1953

January 7 - President Harry Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.
January 13 - Marshal Josip Broz Tito chosen President of Yugoslavia.
January 20 - Change of US presidency from Harry S Truman (1945-1953) to Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961).
January 22 - The Crucible, a drama by Arthur Miller, opens on Broadway.
January 31, February 1 - North Sea flood kills 1,835 people in the southwestern Netherlands and 307 in the United Kingdom.
February 5 - The movie Peter Pan premieres (Roxy Theatre, New York City).
February 11 - President Eisenhower refuses clemency appeal for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
February 11 - The Soviet Union breaks diplomatic relations with Israel.
February 18 - The first 3D film, Bwana Devil opens.
February 19 - Censorship: Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.
February 28 - James Watson and Francis Crick announce that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA.
March 5 - After 29 years of ruling the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin dies.
March 6 - Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Josef Stalin as Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
March 18 - An earthquake hits western Turkey killing 250.
March 26 - Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.
April 7 - Dag Hammarskj�ld is elected United Nations Secretary General.
April 25 - Francis Crick and James Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.
May 18 - At Rogers Dry Lake, California Jacqueline Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier (she flew in a F-86 Sabrejet at an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour).
May 25 - Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test.
May 29 - Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay perform the first successful ascent to the summit of Mount Everest.
June 2 - Coronation of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey.
June 17 - Workers Uprising in East Germany.
July 26 - Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks sparking the Cuban Revolution.
July 27 - Korean War ends: The United States, People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea sign an armistice agreement.
August 7 - Ohio admitted to the union, retroactive to 1803.
August 19 - Cold War: The CIA helps to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
September 7 - Nikita Khrushchev becomes head of the Soviet Central Committee.
October 12 - "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York.
October 30 - Cold War: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
October - The UNIVAC 1103 is the first commercial computer to use random access memory.
November 9 - Cambodia becomes independent from France.
November 21 - Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the skull of the "Piltdown Man", held to be one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, was a hoax.
December 24 - 153 people die as a result of the Tangiwai disaster when the railway bridge collapses at Tangiwai, New Zealand sending a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River
December 30 - The first color television sets go on sale for about $1,175 (American dollars).

Year in topic

1953 in film
- From Here to Eternity
- Julius Caesar
- The Robe
1953 in literature
- Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel published
1953 in music
- Elvis Presley records for the first time
1953 in sports
- April 16th - Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup, defeating Boston Bruins winning the series 4 games to 1, with a score of 1-0, in the first overtime at 1:22 (minutes:seconds)
1953 in television
- January 19 - 68% of all United States television sets were tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth
- February 18 - Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz sign an $8,000,000 contract to continue the I Love Lucy television series through 1955.
- March 25 - CBS concedes victory to RCA in the war over color television standards.
- April 3 - TV Guide is published for the first time, with 10 editions and a circulation of 1,562,000
- May 25 - KUHT in Houston, becomes the first non-commercial educational TV station
- The Tonight Show begins as a local New York variety show.
- August 30 - NBC's Kukla, Fran, and Ollie Show is broadcast in color
- October 19 - Arthur Godfrey fires Julius La Rosa on the air.
- November - RCA tests its compatible color TV system on the air for the first time with a telecast of the Colgate Comedy Hour.
- December 24 - NBC's Dragnet becomes the first network-sponsored television program.
- December 17 - The FCC reverses its 1951 decision and approves the RCA/NTSC color system
- Japanese television goes on the air for the first time
1953 in theater
- July 13 - First lines of the first play produced by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Richard III) are spoken.

Births

January 10 - Pat Benatar, singer
January 10 - Bobby Rahal, automobile racer
January 19 - Desi Arnaz Jr, actor
January 21 - Paul Allen, entrepreneur
January 22 - Jim Jarmusch, director
January 26 - Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark
February 7 - Lige Curry, musician (P Funk)
February 8 - Mary Steenburgen, actress
February 11 - Philip Anglim, actor
February 11 - Stephen D. Thorne, astronaut
February 11 - Alan Rubin, music figure
February 17 - Norman Pace, actor, comic
February 21 - William Petersen, actor
February 25 - Jos� Mar�a Aznar, Spanish politician
March 12 - Ron Jeremy, pornographic film actor
March 12 - Carl Hiaasen, author
March 16 - Richard Stallman, Free software proponent
March 16 - Isabelle Huppert, actress
March 23 - Chaka Khan, singer
April 1 - Barry Sonnenfeld, producer, director
April 11 - Guy Verhofstadt, Prime Minister of Belgium
April 22 - Frank Netzel, Political activist
May 6 - Tony Blair, Prime Minister of United Kingdom
May 15 - Mike Oldfield, composer
May 16 - Pierce Brosnan, actor
May 19 - Victoria Wood, British comic actress
May 26 - Michael Portillo, politician
May 29 - Danny Elfman, (composer)
May 30 - Colm Meaney, actor
June 8 - Bonnie Tyler, singer
June 13 - Tim Allen, actor
July 15 - Mila Pivnicki, First Lady of Canada
July 29 - Geddy Lee, musician with Rush
August 19 - Beno�t R�gent, French film actor
October 9 - Tony Shalhoub, actor
October 16 - Terrence John Mason, American violinist
October 22 - Jeff Goldblum, actor
November 18 - Alan Moore, comicbook writer, writer, performer, magician
December 8 - Kim Basinger, actress and Oscar winner

Deaths

March 5 - Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader
March 5 - Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer
March 5 - Herman J. Mankiewicz, writer, producer
March 24 - Queen Mary the Dowager Queen Mother, formerly Mary of Teck, widow of King George V of the United Kingdom
March 28 - Jim Thorpe, athlete.
July 29 - Richard William Pearse, New Zealander airplane pioneer.
September 2 - General Jonathan Wainwright, U.S Medal of Honor recipient
October 3 - Arnold Bax, composer
November 8 - John van Melle, South African author
November 9 - Dylan Thomas, poet and author
November 27 - Eugene O'Neill, playwright
November 29 - Sam De Grasse, pioneer Hollywood actor
November 30 - Francis Picabia, painter, poet

Nobel Prizes

Physics - Frits (Frederik) Zernike
Chemistry - Hermann Staudinger
Medicine - Hans Adolf Krebs, Fritz Albert Lipmann
Literature - Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Peace - George Catlett Marshall

1953

Events

Year in topic

Births

Deaths

Nobel Prizes

Books