1950s: Encyclopedia II - 1950s - Events and trends

1950s - 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 baby boom from returning GIs who went to college under the G.I. Bill and settled in suburban 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 of the 1930s and 1940s. 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. Stalin's death in 1953 left an enormous impact in Eastern Europe that forced the Soviet Union to create more liberal policies internally and externally. 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.

1950s - 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.

1950s - 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
• The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris in 1954.

1950s - War peace and politics

• Korean War
• Red Scare, McCarthy Hearings
• Suez Crisis
• European Common Market founded.
• Warsaw pact founded.
• Most above ground 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.

1950s - Economics

• "Economic miracle" in West Germany and Italy.

1950s - Culture religion

• Traditional pop music reaches its climax; early rock and roll music (with Elvis Presley in the lead) was embraced by teenagers/youth culture while generally dismissed or condemned by older generations.
• 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, though some see this era as relatively low in crime compared to today. Continuing poverty in some regions during recessions later on in this decade.
• Fairly high rates of unionization, government social spending, taxes, and the like in the US and European countries. Mostly liberal or moderate Western governments, though communism/Cold War play a role in reaction to, and within, domestic politics.
• 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
• Considerable racial tension with military and schools desegregation in the US, though controversy never truly erupts as later on in the 1960s.
• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Twilight Zone premiers as the first major science-fiction show.

Rise of evangelical Christianity including Youth for Christ (1943); the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Council of Christian Churches, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (1950), and the Campus Crusade for Christ (1951). Christianity Today was first published in 1956. 1956 also marked the beginning of Bethany Fellowship, a small press that would grow to be a leading evangelical press.

• Carl Stuart Hamblen religious radio broadcaster.

1950s - Others

• Wartime rationing ends in the United Kingdom.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Events and trends", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki