1954

Events

January

• January 3 - The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting.
• January 7 - Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM.
• January 10 - BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed.
• January 12 - Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200.
• January 15 - Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya.
• January 17 - In Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties.
• January 20 - The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations.
• January 21 - The first nuclear-powered submarine, the, is launched in Groton, Connecticut, by First Lady of the United States Mamie Eisenhower.
• January 25 - The foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union meet at the Berlin Conference.

February

• February 10 - After authorizing $385 million over the $400 million already budgeted for military aid to Vietnam, President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower warns against his country's intervention in Vietnam.
• February 19 - 1954 transfer of Crimea: The Soviet Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the transfer of the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
• February 23 - The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
• February 25 - Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes premier of Egypt.

  March

• March 1
• * U.S. officials announce that a hydrogen bomb test has been conducted, on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
• * U.S. Capitol shooting incident: Four Puerto Rican nationalists open fire in the United States House of Representatives chamber and wound 5; they are apprehended by security guards.
• March 9 - American journalists Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly produce a 30-minute See It Now documentary, entitled A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy.
• March 12 - Finland and Germany officially end their state of war.
• March 13 - Việt Minh forces under General Võ Nguyên Giáp began a massive artillery bombardment on the French military, beginning the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the climactic battle of the First Indochina War.
• March 19 - Joey Giardello knocks out Willie Tory at Madison Square Garden in the first televised boxing prize fight to be shown in colour.
• March 23 - In Vietnam, the Viet Minh capture the main airstrip of Dien Bien Phu. The remaining French Army units there are partially isolated.
• March 25
• * The 26th Academy Awards Ceremony is held.
• * The Soviet Union recognises the sovereignty of East Germany. Soviet troops remain in the country.
• March 27 - The Castle Romeo nuclear test explosion is executed at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands.
• March 28
• * The trial of A. L. Zissu and 12 other Zionist leaders ends with harsh sentences in Communist Romania.
• * Puerto Rico's first television station, WKAQ-TV, commences broadcasting.
• March 29 - A C-47 transport with French nurse Geneviève de Galard on board is wrecked on the runway at Dien Bien Phu.
• March 30 - The first operational subway line in Canada opens in Toronto.

  April

• April 1
• * The U.S. Congress and President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorize the founding of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.
• * South Point School in India is founded, and becomes the largest school in the world by 1992.
• April 3 - Petrov Affair: Diplomat Vladimir Petrov defects from the Soviet Union and asks for political asylum in Australia.
• April 4 - Legendary symphony conductor Arturo Toscanini experiences a lapse of memory during a concert broadcast live from Carnegie Hall in New York City. At this concert's end, his retirement is announced, and he never conducts in public again.
• April 7 - Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech, during a news conference.
• April 8 - A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair Harvard collides with a Trans-Canada Air Lines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.
• April 10 - The modern form of value-added tax is first implemented by Maurice Lauré, joint director of the French tax authority, in France's Ivory Coast colony.
• April 11
• * This day is denoted as the most boring day in the 20th century by True Knowledge, an answer engine developed by William Tunstall-Pedoe. No significant newsworthy events, births, or deaths are known to have happened on this day.
• * In a general election in Belgium, the dominant Christian Social Party wins 95 of the 212 seats in the Chamber of Representatives, and 49 of the 106 seats in the Senate. The government led by Jean Van Houtte loses their majority in parliament. The two other main parties, the Socialist and Liberal Party, subsequently form a rare "purple" government, with Achille Van Acker as Prime Minister.
• April 12 - Bill Haley & His Comets record "Rock Around the Clock" in their first session for American Decca in New York City; it is released on May 20 as a B-side, but only in 1955 becomes a #1 hit, helping to initiate the rock and roll craze.
• April 14
• * Aneurin Bevan resigns from the British Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet in protest over his party's failure to oppose the rearmament of West Germany.
• * A Soviet spy ring in Australia is unveiled.
• April 16 - Vice President Richard Nixon announces that the United States may be "putting our own boys in Indochina regardless of Allied support".
• April 22
• * The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees comes into force, defining the status of refugees and setting out the basis for granting right of asylum.
• * Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army for being "soft" on Communism.
• April 26
• * An international conference on Korea and Indo-China opens in Geneva.
• * Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is released in Japan.
• April 28 - U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles accuses Communist China of sending combat troops to Indo-China to train Viet Minh guerrillas.

  May

• May 1 - The Unification Church is founded in South Korea.
• May 4 - General Alfredo Stroessner deposes Federico Chaves in a coup d'état in Paraguay; from August 15 he will hold the office of President until 1989.
• May 6 - Roger Bannister runs the first sub-four minute mile, in Oxford, England.
• May 7 - Vietnam War : The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends in a French defeat.
• May 8 - The Asian Football Confederation is formed in Manila, Philippines.
• May 11 - U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declares that Indochina is important but not essential to the security of Southeast Asia, thus ending any prospect of American intervention on the side of France.
• May 14
• * The Boeing 707 jetliner is rolled out in the United States, after about 2 years of development.
• * The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict is adopted in The Hague, Netherlands.
• May 15 - The Latin Union is created by the Convention of Madrid. Its member countries use the five Romance languages: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. It suspended operations in 2012.
• May 16 - Beginning of the Kengir uprising in the Gulag.
• May 17
• * Brown v. Board of Education : The Supreme Court of the United States rules unanimously that segregated schools are unconstitutional.
• * The Royal Commission on the Petrov Affair in Australia begins its inquiry.
• * Adnan Menderes of the Democrat Party forms the new government of Turkey.
• May 20 - Chiang Kai-shek is re-elected as the president of the Republic of China, by the National Assembly.
• May 22 - The common Nordic Labour Market act is signed.
• May 26 - A fire on board the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Bennington, off Narragansett Bay, Massachusetts, kills 103 sailors.
• May 29
• * 1954 Australian federal election: Robert Menzies' Liberal/Country Coalition Government is re-elected with a decreased majority, defeating the Labor Party led by H.V. Evatt. The election has come shortly after the Petrov Affair, arguably helping the Government survive what was initially predicted to be a defeat.
• * Creation and first meeting of the Bilderberg Group.
• * Diane Leather becomes the first woman to run a sub-five minute mile, in Birmingham, England.

  June

• June 6 - The grand opening of the sculpture of Yuriy Dolgorukiy takes place in Moscow.
• June 7 - English cryptanalyst, mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, age 41, commits suicide by cyanide poisoning.
• June 9 - McCarthyism: Joseph N. Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy, during hearings on whether Communism has infiltrated the Army, saying, "Have you, at long last, no decency?" The exchange results in the decline of McCarthy's popularity.
• June 14 - The words "under God" are added to the United States Pledge of Allegiance.
• June 15 - The UEFA is formed in Basel, Switzerland.
• June 17 - A CIA-engineered military coup occurs in Guatemala.
• June 18 - Pierre Mendès France becomes prime minister of France.
• June 22
• * Sarah Mae Flemming is expelled from a bus in South Carolina, for sitting in a white-only section.
• * Parker–Hulme murder case: Pauline Parker, 16 and her friend Juliet Hulme, 15, bludgeon Parker's mother to death using a brick, at Victoria Park in New Zealand.
• June 27
• * Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz steps down in a CIA-sponsored military coup, triggering a bloody civil war that continues for more than 35 years.
• * The world's first atomic power station opens at Obninsk, near Moscow.