1953

1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1953 calendar).

Events

January 7 - President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.
January 12 - Estonian emigres find a government in exile in Oslo
January 13 - Marshal Josip Broz Tito chosen President of Yugoslavia
January 14 - CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon. Official results are to publicly "debunk" them and use the media to ridicule people
January 15 - Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying
January 20 - Change of US presidency from Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) to Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961).
January 22 - The Crucible, a drama by Arthur Miller, opens on Broadway
January 24 – Mau Mau rebels in Kenya kill Ruck family – father, mother and a 6-year-old son
January 26 - Walter Ulbricht announces that the agriculture will be collectivized in East Germany
January 28 - Derek Bentley is executed for murder in Wandsworth Prison
January 31-February 1 - North Sea flood of 1953 kills 1,835 people in the southwestern Netherlands (especially Zeeland), 307 in the United Kingdom and several hundred at sea, including 132 on the ferry Princess Victoria in the Irish Sea

February 1 - Surge of North Sea Flood of 1953 continues from the previous day.
February 5 - The movie Peter Pan premieres (Roxy Theatre, New York City).
February 11 - President Eisenhower refuses clemency appeal for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
February 11 - The Soviet Union breaks diplomatic relations with Israel.
February 13 - Transsexual Christine Jorgenson returns to New York after successful sexual reassignment surgery in Denmark
February 18 - The first 3D film, Bwana Devil opens.
February 19 - Censorship: Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States
February 28 - James D. Watson and Francis Crick announce that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA.

March 1 - After an all-night dinner with Soviet Union interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, Joseph Stalin collapses, having suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.
March 1 - Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg made the deputy constable and lieutenant governor of Windsor Castle
March 5 - After 29 years of ruling the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin dies.
March 6 - Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov succeeds Josef Stalin as Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
March 11 - U.S. B-47 bomber accidentally drops an atom bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Fortunately it fails to detonate.
March 13 - United Nations Security Council nominates Dag Hammarskjöld as United Nations Secretary General
March 14 - Nikita Khruschev selected general secretary of the Soviet communist party
March 17 - Nuclear test in Nevada - with 1620 spectators in 3.4 km
March 18 - An earthquake hits western Turkey killing 250.
March 25-26 – Lari Massacre in Kenya – Mau Mau rebels kill up to 150 kikuyu
March 26 - Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.

April 7 - Dag Hammarskjöld is elected United Nations Secretary General.
April 8 – Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced for seven years in prison for alleged organization of Mau Mau Rebellion
April 13 - Ian Fleming publishes his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale in the United Kingdom
April 25 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish their description of the double helix structure of DNA.(::Watson, J. D. and Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature 171, 737-738.)

May 2 - Hussein is crowned King of Jordan.
May 2 - 38-year-old Stanley Matthews finally wins the FA Cup at his third attempt, in the famous 'Matthews Final'
May 9 – France agrees to the provisional independence of Cambodia with the king Norodom Sihanouk
May 10 - Town of Chemnitz in East Germany becomes Karl Marx Stadt
May 11 - The Waco Tornado: A F5 tornado hits in the downtown section of Waco, Texas killing 114.
May 18 - At Rogers Dry Lake, California Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier (she flew in a F-86 Sabrejet at an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour).
May 25 - Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test.
May 29 - Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay perform the first successful ascent to the summit of Mount Everest.