I thought it would be fun to document the happenings of a particular year. I deleted most of the geo-political “news” of the day and went with entertainment and leisure activities. If you see anything missing, please feel free to send me a note. I finish the list off with photos I have taken of cars with the model year, 1956.
Enjoy the year, 1956.
January 26 – The 1956 Winter Olympics open in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
February 22 – Elvis Presley enters the United States music charts for the first time, with “Heartbreak Hotel”.
February 23 – Norma Jean Mortenson legally changes her name to Marilyn Monroe.
February 24 – Doris Day records her most famous song, “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)”; it is from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, in which Day co-stars with James Stewart.
March 10 – The Fairey Delta 2 breaks the World Air Speed Record, raising it to 1,132 mph (1,822 km/h) or Mach 1.73, an increase of some 300 mph (480 km/h) over the previous record, and thus becoming the first aircraft to exceed 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h) in level flight.
March 13 – Elvis Presley releases his first gold album titled Elvis Presley in the United States.
March 15 – The Broadway musical My Fair Lady opens in New York City.
March 21 – The 28th Academy Awards Ceremony held in Los Angeles. Marty awarded Best Picture.
April 19 – American actress Grace Kelly marries Rainier III, Prince of Monaco.
April 27 – Heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano retires, without losing a professional boxing match.
May 22 – The NBC Peacock logo debuts on television in the United States.
June 5 – Elvis Presley performs “Hound Dog” on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the American television audience with his suggestive hip movements.
June 29 – Actress Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller, in White Plains, New York.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating the Interstate Highway System in the United States.
June 30 – 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision: A TWA Lockheed Constellation and United Airlines Douglas DC-7 collide in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft, in the deadliest civil aviation disaster to date; the accident leads to sweeping changes in the regulation of cross-country flight and air traffic control over the United States.
July 4 – An American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft makes its first flight over the Soviet Union.
July 13 – John McCarthy (Dartmouth), Marvin Minsky (MIT), Claude Shannon (Bell Labs) and Nathaniel Rochester (IBM) assemble the first coordinated research meeting on the topic of artificial intelligence, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States.
July 25 – The Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS Stockholm in heavy fog 72 kilometers (45 mi) south of Nantucket island, killing 51 and losing the Chrysler concept car Norseman on its way to the 1957 Auto Show exhibit yet was never seen by the public.
July 30 – Joint resolution of Congress signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing “In God we trust” as the U.S. national motto.
September 9 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States for the first time.
September 13 – The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team, led by Reynold B. Johnson.
September 25 – The submarine transatlantic telephone cable opens.
September 27 – The Bell X-2 becomes the first crewed aircraft to reach Mach 3.
October 5 – Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses, is released in the United States. It will be in the top ten of the worldwide list of highest-grossing films of all time, adjusted for inflation.[10]
October 8 – Baseball pitcher Don Larsen of the New York Yankees throws the only perfect game in World Series history, in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Yogi Berra catches the game. Dale Mitchell is the final out. The New York Yankees win the series in seven games. Larsen is named series MVP.
November 1 – The film Oklahoma! (1955), previously released to select cities in Todd-AO, now receives a U.S. national release in CinemaScope, since not all theatres are yet equipped for Todd-AO. To accomplish this, the film has actually been shot twice, rather than printing one version in two different film processes, as is later done.
November 3 – MGM’s film The Wizard of Oz is the first major Hollywood film running more than 90 minutes to be televised uncut in one evening, in the United States.
November 6 – 1956 United States presidential election: Republican incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower defeats Democratic challenger Adlai Stevenson, in a rematch of their contest 4 years earlier.
November 14 – An eight-mile long stretch of highway is opened west of Topeka, Kansas, creating the first portion of the Interstate Highway System in the United States and the first highway to be completed with funds from the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.[13]
November 22 – The 1956 Summer Olympics begin in Melbourne, Australia.
November 30 – African-American Floyd Patterson wins the world heavyweight boxing championship that is vacant after the retirement of Rocky Marciano.
December 4 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio, for the first and last time in history.
December 18 – To Tell the Truth debuts on CBS-TV in the United States.
December 31 – Bob Barker makes his television debut, as host of the game show Truth or Consequences in the United States.
