1956

Events

January

• January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan after 57 years.
• January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are killed for trespassing by the Waorani people of Ecuador, shortly after making contact with them.
• January 16 – Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser vows to Liberate Palestine.
• January 25–26 – Finnish troops reoccupy Porkkala, after Soviet troops vacate its military base. Civilians can return February 4.
• January 26 – The 1956 Winter Olympics open in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

  February

• February 11 – British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean resurface in the Soviet Union, after being missing for 5 years.
• February 14–25 – The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is held in Moscow.
• February 16 – The 1956 World Figure Skating Championships open in Garmisch, West Germany.
• February 25 – Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Joseph Stalin, in a speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", at a secret session concluding the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This is not officially made public in the Soviet Union at this time but becomes known in the West in June.

  March

• March 1 – The International Air Transport Association finalizes a draft of the radiotelephony spelling alphabet, for the International Civil Aviation Organization.
• March 2 – Morocco declares its independence from France.
• March 9
• * The British deport Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus to the Seychelles.
• * The Soviet Armed Forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy.
• March 10 – The Fairey Delta 2 breaks the World Air Speed Record, raising it to or Mach 1.73, an increase of some over the previous record, and thus becoming the first aircraft to exceed in level flight.
• March 12 – 96 U.S. Congressmen sign the Southern Manifesto, a protest against the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that desegregated public education.
• March 19 – At age 48, Dutch boxer Bep van Klaveren contests his last match in Rotterdam.
• March 20 – Tunisia gains independence from France.
• March 21 – The 28th Academy Awards Ceremony is held in Los Angeles. Marty is awarded Best Picture.
• March 23 – Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, and a national holiday is observed in the country, including the state of East Pakistan.

  April

• April 7 – Spain relinquishes its protectorate in Morocco.
• April 9 – Habib Bourguiba is elected President of the National Constituent Assembly of the Kingdom of Tunisia; on April 15 he becomes prime minister.
• April 14 – Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB convention in Chicago, United States, by Ampex. It is the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex.
• April 18
• * American actress Grace Kelly legally marries Rainier III, Prince of Monaco; a religious ceremony follows next day.
• * Maria Desylla-Kapodistria is elected mayor of Corfu, becoming the first female mayor in Greece.
• April 19
• * British diver Lionel Crabb dives into Portsmouth Harbour, to investigate a visiting Soviet cruiser, and vanishes.
• * The 5.0 1956 Atarfe-Albolote earthquake strikes southern Spain killing 12 and injuring dozens more.

  May

• May 1 – Minamata disease is discovered in Japan.
• May 2 – The United Methodist Church in America decides, at its General Conference, to grant women full ordained clergy status. It also calls for an end to racial segregation in the denomination.
• May 8 – The constitutional union between Indonesia and the Netherlands is dissolved.
• May 9 – Manaslu, eighth highest mountain in the world is first ascended, by a Japanese team.
• May 18 – Lhotse main summit, the fourth highest mountain is first ascended, by Fritz Luchsinger and Ernst Reiss.
• May 23 – French minister Pierre Mendès France resigns, due to his government's policy on Algeria.
• May 24 – The first Eurovision Song Contest is broadcast from Lugano, Switzerland. The winning song is the host country's Refrain by Lys Assia.
• May 25 – India announces the institution of diplomatic relations with Francoist Spain.

  June

• June 1 – Vyacheslav Molotov resigns as foreign minister of the Soviet Union; he later becomes ambassador to Mongolia.
• June 4 – Montgomery bus boycott: The related civil suit is heard in federal district court; the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the ruling in November.
• June 5 – The text of Nikita Khrushchev's February attack on Stalin's reputation, "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", is first published in the West, in The New York Times.
• June 6 – In Singapore, chief minister David Marshall resigns a little over a year into his chief ministership, after the breakdown of talks regarding internal self-government in London.
• June 8 – General Electric/Telechron introduces model 7H241 "The Snooz Alarm", the first snooze alarm clock ever.
• June 10 – 1956 Summer Olympics: Equestrian events open in Stockholm, Sweden.
• June 13
• * The International Criminal Police Organization adopts Interpol as its official name.
• * Real Madrid beats Stade Reims 4–3 at Parc des Princes, Paris and wins the 1955–56 European Cup.
• June 14 – The Flag of the United States Army is formally dedicated.
• June 15 – Eindhoven University of Technology is founded in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
• June 21 – Playwright Arthur Miller appears before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D.C.
• June 23 – Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes the 2nd president of Egypt, a post he holds until his death in 1970.
• June 28
• * Poznań 1956 protests: Labour riots in Poznań, Poland, are crushed with heavy loss of life. Soviet troops fire at a crowd protesting high prices, killing 53 people.
• * The film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, is released only a few months after the film version of R&H's Carousel. It becomes the most financially successful film version of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical up to this time, and the only one to win an acting Oscar. It is also one of two Rodgers and Hammerstein films to be nominated for Best Picture.
• June 29
• * Actress Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller, in White Plains, New York.
• * President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating the Interstate Highway System in the United States.
• June 30 – 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision: A TWA Lockheed Constellation and United Airlines Douglas DC-7 collide in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft, in the deadliest civil aviation disaster to date; the accident leads to sweeping changes in the regulation of cross-country flight and air traffic control over the United States.

  July

• July 2 – A laboratory experiment involving scrap thorium at Sylvania Electric Products in Bayside, New York, results in an explosion.
• July 4 – An American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft makes its first flight over the Soviet Union.
• July 8 – The mountain Gasherbrum II, on the border of Pakistan and China, is first ascended, by an Austrian expedition.
• July 9 – The 7.7 Amorgos earthquake shakes the Cyclades island group in the Aegean Sea, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX. The shaking and the subsequent tsunami leave 53 people dead.
• July 10 – The British House of Lords defeats the abolition of the death penalty.
• July 13 – John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon and Nathaniel Rochester assemble the first coordinated research meeting on the topic of artificial intelligence, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States.
• July 25 – The Italian ocean liner sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS Stockholm in heavy fog south of Nantucket island, killing 51.
• July 26 – Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, sparking international condemnation.
• July 30 – A joint resolution of Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing "In God we trust" as the U.S. national motto.
• July 31
• * Cricket: Jim Laker sets an extraordinary record at Old Trafford in the fourth Test between England and Australia, taking 19 wickets in a first class match.
• * Luzhniki Stadium, well known sports venue of Russia and the Soviet Union, officially opens in Moscow.

  August

• August 7 – Seven ammunition trucks loaded with 1,053 boxes of dynamite explode in Cali, Colombia. Death estimates range from 1,300 to 10,000, in a city that at this time has 120,000 inhabitants.
• August 8 – 262 miners die in a fire at the Bois du Cazier coal mine, in Marcinelle, Belgium.
• August 12 – Around 5,000 members of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church hold a mass outside Cluj-Napoca Piarists' Church to demonstrate that their church, proscribed by the government in 1948, has not ceased to exist as the regime claims.
• August 17 – West Germany bans the Communist Party of Germany.
• The first interfaith dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims with over 850 participants takes place at the monastery of Toumliline in Azrou, Morocco.

  September

• September 13
• * The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team, led by Reynold B. Johnson.
• * The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed.
• September 16 – Television broadcasting in Australia commences.
• September 21 – Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García is assassinated.
• September 25 – The submarine transatlantic telephone cable opens.
• September 27 – The Bell X-2 becomes the first crewed aircraft to reach Mach 3.