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Top Song(s)
• Elvis Presley - All Shook Up
• Buddy Holly - That'll Be the Day
• Jerry Lee Lewis - Great Balls of Fire
• Paul Anka - Diana
• Pat Boone - Love Letters in the Sand
Top Film(s)
• Paths of Glory
• 12 Angry Men
• Wild Strawberries
• The Seventh Seal
• Throne of Blood
Best Selling Book(s)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! - Dr. Seuss
• The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss
• Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
• On the Beach - Nevil Shute
• On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Famous Deaths
• January 4 – Theodor Korner, Austrian statesman, 5th President of Austria
• February 9 – Miklos Horthy, Austro-Hungarian admiral and regent of the Kingdom of Hungary
• April 6 – Pierina Morosini, Italian Roman Catholic laywoman, martyr
• May 20 – Gilbert Murray, Australian-British classical scholar and intellectual
• June 21 – Johannes Stark, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• July 15 - James M. Cox, Democratic candidate for President of the United States
• August 5 – Heinrich Otto Wieland, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• October 26 - Gerty Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize
• November 13 – Antonín Zapotocky, 6th President and 15th Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
• December 6 – Robert Esnault-Pelterie, French aircraft designer and pioneer rocket theorist
Medical/Science/Technology
• Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, by an R-7 Semyorka rocket.
• Launch of Sputnik 2, with a dog called Laika on board, the first animal sent into orbit.
• Dopamine is first identified in the human brain by Katharine Montagu.
• The structure of myoglobin is determined by John Kendrew and colleagues in England.
• Costin Neni?escu synthesizes cyclobutadiene.
• IBM delivers the first compiler for the FORTRAN scientific programming language.
• Robert C. Prim independently rediscovers Prim's algorithm.
• The drug Thalidomide is launched as a sedative by Grünenthal GmbH.
• An article by Fred Kummerow suggests a link between trans fats and heart disease.
• Harry Harlow begins maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys.
Political
• January 5 - US President Eisenhower asks Congress to send troops to the Middle East.
• January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon are inaugurated for a second term.
• February 25 - US Supreme Court decides 6-3, baseball is only antitrust exempt pro sport.
• March 7 – The United States Congress approves the Eisenhower Doctrine.
• March 13 – The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation arrests Jimmy Hoffa and charges him with bribery.
• August 21 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces a 2-year suspension of nuclear testing.
• September 9 - Civil Rights Act of 1957 enacted, setting up the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
• September 24 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to Arkansas.
• October 9 – Neil H. McElroy is sworn in as United States Secretary of Defense.
• November 7 – In the United States, the Gaither Report calls for more American missiles and fallout shelters.
National
• January 2 – The San Francisco and Los Angeles stock exchanges merge to form the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.
• January 22 – The New York City "Mad Bomber", George Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut.
• February 4 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), logs its 60,000th nautical mile.
• March 4 – Standard & Poor's first publishes the S&P 500 Index in the United States.
• May 2 - Iron Liege, at 8–1, wins the Kentucky Derby in one of the most eventful Derbys ever.
• May 16 – Walt Whitman Bridge opens between Philadelphia and New Jersey.
• June 27 – Hurricane Audrey demolishes Cameron, Louisiana, killing 400 people.
• September 4 - The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel on what the company proclaims as "E Day".
• November 1 - The Mackinac Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge between anchorages at the time, opens to traffic.
• December 18 - A violent F5 tornado wipes out the entire community of Sunfield, Illinois.
Worldwide
• January 3 – Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
• February 23 – The founding congress of the Senegalese Popular Bloc opens in Dakar.
• March 6 - United Kingdom colonies Gold Coast and British Togoland become the independent nation of Ghana.
• April 9 – Egypt reopens the Suez Canal to all shipping.
• May 24 – May 24 incident: Anti-American riots erupt in Taipei, Taiwan.
• September 29 – The Kyshtym disaster occurs at the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant in Russia.
• October 21 – The U.S. military sustains its first combat fatality in Vietnam.
• October 31 – Toyota begins exporting vehicles to the U.S.
• November 30 - Indonesian president Sukarno survives a grenade attack at the Cikini School in Jakarta.
• December 5 – All 326,000 Dutch nationals are expelled from Indonesia.