1955 In Europe

Events

January

* January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama.
* January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut.
* January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijiangshan Islands: The Chinese Communist People's Liberation Army seizes the islands from the Republic of China (Taiwan).
* January 22 – In the United States, The Pentagon announces a plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), armed with nuclear weapons.
* January 23 – The Sutton Coldfield rail crash kills 17, near Birmingham, England.
* January 25 – The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet announces the end of the war between the USSR and Germany, which began during World War II in 1941.
* January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Formosa from the People's Republic of China.

February

* February 10 – The United States Seventh Fleet helps the Republic of China evacuate the Chinese Nationalist army and residents from the Tachen Islands to Taiwan.
* February 16 – Nearly 100 die in a fire at a home for the elderly in Yokohama, Japan.
* February 19 – The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is established, at a meeting in Bangkok.
* February 22 – In Chicago's Democratic primary, Mayor Martin H. Kennelly loses to the head of the Cook County Democratic Party, Richard J. Daley, 364,839 to 264,077.
* February 24 – The Baghdad Pact (CENTO), originally known as Middle East Treaty Organization (METO), is signed between Iraq and Turkey.

March

* March 2 – Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African-American girl, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards, while being kicked, handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station. She becomes a plaintiff in ''Browder v. Gayle'' (1956), which rules bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
* March 5
** WBBJ-TV signs on the air in Jackson, Tennessee, with WDXI as its initial call-letters, to expand American commercial television in mostly rural areas.
** Elvis Presley makes his television debut on "Louisiana Hayride", carried by KSLA-TV Shreveport in the United States.
* March 7 – The Broadway musical version of ''Peter Pan'', which had opened in 1954 starring Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by NBC-TV, with its original cast, as an installment of ''Producers' Showcase''. It is also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV, almost exactly as it was performed on stage. This program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time, and it becomes one of the first great TV family musical classics.
* March 17 – Richard Riot in Montreal: 6,000 people protest the suspension of French Canadian ice hockey star Maurice Richard of the Montreal Canadiens by the National Hockey League, following a violent incident during a match.
* March 19 – KXTV signs on the air in Sacramento, California, as the 100th commercial television station in the United States.
* March 20 – The movie adaptation of Evan Hunter's novel ''Blackboard Jungle'' premieres in the United States, featuring the famous single " Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song.

April

* April 1 – EOKA starts a terrorist campaign against British rule in the Crown colony of Cyprus.
* April 5
** Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, due to ill-health, at the age of 80.
** Richard J. Daley defeats Robert Merrian to become Mayor of Chicago, by a vote of 708,222 to 581,555.
* April 6 – Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
* April 10 – In the American National Basketball Association championship, the Syracuse Nationals defeat the Fort Wayne Pistons 92–91 in Game 7, to win the title.
* April 11
** The Taiwanese Kuomintang put a bomb on the airplane ''Kashmir Princess'', killing 16 but failing to assassinate the People's Republic of China leader, Zhou Enlai.
** Taekwondo, a form of Korean martial arts, is officially recognized in South Korea.
* April 12 – The Salk polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
* April 14 – The Detroit Red Wings win the Stanley Cup in North American ice hockey for the 7th time in franchise history, but will not win again until 1997.
* April 14 – A 7.1 earthquake shakes the Chinese city of Kangding leaving 70 dead.
* April 15 – The first franchised McDonald's restaurant is opened by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois.
* April 16 – The Burma-Japan Peace Treaty, signed in Rangoon on November 5, 1954, comes into effect, formally ending a state of war between the two countries.
* April 17 – Imre Nagy, the communist Premier of Hungary, is ousted for being too moderate.
* April 18– 24 – The Asian-African Conference is held in Bandung, Indonesia.

May

* May 5 – West Germany becomes a sovereign country, recognized by important Western countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
* May 6 – The Western European Union Charter becomes effective.
* May 7 – Newcastle United F.C. in England win their fourth (and, as of 2022, last) Football League First Division title.
* May 9
** West Germany joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
** A young Jim Henson introduces the earliest version of Kermit the Frog (made in March), in the premiere of his puppet show ''Sam and Friends'', on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.
* May 11 – Japanese National Railways' ferry ''Shiun Maru'' sinks after a collision with sister ship ''Uko Maru'', in thick fog off Takamatsu, Shikoku, in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan; 166 passengers (many children) and 2 crew members are killed. This event is influential in plans to construct the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (built 1986–98).
* May 12 – New York's Third Avenue Elevated runs its last train between Chatham Square in Manhattan and East 149th Street in the Bronx, thus ending elevated train service in Manhattan.
* May 14
** Eight Communist Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defence treaty in Warsaw, Poland, that is called the Warsaw Pact (it will be dissolved in 1991).
** Warrington win the British Rugby League Championship title for the third time; they will not win it again within the following 60 years.
* May 15
** The Austrian State Treaty, which restores Austria's national sovereignty, is concluded between the 4 occupying powers following World War II (the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France) and Austria, setting it up as a neutral country.
** Lionel Terray and Jean Couzy become the first people to reach the summit of Makalu, the fifth-highest mountain in the world, on the 1955 French Makalu expedition. The entire team of climbers reaches the summit over the next two days.
* May 18 – Free movement of residents between North and South Vietnam ends.
* May 25 – Joe Brown and George Band are the first to reach the summit of Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, as part of the British Kangchenjunga expedition led by Charles Evans.

June

* June 7 – The television quiz program ''The $64,000 Question'' premieres on CBS-TV in the United States, with Hal March as the host.
* June 11 – Le Mans disaster: Eighty-three people are killed and at least 100 are injured, after two race cars collide in the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans.
* June 13 – Mir Mine, the first diamond mine in the Soviet Union, is discovered.
* June 16 – ''Lady and the Tramp'', the Walt Disney company's 15th animated film, premieres in Chicago.
* June 26 – The Freedom Charter of the anti-apartheid South African Congress Alliance is adopted, at a Congress of the People in Kliptown.

July

* July 1 – Transformation from the Imperial Bank of India to the State Bank of India is given legal recognition through an Act of the Parliament of India.
* July 7 – The New Zealand Special Air Service is formed.
* July 13 – Ruth Ellis is hanged for murder in London, becoming the last woman ever to be executed in the United Kingdom.
* July 17
** The Disneyland theme park opens in Anaheim, California, an event broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company television network.
** The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially, partially powering Arco, Idaho, from the U.S. National Reactor Testing Station; on July 18, Schenectady, New York, receives power from a prototype nuclear submarine reactor at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory."1955". ''Houghton Mifflin Guide to Science & Technology''.
* July 18 – Illinois Governor William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act, that mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath to the State of Illinois and the United States or lose their jobs.
* July 18– 23 – Geneva Summit between the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom and France.
* July 22 – In Long Beach, California (United States), Hillevi Rombin of Sweden is crowned Miss Universe.
* July 27 – El Al Flight 402 from Vienna (Austria) to Tel Aviv, via Istanbul, is shot down over Bulgaria. All 58 passengers and crewmen aboard the Lockheed Constellation are killed.
* July 28 – The first Interlingua Congress is held in Tours, France, leading to the foundation of the Union Mundial pro Interlingua.

August

* August 1 – The prototype Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft first flies, in Nevada.
* August 18
** The First Sudanese Civil War begins.
** The first meeting of the Organization of Central American States ( es, Organización de Estados Centroamericanos, ODECA) is held, in Antigua Guatemala.
* August 19 – Hurricane Diane hits the northeastern United States, killing over 200 people and causing over $1 billion in damage.
* August 20 – Hundreds of people are killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
* August 22 – Eleven schoolchildren are killed when their school bus is hit by a freight train in Spring City, Tennessee.
* August 25 – The last Soviet Army forces leave Austria.
* August 26 – Satyajit Ray's film ''Pather Panchali'' is released in India.
* August 27 – The first edition of the '' Guinness Book of Records'' is published, in London.
* August 28 – Black 14-year-old Emmett Till is lynched and shot in the head for allegedly grabbing and threatening a white woman in Money, Mississippi; his white murderers, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, are acquitted by an all-white jury.

September

* September 2 – Under the guidance of Dr. Humphry Osmond, Christopher Mayhew ingests 400 mg of mescaline hydrochloride and allows himself to be filmed as part of a '' Panorama'' special for BBC TV in the U.K. that is never broadcast.
* September 3 – Little Richard records "Tutti Frutti" in New Orleans; it is released in October.
* September 6 – Istanbul pogrom: Istanbul's Greek minority is the target of a government-sponsored pogrom.
* September 10 – The long-running Western television series '' Gunsmoke'' debuts, on the CBS network in the United States.
* September 14 – Pope Pius XII elevates many of the Apostolic vicariates in Africa to Metropolitan Archdioceses.
* September 15 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel '' Lolita'' is published in Paris, by Olympia Press.
* September 16
** The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight.
** A Soviet Navy Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.
* September 18 – The United Kingdom formally annexes the uninhabited Atlantic island of Rockall.
* September 19– 21 – President of Argentina Juan Perón is ousted in a military coup.
* September 19 – Hurricane Hilda kills about 200 people in Mexico.
* September 21– 30 – Hurricane Janet, one of the strongest North Atlantic tropical cyclones on record, sweeps the Lesser Antilles and Mexico, causing more than 1,020 deaths.
* September 22 – Commercial television starts in the United Kingdom with the Independent Television Authority's first ITV franchises beginning broadcasting in London, ending the BBC
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