Daily writing prompt

Share what you know about the year you were born.

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Off the top of my head, I know that Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, and that the Brown V Board of Education case came before the Supreme Court, a case in which the court voted unanimously to find segregation in schools to be unconstitutional.

The rest is with an assist from Wikipedia… the year 1954 started on a Friday; Jonas Salk announced the polio vaccine, and the first doses would be administered in Pittsburgh; West Germany won its first World Cup title, over Hungary; Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel; there was a coup d’etat in Guatemala; Hurricane Hazel devastated the Caribbean, U.S., and Canada; the Castle Bravo and Castle Romeo (hydrogen) nuclear tests were conducted in the Marshall Islands; the first operational subway line was opened in Toronto; The U.S. Air Force Academy was founded; Arturo Toscanini’s retirement was announced after a performance at Carnegie Hall, during which he had a memory lapse; President Eisenhower laid out what became known as the Domino Theory at a news conference in April; April 11 was denoted as the Most Boring Day in the 20th Century; Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe got married; Roger Bannister ran the first sub-4 minute mile, in England; the words “under God” are added to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance; Diane Leather was the first woman to run a sub-5 minute mile, also in England; Joseph McCarthy’s popularity declines after Special Counsel Joseph N. Welch lashed out with his now famous attack–“Have you, at long last, no decency?”

There is much more, but one last entry: food rationing ended in Great Britain, 14 years after it began early in WWII, and almost a decade after the war ended.

Daily writing prompt

Share what you know about the year you were born.

View all responses

Dwight D. Eisenhower was President; The Brown v Board of Education decision was handed down; the first mass vaccinations against polio began, in Pittsburgh; the first Burger King opened– in Miami; the first Godzilla movie premiered in Tokyo; “Rock Around the Clock” was released as a B side; the DJIA closed at an all-time high of 382.74, not seen since before the crash of 1929; things were quieting down and heating up in Vietnam; The USS Nautilus was launched in Groton, CT; Texas Instruments introduced its first transistor radio; the U.S. government announced the testing of a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, and the U.S. Senate roundly condemned Joseph McCarthy.

I needed a memory refresh courtesy of Wikipedia… the only things about 1954 that I remembered off the top of my head were the Brown v Board… decision, and that Dwight D. Eisenhower was POTUS.