Communist North Korean armies invaded South Korea, triggering the Korean War, in which the United Nations and United States forces under the command of World War II hero Douglas MacArthur, fought for three years, suffering more than 950,000 casualties, inflicting at least 1.5 million on the enemy. An estimated 2.5 million civilian casualties were caused in the course of the war.

General Douglas MacArthur was sacked by President Truman for exceeding orders and

I Love Lucy began its television run on CBS.

The Marshall Plan expired, having distributed more than 13 billion dollars in aid to European countries.

Republican, former Commander of Allied armies in Europe in WWII, Dwight D. Eisenhower of Kansas, elected 34^th President of the United States.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for passing atomic secrets to the Russians, with whom the United States was not at war. The controversial trial and executions received world-wide condemnation.

In Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court decided in a 9-0 ruling, that the “Separate but Equal” principle in force since Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896, in regard to segregated government schools was unconstitutional.

Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine approved by the FDA, allowing mass production of the drug, resulting in a great reduction in the cases of polio, for the first time in history.

The national civil rights movement began when Rosa Parks refused to give up her  bus seat to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama and is arrested.

The U.S. Seventh Fleet helped the Nationalist Chinese army flee to safety on Formosa as the Communist Chinese army led by Chairman Mao defeated the Nationalist army of Chang Kai Chek.

President Eisenhower sends the first military advisors to South Vietnam.

President Eisenhower created the national interstate highway system which made interstate commerce and travel infinitely more efficient.

Captain Hank Cramer became the first United States serviceman killed in action in Vietnam.

Elvis Presley Releases (Let Me be Your) Teddy Bear which goes to #1 on the charts. He moves out from his parents house that same year.

Alaska and Hawaii become the 49^th and 50th American states, respectively.

Robert W. Welch founded the John Birch Society, an anti-communist organization named after an American soldier killed by the communist Chinese.

The post-WWII “baby boom” officially came to an end, beginning an eleven year declining birthrate in the United States.

Premier Nikita Kruschev of the Soviet Union and American Vice-President Richard Nixon have a “kitchen debate” at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, and end up singing Ramblin Wreck from Georgia Tech together, one of the few thaws in the Cold War.