1954 in the United States

1954 in the United States
Years:	1951 1952 1953 – 1954 – 1955 1956 1957
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Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1945–64)

Events from the year 1954 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-Kansas/New York)
• Vice President: Richard Nixon (R-California)
• Chief Justice: Earl Warren (California)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph William Martin, Jr. (R-Massachusetts)
• Senate Majority Leader: William F. Knowland (R-California)
• Congress: 83rd

Events

January

January 21: USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine

• January 14 – Marilyn Monroe marries baseball player Joe DiMaggio.
• January 20
  • The U.S.-based National Negro Network is established with 40 charter member radio stations.
  • Rogers Pass, Montana records the coldest temperature in the contiguous United States of −70 °F (−56.7 °C).
• January 21 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut, by First Lady of the United States Mamie Eisenhower.
• January 25 – The foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union meet at the Berlin Conference.

February

• February 10 – After authorizing $385 million over the $400 million already budgeted for military aid to Vietnam, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower warns against United States intervention in Vietnam.
• February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

March

• March 1 – U.S. officials announce that a hydrogen bomb test has been conducted on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
• March 1 – U.S. Capitol shooting incident: Four Puerto Rican nationalists open fire in the United States House of Representatives chamber and wound 5; they are apprehended by security guards.
• March 9 – American journalists Edward Murrow and Fred W. Friendly produce a 30-minute See It Now documentary, entitled A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy.
• March 16 – The Army–McCarthy hearings are convened.
• March 19 – Joey Giardello knocks out Willie Tory at Madison Square Garden, in the first televised boxing prize fight to be shown in color.
• March 25 – The 26th Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• March 28 – Puerto Rico's first television station, WKAQ-TV, goes on the air.

April

• April 1 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes the creation of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado
• April 7 – Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference.
• April 16 – Vice President Richard Nixon announces that the United States may be “putting our own boys in Indochina regardless of Allied support.”
• April 22 – Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army for being "soft" on Communism.

May

• May 14 – The Boeing 707 is released after about two years of development.
• May 17 – Brown v. Board of Education (347 US 483 1954): The United States Supreme Court rules that segregated schools are unconstitutional.^[1]

June

• June 9 – McCarthyism: Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy, during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the Army, saying, 'Have you, at long last, no decency?'.^[1]
• June 14 – The words "under God" are added to the United States Pledge of Allegiance.
• June 17 – A CIA-engineered military coup occurs in Guatemala.
• June 27 – Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán steps down in a CIA-sponsored military coup, triggering a bloody civil war that continues for more than 35 years.

July

• July 1 – The United States officially begins using the international unit of the nautical mile, equal to 6,076.11549 ft. or 1,852 meters.
• July 15 – The maiden flight of the Boeing 367-80 (or Dash 80), a prototype of the Boeing 707 series.
• July 19 – Release of Elvis Presley's first single, "That's All Right", by Sun Records (recorded July 5 in Memphis, Tennessee).

August

• August 16 – The first issue of Sports Illustrated magazine is published in the United States.

September

• September 3 – The last new episode of The Lone Ranger is aired on radio, after 2,956 episodes over a period of 21 years.
• September 11 – The Miss America Pageant is broadcast on television for the first time.
• September 30 – The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, is commissioned by the US Navy.

October

• October 15 – Hurricane Hazel makes U.S. landfall; it is the only recorded Category 4 hurricane to strike as far north as North Carolina.
• October 18 – Texas Instruments announces the development of the first transistor radio.

November

• November 10 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.
• November 12 – The main immigration port-of-entry in New York Harbor at Ellis Island closes.
• November 23 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average rises 3.27 points, or 0.86%, closing at an all-time high of 382.74. More significantly, this is the first time the Dow has surpassed its peak level reached just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
• November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, a 4 kg piece of the Hodges Meteorite crashes through the roof of a house and badly bruises a napping woman, in the first documented case of an object from outer space hitting a person.

December

• December 1 – The first Hyatt Hotel, The Hyatt House Los Angeles, opens. It is the first hotel in the world built outside of an airport.
• December 2
  • Red Scare: The United States Senate votes 67–22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."^[1]
  • The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and Republic of China is signed.^[2]
• December 4 – The first Burger King opens in Miami, Florida, USA.
• December 23 – The first successful kidney transplant is performed by Joseph E. Murray, MD in Boston from one identical twin to his brother. Murray would later share the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his "[discovery] concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease".^[3]

Undated

• Gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) are brought to the United States by Dr. Victor Schwentker.
• New York City Ballet co-founder and balletmaster George Balanchine's production of The Nutcracker is staged for the first time in New York, becoming an annual tradition there, still being performed as of 2008.
• The Boy Scouts of America desegregates on the basis of race.
• The TV dinner is introduced by the American entrepreneur Gerry Thomas.

Ongoing

• Cold War (1945–1991)
• Second Red Scare (1947–1957)

Births

Deaths

• January 5 – Rabbit Maranville, baseball player (b. 1891)
• February 6 – Maxwell Bodenheim, poet and novelist, murdered (b. 1892)
• Jeremiah Dublanc, Philadelphia businessman

See also

• List of American films of 1954

References

External links

• Media related to 1954 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons