The first Indochina war, fought between France and southern Vietnamese forces led by Ho Chi Minh, ended in 1954. The fight of Dien-Bien-Phu began on March 13th, and the French lost it a few months later in May. The conflict came to an end at this point, but South Vietnam’s failure to comply with the requirements of the Geneva Accords of 1954 led to the Vietnam War crisis a few years later. As President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, attempted to thwart the Viet Minh’s communist aspirations through diplomacy in April, tensions between the US and the Communist world were already rising. The United States Supreme Court found racially segregated schools unconstitutional less than a month later.
Food rationing, which had been in place since World War II, was likewise abolished in the United Kingdom. In April, Bill Haley & His Comets released “Rock Around the Clock,” the record credited with kicking off the rock ‘n roll craze in the United States. Elvis Presley’s first song, “That’s All Right,” was released later that year, signalling the start of a very successful career. On September 17th, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies will be released in London. On November 3rd, the first Godzilla film will be released in Tokyo, a few months after Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai was released in Japanese theatres.
In science and technology, the first colour television set was released by RCA, and doctors J. Hartwell Harrison and J. Murray performed the first successful kidney transplant on December 23rd in Boston. Jerry Seinfeld, John Travolta, Matt Groening, and Oprah Winfrey, among others, were born in 1954, as were German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande.
Continue reading to discover more about the events of 1954. (January 14, 1954) (February 15, 1954) (March 01, 1954) (April 29, 1954) (May 06, 1954) (May 07, 1954) (May 17, 1954) (June 27, 1954) (June 27, 1954) (July 15, 1954) (August 16, 1954) (August 16, 1954) (September 30, 1954) (November 13, 1954) (December 28, 1954)
Event
At City Hall in San Francisco, baseball player Joe DiMaggio married actress Marilyn Monroe.
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Matt Groening, the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell and the television shows The Simpsons and Futurama, was born in the United States.
Ron Howard, an Academy Award-winning director who rose to prominence as a child actor, was born in the United States.
Jerry Seinfeld, the late-twentieth-century comedian whose television programme Seinfeld was a hallmark of American pop culture, was born in Brooklyn, New York.
Britain's Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
During the First Indochina War, Viet Minh General Vo Nguyen Giap caught the French off guard at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, encircling their stronghold with 40,000 soldiers and employing heavy artillery to conquer it.
On this day in 1954, lawyer Thurgood Marshall won a momentous win when the United States Supreme Court unanimously declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
The highly anticipated FIFA World Cup quarterfinal encounter between Hungary and Brazil turns violent, with three players expelled and further fighting continuing after the game.
The Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the Soviet Union's first nuclear power station, is inaugurated in Obninsk, near Moscow.
The maiden flight of the Boeing 367-80, the prototype for the Boeing 707 and C-135 series.
James Cameron, a Canadian filmmaker known for his broad vision and revolutionary special-effects films such as Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), was born.
The first edition of Sports Illustrated was published, and the weekly publication (later changed to monthly) quickly became America's preeminent sports magazine.
The USS Nautilus, a submarine of the United States Navy, is commissioned as the world's first nuclear-powered ship.
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In front of roughly 30,000 fans, Great Britain defeats France to win the first ever Rugby League World Cup in Paris.
photo source: wikimedia.org
Denzel Washington, an American actor known for his compelling and forceful performances in films such as Glory (1989), Malcolm X (1992), and Training Day (2001), was born.
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