1957 in the United States

1957 in the United States
Years:	1954 1955 1956 – 1957 – 1958 1959 1960
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48 stars (1912–59)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1945–64)

Events from the year 1957 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-Kansas/New York)
• Vice President: Richard Nixon (R-California)
• Chief Justice: Earl Warren (California)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Sam Rayburn (D–Texas)
• Senate Majority Leader: Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas)
• Congress: 84th (until January 3), 85th (starting January 3)

Events

January

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the President of the United States, began his second term on January 20

• January 2 – The San Francisco and Los Angeles stock exchanges merge to form the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.
• January 6 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the 3rd and final time. He is only shown from the waist up, even during the gospel segment, singing "Peace In The Valley". Ed Sullivan describes Elvis thus: "This is a real decent, fine boy. We've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you. You're thoroughly alright."
• January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States.
• January 22 – The New York City "Mad Bomber", George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and is charged with planting more than 30 bombs.
• January 23 – Ku Klux Klan members force truck driver Willie Edwards to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River; he drowns as a result.
• January 31 – Pacoima aircraft accident: Three students on a junior high school playground in Pacoima, California are among the 8 persons killed following a mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet, in the skies above the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.

February

• February 4 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), logs its 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
• February 17 – The Warrenton Nursing Home Fire kills 72 people.
• February 25 – The Boy In The Box is discovered along a sidewalk in Philadelphia. The murder victim is described as Caucasian in appearance and 4 to 6 years old; the case is never solved.

March

March 26: Elvis Presley buys Graceland

• March 7 – The United States Congress approves the Eisenhower Doctrine.
• March 10 – Floodgates of The Dalles Dam are closed, inundating Celilo Falls and ancient Indian fisheries along the Columbia River in Oregon.
• March 13 – The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation arrests Jimmy Hoffa and charges him with bribery.
• March 26 – 22-year-old Elvis Presley buys Graceland on 3734 Bellevue Boulevard (Highway 51 South) for $100,000. He and his family move from the house on 1034 Audubon Drive.
• March 27 – The 29th Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• March 31 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, the team's only musical written especially for television, is telecast live and in color by CBS, starring Julie Andrews in the title role. The production is seen by millions, but this 1957 version is not be telecast again for more than 40 years, when a kinescope of it is shown.

April

• April 12 – Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl, printed in England, is seized by U.S. customs officials on the grounds of obscenity.

May

• May 2 – Vincent Gigante fails to assassinate mafioso Frank Costello in Manhattan.
• May 3 – Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles.

June

• June 15 – Oklahoma celebrates its semi-centennial statehood. A brand new 1957 Plymouth Belvedere is buried in a time capsule (to be opened 50 years later on June 15, 2007).
• June 20 – 1957 Fargo Tornado starts on Thursday, June 20 7:30 pm.
• June 25 – The United Church of Christ is formed in Cleveland, Ohio by the merger of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church.
• June 27 – Hurricane Audrey demolishes Cameron, Louisiana, killing 400 people.

July

• July 9 – Elvis Presley's Loving You opens in theaters.
• July 16 – United States Marine Major John Glenn flies an F8U supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds, setting a new transcontinental speed record.

August

• August 5 – American Bandstand, a local dance show produced by WFIL-TV in Philadelphia, joins the ABC Television Network.
• August 21 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces a 2-year suspension of nuclear testing.
• August 28 – United States Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) sets the record for the longest filibuster with his 24-hour, 18-minute speech railing against a civil rights bill.

September

September: Little Rock Nine

• September 4
  • American Civil Rights Movement – Little Rock Crisis: Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas calls out the US National Guard, to prevent African-American students from enrolling in Central High School in Little Rock.
  • The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel on what the company proclaims as "E Day".
• September 9 – Catholic Memorial High School opens its doors for the first time in Boston, Massachusetts.
• September 24 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to Arkansas to provide safe passage into Central High School for the Little Rock Nine.
• Setptember 26 – West Side Story, a new musical by Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim opens at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.

October

• October 9 – Neil H. McElroy is sworn in as United States Secretary of Defense.
• October 10 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after he is refused service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant.
• October 11 – The orbit of the last stage of the R-7 Semyorka rocket (carrying Sputnik I) is first successfully calculated on an IBM 704 computer by teams at The M.I.T. Computation Center and Operation Moonwatch, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• October 21 – The U.S. military sustains its first combat fatality in Vietnam, Army Capt. Hank Cramer of the 1st Special Forces Group.
• October 25 – Mafia boss Albert Anastasia is assassinated in a barber shop, at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City.
• October 31 – Toyota begins exporting vehicles to the U.S., beginning with the Toyota Crown and the Toyota Land Cruiser

November

• November 1 – The Mackinac Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge between anchorages at the time, opens to traffic connecting Michigan's two peninsulas.
• November 6 – Jailhouse Rock opens nationally and Elvis Presley continues to gain more notoriety.
• November 7 – Cold War: In the United States, the Gaither Report calls for more American missiles and fallout shelters.
• November 14 – Apalachin Meeting: American Mafia leaders meet in Apalachin, New York at the house of Joseph Barbara; the meeting is broken up by a curious patrolman.
• November 16
  • Edward Gein murders his last victim, Bernice Worden of Plainfield, Wisconsin.
  • Oklahoma celebrates its 50th anniversary of statehood. Notre Dame beats the Oklahoma Sooners 7–0 to end the Sooners record 47 straight college football winning streak.
• November 25 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffers a stroke.

December

December 2: Shippingport Reactor goes online

• December 2 – Shippingport Atomic Power Station goes online; commercial operation begins on May 26, 1958.
• December 6 – Vanguard TV3, the first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite, fails with the rocket blowing up on the launch pad.
• December 19 – Meredith Willson's classic musical The Music Man, starring Robert Preston, debuts on Broadway.
• December 20 – The Boeing 707 airliner flies for the first time.
• December 22 – The CBS afternoon anthology series Seven Lively Arts presents Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker on U.S. television for the first time.

Undated

• The Civil Rights Commission is established in the USA under the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
• Operation Dropshot, an all-out U.S. war with the Soviet Union, is expected to be triggered by the Soviet takeover of Western Europe, the Near East and parts of Eastern Asia, as it was anticipated in 1949.

Ongoing

• Cold War (1945–1991)
• Second Red Scare (1947–1957)
• Space Race (1957–1975)

Births

• January 4 – Patty Loveless, country singer
• January 6 – Nancy Lopez, golfer
• January 22 – Brian Dayett, baseball player and manager
• January 29 – Ron Franscell, journalist and author
• February 17 – Douglas Urbanski, actor and talk show host
• March 12 – Marlon Jackson, R&B singer
• March 13 – John Hoeven, U.S. Senator from North Dakota from 2011.
• March 20
  • Vanessa Bell Calloway, actress
  • John Grogan, journalist and non-fiction writer
  • Spike Lee, film director and actor
  • Theresa Russell, actress
• March 23 – Teresa Ganzel, comedian and actress
• May 12 – Lou Whitaker, baseball player and coach
• May 21 – Judge Reinhold, actor
• May 22 – Lisa Murkowski, U.S. Senator from Alaska from 2002
• June 2 – Jonathan Stack, director and producer
• June 8 – Scott Adams, cartoonist
• August 31 – Deborah Axelrod, surgeon
• September 27 – Peter Sellars, theatre director
• October 29 – Dan Castellaneta, voice actor
• November 24 – Denise Crosby, film & television actress
• November 25 – Daniel Berger, physician
• December 21 – Tom Henke, baseball player
• December 29 – Bruce Beutler, immunologist and geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2011

Deaths

• January 11 – Jack Gilbert Graham, mass murderer (executed) (born 1932)
• January 14 – Humphrey Bogart, film actor (born 1899)
• January 16 – Arturo Toscanini, Italian-born orchestral conductor (born 1867)
• January 18 – George Girard, jazz trumpeter (cancer) (born 1930)
• January 20 – James B. Connolly, field athlete, gold medal winner in 1896 Summer Olympics (born 1868)
• January 26
  • Helene Costello, silent film actress (born 1906)
  • William Eythe, actor (born 1918)
• February 2 – Julia Morgan, architect (born 1872)
• February 8 – John von Neumann, Hungarian American mathematician (born 1903)
• February 10 – Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (born 1867)
• February 18 – Henry Norris Russell, astronomer (born 1877)
• February 25
  • Bugs Moran, gangster (born 1893)
  • B. P. Schulberg, film producer (born 1892)
• March 5 – William Cameron Menzies, film production designer (born 1896)
• March 11 – Richard E. Byrd, explorer (born 1888)
• March 12 – Josephine Hull, actress (born 1886)
• March 28 – Christopher Morley, journalist, novelist and poet (born 1890)
• March 29 – Laura Bowman, actress and singer (born 1881)
• April 16 – Johnny Torrio, Italian American gangster (born 1882)
• April 26 – Elinor Fair, film actress (born 1903)
• May 1 – Grant Mitchell, actor (born 1874)
• May 2 – Joseph McCarthy, U.S. Senator (born 1908)
• May 13 – Robert A. "Fuzzy" Theobald, admiral (born 1884)
• May 21 – Bruce Rogers, typographer and book designer (born 1870)
• May 16 – Eliot Ness, Prohibition agent (born 1903)
• June 1 – Russell Hicks, film actor (born 1895)
• June 12
  • Robert Alton, dancer and choreographer (born 1906)
  • Jimmy Dorsey, big band leader (born 1904)
• June 13 – Irving Baxter, field athlete, gold medal winner in 1900 Summer Olympics (born 1876)
• June 15 – Skipwith Cannell, Imagist poet (born 1887)
• July 3 – Judy Tyler, actress (automobile accident) (born 1932)
• July 8 – Grace Coolidge, wife of Calvin Coolidge, First Lady of the United States, Second Lady of the United States (born 1879)
• July 21 – Kenneth Roberts, historical novelist (born 1885)
• July 28 – Edith Abbott, advocate for social welfare (born 1876)
• August 7 – Oliver Hardy, comic film actor (born 1892)
• August 13 – Joseph Warren Beach, author, critic and educator (born 1880)
• August 16 – Irving Langmuir, chemist and physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 (born 1881)
• August 22 – Beverly Loraine Greene, African American architect (born 1915)
• September 2 – Bobby Myers, race car driver (killed in racetrack accident) (born 1927)
• September 20 – Merrill Moore, psychiatrist and poet (born 1903)
• September 21 – Henry E. Warren, inventor (born 1872)
• September 26 – Pompeo Coppini, Italian American sculptor (born 1870)
• October 3
  • Bernard Maybeck, Arts & Crafts architect (born 1862)
  • Caro Dawes, wife of Charles G. Dawes, Second Lady of the United States (born 1866)
• October 23 – Abe Lyman, bandleader (born 1897)
• October 25 – Albert Anastasia, Italian American gangster (born 1902)
• October 26 – Gerty Cori, Czech American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947 (born 1896)
• October 29 – Louis B. Mayer, Belarusian-born film studio head (born 1885)
• November 2 – Mahonri Young, sculptor (born 1877)
• November 3
  • Charles Brabin, film director and screenwriter (born 1882)
  • Wilhelm Reich, Austrian American psychoanalyst (born 1897)
• November 17 – Cora Witherspoon, character actress (born 1890)
• November 20 – Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Russian-born graphic artist (born 1875)
• November 25
  • Raymond Griffith, comic silent film actor (born 1895)
  • William V. Pratt, admiral (born 1869)
• November 29 – Erich Korngold, Austrian-born composer (born 1897)
• December 2 – Harrison Ford, silent film actor (born 1884)
• December 10 – Maurice McLoughlin, tennis player (born 1890)
• December 24 – Norma Talmadge, silent film actress (born 1893)
• December 25 – Stanley Vestal, writer, poet and historian (born 1877)
• Undated – Adam Emory Albright, painter (born 1862)

See also

• List of American films of 1957

External links

• Media related to 1957 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons