ "BLEW HIMSELF UP". Uralla Times. Australia. January 15, 1953.
Weston, West 'Virginia, a man turned himself into a human bomb, setting off several sticks of dynamite strapped to his waist. He was blown to pieces and his divorced wife and her lawyer were critically injured. The incident occurred at a court. The magistrate was thrown from his chair, and another lawyer knocked unconscious.
- ^ "Man Became Human Bomb". National Advocate. January 14, 1953.
- ^ "'Human Bomb' Kills Self, Wounds Wife". Nassau Daily Review-Star. January 13, 1953.
WESTON, W. Va. "Look what's going to happen here", said Donzel Raymond McCray as he dis-played five or six sticks of dyna-mite strapped to his waist. As five persons, including his divorced wife, looked on in horror yesterday, he touched two small batteries to wires extending from the dynamite. McCray was blown to bits and his wife and her lawyer, Charles N. Bland, were critically injured. The other three witnesses Magistrate W. S. Fults, Linn Mapel Brannon, and 78-year-old J. N. Osborn escaped serious injury. McCray, 47, and his wife were divorced last September. They had six children.
- ^ "64. Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992)". uca.edu. Retrieved September 2, 2025.
- ^ Stratton, J. M. (1969). Agricultural Records. John Baker. ISBN 978-0-212-97022-3.
- ^ Grieve, Hilda (1959). The great tide: The story of the 1953 flood disaster in Essex. Essex County Council.
- ^ "Statement by the President After Reviewing the Case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. | The American Presidency Project". www.presidency.ucsb.edu. Retrieved September 27, 2025.
- ^ Urschel, Donna. "The Death of Stalin". Library of Congress. Retrieved August 9, 2010.
- ^ "Chance for Peace Speech". Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission. April 16, 1953. Archived from the original on November 22, 2010. Retrieved August 9, 2010.
- ^ Watson, J. D.; Crick, F. H. C. (1953). "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid". Nature. 171 (4356): 737–738. Bibcode:1953Natur.171..737W. doi:10.1038/171737a0. PMID 13054692. S2CID 4253007. Retrieved August 9, 2010.
- ^ "King Hussein of Jordan". Royalty Obituaries. The Daily Telegraph. February 8, 1999. Archived from the original on February 11, 2010. Retrieved May 17, 2022.
- ^ Costandi, Mo (September 2, 2014). "A brief history of psychedelic psychiatry". Neuroscience. The Guardian. Retrieved May 18, 2022.
- ^ Dunn, Roy Sylvan. "Tornadoes". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved May 17, 2022.
- ^ "Search Results". Storm Events Database. National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved May 17, 2022.
- ^ "Annex 15 – Aeronautical Information Services". The Postal History of ICAO. applications.icao.int. Retrieved May 31, 2022.
- ^ Cochrane, Dorothy; Ramirez, P. (October 28, 2021). "Meet Jacqueline Cochran". National Air and Space Museum. Retrieved May 17, 2022.
- ^ "Operation Upshot-Knothole – 1953". Radiochemistry Society U.S. Nuclear Tests Info Gallery 1945-1962. Archived from the original on February 16, 2023. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
- ^ "Mount Everest Expedition 1953". Imaging Everest. Royal Geographical Society, Institute of British Geographers. 2003. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 17, 2022.
- ^ "Dinard – Viking". Simplon Postcards: The Passenger Ship Website. 2005. Retrieved October 22, 2012.
- ^ Herrligkoffer, Karl Maria (1954). Nanga Parbat [Nanga Parbat 1953]. Translated by Brockett, Eleanor; Ehrenzweig, Anton. New York: Knopf. pp. 102–115.
- ^ "Historic Aircraft: The Flying Boxcar". eLibrary.ru. Retrieved January 19, 2012.
- ^ Toth, Stephen (2006) Beyond Papillon: The French Overseas Penal Colonies, 1854–1952. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803244498.
- ^ Arrighi, Robert S. (2016). Bringing the Future Within Reach: Celebrating 75 Years of the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center (PDF). National Aeronautics and Space Administration. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-16-093210-6. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2019.
- ^ "US-Korea Military Alliance".
- ^ Weiner, J. S.; Oakley, K. P.; Le Gros Clark, W. E. (November 20, 1953). "The Solution of the Piltdown Problem". Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Geology Series. 2 (3): 141–6.
- ^ "Piltdown Man forgery". The Times. London. November 21, 1953. p. 6.
- ^ Keren Blankfeld (May 9, 2011). "JBS: The Story Behind the World's Biggest Meat Producer". Forbes. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
- ^ Channelweb srl. "China Construction First Group Construction & Development Co., Ltd. | OpenCorporation". opencorporation.org. Archived from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved July 1, 2022.
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