Directory

1953 CE

The Coronation of Elizabeth II is held in the United Kingdom; Joseph Stalin dies, ending an era of Soviet rule; the Korean Armistice Agreement ends the Korean War; the Attack on the Moncada Barracks launches the Cuban Revolution; the 1953 Iranian coup d'état topples Mohammad Mosaddegh; the East German uprising of 1953 is suppressed; the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition achieves the first ascent; the North Sea flood of 1953 devastates Western Europe; and the Tangiwai disaster kills 151 in New Zealand.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 14 – Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen President of Yugoslavia.source
  • February 11 – The Soviet Union breaks diplomatic relations with Israel, after a bomb explodes at the Soviet Embassy, in reaction to the 'Doctors' plot'.source
  • February 12 – The Nordic Council is inaugurated.source
  • February 28 – Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia sign the Balkan Pact.source
  • March 6 – Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin, as Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.source
  • April 7 – Dag Hammarskjöld is elected Secretary-General of the United Nations.source
  • May 9 – Australian Senate election, 1953: The Liberal/Country Coalition Government, led by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, holds their Senate majority, despite gains made by the Labor Party, led by H. V. Evatt. This is the first occasion where a Senate election is held without an accompanying House of Representatives election.source
  • May 9 – France agrees to the provisional independence of Cambodia, with King Norodom Sihanouk.source
  • June 7 – Italian general election: the Christian Democracy party wins a plurality in both legislative houses.source
  • June 13 – Hungarian Prime Minister Mátyás Rákosi is replaced by Imre Nagy.source
  • June 18 – Egypt declares itself a republic.source
  • July 10 – The Soviet official newspaper Pravda announces that Lavrentiy Beria has been deposed as head of the NKVD.source
  • August 22 – The last prisoners are repatriated from Devil's Island to France.source
  • September 23 – The Pact of Madrid is signed by Francoist Spain and the United States of America, ending a period of virtual isolation for Spain.source
  • September 25 – The first German prisoners of war return from the Soviet Union to West Germany.source
  • October 1 – The Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea is concluded in Washington, D.C.source
  • October 5 – Earl Warren is appointed Chief Justice of the United States, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.source
  • October 9 – West German federal election, 1953: Konrad Adenauer is re-elected as German chancellor.source
  • November 5 – David Ben-Gurion resigns as prime minister of Israel.source
  • November 9 – Cambodia becomes independent from France.source
  • December 2 – The United Kingdom and Iran reform diplomatic relations.source
  • December 8 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his Atoms for Peace address, to the United Nations General Assembly.source
  • December 25 – The Amami Islands are returned to Japan, after 8 years of United States military occupation.source
  • December 30 – Ramon Magsaysay becomes the 7th President of the Philippines.source

Conflict & Security

  • January 24 – Mau Mau Uprising: Rebels in Kenya kill the Ruck family (father, mother, and six-year-old son).source
  • February 3 – Batepá massacre: Hundreds of native creoles, known as forros, are massacred in São Tomé, by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners.source
  • February 11 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower refuses a clemency appeal for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.source
  • March 25–26 – Lari Massacre in Kenya: Mau Mau rebels kill up to 150 Kikuyu natives.source
  • May 25 – Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its only nuclear artillery test: Upshot-Knothole Grable.source
  • June 1 – Uprising in Plzeň: Currency reform causes riots in Czechoslovakia.source
  • June 17 – Workers' Uprising in East Germany: The Soviet Union orders a Division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.source
  • July 26 – Fidel Castro and his brother lead a disastrous assault on the Moncada Barracks, preliminary to the Cuban Revolution.source
  • July 27 – The Korean War ends, with the Korean Armistice Agreement: The United Nations Command (Korea) (United States), China and North Korea sign an armistice agreement at Panmunjom, and the north remains communist, while the south remains capitalist. No formal peace treaty is ever signed.source
  • August 5 – Operation Big Switch: Prisoners of war are repatriated to the United States after the Korean War.source
  • August 8 – Soviet prime minister Georgi Malenkov announces that the Soviet Union has a hydrogen bomb.source
  • August 15–19 – Cold War: 1953 Iranian coup d'état – Overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, by Iranian military in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with the support of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (as "Operation Ajax") and the United Kingdom.source
  • August 20 – The French government ousts King Mohammed V of Morocco, and exiles him to Corsica.source
  • August 25 – The French general strike ends.source
  • October 9 – Fearing communist influence in British Guiana, the British Government suspends the constitution, declares a state of emergency, and militarily occupies the colony.source
  • October 12 – The play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial opens at the Plymouth Theatre, New York.source
  • November 9 – The Laotian Civil War begins between the Kingdom of Laos and the Pathet Lao, all the while resuming the First Indochina War against the French Army in a Two-front war.source
  • November 20–22 – First Indochina War: Operation Castor – In a massive airborne operation in Vietnam, French forces establish a base at Điện Biên Phủ.source
  • November 25 – Match of the Century (1953 England v Hungary football match): The England national football team loses 6–3 to Hungary at Wembley Stadium, their first ever loss to a continental team at home.source
  • November 29 – First Indochina War: Battle of Dien Bien Phu – French paratroopers consolidate their position at Điện Biên Phủ.source
  • November 30 – Kabaka crisis: Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda, is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Benjamin Cohen, Governor of Uganda.source
  • December 7 – A visit to Iran by American Vice President Richard Nixon sparks several days of riots, as a reaction to the August 19 overthrow of the government of Mohammed Mossadegh by the U.S.-backed Shah. Three students are shot dead by police in Tehran. This event becomes an annual commemoration.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma.source
  • January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a government-in-exile in Oslo.source
  • May 29 – 1953 British Mount Everest expedition: Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay from Nepal become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.source
  • July 3 – The first ascent of Nanga Parbat in the Pakistan Himalayas, the world's ninth highest mountain, is made by Austrian climber Hermann Buhl alone on a German–Austrian expedition.source
  • August – High Arctic relocation of Inuit families by the Government of Canada.source
  • November 21 – Puerto Williams is founded in Chile, as the southernmost settlement of the world.source

Religion & Belief

  • June 2 – Elizabeth II is crowned Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, at Westminster Abbey.source

Economy & Finance

  • January 24 – Leader of East Germany Walter Ulbricht announces that agriculture will be collectivized in East Germany.source
  • July 9 – The U.S. Treasury formally renames the Bureau of Internal Revenue; the new name (which had previously been used informally) is the Internal Revenue Service.source
  • Global meat packing industry JBS is founded in Anapolis, Goias, Brazil.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • January 19 – 71.1% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into I Love Lucy, to watch Lucy give birth to Little Ricky, which is more people than those who tune into Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration the next day.source
  • March 13 – The United Nations Security Council nominates Dag Hammarskjöld from Sweden as United Nations Secretary General.source
  • March 17 – The first nuclear test of Operation Upshot–Knothole is conducted in Nevada, with 1,620 spectators at 3.4 km mi.source
  • March 19 – The 25th Academy Awards Ceremony is held (the first one broadcast on television).source
  • April 16 – President Eisenhower delivers his "Chance for Peace" speech, to the National Association of Newspaper Editors.source
  • May 15 – The Standards And Recommended Practices (SARPS) for Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) are adopted by the ICAO Council. These SARPS are in Annex 15 to the Chicago Convention, and 15 May is celebrated by the AIS community as "World AIS Day".source
  • May 18 – At Rogers Dry Lake, Californian Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to exceed Mach 1, in a North American F-86 Sabre at 652.337 mph kn km/h.source
  • June 30 – The first roll-on/roll-off ferry crossing of the English Channel, Dover–Boulogne, takes place.source
  • July 9 – Inauguration of the south lane of the Rodovia Anchieta.source
  • August 12 – Soviet atomic bomb project: "Joe 4", the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon, is detonated at Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakh SSR.source
  • October 23 – Alto Broadcasting System (ABS) in the Philippines makes the first television broadcast in southeast Asia, through DZAQ-TV. Alto Broadcasting System is the predecessor of what will later become ABS-CBN Corporation.source
  • October – The UNIVAC 1103 is the first commercial computer to use random-access memory.source
  • November 20 – The Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, piloted by Scott Crossfield, becomes the first manned aircraft to reach Mach 2.source
  • December 17 – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves color television (using the NTSC standard).source
  • China First Building Corporation, a partial predecessor of China State Construction Engineering, is founded in Beijing.source

Science & Discovery

  • January 14 – The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon.source
  • February 28 – James Watson and Francis Crick of Britain's University of Cambridge announce their discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule.source
  • April 25 – Francis Crick and James Watson publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid", their description of the double helix structure of DNA.source
  • September 4 – The discovery of REM sleep is first published, by researchers Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman.source
  • October 10 – Roland (Monty) Burton wins the 1953 London to Christchurch air race, in under 23 hours flying time.source

Health & Medicine

  • February 13 – Transsexual Christine Jorgensen returns to New York after successful sex reassignment surgery in Denmark.source
  • March 26 – Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.source
  • March 29 – A fire at the Littlefield Nursing Home in Largo, Florida, kills 33 persons, including singer-songwriter Arthur Fields.source
  • May 5 – Aldous Huxley first tries the psychedelic hallucinogen mescaline, inspiring his book The Doors of Perception.source
  • May 11 – Waco tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hits in the downtown section of Waco, Texas, killing 114.source
  • May 20–21 – A tornado outbreak tears through Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario, leaving eight people dead and 123 people injured.source
  • June 7–9 – Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: A single storm-system spawns 46 tornadoes of various sizes, in 10 states from Colorado to Massachusetts, over 3 days, killing 246.source
  • June 8 – On the second day of the Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence, a tornado kills 116 in Flint, Michigan; it will be the last to claim more than 100 lives, until the 2011 Joplin tornado.source
  • June 9 – CIA Technical Services Staff head Sidney Gottlieb approves of the use of LSD in an MKUltra subproject.source
  • September 26 – Rationing of sugar ends in the UK.source

Crime & Justice

  • January 15 – Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying.source
  • January 15 – British security forces in West Germany arrest 7 members of the Naumann Circle, a clandestine Neo-Nazi organization.source
  • March 8 – The Thieves World, which has been transformed into the Russian mafia, are freed from prisons by the Malenkov regime, ending the Bitch Wars.source
  • April 8 – Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced to 7 years in prison for the alleged organization of the Mau Mau Uprising in the British Kenya Colony.source
  • August 17 – The first planning session of Narcotics Anonymous is held in Southern California (see October 5).source
  • October 5 – The first meeting of Narcotics Anonymous is held (the first planning session was held August 17).source
  • December 23 – The Soviet Union announces officially that Lavrentiy Beria has been executed.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • March 1 – Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke, after an all-night dinner with Soviet Union interior minister Lavrentiy Beria and future premiers Georgy Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin, and Nikita Khrushchev. The stroke paralyzes the right side of his body and renders him unconscious until his death on March 5.source
  • April 16 – The Habar Corporation's building in Chicago, United States, catches fire, killing 35 employees.source
  • June 18 – Tachikawa air disaster: A United States Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashes just after takeoff from Tachikawa Airfield near Tokyo, Japan, killing all 129 people on board in the worst air crash in history up to this time, and the first with a confirmed death toll exceeding 100.source
  • July 17 – The greatest recorded loss of United States midshipmen in a single event results from an aircraft crash near NAS Whiting Field.source
  • December 24 – Tangiwai disaster: A railway bridge collapses at Tangiwai, New Zealand, sending a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River; 151 are killed.source

Climate & Environment

  • January 31–February 1 – The North Sea flood of 1953 kills 1,836 people in the southwestern Netherlands (especially Zeeland), 307 in the United Kingdom, and several hundred at sea, including 133 on the ferry in the Irish Sea.source
  • February 1 – The surge of the North Sea flood continues from the previous day.source
  • March 18 – The Yenice–Gönen earthquake affects western Turkey, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (violent), causing at least 1,070 deaths, and $3.57 million in damage.source
  • June 9 – On the third day of the Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence, a tornado spawned from the same storm system as the Flint tornado the day before hits in Worcester, Massachusetts, killing 94.source
  • August 12 – The 1953 Ionian earthquake of magnitude 7.2 totally devastates Cephalonia and most of the other Ionian Islands, in Greece's worst natural disaster in centuries.source

Culture & Society

  • February 19 – Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.source
  • March 1 – Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg is made deputy constable and lieutenant governor of Windsor Castle.source
  • May 2 – Hussein is crowned King of Jordan.source
  • August 13 – Four million workers go on strike in France to protest against austerity measures.source
  • October 6 – UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, is made a permanent specialized agency of the United Nations.source
  • November 20 – Authorities at the Natural History Museum, London announce that the skull of Piltdown Man (allegedly an early human discovered in 1912) is a hoax.source
  • December 6 – With the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Arturo Toscanini performs what he claims is his favorite Beethoven symphony, Eroica, for the last time. The live performance is broadcast across the United States on radio, and later released on records and CD.source

Births

  • January 1 – Gary Johnson, American businessman, politician and 29th Governor of New Mexicosource
  • January 20 – Jeffrey Epstein, American financier and sex offender (d. 2019)source
  • January 21 – Paul Allen, American entrepreneur, co-founder of Microsoft (d. 2018)source
  • February 19 – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentine lawyer and politician, President of Argentina and Vice President of Argentinasource
  • March 19 – Lenín Moreno, Ecuadorian politician, 44th President of Ecuadorsource
  • March 26 – Elaine Chao, American politician, wife of Senator Mitch McConnellsource
  • May 6 – Aleksandr Akimov, Soviet engineer who was the shift supervisor during the events of the Chernobyl disaster (d. 1986)source
  • July 21 – Jeff Fatt, Australian musician, former member of The Wigglessource
  • August 12 – Carlos Mesa, President of Boliviasource
  • September 23 – Alexey Maslov, commander-in-chief of the Russian Ground Forcessource
  • October 21 – Peter Mandelson, British politician and member of the Labour Partysource
  • November 11 – Andy Partridge, British musician and frontman of the band XTCsource
  • November 13 – Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of Mexico (2018–2024)source
  • December 13 – Ben Bernanke, American economist, Federal Reserve System chairmansource

Deaths

  • January 1 – Hank Williams, American singer-songwriter and musician (b. 1923)source
  • February 24 – Gerd von Rundstedt, German field marshal (b. 1875)source
  • March 24 – Mary of Teck, consort of George V of the United Kingdom (b. 1867)source
  • March 28 – Jim Thorpe, Native-American athlete, Olympic medalist and professional baseball player (b. 1887)source
  • June 18 – René Fonck, French aviator, top Allied World War I Flying Ace (b. 1894)source
  • June 19 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, American communist spies (b. 1918 and 1915, respectively) (executed on same day)source
  • July 16 – Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian (b. 1870)source
  • July 31 – Robert A. Taft, American politician, United States Senate Majority Leader (b. 1889)source
  • September 8 – Fred M. Vinson, Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1890)source
  • November 8 – Ivan Bunin, Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1870)source
  • November 9 – Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and author (b. 1914)source
  • November 27 – Eugene O'Neill, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1888)source
  • December 19 – Robert Andrews Millikan, American physicist Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)source
  • December 23 – Lavrentiy Beria, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union (b. 1899)source