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Top Song(s)
• Tennessee Ernie Ford - Sixteen Tons
• The Platters - Only You (And You Alone)
• Four Aces - Love is a Many Splendoured Thing
• Al Hibbler - Unchained Melody
• Little Richard - Tutti Frutti
Top Film(s)
• The Night of the Hunter
• Diabolique
• Rififi
• Rebel Without a Cause
• To Catch a Thief
Best Selling Book(s)
• Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
• The Magician’s Nephew - C.S. Lewis
• The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
• The Quiet American - Graham Greene
Famous Deaths
• January 2 – José Antonio Ramón Cantera, 19th President of Panama
• February 9 – Ahmed Zaki Abu Shadi, Egyptian poet, publisher, doctor, bacteriologist and bee scientist
• March 11 – Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize
• April 10 – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French Jesuit priest, philosopher, paleontologist and geologist
• May 4 - Louis Charles Breguet, French aircraft designer and builder and early aviation pioneer
• July 23 – Cordell Hull, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• October 6 – Robert Munro, Scottish lawyer, judge and Liberal politician
• October 13 - Manuel Ávila Camacho, 45th President of Mexico
• November 6 – Edwin Barclay, 18th president of Liberia
• December 8 – Hermann Weyl, German mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher
Medical/Science/Technology
• Fred Hoyle and Martin Schwarzschild describe the mechanism for the creation of red giant stars.
• Jan Oort confirms that polarized light from the Crab Nebula is produced by synchrotron radiation.
• Avian influenza is confirmed to be caused by Influenza A virus.
• Severo Ochoa develops enzymes that cause nucleic acid bases to form RNA.
• James F. Bonner and Paul Ts'o isolate mitochondria from cells.
• Lloyd Conover is granted a patent for tetracycline in the United States.
• The ENIAC computer is deactivated, having been in continuous operation since 1947.
• The Salk polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials, receives full approval by the FDA.
• G. I. M. Swyer first describes XY gonadal dysgenesis.
• Hemolytic–uremic syndrome is first described by Conrad Gasser.
Political
• January 22 – The Pentagon announces a plan to develop (ICBMs) armed with nuclear weapons.
• January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Formosa.
• February 12 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam.
• February 22 – In Chicago's Democratic primary, Mayor Martin H. Kennelly loses to Richard J. Daley.
• February 24 – The Baghdad Pact, originally known as Middle East Treaty Organization, is signed between Iraq and Turkey.
• March 28 – The important income tax case of Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co. is decided in the Supreme Court.
• April 5 - Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, due to ill-health, at the age of 80.
• July 18 – Illinois Governor William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act.
• September 24 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffers a coronary thrombosis while on vacation in Denver.
• November 15 – The Democratic Party of Japan and Japan Liberal Party merge to form the Japan Liberal Democratic Party.
National
• January 7 – Marian Anderson is the first African-American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
• February 1 – Major tornadoes in Mississippi.
• March 19 – KXTV of Stockton, California signs on the air as the 100th commercial television station in the U.S.
• April 15 – Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois.
• May 9 – A young Jim Henson introduces the earliest version of Kermit the Frog.
• July 17 - The Disneyland theme park opens in Anaheim, California.
• August 1 – The prototype Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft first flies, in Nevada.
• September 10 – Western series Gunsmoke debuts on the CBS television network.
• October 3 – The Mickey Mouse Club airs on the ABC television network.
• December 1 – Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a bus to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama.
Worldwide
• January 18–20 – The Chinese Communist People's Liberation Army seizes the islands from the Republic of China.
• February 16 – Nearly 100 die in a fire at a home for the elderly in Yokohama, Japan.
• April 1 – EOKA starts a resistance campaign against British rule in the Crown colony of Cyprus.
• May 5 – West Germany becomes a sovereign country, recognized by Western countries.
• May 18 – Free movement of residents between North and South Vietnam ends.
• June 13 – Mir mine, the first diamond mine in the Soviet Union, is discovered.
• July 7 – The New Zealand Special Air Service is formed.
• August 20 – Hundreds of people are killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
• August 27 – The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records is published, in London.
• December 4 – The International Federation of Blood Donor Organizations is founded in Luxembourg.