Explore 5191 historical events from 1950–1959.
The First Indochina War, known alternatively internationally as the French Indochina War, was fought in French Indochina between France and the Viet Minh and their respective allie…
First Indochina War: Viet Minh forces overran a French and Laotian garrison at Muong Khoua, leaving only four survivors
The Catalina affair was a military confrontation and Cold War-era diplomatic crisis in June 1952, in which Soviet Air Force fighter jets shot down two Swedish aircraft over interna…
Soviet aircraft shot down a Swedish military plane carrying out signals-intelligence gathering operations, followed thre
The period in the history of Guatemala between the coups against Jorge Ubico in 1944 and Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 is known locally as the Revolution. It has also been called the Ten Y…
Guatemalan Revolution: The Guatemalan Congress passed Decree 900, redistributing unused land greater than 224 acres (0
SS United States is a retired American ocean liner that was built during 1950 and 1951 for United States Lines. She is the largest ocean liner to be entirely constructed in the Uni…
SS United States (pictured) departed New York Harbor on her maiden voyage, on which completion she became the fastest…
The 1952 Kern County earthquake occurred on July 21 in the southern San Joaquin Valley and measured 7.3 on the moment magnitude scale. The main shock occurred at 4:52 am Pacific Da…
An earthquake registering 7.3 Mw struck the southern San Joaquin Valley in California, causing 12 deaths and an…
Talal bin Abdullah al-Hashimi was King of Jordan from the assassination of his father King Abdullah I in 1951, until his forced abdication in 1952. As a member of the Hashemite dyn…
King Talal of Jordan was forced to abdicate due to mental illness and was succeeded by his eldest son Hussein.
The Night of the Murdered Poets occurred on 12 August 1952, and it involved the execution of 13 Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Arrests were made in September 1948 an…
Thirteen Jewish poets were executed in Moscow for espionage based on false confessions.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has …
Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea, which later won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was first published.
On 6 September 1952, a prototype de Havilland DH.110 jet fighter crashed during an aerial display at the Farnborough Airshow in Hampshire, England. The jet disintegrated mid-air du…
A prototype aircraft crashed at the Farnborough Airshow in Hampshire, England, killing the pilot and test observer on…
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he represented California in b…
U.S. vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon delivered the Checkers speech, one of the first political uses of…
Operation Hurricane was the first test of a British atomic device. A plutonium implosion device was detonated on 3 October 1952 in Main Bay, Trimouille Island, in the Montebello Is…
The United Kingdom successfully conducted its first nuclear test, becoming the world's third state with nuclear weapons.
The Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash was a three-train collision at Harrow and Wealdstone station in Wealdstone, Middlesex during the morning rush hour of 8 October 1952. The crash…
Three trains collided (aftermath pictured) at Harrow & Wealdstone station in London, killing 112 people and injuring…
The Knowsley Hall shootings occurred on the evening of 9 October 1952 in Knowsley Hall, Merseyside, England. Harold Winstanley, a 19-year-old trainee footman at the house, shot his…
A footman shot and killed two colleagues and wounded the lady of the house at Knowsley Hall, England.
The Indonesian Army is the land branch of the Indonesian National Armed Forces. It has an estimated strength of 1.632.000 active personnel. The history of the Indonesian Army has i…
Indonesian Army elements surrounded the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, demanding that President Sukarno disband the…
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London, England. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far fro…
London's Royal Festival Hall opens with the Festival of Britain
The National University of San Marcos is a public research university located in Lima, the capital of Peru. In the Americas, it is the first officially established and the oldest c…
The 400th anniversary of the founding of the National University of San Marcos is commemorated by the opening of the fir
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is the foundation of the system of military justice of the armed forces of the United States. The UCMJ was established by the United Sta…
The Uniform Code of Military Justice takes effect as the legal system of the United States Armed Forces
William Bradford Shockley was an American physicist. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were j…
William Shockley announces the invention of the junction transistor.
The Korean War was an armed conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea and South Korea and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, w…
Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong.
Leopold III was King of the Belgians from 23 February 1934 until his abdication on 16 July 1951. At the outbreak of World War II, Leopold tried to maintain Belgian neutrality, but …
King Leopold III of Belgium abdicates in favor of his son, Baudouin of Belgium.
Jerome David Salinger was an American author best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger published several short stories in Story magazine in 1940, before servin…
J. D. Salinger publishes his popular yet controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye.
Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 3505 was a scheduled flight operated by Canadian Pacific Air Lines for the United Nations from Vancouver, Canada, to Tokyo, Japan. On 21 July 1951…
Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 3505 disappears while flying from Vancouver to Tokyo. The aircraft and its 37…
United Air Lines Flight 615 was a US transcontinental east–west airline service from Boston to Hartford, Cleveland, Chicago, Oakland and San Francisco. On August 24, 1951, the Doug…
United Air Lines Flight 615 crashes near Decoto, California, killing 50 people.
Luis Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas was a Mexican chemist known as co-inventor and the first to synthesize an oral contraceptive, progestin norethisterone.
Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes completes the synthesis of norethisterone, the basis of an early oral contraceptive.