Find out about the 1955 headlines that captured the interest of the public. The 1950’s was a decade of technological advancement, and was particularly characterized by the introduction of television into the family home. By the middle of the 1950’s, it was impossible to predict which direction society was going in. Women had taken a step backwards, and were expected to stay at home and raise the family while men went out to work.
Our 1955 newspaper articles tell the history of 1955 through the words and pictures of those who lived the experiences. Which 1955 events stood out this year? It was a year of rock and roll, where the genre took over mainstream music. Physicist and genius Albert Einstein sadly passed away, Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California, and Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white person on a bus.
1955 newspapers cover all kinds of events, from natural disasters, to public scandals, to political dramas. Learn about this important year in history with an authentic newspaper, the perfect gift for a history fan, or someone with a connection to this year.
January 25, 1955
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet Union announces the end of the war between the USSR and Germany. This conflict had begun during the Second World War in 1941.
March 7, 1955
The 1954 Broadway musical version of Peter Pan is presented on television for the first time by NBC. This is the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV exactly as performed on stage. The show gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time and becomes one of the first great television classics.
March 20, 1955
“Blackboard Jungle” opens in movie theaters featuring the song “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and his Comets. The impact of the song is massive, propelling Rock and Roll music as a mainstream genre.
April 12, 1955
The Salk Polio Vaccine is introduced, consisting of an injected dose of the dead polio virus. Following the subsequent development of an oral vaccine, polio is eradicated in most countries. On this date, it receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
April 15, 1955
Ray Kroc opens the ninth McDonald’s fast food restaurant since the company was founded in 1940. Kroc later takes over the business and oversees its worldwide expansion.
April 18, 1955
Albert Einstein, German-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1879) dies from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Hospital pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removes Einstein’s brain for preservation, without the permission of his family, hoping that neuroscience of the future will discover the source of Einstein’s exceptional intelligence.
May 9, 1955
West Germany joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
May 9, 1955
Jim Henson introduces the earliest version of Kermit the Frog in the premiere of his puppet show Sam and Friends.
May 21, 1955
Chuck Berry records his first single Maybelline for Chess Records in Chicago.
June 16, 1955
Lady and the Tramp premieres in Chicago as Walt Disney’s 15th animated film.
July 13, 1955
Ruth Ellis (b. 1926) is hanged for murder in London. She is the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom.
July 17, 1955
‘Disneyland’ opens in Anaheim, California.
August 27, 1955
The first edition of the “Guinness Book of World Records” is published in London.
August 28, 1955
Black 14-year-old Emmett Till is lynched and shot in the head for allegedly grabbing and threatening a white women in Money, Mississippi. His white murderers, Roy Bryant and J. M. Milam, are acquitted by an all-white jury.
September 10, 1955
Western series Gunsmoke debuts on CBS.
September 26, 1955
Singers Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, known as “America’s Sweethearts,” marry.
September 30, 1955
Actor James Dean is killed when his Porsche 550 Spyder collides with another car near Cholame in California.
October 3, 1955
The Mickey Mouse Club airs on ABC.
December 1, 1955
Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a bus to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama.
December 5, 1955
The Montgomery bus boycott begins as a civil rights protest in Montgomery, Alabama. African Americans refused to ride city buses to protest segregated seating. The boycott would last until December 1956.