So, my uncle’s gonna be having his 50th birthday pretty soon, and my mom wanted to know some stuff that was happening about that time. Anything is fine, from the price of gas to the political situation. Thanks in advance.
The Korean War was winding down.
The structure of DNA was determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.
Mt. Everest was climbed by Hillary and Norgay in 1953.
Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953.
Disney’s Peter Pan was released.
Here’s the Prime-Time lineup for 1953.
You can always grab the Scopes Sytems Today-in-History page and look up his birthday, then check for events for 1953.
The International Movie Database Search function has an “On This Day in History” function near the bottom of the page that provides births, deaths, and marriages for each day by year.
The IMDb also provides lists of movies by year, (in this case, 1953).
(Unfortunately, the Dead People Server does not go back to the 1950s.)
The Chevy Corvette is 50, this year.
Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond were both Democrats.
Eisenhower had recently begun serving.
McCarthy was in his “prime”.
Around that time, the first commercial computer, the Univac I, was offerred for sale.
Gas cost about 25c (depending on location; this was in Philadelphia).
A baseball game cost $1 plus 30c tax for general admission (again in Philly; bleahcers were 50c, reserved $2 and box seats $2.50).
A loaf of bread, a quart of milk, a quarter pound of cheese all cost about 20c. Most prescriptions cost 85c (they were probably sugar pills and, except for a few antibiotics, may as well have been).
You could buy a very nice house for $15,000 and a car for $2000. (VWs were less and Caddies were more like $5000).
And $100/week was fairly good pay.
Ike became POTUS.
Stalin died.
A coup in Iran put the Shah in power.
Star baseball player Ted Williiiams was shot down in Korea.
Playboy began publication.
Here’s a little Internet factoid I’m going to have to chew on for a bit:
Portables? Back then?
L. Ron Hubbard started the Church of Scientology.
My mom briefly got over being pregnant.
People were scared,really scared, of polio.
The milkman delivered milk to your door.
The assessor went door to door.
My sister was born.
You could buy a used car for $100.00
There were measle epidemics.
Life was simpler. Nobody had anything.
Be sure to do a search on eBay for 1953…you might come up with some cool magazines from then. (I recently gave my dad some old gardening magazines from the day he was born.)
(You can still buy a used car for $100…it just depends on who’s selling it cough CRACKHEAD cough, how hard up you are for a car and what you want to use it for!)