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Top Song(s)
• Dean Martin - That's Amore
• Patti Page - How Much is That Doggy in the Window?
• Frankie Laine - I Believe
• Tony Bennett - Rags to Riches
• Nat King Cole - Pretend
Top Film(s)
• The Wages of Fear
• Tokyo Story
• Stalag 17
• Ugetsu
• Roman Holiday
Best Selling Book(s)
• Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
• The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis
• The Crucible - Arthur Miller
• The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
• Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
Famous Deaths
• January 29 – Sir Reginald Wingate, British army general and colonial administrator
• February 16 – James L. Kraft, Canadian-American entrepreneur, inventor
• March 14 – Klement Gottwald, 5th President of Czechoslovakia
• May 16 - Nicolae Radescu, Romanian military officer and statesman, 45th Prime Minister of Romania
• June 18 – René Fonck, French aviator, top Allied World War I Flying Ace
• July 29 – Richard Pearse, New Zealand airplane pioneer
• September 2 – Jonathan M. Wainwright, American general and Medal of Honor recipient
• September 30 – Lewis Fry Richardson, English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist
• November 8 – Ivan Bunin, Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• December 31 – Albert Plesman, Dutch aviation pioneer
Medical/Science/Technology
• Stanley Miller publishes results from the Miller–Urey experiment in the journal Science.
• Ziegler–Natta catalyst invented by Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta.
• UNIVAC 1103 launched.
• American scientist Winston Price isolates the first rhinovirus, the most prevalent cause of the common cold.
• Maurice Ewing and Bruce Heezen discover the deep canyon running along the center of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
• Klaus Roth publishes a theorem regarded as a milestone in arithmetic combinatorics.
• Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.
• The first successful open heart surgery on a human utilizing a cardiopulmonary bypass pump is performed.
• Andrew Watt Kay publishes his augmented histamine test.
• American neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville performs an experimental segmental resection.
Political
• January 7 – President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.
• January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as the 34th president of the United States.
• February 19 – Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the U.S.
• April 11 – The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare begins operations.
• June 9 - CIA Technical Services Staff head Sidney Gottlieb approves of the use of LSD in a MKULTRA subproject.
• September 9 – The Supreme Court decision in Rumely v. United States.
• October 5 - Earl Warren is appointed Chief Justice of the United States by U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• October 10 – Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea is concluded in Washington D.C.
• October 30 – Dwight D. Eisenhower approves the top secret document of the U.S. National Security Council NSC 162/2.
• December 8 – Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his Atoms for Peace address to the UN General Assembly in New York City.
National
• January 14 – The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon.
• February 5 – Walt Disney's 14th animated film, Peter Pan, premieres in Chicago.
• May 11 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: an F5 tornado hits in the downtown section of Waco, Texas, killing 114.
• May 25 – Nuclear testing: at the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test.
• June 19 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York for conspiracy to commit espionage.
• June 19 - The Baton Rouge bus boycott begins in the Southern United States.
• June 30 – Assembly of the first Chevrolet Corvette is completed in Flint, Michigan.
• July 28 – Burger King opens its first restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida.
• August 5 – Operation Big Switch: U.S. prisoners of war are repatriated after the Korean War.
• December 25 – Amami Islands are returned to Japan after 8 years of United States Military occupation.
Worldwide
• January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma.
• February 12 – The Nordic Council is inaugurated.
• March 6 – Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin, as Premier.
• May 2 – Hussein is crowned King of Jordan.
• May 29 – Sir Edmund Hillaryand Tenzing Norgay become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
• June 2 – Elizabeth II is crowned Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms.
• June 17 – Workers' Uprising in East Germany.
• August 8 – Soviet prime minister Georgi Malenkov announces that the Soviet Union has a hydrogen bomb.
• September 26 – Rationing of sugar ends in the UK.
• December 2 – The United Kingdom and Iran reform diplomatic relations.