1952

  • Summer - worst polio epidemic

1953

  • March 9 - Stalin dies, Doctor’s Plot ends

1954

  • April-June – Army-McCarthy hearings

1955

  • Feb 13 – Israel obtains four of the seven Dead Sea scrolls
  • Wednesday, April 6 – First Seder in the evening
  • April 12 – Salk polio vaccine announced
  • July 17 - Disneyland theme park opens in Anaheim, Calif
  • Aug 28 – Black 14-year-old Emmett Till is lynched in Miss
  • Oct 4 - Brooklyn Dodgers win World Series in 7 games
  • Oct 5 - “Diary of Anne Frank” play opens on Broadway
  • Monday, Sept 26 – Yom Kippur
  • Dec 1 - Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama.
  • Friday, December 9 – first night of Hanukah

1956

  • March 12 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 500 for the first time
  • March 17 - Irène Joliot-Curie, French Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, dies
  • March 17-20 – First big snowstorm of the year in New York City
  • Monday, March 26– First Seder in the evening
  • April 1 – “Diary of Anne Frank” wins Best Play Tony Award
  • April 9 - Supreme Court decides Slochower v. Bd of Ed case 5-4 for Slochower
  • April 19 - Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
  • April 29 – Lag b’Omer
  • May 2 –The U.S. Methodist Church grants women full ordained clergy status
  • May 8 - Israel and Austria establish diplomatic relations
  • July 26 – Egypt leader Gamal Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal
  • August 25 – Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey dies
  • Sept 9 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show
  • Saturday, Sept 15 – Yom Kippur
  • Oct 5 – “Ten Commandments” movie premiers in New York
  • Oct 8 – NY Yankee pitcher Don Larsen throws the only perfect game in World Series history against the Brooklyn Dodgers
  • Nov 11 – Last Hungarian insurgents succumb to the invading Soviet army

1957

  • Jan 14 - Actor Humphrey Bogart dies of lung cancer
  • Jan 20 – Israel withdraws from Sinai peninsula, captured from Egypt in Oct 1956
  • March 4 - Standard & Poor’s first publishes the S&P 500 Index
  • March 12 - Dr. Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat” goes on sale
  • May 3 - Owner Walter O’Malley agrees to move Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles