•America's movement to suburbia
spurs the growth of shopping malls, drive-ins, and supermarkets. •Disc jockey
Allen Freed coins the term "rock 'n' roll." •The Supreme Court case Brown vs.
Board of Education declares segregation unconstitutional. |
•Thirteen nuclear materials
production reactors are operating during the decade. Two commercial nuclear
reactors are operating in the United States by 1959. |
In 1945, American troops returned home, many starting new lives and families.
Between 1946 and 1964, 76.4 million baby boomers were born. Over 13 million
homes went up from 1948 to 1958. Most were affordable, cookie-cutter houses
fashioned after the phenomenally successful Levittown, Long Island. William J.
Levitt had pioneered the suburb by building neighborhoods of nearly identical,
quickly built housing. America's movement to the suburbs spurred the growth of
shopping malls, drive-ins, and supermarkets. Many saw the 1950's as a return to
prosperity and social "normality."
The prosperity and social normality was tinged with a "Red" hysteria, however.
Americans saw communism on the march everywhere. By the end of the 1940's,
Americans had seen the Soviets try to cut off Berlin from the West, Mao's
Communist Party come to power in China, and the Soviet Union explode its first
atomic bomb. In 1947, President Truman had outlined what became known as the
Truman Doctrine: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to
support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by
outside pressures." A State Department official, George Kennan, later fleshed
out the Truman Doctrine, introducing the policy of "containment," which meant
the United States would contain the Soviet Union's influence anywhere in the
world. The "containment of the Communist threat" colored U.S. foreign policy
decisions for decades to come.
At home, politicians found it politically expedient to be hard on communism. A
former Communist Party member charged former Roosevelt advisor, Alger Hiss,
with being a Communist spy. Hiss denied the charges before the House
Un-American Activities Committee, which investigated alleged communist
subversion in the U.S. government. The statute of limitations protected Hiss
from espionage charges, but he was later found guilty of perjury. At the same
time, Americans learned that respected Los Alamos scientist Klaus Fuchs had
been passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Other conspirators testified
that they had passed the secrets to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs
were convicted and executed as spies. Their defenders--then and now--claimed
the Rosenbergs were framed, convicted, and executed in an anti-Semitic and
anti-Communist frenzy.
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January 1950
President Truman orders the Atomic Energy Commission to develop the hydrogen
bomb (H-bomb).
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February 1950
Senator Joseph McCarthy launches a crusade to rout out communism in America.
"McCarthyism" is born.
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June 1950
The Korean War begins as North Korean forces invade South Korea.
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December 1951
The first usable electricity from nuclear fission is produced at the National
Reactor Station, later called the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
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October 1952
Operations begin at the Savannah River Plant in Aiken, South Carolina, with the
startup of the heavy water plant.
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December 1953
In his Atoms for Peace speech, President Eisenhower proposes joint
international cooperation to develop peaceful applications of nuclear energy.
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January 1954
U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces U.S. policy of massive
retaliation, that the United States would respond to any Communist aggression.
The first nuclear submarine, U.S.S. Nautilus, is launched.
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April 1954
Army-McCarthy hearings are on TV for five weeks. By the end, Senator McCarthy
is publicly disgraced.
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August 1954
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 is passed to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear
energy through private enterprise and to implement President Eisenhower's Atoms
for Peace Program.
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July 1955
Arco, Idaho becomes the first U.S. town to be powered by nuclear energy.
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October 1956
Hungarian revolution is crushed by Soviet tanks.
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November 1956
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev tells the West, "History is on our side. We
will bury you."
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July 1957
The Sodium Reactor Experiment in Santa Susana, California generates the first
power from a civilian nuclear reactor.
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September 1957
The United States sets off first underground nuclear test in a mountain tunnel
in the remote desert 100 miles from Las Vegas.
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October 1957
Radiation is released when the graphite core of the Windscale Nuclear Reactor
in England catches fire.
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first spacecraft.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is formed to promote the peaceful
uses of nuclear energy and to provide international safeguards and an
inspection system to ensure nuclear materials aren't diverted from peaceful to
military uses.
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December 1957
The first U.S. large-scale nuclear powerplant begins operating in Shippingport,
Pennsylvania.
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October 1959
The Dresden-1 Nuclear Power Station in Illinois achieves a self-sustaining
nuclear reaction. It's the first U.S. nuclear powerplant built entirely without
government funding.
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