©
Mark Verma 2005
1950
POPULATION
GENERAL
*World population is
2.55b. World Jewish population is 11.2m.
*The Chinese Communist Party
initiates a policy of actively encouraging population growth (as it believes a
large population is one way to bring about a stronger nation). “It is a
good thing that
URBANISATION
*There are 83 cities
with a population of over 1 million people (compared with 12 in 1900).
MIGRATION & REFUGEES
*With nearly a million displaced
persons still in
*The innovations of William Levitt
(see 1947) and a gradual increase in crime rates begins to see the urban
populations of many large cities (especially in the American Rust Belt) leave
for the leafier, outlying suburbs, with declines of 50% or more in the inner
urban populaces of Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit over the next five decades.
*Coastal Migration: The
*Mass migration of workers from
POLITICS
WORLD
*Start of the Korean War (see
below). The UN General Assembly passes a resolution establish a
unified and democratic
*The UN General Assembly
Resolution 423 invites “States and interested organizations to adopt
[the] 10th December of each year as Human Rights Day, to
observe this day to celebrate the proclamation of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights by the General Assembly on 10th December
1948, and to exert increasing efforts in this field of human progress.”
*The
*The Knesset passes a resolution
that states
*The Knesset passes the Absentee
Property Law, which authorises the expropriation of all lands belonging to
Palestinians who are not in
*
*Former French Prime Minister Robert Schuman (1886 –
1963) presents his proposal on the creation of an organised
*
*To create a legal infrastructure for
aiding refugees from Soviet persecution, the Council of Europe
formulates the European Convention on Human Rights (which includes
several articles such as prohibitions against torture and slavery as well as
protocols such as one banning the death penalty outside wartime). Protocols are
allowed to be accepted (or not) by individual states although it is assumed
member states will be party to as many protocols as possible. The Convention
also sets up the European Court of Human Rights, to which any person who
feels their rights have been violated under the Convention by a state
party can take a case to - the decisions of the Court are legally
binding and it has the power to award damages.
*Rainbow Tour: Eva
Perón (1919 - 1952) tours
*Belgian referendum sees the nation
support the return of the monarchy. Leopold III (1901 – 1983) returns to
*Mass arrests of communists occur in
*Clement Attlee’s Labour
government narrowly retains power in the British general election.
*
*The
UN and US end their diplomatic isolation of
*West German leader Konrad
Adenauer (1876 – 1967) tries unsuccessfully to negotiate with
*Western Allied foreign ministers
meeting in
SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA / THE
*Former dictator Getulio Vargas
becomes
*In British Guyana, Cheddi Jagan
(1918 – 1997) founds the People’s Progressive Party, the
first modern political organisation in the colony (see 1953).
*Assassination of Venezuelan
President Carlos Delgado
Chalbaud (1909 – 1950) ushers in a more authoritarian military
dictatorship.
*
*The UN rejects membership
for Communist China.
*
*The
*Reign of terror in
*Sweeping social reform is
introduced to China, banning forced marriages, polygamy, the sale of women into
prostitution, the killing of unwanted babies, and making divorce (all but
impossible under the old regime) easier. The arrival of the new regime also
sees Chinese cities change as cars, foreigners and foreign businesses disappear
(the bicycle becomes the new favoured means of transport). In the economic
sphere, all private banks are closed and a new state bank is established
(companies having to gain the support of the Party to secure loans).
*
*Nationalist leader
Chiang Kai-shek is elected president of the Republic of China on
*Increasing tension arises between
*US President Truman announces the
*
*
*The Japanese
“economic miracle” (see below) sees the nation rapidly
urbanise, with people moving to the city to take advantage of growing
employment opportunities (eventually 1m a year will be making the move, from
1955 to the 1970s). Suburban living and the Western-style nuclear family
replace rustic living and the extended family as the societal norms. In later
decades, urban overcrowding will spark extreme social tension, with suicide
increasing to Western levels, juvenile crime growing 80% after 1972, and
divorces, though low when compared with the West, doubling into the late 1980s.
*Start of the Korean War.
The North invades the South. Backed by Soviet equipment and manpower, the North
forces the Southern army to retreat. The
*
CONFLICT
NATION STATES
*
*Korean War (lasts until 1953,
3,000,000 killed).
CIVIL WAR
*Uprising against authoritarian
rule in
CIVIL UNREST & ETHNIC CLASHES
*Riot in
*Pro-Communist riots in
*Communist reign of terror in
*Rioting in Molluccas is quelled by
the Indonesian government (5000 killed).
*Puerto Rican nationalists attack
Blair House in a failed attempt to assassinate President Truman.
*Start of a two-year failed US-British
covert campaign to oust the Communist regime of
*Klaus Fuchs (1911 – 1988), a
physicist on the British World War II atomic program and the Manhattan
Project, confesses to and is convicted of spying for the Russians. He is
jailed for nine years.
*A
*
*Failed assassination attempt on Harry
Truman by Puerto Rican nationalists.
*Alger Hiss is convicted of
perjury. Hiss’ conviction prompts the passage of the McCarran Internal Security Act, which requires US
Communists and Communist organisations to register with the federal government.
*The
Red Scare: In his speech to the Republican Women’s Club at the McClure
Hotel in
*President Truman orders US
Strategic Air Command to dispatch 10 B-29s loaded with unarmed atomic bombs
to
*Establishment of Air America, as a 100%-owned
subsidiary of the Pacific Corporation. It undertakes worldwide charter and
contract operations primarily in the
*The Australian government bans the
Communist Party (although the High Court later strikes out the law as
unconstitutional).
GENERAL
*The European Payments
*Typifying a trend in Western
economies, the post-Keynesian outsized growth of government (see 1944)
sees public expenditure in
*Wirtschaftswunder (West German Economic Miracle): A combination of a new currency
restoring consumer and financial confidence (see 1948), large investment funds released by the Marshall Plan (see 1948), the stimulus to German industry provided by the
diversion of other Western resources for Korean War production, the Korean
conflict also increasing demand for goods worldwide and, concurrently, seeing
postwar qualms / resistance to buying German products subside in other nations,
and the willingness of the German people to work hard for low wages until
productivity has risen, provides the impetus for a boom that transforms West
Germany into an economic powerhouse (it becomes the world's fourth largest
economy). The growth rate of industrial production reaches 25.1% this year and
maintains a high rate throughout the 1950s (despite the odd slowdown). By 1960,
industrial production is 2½ times that of 1950 and far beyond that the
Nazis reached during the 1930s in all of
*
*The Korean War sees US
military spending as a percentage of GDP surge from 4% to 11%. The ongoing
large defence budget dates from this period (although it will wax and wane at
various times over the next several decades).
*The Wealth Explosion: As
the
*The Colombo Plan: An
international economic body is set up to provide aid and training to several
South East Asian countries (e.g. India, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc) with
Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the US providing the bulk of the donations.
Assistance is given in the form of educational and health aid, training
programs, loans, food supplies, equipment, and technical aid. Originally
conceived as a six-year measure, the Plan is renewed several times before being
made permanent in 1980.
*Japanese Economic
Miracle:
- the
size of mills is enlarged and LD converters (the modern oxygen steel making
process which informs steel production to date) are imported (5m tons of steel
are produced this year versus 82m tons in 1969)
- energy
switches from coal to oil (the “energy revolution”)
- petrochemistry and
synthetic fibres (e.g. nylon) become new industries and the automotive and shipbuilding
industries power ahead (1500 cars are produced in 1950 versus 2.6m in 1970 when
Japan is the third largest car manufacturer in the world – later growing
to the number one position; by 1956, Japan is the largest shipbuilder in the
world, producing almost 50% of all ships in the world by 1970).
Additionally,
*
*The Japanese government
begins to actively encourage workers to shift from agriculture to industry.
*Kenneth Boulding (1910 –
1993) publishes A Reconstruction of Economics, in which he posits that
the basic analytic framework in economics is the balance sheet; i.e. asset
transfers as expressed in the balance sheet provide the best understanding of
economic behaviour. Since consumption is the destruction of assets, the
maximisation of welfare through the enjoyment of assets requires that
consumption be minimised. Current levels of consumption are so high, however,
that the stock of assets, particularly natural resources, is being depleted.
The end result will be a no-growth, stationary state in which current
consumption equals current production.
TRADE
*World trade in relation to output,
having grown from the mid-1800s to 1913, then fallen from 1913 to now because
of the two world wars and protectionist policies implemented during the Great
Depression, begins to burgeon once more due to concerted efforts by the
major economies to stimulate trade in the last couple of years (notably GATT
– see below) (see 1970).
*The Torquay Round: 38
nations meet in
*Birth of Euromarkets: In
the aftermath of WWII, US dollars in circulation outside the US (hence,
deposited at banks outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Reserve and
so subject to much less regulation than similar deposits within the US,
allowing for higher margins – higher profits as a percentage of
revenue/turnover) have increased enormously, both as a result of the Marshall
Plan (see 1948) and as a result of imports into the US, which has
become the largest consuming market after the re-establishment of peace. These
US dollars are mostly held in European institutions (although, later, the
greenback comes to be in wide circulation across the globe). It is Cold War
tensions this decade, however, that see a market emerge based on these US
dollars held outside the
*The Japanese Export
Bank is established to provide a wide range of services
to support and encourage Japanese trade and overseas investment. Its name
changes to the Export-Import Bank of Japan
in 1952, when its activities expand to include
import financing.
CORPORATISATION
& NATIONALISATION
*Banks in the
*Organisation Development:
Large companies begin to send key management personnel to sensitivity
training groups (or T-groups – see 1947) so as to develop
employees with a more focused work ethic. Gradually, such sessions are held in
workplaces themselves (with employee attendance often mandatory) so the entire
company can benefit from them. Eventually, the organisers of the sessions
discover that both groups and the communication patterns within them evolve in
a broadly predictable way. Once it is understood how the members of a group
learn to trust one another, trainers are able to apply the lessons throughout
business, using such techniques as teamwork and management retreats. The rise
of the human potential movement (within the broader New Age movement – see
1970, 1971, 1976) and the fact it overlaps with several aspects of
organisation development eventually sees the latter saturated with the former
movement’s distinctive beliefs and practices (see 1980).
*The French government,
concerned at the permeating of national culture by American mass culture,
decide to limit the sale of Coca-Cola in
*President Truman orders the US
Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike.
The railroads are returned to their owners two years later.
*Dunkin’ Donuts opens.
It eventually operates 6000 franchises throughout the world (with most in the
*EMI Group
(founded 1931) begins to enjoy great success in the popular music field,
establishing numerous subsidiaries and becoming one of the biggest music labels
in the world (with assets of US$800bn by 2004). The Group eventually
includes such labels as Capitol [founded 1942], Chrysalis
[founded 1969], Parlophone [founded c.1910] and Virgin Records
[founded 1972]).
*Levi Strauss (founded 1850)
begins selling its denim pants nationally. The popularity of jeans (see 1947),
sees the company grow to become a clothing corporate giant and the
world’s top maker of brand-name clothes (with assets of US$2.8bn by
2004).
*Tetra Pak (later part of
the Tetra Laval holding company) is founded in
*The Walt Disney
Company (founded 1923), thus far a producer of
cartoons and other animated fare, moves into broadcast television (which spurs
the initial period of huge corporate growth). Later in the decade it also opens
the first of its world famous theme parks,
MARKETING &
CONSUMPTION
*During the 1950s, the
supermarket emerges as the predominant food retailer in the
*Northgate, near
*Prevailing methods for
marketing research (e.g. statistical methodology) begin to be seen as deficient
due to the time lag in gathering data external to the business which makes them
available only after change in the market place has altered the conditions
which they are intended to depict; and the static nature of research, which
does not reflect the many complex marketing situations which cannot be reduced
to statistical terms. Consequently, traditional approaches to the study of
marketing are supplemented by an increasing emphasis upon judgement skills in
the use of research. A contrasting trend manifests in increasing incorporation
in marketing research of methods and techniques borrowed from related social
sciences (as influenced by prevailing trends in psychoanalysis). A number
of concepts and techniques are drawn from the fields of psychology and
sociology (e.g. Word association, sentence completion, Rorschach
tests). Focus is placed on managerial decision making (in marketing
analyses of consumer motivation and the use of concepts developed in related
behavioural sciences) and the societal aspects of marketing. The market is
recognised as being heterogenous and not homogenous and so emphasis turns
towards specialisation and away form generalisation in marketing thought.
*Advertising largely reflects
societal norms: Ads in the 1950s depict women primarily as decoration or sex
objects. Although millions of women work outside the home by the mid-1960s, ads
continue to focus on their role as homemakers. Whether owing to the feminist movement
or to women’s increasing economic power, after the 1960s it becomes more
common to see women depicted in professional roles. Similarly, prior to 1960,
African-Americans are usually shown in a subordinate position. Due to the
influence of the civil rights movement, however, advertisers by the 1980s have
begun to depict them as students, professionals or business people.
*The
Single Sponsor Era: The wholesale arrival of television in the post-war
period sparks an advertising boom as manufacturers seek to inform newly prosperous consumers of the dazzling
array of new goods they can purchase (washing machines, vacuum cleaners, food
mixers, television sets) that they never previously knew they needed. With the
combined impact of image and sound, it soon becomes clear that brand
recognition is much greater with television than with radio and soon the
airwaves are full of programs like Kraft Television Theater, Colgate
Comedy Hour, and Coke Time as advertisers scrambled to access
this new wave of consumers.
*Bic pen.
*First milk vending machines.
*First paper milk cartons with pour
spout.
*Polystyrene is
invented.
*Flexible polyurethane
foam (and rigid foam in the 1960s).
*Rolodex.
*Telephone answering
machine.
*The first commercially packaged sliced
process cheese is introduced by Kraft.
*Frisbee (initially called the
Flyin’ Saucer, before acquiring the familiar name in 1957).
*Silly putty.
CONSUMER PROTECTION
*Pent-up demand for
consumer products explodes (see above). Subscriptions to Consumer
Reports reach nearly 400,000 (after its 1936 launch, it took a decade to
reach 100,000).
*The House
Un-American Activities Committee places Consumers Union on its list
of subversive organisations (see 1954).
CREDIT & DEBT
*Launch of Diner’s Club,
the first credit card (see 1949). Initially, it s primarily a business
man’s card, available for dinners and retail purchases while travelling
(having been given out free to 200 customers who can use it at 27 restaurants
in
ENERGY & RESOURCES
---AGRICULTURE, LIVESTOCK &
FISHERIES
*Global grain supplies begin to
grow as several nations follow
*The Green Revolution (see
1944, 1945) begins to deliver large agricultural surpluses –
*First regeneration of
entire plants from an in vitro culture.
*Artificial insemination of livestock using frozen semen is
successfully accomplished.
*Global meat production increases
fourfold over the next four decades, with farm animals increasing faster that
the human population (see 1995).
*Global fish catch is 20m tons.
---OIL, GAS & FOSSIL FUELS
*World oil discoveries
this decade: 450bn barrels.
*The American Petroleum
Institute says world recoverable oil reserves are at 100bn barrels. The
figure will greatly expand as the centre of the global oil industry shifts to
the
*Between 1950 and 1972, global (and
more so
*
*The 1700km Trans-Arabian
Pipe Line (Tapline) is completed, linking the Saudi Arabian Eastern
Province oil fields to
*Profit-sharing agreement between Aramco
and the Saudi government sees half the profits of all oil sales go to the
*Soviet oil exploration
in the Volga-Urals region pays off, with new fields there accounting for 45% of
the country’s total production. The new larger volume of crude goes to
feed a wave of new refineries such as the one at
---WATER
*Centralised dams on the
EMPLOYMENT
*The International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions (see 1949) begins to actively recruit new
member unions from Asia (and, later, Africa).
*A rail workers strike shuts down
much of the Canadian economy.
*A cultural shift begins
to occur concerning the place of workers in Japanese society, as part of its
“economic miracle” (see above): the pre-existing blue collar
mentality is supplanted, partly because of the Dodge reforms (see
1949), which have wrought a severe economic downturn, seized upon by big
business to rationalise and down-size, which undermines the nation’s
unions (whose leadership is purged of radicals). Corporate (company-based)
unions subsequently replace trade unions as labour and management unite to
establish working conditions and employment practices whose main emphasis is
employment stability, promotion by seniority and healthy (and growing) pay
packets (based on profits, which are plentiful and remain so for decades). The
burgeoning wealth is spread around (fostering harmony between management and
employees, in contrast to the West) breeding an environment wherein the company
becomes a type of community and the standard of living rises exponentially
(doubling by the mid-1960s). The elevation in worker social status is furthered
as, by the mid-1950s, most factory workers are high-school graduates (a
requirement imposed by the technological innovations in the industrial
process). The result of these changes causes productivity to skyrocket.
POVERTY, AID & CHARITY
*The UN sets up more aid
programs this decade as its specialised agencies gradually become more involved
in technical cooperation with developing countries (see 1949). It becomes
clear, however, that technical cooperation can be much more effective if it is
combined with low-interest loans or other forms of capital investment (see
1958).
CRIME, PUNISHMENT &
INTERNATIONAL LAW
*Behaviourism (see
1939) comes to inform the justice systems of the West in the post-war
period. Improving standards of living in the post-war boom and a general rise
in confidence (stimulated by the economy and also scientific breakthroughs in
medicine and other areas) creates a dynamic whereby courts are more indulgent
with reforming criminals rather than punishing them (especially given the more
acceptable idea that it is poor social conditions – ‘society’
– that is seen, thanks to the rise of behaviourism, to produce
criminality).##
*Public respect for
police reaches a peak this decade. In Western nations they are seen as
upstanding, community-minded, and tough but fair. Scandalous corruption cases
in the
*Rising crime rates in
the post-ware era in the West sees prison populations
rise. The number of British prisoners trebles in 40 years, from 20,000 to 60,000
in 1990 (20,000 more than capacity). A lack of investment in prisons sees
serious overcrowding problems emerge in the 1970s and 1980s, which invariably
spark more and more riots.
*The FBI begins its Ten
Most Wanted list after a reporter asks who the “toughest guys”
the Bureau would most like to capture are.
DRUGS, TOBACCO & ALCOHOL
---NARCOTICS
*First scientific recommendation of
utilising LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy. Throughout this decade, psychedelic
drugs, mainly LSD and mescaline, are freely available to physicians and
psychiatrists in Europe and the
*Cold War tensions push the
*The Chinese Communist government
launches a major crackdown on drugs, burning 20,000 pounds of opium, 300 pounds
of heroin, executing three dozen addicts and forcing the nation’s 10m
addicts into treatment programs.
---NICOTINE
*Ernst L. Wynder (1922 - 1999) and Evarts A. Graham (1883 -
1957) publish, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the first large-scale study to find
a clear link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer.
GAMBLING
*The growth of the television
medium sees horseracing become a televised sport in
*The US Senate sets up the Committee
to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce to investigate growing
concerns over the involvement of the Mafia in Nevada’s gambling industry
(which continues to grow exponentially due to a gambling tourism boom prompted
by the postwar economic good times that are bequeathing spare liquid income
into the pockets of millions of middle class Americans; the entertainment at
the casinos – such Hollywood stars as Jimmy Durante [1893 – 1980]
and George Raft [1895 - 1980] – also draws the crowds, as Frank Sinatra,
Dean Martin [1917 – 1995] and Sammy Davis, Jr [1925 - 1990] will later in
the decade). The Committee finds widespread evidence of skimming, which
sheltered gambling profits from taxes. Thereafter, a law enforcement crackdown
on criminal influence in casinos occurs and the industry is largely
‘cleaned out,’ with the Mafia ultimately selling their casino
interests to lawful individuals and publicly-traded companies (although the
industry will lack ‘respectability’ until the 1990s). Additionally,
voters in
ACTIVISM
& ADVOCACY
*George Habash (1925 - ) sets up
the Arab Nationalists’ Movement with colleagues from the
*The First Inter-American
Conference for Democracy and Freedom is held in Havana, Cuba by the Latin
American branch of the International League for the Rights of Man (see
1946), which draws delegates of different political backgrounds with a
desire to promote democracy and oppose forces that threaten liberty and peace
in the Americas. The delegates establish a permanent organisation to create a
network of Pan-American democratic movements aimed at protecting the hemisphere
from fascism, and communism. Subsequently, the Inter-American Association
for Democracy and Freedom is formed.
*Winston Churchill supports the idea of pan-European
army allied with
*Albert Einstein warns that
nuclear war could lead to mutual destruction.
SUICIDE & EUTHANASIA
---SUICIDE
*The global suicide rate is 16 per
100,000 for males and 5 per 100,000 for females (see 1970).
RACE
RELATIONS
*UNESCO publishes The
Race Question, a formal statement signed by 21 notable scholars including
Ashley Montagu (see 1942), Gunnar Myrdal (see 1944), and Julian
Huxley (see 1939, 1945), aimed at both debunking pseudo-scientific
racist theories which have played a role in the Holocaust (such as eugenics),
by popularising modern knowledge concerning "the race question," and
morally condemning racism as contrary to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and
its assumption of equal rights for all. The statement is later cited in the Supreme
Court’s landmark Brown v Board of Education decision (see
1954).
*The
US Supreme Court rules that segregation of a black man, who has won the
right to attend a white Southern university, in the classroom and cafeteria, is
unconstitutional.
*Throughout this decade,
segregation of Hispanics throughout the
*African American diplomat Ralph J.
Bunche (1904 - 1971) wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a mediator in
the Arab-Israeli conflict in the
*Poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 -
2000) becomes the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, which
she receives for her poetry collection Annie Allen.
*Juanita Hall (1901 -
1968) is the first African American to win a Tony Award, for her role as
Bloody Mary in the musical South Pacific.
*In
WOMEN, MARRIAGE & DIVORCE
*The postwar economic boom (see
1945) leads to a massive economic expansion and to the creation of many
white-collar jobs in the private sector. any of these jobs required some higher
education such that by the 1950s, many women (mostly white middle-class with
some college education) begin taking such jobs; partly because there are not
enough men to take them, partly because many families and women need/desire
more income (to keep up with the Joneses in the emerging consumer society) and
partly because some women are tired of domesticity and want jobs (some
recalling their wartime experience with warmth, remembering the camaraderie of
the WWII workplace). These trends accelerate (along with the economy) in the
1960s. The increase of female engagement in the workforce sets the stage for a
radical sea change in women’s rights and Western culture in general.
*Female suffrage in
*Actress Ingrid Bergman (1915
– 1982) leaves her husband and daughter for film director Roberto
Rossellini (1906 – 1977) and has an illegitimate child with him. Although
they soon marry, the scandal arouses ire in the
CHILDREN & YOUTH
*UNICEF mandate is extended
indefinitely. It subsequently shifts its emphasis to long-term humanitarian /
developmental assistance to children and mothers in the developing world,
beginning with a successful global campaign against yaws, a disfiguring disease
affecting millions of children, and one that can be cured with penicillin.
EDUCATION
*UNESCO passes the Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Materials, wherein signatories agree not to apply customs duties on educational materials.
*A UNESCO program to provide
education to Palestinian refugees begins.
*UNESCO begins to organise
projects for primary education in Latin America, Asia and
SEX & SEXUALITY
---GENERAL
*Sex Education: After lobbying by public health agencies and departments in several Western countries, sex education begins for teenage students in public schools this decade and beyond (see 1983).
---MEDICAL
*The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sexualforschung (German Society for Sex Research) is established, a
successor to the ill-fated Institute for Sexual
Science (see 1941).
*Americans spend an estimated
US$200m a year on contraceptives. Due to massive improvements over the past
decade in condom quality and a growing awareness of the inadequacies of
douches, ‘rubbers’ are the most popular form of birth control on
the market.
*Although the vast majority
of doctors approve of birth control for the good of families, anti-birth
control laws on the books in 30 US states still prohibit or restrict the sale
and advertisement of contraceptive devices (e.g. it is a felony in
Massachusetts to “exhibit, sell, prescribe, provide, or give out
information” about them; in Connecticut, it is a crime for a couple to
use contraception).
*Ernst Grafenberg (1881 - 1957)
publishes The Role of Urethra in Female Orgasm, in which he describes
female ejaculation, and an erotic zone where the urethra is closest to the
vaginal wall (later named the G-spot in honour of him).
---HOMOSEXUALITY, TRANSVESTISM & TRANSGENDERISM
*Bowing to McCarthyist pressures,
the Civil Service Commission intensifies its efforts to locate and dismiss
lesbians and gay men working in government. Over the next six months, 382 are
fired, compared with 192 for the preceding two and a half years.
*The US Senate authorises a
wide-ranging investigation of homosexuals “and other moral
perverts” working in national government. A Senate report later
concludes homosexuals are a security risk not simply because they are liable to blackmail but also
because homosexuality inevitably perverts “moral fibre;” the report
recommends stringent measures be taken to root all lesbians and gay men out of
government.
*Early Gay Rights: The Mattachine
Society, one of the first gay rights organisations, is founded in
*Gay Bathhouses: First gay
bathhouses open in the
ECOLOGY & ENVIRONMENTALISM
GENERAL
*The Nature
Conservancy is founded in the
*Margaret Mee (1909 -
1988) leaves
POLLUTION, DEFORESTATION &
DESERTIFICATION
---POLLUTION
*
*Scientists identify the causes of smog in
*The Poza Rica killer smog (caused
by gas fumes from an oil refinery) incident leaves 22 dead and hundreds
hospitalised in
---DEFORESTATION
*The Peak District becomes
WEATHER & CLIMATE
*Hurricanes are named
alphabetically from this year.
*A typhoon strikes
ANIMAL WELFARE
*Australian scientists
oversee the first full-scale release of the myxomatisis disease to bring the
country’s rabbit population under control (rabbits having been introduced
to
NATURAL
*Starting this decade,
the number of natural disasters increases fourfold by the 21st
century, while economic losses from natural catastrophes, after adjusting for
inflation, increases by a factor of 14 (see 2004).
*An earthquake in
Chinese Tibet kills 1500.
*An earthquake and
floods in
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN
ACHIEVEMENT
GENERAL
*World knowledge now
doubles every 50 years (see 1960).#####
*The Rise of the
Global Scientific Establishment: There are now 1m scientists worldwide
(versus 100,000 in 1900 and 1000 in 1800) (see 2000). Improving global
communications (satellite link-ups and later, faxes and emails), the
proliferation of technical and scientific articles and books (see 1982) and the
growth of air travel over the next decades sees more collaboration between
scientists across the globe than ever before (with more conferences held
attended by more specialists from more nations than hitherto – leading to
more uniformity of thought and ideas). Before the end of the current decade,
the first international scientific conference addressing non-technical issues
is held (see 1956).
*Interdisciplinary Approach to Science: Owing to the
increasing specialisation of knowledge (as it begins to exponentially increase
in volume and scope due to technical advances – such as those in computer
science [see 1957] - and various breakthroughs – such as the
cognitive conceptual revolution in psychology [see 1958]), a new
interdisciplinary approach to the sciences begins to emerge in coming decades,
a more holistic ethos that seeks to integrate concepts across different disciplines. As a
result, new disciplines will emerge (such as archaeoastronomy – see 1967).
*In the
PHYSICS &
MATHEMATICS
*Plasma Physics:
Swedish astrophysicist Hannes Alfvén (1908 - 1995) publishes Cosmical
Electrodynamics, which summarises his early work in plasma physics, the
study of ionised gases that bears on phenomena within Earth’s magnetic
field such as the northern lights, on space science, and on later research in
nuclear fusion (see 1997).
NUCLEAR ENERGY, WEAPONRY
& BALLISTIC MISSILES
*
*The
*The US Army begins to deploy
anti-aircraft cannons to protect nuclear stations and military targets.
*President Truman threatens
the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean War.
*President Truman announces
the US Atomic Energy Commission will proceed with work “on all
forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super-bombs,”
in a project overseen by Edward Teller. Twelve leading US physicists speak out
against the decision (see 1951, 1952).
*The National Security
Council warns of a surprise attack by the
*Military Nuclear Accidents:
A B-36 bomber jettisons an atomic bomb (which does not contain the plutonium
core required for a nuclear explosion) off the coast of
*Worldwide stockpile of
nuclear warheads: US – 369,
ARCHAEOLOGY
*A 40-acre field in
rural
ASTRONOMY & SPACE
EXPLORATION
*Over a hundred German
scientists, described as “prisoners of peace,” begin arriving in
*Because of forest fire
in
*Total eclipse in
*Jan Oort predicts the
existence of the Oort Cloud of comets;
analysing the orbits of comets entering the inner solar system for the first
time, he proposes that these new comets originate in a cloud of comets tens of
thousands of astronomical units from the Sun (see 2004).
GEOSCIENCES
*Orthophoto mapping, wherein aerial
photographs have been rectified such that they are equivalent ot a map of the same scale, first become widely used (in the
geosciences).
PSYCHOLOGY
*Child Psychology:
Psychologist Erik Erikson (1902 - 1994) publishes Childhood & Society,
in which he divides the human life cycle into eight psychosocial stages of
development, each of which involves a personal psychological crisis that an
individual must overcome to move to the successive stage. He coins the term
“identity crisis” to describe the confusion and despair often experienced
by teenagers when they perceive that they lack a strong personal identity, a
crisis they must overcome to reach adulthood. Erikson’s work,
along with others, is a key to the emergence of developmental or child
psychology, the scientific study of age-related behavioral changes which occur
as a child grows up.
*David Riesman, Jr. (1909 – 2002) publishes The
Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, a sociological
study that investigates how the increasing power of corporate and government
organisations is influencing national character. Riseman notes that in every
age, certain personality types rise to prominence. Wars call forth warriors and
an era of expansion calls forth adventurers. What sort of people flourish in
the age of organisation? Answering that question, Riesman sorted character
types into three defined but overlapping categories. Tradition-directed people,
who rigorously obey ancient rules, seldom thrive in modern, quickly changing
societies. Inner-directed people live as they were taught in childhood: They
tend to be confident and perhaps also rigid. But other-directed people are
flexible and willing to accommodate others to win approval. Big organisations
find this type essential: “The other-directed person wants to be loved rather
than esteemed,” not necessarily to control others but to relate to them.
Those who are other-directed need assurance that they are emotionally in tune
with people around them. In the 1940s, Riesman posits that the other-directed
character is beginning to dominate society.
ANTHROPOLOGY & LINGUISTICS
*Sociocultural Anthropology:
British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology begin to form a
hybrid (dominant) school, increasingly modelled on the rigorous scientific
methodology of the natural sciences, which seeks to examine the interplay
between social and cultural aspects of human societal behaviour. Several
different sub-branches spring forth, including the study of the processes of modernisation by
which growing number of newly independent states can develop, of how societies
evolve and fit their ecological niche, of how the development of traditional
economics ignored cultural and social factors, and so on: in essence, a
fragmentation occurred within this blended socio-cultural stew.######
HEALTH & MEDICINE
*Early Failures of
Antibiotics: This decade, the first strains of diseases resistant to
antibiotics emerge but new antibiotics will continue to be developed to combat
them until the end of the 1960s (see 1969).
*Antihistamine is
discovered, a chemical which serves to reduce or eliminate effects mediated by
histamine, an endogenous chemical of the human body released during allergic
reactions.
*Edward Ahrens, Jr.
(1915 – 2000) begins to undertake dietary studies, using formula diets,
to test the effects of different types of fats on cholesterol levels, and his
laboratory provides definitive confirmation that the kind of fats we eat can
alter the level of cholesterol in our blood. His clinical studies will span
more than four decades and centre on fat digestion and absorption, fat
transport through the body, control of serum cholesterol levels, deposition of
fat in adipose tissues and factors controlling the composition of
mother’s milk. His primary interest in later years is the relationship of
cholesterol metabolism to the genesis of coronary heart disease.
*Joseph Rotblat (see
also 1944, 1946, 1947, 1957, 1958) begins a
26-year stint as Professor of Physics at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in
London, during which time his research contributes to the further understanding
of nuclear hazards: he is able to show that the fallout from hydrogen bombs
(thought to be ‘clean’) is in fact highly radioactive, and that
radiation is a direct cause of cancers in fallout victims.
CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY &
GENETICS
*Neural Networks:
Early this decade, Friedrich Hayek is one of the first to posit the idea of
spontaneous order in the brain arising out of decentralised networks of simple
units (neurons). The rise in cognitive science later in the 1950s (see 1958)
seeks to understand the structure and inner workings of these neural pathways
and some researchers will even seek to build artificial neural networks (see
1957).
*Barbara McClintock, working in the genetics of maize,
reports finding control elements, providing the first evidence that genetic
regulation might be universal.
*Erwin Chargaff (1929 – 1992) discovers a regularity in the proportions of DNA bases for different
species. In all organisms he studies, the amount of adenine (A) approximately
equals that of thymine (T), and guanine (G) equals cytosine (C).
*Karl von Frisch (1886 – 1982)
discerns the code which is conveyed by the dance of bees.
*Physicist Maurice
Wilkins (1915 – 2004) produces pictures of X-ray diffraction (a technique
whereby patterns are produced revealing the nature of the lattice of atoms in a
substance) in aligned fibres of DNA. Data from these pictures leads to the
discovery of the structure of DNA (see 1953).
ENGINEERING
*The Rise of Plastics:
The rising popularity of Tupperware (see
1946) and the like in the aftermath of the Petrochemical Revolution (see
1945) fully realise the potential of modern plastics. Against a backdrop of
a growing range of consumables made from a variety of new materials (such a
Teflon, Rayon, polystyrene, etc), by decade’s end most household items
are engineered with one or more of the synthetic compounds either invented,
commercially introduced or else commercially viable since the end of the war.
*This decade, silicones,
a family of chemically related substances whose molecules are made up of
silicon-oxygen cores with carbon groups attached, become important as
waterproofing sealants, lubricants, and surgical implants.
AVIATION, TRANSPORT
& SHIPPING
*First non-stop
trans-Canada flight.
*First crossing of the
*A
*The St. Roch
becomes the first vessel to circumnavigate
*Ralph Teeter, a blind
man, senses by ear that cars on the Pennsylvania Turnpike travel at
uneven speeds, which he believes leads to accidents. He develops a cruise
control mechanism that a driver can set to hold the car at a steady speed.
Unpopular when generally introduced this decade, cruise control becomes
standard on more than 70% of automobiles.
*A cultural change
sweeps
COMMUNICATIONS
*Engineers improve the
rectangular cathode-ray tube for television monitors, eliminating the need for
rectangular ‘masks’ over the round picture tubes of earlier monitors.
The average price of a television set drops from US$500 to US$200 this decade.
*First pagers developed
(see 1955).
COMPUTERISATION &
AUTOMATION
*Buffer memory, which
temporarily stores data as it moves from or to slow peripherals, thus freeing the
central processor for other tasks, is developed.
*Turing Test: Alan Turing publishes “Can a Machine Think?”
in the journal Mind, in which he proposes a test to determine if a
computer has real intelligence. In the ‘Turing test,’ as it comes
to be known, a computer in one room that can communicate with humans in another
room must be able to convince the humans that it is intelligent.
*Norbert Wiener
publishes The Human Use of Human Beings, in which he speculates that
robots taking over human jobs may initially lead to growing unemployment and
social turmoil, but that in the medium-term it might bring increased material
wealth to people in most nations.
ARTS & CULTURE
GENERAL
*This decade, UNESCO begins to
encourage cultural exchanges between East and West, undertaking translations of
important writings and organising personal exchanges.
PHILOSOPHY, POLITICAL SCIENCE &
HISTORY
*Future Studies: Postwar
rebuilding in Europe (on both sides of the Iron Curtain – albeit with a
focus on national economic planning processes in the Eastern bloc) sparks the
rise of future studies as academics, philosophers, writers, and artists begin
to explore what might constitute a long-term positive future for humanity as a
whole, and their own countries in particular. In the US, futures studies as a
discipline emerges from the successful application of the tools and
perspectives of systems analysis (an interdisciplinary science –
encompassing philosophy, physics, biology, engineering, etc - seeking to study
the relationships of complex systems as a whole), especially with regard to
quarter mastering the war effort. By the 1960s, such efforts lead, in the West,
to the emergence of an international dialogue about the global problems of
humanity (e.g. population growth, environmental concerns, etc).
*The Congress for Cultural
Freedom is established as an international caucus of anti-Stalinist
intellectuals (of the Left and Right) to oppose totalitarianism in
general and the influence of communism and neutralism (in the Cold
War) in particular (tiptoeing gently around US racism and imperialism). Funded
by the CIA, it is initially relatively successful in
establishing itself in the western world but faces a crisis of
purpose and direction following the death of Stalin (see 1953)
and the waning of the ‘cultural Cold War’ (see 1947).
*Proliferation of books on juvenile
delinquency (a subject that began to be covered at the end of the 1930s)
reflects growing concern over perceived aimlessness of teenagers and
adolescents (and increasing incidence of youth violence and vandalism): Delinquency Control, The Challenge Of Delinquency, Unraveling
Juvenile Delinquency, etc.
*Existentialism & The
Politics of the Radical Left: Jean-Paul Sartre (see 1943) this
decade (and continuing through to his death in 1980) becomes engaged in radical
leftist politics. The radical individualism of his existential philosophy means
that he will make numerous statements widely considered to be outrageous,
supporting the violence of the French Communist Party, appreciating why the
Bolshevik revolution “had to” become Stalinist and rationalising
Algerian and Palestinian terrorism. All of this is justifiable in the new
existentialist morality, which has negation as its sole premise:
I have not, nor can I have, recourse to any value against the fact that
it is I who maintain values in being; nothing can assure me against myself; cut
off from the world and my essence by the nothing that I am, I have to realise
the meaning of the world and my essence: I decide it, alone, unjustifiable, and
without excuse.
Hence, the now committed Communist Sartre justifies (to
himself, he has no need of others’ understanding or support) such excess
because he sees such groups of radical individuals as being true to themselves,
of being authentic to the point of taking action to prosecute their beliefs (to
the point nothing, no overarching creed or morality will keep them from such
prosecution and ideally, consummation of their cause). Sartre’s
existentialist take on politics will prove highly influential (as countless
activists, predominantly from the late 1960s onwards, will live by the dictum
that the ends justify the means, whether staging violent protests in the name
of peace, levelling monuments with high explosives in the name of building a
new order, euthanising farm animals ‘liberated’ from ‘cruel
conditions,’ whatever).
*Political theorist James Burnham
publishes The Coming Defeat of Communism, in which he argues that the US
can defeat the USSR in the Cold War provided it is follow the example of the
experienced master of the Cold War technique, that is, Russia, which, since
1944, has engaged in a range of ruthless and calculated measures to advance its
cause: subversive warfare, propaganda, resistance, lies, deceptions, murders,
assassination, etc.
*British historian Christopher
Dawson publishes Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, in which he
addresses the Christian origins of the West, and the patterns of its growth as
“a series of renaissances - of spiritual and intellectual revivals which
arose independently, usually under religious influences, and were transmitted
by a spontaneous process of free communication” to lands other than the
locale where they originated (e.g. Christian conversion of northern Europe -
Britain, Scandinavia, Germany – acted as a spur to such cultural growth
that this region eventually became more prosperous than southern countries like
Italy and Spain). Dawson sees Christianity as a unique force in human
development, a force that constantly overcomes any obstacles placed in its path
(such as the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire, to the mass migrations
of the early medieval period, to the rise of cities and organised commerce),
either on purpose or by the vagaries of history. Presiding over and infusing
all of these changes is an organic and lived Christian
faith. The perception that Christianity is a static, ossified system locked in
rigid dogma stretching back through the ages
*Gabriel Marcel (1889 – 1973)
publishes Mystery of Being, in which he argues that scientific thought
had squeezed the life out of human experience, by replacing the
“mystery” of being with a false scenario of life composed of
“problems” and “solutions.”
ARCHITECTURE
*Minimalist
Architecture: Farnsworth House, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is
completed in
VISUAL ARTS & SCULPTURE
*Kinetic Sculpture: Inspired
by Alexander Calder’s mobiles (see 1943),
LITERATURE & LANGUAGES
*Modern British Comics:
Although comics trips and juvenile market material stretch back to the 1880s, Eagle
is the first of the new ‘slicks,’ British comics designed for older
teenage readers, initiating the modern age of comics in Britain (later taken to
a whole new aesthetic level by 2000AD (begun in 1977).
CINEMA
*Hollywood
& The Rise of Television: Hollywood begins to develop ways to counteract (free) television’s
gains in the entertainment market by increasing the use of colour, and by
introducing wide-screen films (i.e., CinemaScope – first seen in the
Biblical epic The Robe, Techniscope, Cinerama, VistaVision, etc) and
gimmicks (notably 3-D viewing with cardboard glasses, Smell-O-Vision, etc). The
first feature-length 3-D film is released in 1952 (Bwana Devil),
inspiring a flood of other quickly and cheaply made, but sometimes successful,
3-D features.
*Science Fiction Films: The
popularity of science fiction literature (see 1946) – as well as the
atomic bomb (which has renewed interest in science generals) - sees the genre
come into its own in celluloid form this decade, although many efforts are
strictly B-grade affairs. Additionally, some films capture the zeitgeist of the
times, reflecting the Cold War paranoia of the period (e.g. The Thing From
Another World [1951] one of the first films to express a fear of being
taken overtaken by unknown visitors – in this case an alien being that
replicates and whose duplicates all work with a single unitary purpose; Invasion
of the Body Snatchers (1956), where inhabitants of a small town are slowly
replaced by alien look-alikes: in the era of widespread fear of Soviet spy
rings and a fear of fifth columnists overthrowing America from within, the
allusions and allegory was thinly-veiled). In the later years of the 1950s, the
major American studios limited themselves to adaptions of classics by Jules
Verne and H. G. Wells. It is only, however, with 2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968), which is groundbreaking in the quality of its
visual effects, in its realistic portrayal of space travel, and in the epic and
transcendent scope of its story, that science fiction movies truly enter the
modern era. Later, Star Wars (1977 - see) makes the genre highly
bankable.
*Japanese Cinema Comes of Age:
Japan’s film industry gains world renown with the release of Rashomon,
a period piece directed by Akira Kurosawa (1910 - 1958) utilising the
revolutionary idea of depicting the same tale from four different
characters’ perspectives. Touching on (growing) post-war cultural
existentialism and relativism (in questioning absolute truths), the film wins
the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and becomes a by-word for any
situation wherein the truth of an event becomes difficult to verify due to the
conflicting accounts of different witnesses. Kurosawa will also direct The
Hidden Fortress (1958), the key cinematic influence on Star Wars (see
1977).
MEDIA
---GENERAL
*The European Broadcasting Union is founded by 23 public radio
and television companies (and private ones with public missions) in
---PRINT
*The Growth of Newsprint:
There are 1772 daily newspapers in circulation in the
*Paparazzi: The decline of
the Hollywood studio system (see 1948) and the rise of a new era in
which movie stars are independent (shedding the studio control over much of
their lives) sees many famous actors and actresses begin to travel to Rome
(working in cheap local studios as well as to enjoy something of a working
holiday) this decade. Gradually, local photographers begin to clamour for
photographs of these world-famous stars (as a means to a steady paycheck)
(foreshadowing the eventual rise of the cult of celebrity – see 1966).
The popularity of such star snaps in newspapers and magazines begins to see
notoriously aggressive packs of photographers form in Europe and later in the
US (e.g. in 1957, when Italian actress Sophia Loren flies into Washington D.C.,
media photographers climb poles and onto one another’s shoulders merely
to get shots of her cleavage). The paparazzi are popularised in the Italian art
house film La Dolce Vita (1960) and a TIME magazine article
entitled “Paparazzi on the Prowl” the following year, which
includes a photograph of throngs of reporters blocking the car of a princess
visiting
---RADIO
*The widespread introduction of TV (see below) beginning in the US this decade erodes the popularity of radio, the first (dominant) broadcast medium, causing changes in programming (in essence, adopting a form that has a strong focus on music, news and sports).
---TELEVISION
*The Rise of Television:
In the
*Federal Communications Commission issues the first license to
broadcast television in color (to CBS).
*First television remote
control (albeit not wireless – it is attached to a television by a bulky
cable).
*Poet T. S. Eliot speaks
out against television in
MUSIC & POP SUBCULTURES
---GENERAL / TECHNOLOGY
*Stylistic Cross-Pollination:
Although musicians have incorporated other styles (than they have hitherto been
known for) into their work for centuries, the rise of modern mass media sees
increasing cross-pollination of styles at a greater rate (such that new hybrid
sub-genres will even mix and create sub-sub-genres in coming decades), marking
the rise of postmodernity in the musical arts. The most notable example this
decade is the birth of rock ‘n’ roll (see
1954), a merging of rhythm and blues, and country.
*Top 40 Radio: Although
predated by the music marketing concept of the hit parade (see 1940),
the Top 40 radio format (based on frequent repetition of songs from a
constantly-updated list of the forty best-selling singles) begins this decade
in response to the drift of American audiences away from radio to television.
Scheduled block programming could not compete with the new visual medium. With
the loss of audience came the loss of sponsors and big budget radio
productions. Consequently, strategies were devised along the lines of putting
something on radio that wasn't available on television. The subsequent Top 40
format placed less value on genres and artists and concentrated entirely on
repetitive play of hits based on research which reported that listeners wanted
to “hear all the hits and nothin’ but the hits!” As a format,
Top 40 radio wanes in the mid-1970s with the expansion of FM radio with its
superior sound and more varied programming. Much of the popular audience moveds
to more sophisticated and targeted formats such as Album Oriented Rock. Radio
stations begin to specialise in particular types of music rather than playing
current hits regardless of genre.
---JAZZ
*Cool Jazz: On the West
Coast of the
---POP / ROCK
*Folk Revival: American
folklorist and musicologist Alan Lomax (1915 – 2002), having made
countless field recordings of blues and folk artists in rural America in the
1930s for the Library of Congress, visits Britain to make recordings of
traditional folk in that country. There he meets local folk musicians such as
A.L. Lloyd (1908 – 1982) and Ewan MacColl (1915 – 1989), who are
performing folk songs in a remote northern mining village. Inspired
by the meeting, Lloyd and MacColl return to
*Electric Guitars: Fender introduces the Fender Telecaster, sparking a public craze for electric guitars, an instrument which will profoundly alter the course of popular music due to its becoming a pillar of the rock ‘n’ roll sound (see 1953, 1954).
*DJs in the US begin appearing at live ‘sock hops’ and ‘platter parties,’ assuming the role of a human jukebox, spinning 45rpm records featuring hit singles on one turntable, while talking between songs. Occasionally, a live drummer is hired to play beats between songs to maintain the dance floor.
*In
the early part of this decade, sound systems emerge as a new form of public
entertainment in the ghettos of
BEAUTY & FASHION
*The Twin Titans of
World Fashion: By now, a strong dichotomy had developed between the refined
yet overly structured elegance of French tailoring and the casual, sporty
comfort of American designs in Western fashion. This duality manifested most
simply in the stark contrast between mid-century department store mass
production and the more exclusive custom-made couture trade popular in the
epicentres of Paris and New York. The resulting isolation of the respective
sectors of society who solely patronise one or the other tradition fosters the
need for clothing that incorporated the most appealing aspects of both
industries. Christian Dior (see 1947) and other French designers begin
pairing down their couture designs and championing them as ready-to-wear
garments for American department stores and
*Postwar cultural
conservatism in the US is expressed in fashions: men (from 1953) wear grey
flannel suits, women wear dresses with pinched in waists and high heels, and
youth wear blue jeans (as well as poodle skirts made of felt and decorated with
sequins and poodle appliques, pony tails for girls, and flat tops and crew cuts
for guys). Reflecting this more sedate age, President Eisenhower refuses to bow
to tradition at his 1953 inauguration and chooses to wear a jacket and homburg
with his striped trousers instead of the usual top hat and cutaway.
TOURISM
& TRAVEL
*Global
annual tourist arrivals: 25m. The rate grows 10.6% annually through 1960 (predominantly
via the growth of cheap and affordable cruises). International tourist arrivals
will increase by a factor of 28 between now and the end of the century
(primarily through the advent of cheap mass air travel – see 1958,
1960). The share of international
tourists travelling to
*Club
Med: Belgian sportsman Gilbert Blitz (1901 – 1990) and Gilbert Trigano (1920 – 2000) open the
first Club Med resort on the Spanish
SPORTS & HOBBIES
*The World Game:
Soccer’s World Cup is held for the first time in 12 years, in
Brazil, with Uruguay beating the hosts in a round-robin tournament (in the
first and only time this arrangement operates – thereafter, finals and
semi-finals are held once more).#######
*The first Formula One motor
racing championship is held.
GENERAL
*Global breakdown of
major religions: Christians (34% of the world population; evangelicals 3.5%);
Muslims (13.5%); Buddhists (7%); Hindus (12.5%).
CHRISTIANITY
*Pope Pius XII issues Humani
Generis, in which he proposes that a belief in the evolution of lower forms
or life into higher forms of life does not contradict any teaching of the
Church (although he does condemn polygenism: a theory of human origins positing
that the human races are of different lineages, either from a scientific or a
religious basis; hence, this is opposite from monogenism: which posits a single
origin of humanity - e.g. Adam and Eve in The Bible).
*Pope Pius XII issues Munificentissimus
Deus, in which he defines a new dogma of Roman Catholicism: that God
assumed Mary’s body into Heaven after her death.
*Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997) founds
the Missionaries of Charity (eventually global order) of nuns in
*The Growth of Modern
Evangelicalism: The postwar prosperity (see 1946) is a boon to
modern Evangelicalism (see 1949) in the
*First Postwar Korean Christian
Revival: In the chaos of the Korean War (see above), thousands of
locals convert to Christianity, setting the stage for the massive growth in the
1980s (see 1980).
*In the
*The Rise of the
Para-Church: Tied to the rise of evangelicalism (see above) will be
the rise of para-church organisations, agencies allowing evangelical Christians
to work collaboratively, both outside and across their denominations, to engage
with the world in mission, social welfare and evangelism. Although originating
in the 19th century during the Second Great Awakening (a national
religious revival in the
ISLAM
*The Muslim Tablighi Ijtimah
(Congregation of Preaching) movement is founded in
BUDDHISM
*Tenzin Gyatso (1935 - ) becomes
the 14th Dalai Lama. He is reduced to a figurehead after the Chinese
invasion (see above). After taking control of the mountain kingdom, the
Chinese begin to persecute Buddhist monks.########
HINDUISM
*Western tours this decade and the
next by sitar star Ravi Shankar (see 1939) sees Indian music find a
niche popularity in the West and also lead to Western interest in the Hindu
religion that informs it (see also 1965).
ATHEISM, SECULARISM & HUMANISM
*Science
& Humanism: Science, already a strong social force (thanks to wartime developments
in medical drugs and nuclear technology), grows stronger still this decade with
the beginning of the genetic (see 1953) and information technology (see
1958) revolutions and the start of the space race (see 1957). Such
developments implicitly promote humanism and undercut traditional religious
ideas of reliance on a deity.
PARANORMALISM
*US physician William S. Sadler
(1875 – 1969) sets up the Urantia Foundation after one of his
patients supposedly channels messages from extraterrestrials, who dictate
various messages that later comprise the pseudo-Christian cult’s bible, The
Urantia Book (published in 1955, the same year George King [1919 –
1997] forms the Aetherius Society, which is dedicated to working to
improve the world’s conditions, after supposedly acting as a direct voice
medium for extraterrestrials).
*This decade and next,
Russian parapsychologists conduct and present research to various worldwide
audiences in psychokinesis (the supposed ability of to move matter with extra
sensory mental energy – ‘mind over matter’), including
levitation. Western scientists report they observe a Leningrad housewife named
Nina Kulagina (1927 - 1990) levitate and move various stationary objects (and
in one test, speed up and slow down a removed frog’s heart, what
researchers refer to as ‘biopsychokinesis,’ psychokinesis applied
to living tissue).
*Electronic Voice Phenomena:
A
*Fantastic Realism: Russian émigré and onetime psychiatrist
Immanuel Velikovsky (1895 - 1979) publishes Worlds in Collision, in
which he revives the 19th century tradition of speculating on
mythical ancient societies such as Atlantis, proposing that many myths and
traditions of ancient peoples and cultures were based on actual events.
He further claims that the history of our world has been shaped by global catastrophes
- reviving the idea of catastrophism that had been the dominant theory of human
origins and development in the decades prior to Charles Darwin’s Theory
of Natural Selection. Velikovsky’s publishing house, Macmillan, is
a leading publisher of academic and scholarly textbooks and when
America’s scientific intelligentsia gets wind of the contents of
Velikovsky’s book, pressure is brought to bear (including threats of an
economic boycott of Macmillan’s catalogue - by academic
institutions, who comprised the company’s largest customer group) such
that the book's publication was transferred to the Doubleday imprint.
The ‘Velikovsky Affair,’ as it becomes known, does nothing to stop
the book’s popularity as it soars to the top of the bestseller list. It
does, however, later raise questions about freedom of speech and the commitment
to it by those agencies supposedly in the vanguard of such ideals. The affair
also raises questions about the rigidity and inflexibility of the scientific
establishment. Some claim that the edicts of classical science - to be
open-minded, to explore, to entertain a myriad of possibilities, et al - have
been submerged in a stifling, closed-minded dogmatism. Velikovsky, who goes on
to publish a series of similar works, is feted by American celebrities and
glitterati in the 1970s and a younger generation of scientists responds to the
seeming inflexibility of their older peers to be more open-minded by engaging
in critique of the ideology they perceive to be underpinning modern science,
Scientism (which then begins to go into a long-term decline – see 1973).
Meanwhile, the rising tide of paranormalism (see 1970) sees a large rise
in depictions / explorations of legendary ancient civilizations (predominantly
Atlantis) in books, films and on television.
*The
Bermuda Triangle: The first mention of any
disappearances in a 1.5m square mile stretch of ocean roughly defined by
Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the southern tip of
#
At the time of Jesus Christ’s
birth,
This doubling and redoubling of the
population occurred well before
This was merely relative to preceding
growth, however. Between 1850 and 1949, a century of rebellion, social
upheaval, and suffering,
And under Mao, population was a prized
asset, seen as means to national and international strength. Indeed, one reason
Mao was so in favour of confrontation with the West regardless of the nuclear
threat (a mentality that fuelled a split with the Soviet Union, – see
1960 – which was more in favour of a less-direct means of battling
the ‘Western imperialists’ through the Cold War) was that he
believed China’s significantly larger population meant that greater
numbers of Chinese would survive a nuclear conflict and so be able to triumph
in the atomic aftermath.
The government’s propaganda
encouraged families to have as many children as possible and, combined with
falling death rates (due to modernisation of the country allowing for improved
living conditions, more food supplies and so on – see 1952), the
population skyrocketed. It doubled from 583 million (a figure recorded during
the first modern census in 1953, as part of the target-setting for the First
Five Year Plan – see 1952) to 1.2 billion by 2000 (despite a dip
during the famine brought about by the disastrous Great Leap Forward (see
1958) as well as the introduction of the One Child Policy (see 1978).
The magnitude of this explosive growth over five decades can be measured by
comparing the increase (670 million) with that of the present population for
all of
##
This was not the first
period in which better overall social conditions saw a system become more
indulgent to the needs of lawbreakers. In
###
BOOKMAKERS
The history of organised, modern
horseracing in
Horseracing first came under royal
patronage during the reign of James I (1566 – 1625), when the monarch had
a royal palace built near
The British settlers
brought horses and horseracing with them to the New World, with the first
racetrack laid out on
Around the middle of the 18th
century, horseracing became the first regulated sport in
Gradually, the emphasis on stamina
was replaced by racing younger horses over shorter distances. The late 18th
century saw the establishment of the classic format still run today. The arrival
of better transport links and other technological innovations in the 19th
century led to horseracing becoming a sport watched by millions each year.
Leading newspapers began to give horseracing far more coverage, and there was a
marked increase in the volume of betting on races.
The arrival of professional
on-course bookmakers into the sport brought with it different challenges. The Jockey
Club reacted by establishing high standards of order, discipline and
integrity to ensure the sport continued to prosper.
In the 20th century,
horseracing was one of the only sports to continue during both world wars,
albeit on a very limited scale.
UNITED STATES
In the
However, the rapid growth of the
sport without any central governing authority led to the domination of many
tracks by criminal elements. In 1894, the nation’s most prominent track
and stable owners met in
In the early 1900s, however, racing
was almost wiped out by antigambling sentiment (see 1945) that led
almost all
####
Although orgies of a heterosexual
and homosexual nature date to ancient times (notably
#####
R. L. Wysong in
“Time Compression” (1990) writes that:
If
we go from the Bronze Age, which some would argue was centred in the area of
Now
changes really begin to happen as we enter into the Information Revolution,
rather then the power machine, and technology revolution, particularly
beginning about 1950. In 1950 there was another doubling of 16 smart
units. The rate of information increase can be measured by many different
methods such as the number of publications per year, patents per year and other
criteria. To give a specific example, there were about 18,000 medical articles
in 1879, that was the total number of articles written
to that date. At the present there are 250,000 articles published each
year. Back to our smart units…in 1950 there were 16 smart units, 1960
– 32, 1967 with another doubling to 64 smart units [and] 1973 another
doubling to 128 smart units…When you consider that the total smart units
up to 1AD was 1and there were 128 in 1973…the incredible rate of
information increase becomes apparent.
What does all of this
mean? It speaks to the fact that we do indeed live in a unique time of
information glut. The sceptical capability of human action is without
equal in history. When we understand this logarithmic rate of accelerated
capacity, it becomes important to understand that management is critical [as w]e are in an age…of quantity not quality. Even though
information escalates at bewildering rates, applications of this knowledge do
not seem well formulated. They often do not seem even as sound as ideas held by
ancient peoples.
######
[Edited from Wikipedia]
Anthropology, the study of
humanity, was an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment. It was during this period that Europeans
attempted systematically to study human behavior. Traditions of jurisprudence
(legal history and philosophy), history, philology (the study of ancient texts
and languages) and sociology developed during this time and informed the
development of the social sciences of which anthropology was a part. At the
same time, the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers who
began to grapple with one of the greatest paradoxes of modernity: as the world
is becoming smaller and more integrated, people’s experience of the world
is increasingly atomized and dispersed.
Institutionally
anthropology emerged from natural history. It sought to
examine human
beings - typically people living in European colonies (or Native Americans in
the
Gradually, the discipline grew
distinct from natural history and by the 1930s, it was
dominated by ‘the comparative method’. It was assumed that all
societies passed through a single evolutionary process from the most primitive to
most advanced. Non-European societies were thus seen as evolutionary
‘living fossils’ that could be studied in order to understand the
European past. Scholars wrote histories of prehistoric migrations which were
sometimes valuable but often also fanciful.
#######
[Edited from Wikipedia]
The Evolution of Soccer
The Laws of the Game are based on
efforts made in the mid-19th century to standardise the rules of the
widely varying games of football played at the public schools of
These efforts contribute to the
formation of the Football Association in 1863. The International Football
Association Board was set up after a meeting of the English, Scottish,
Welsh and Irish national associations in 1882. The popularity of the game in
other European nations saw the Fédération Internationale de
Football Association (FIFA) set up in 1904.
(It was primarily due to the game’s
popularity in various colonial powers that saw it played in dozens of colonies
and become a favourite of indigenous populations [who began to establish local
leagues and national teams during the postwar period of decolonisation] –
thereby becoming the first sport to truly become the ‘world game.’)
In the Olympic Games of 1924
(and again in 1928),
In 1927, the 1932 summer Olympics
were awarded to
In response, FIFA set about
organising the inaugural World Cup tournament, to take place in
########
[Edited from Wikipedia]
Buddhism is based on the teachings
of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama (566BC – 486BC), a prince of the
Shakyas, an ancient Hindu kingdom. As with any history so old, there are many
different stories of how the Buddha came to be. One legend (the most commonly
accepted by historians) has it that a seer predicted shortly after his birth
that Siddhārtha would become either a great king or a great holy man;
because of this, the king tried to make sure that Siddhartha never had any
cause for dissatisfaction with his life, as that might drive him toward a
spiritual path. Nevertheless, at the age of 29, he came across what has become
known as the Four Passing Sights: an old crippled man, a sick man, a decaying
corpse, and finally a wandering holy man. These four sights led him to the
realization that birth, old age, sickness and death come to everyone, not only
once but repeated for life after life in succession since beginningless time.
He decided to abandon his worldly life, leaving behind his wife, child and
rank, etc. to take up the life of a wandering holy man in search of the answer
to the problem of birth, old age, sickness, and death.
Indian holy men (called
sādhus), in those days just as today, often engaged in a variety of
ascetic practices designed to ‘mortify’ the flesh. It was thought that by enduring
pain and suffering, the soul became free from the cycle of rebirth with its
pain and sorrow. Siddhārtha proved adept at these practices, and was able
to surpass his teachers. However, he found no solution to end all Suffering and
so, leaving behind his teachers, he and a small group of companions set out to
take their austerities even further. After six years of ascetism, and nearly
starving himself to death with no success (some sources claim that he nearly
drowned), Siddhārtha began to reconsider his path. Then he remembered a
moment in childhood in which he had been watching his father start the season's
plowing, and he had fallen into a naturally concentrated and focused state in
which time seemed to stand still, and which was blissful and refreshing.
Taking a little buttermilk from a
passing goatherd, he found a large tree (now called the Bodhi tree) and set to
meditating. He developed a new way of meditating, which began to bear fruit.
His mind became concentrated and pure, and then, after six years since he began
his quest in search of a solution to an end of Suffering, he attained
Enlightenment, and became a Buddha (an ‘awakened one’ or
‘enlightened one’).
Generally, Buddhists do not
consider Siddhartha Gautama to have been the first or the last Buddha. From the
standpoint of classical Buddhist doctrine, a Buddha is anyone who
rediscovers the Dharma (the way of the higher Truths) and achieves
enlightenment, having amassed sufficient positive karma (a sum of all that an
individual has done and is currently doing) to do so. Karma can be good - which
leads to positive/pleasurable experiences like high rebirth (reincarnation in
the form of a higher being than one’s current incarnation), bad - which
leads to suffering and low rebirth (e.g. returning as an animal). here is also a completely different type of karma that is
neither good nor bad, but liberating. This karma allows for the individual to
break the uncontrolled cycle of rebirth which always leads to suffering, and
thereby leave samsara (the near-endless cycle of reincarnation) to permanently
enter Nirvana (a ‘deathless’ state in which the fire of soul goes
out, its fuel being primarily the false idea of self, which causes (and is
caused by) among other things craving, consciousness, birth, death, greed,
hate, delusion, ignorance: liberating karma sees the false idea of self
conquered by an individual). The Buddhist sutras (canonical scriptures based on
the oral; teachings of Siddhartha Gautama) explain that in order to generate
liberating karma, a devotee must first develop incredibly powerful
concentration, and proper insight into the (un)reality
of samsara.
Buddhists believe there have existed many individuals who have become Buddhas in the
course of cosmic time. Hence, Gautama Buddha (known by the religious name Shakyamuni)
is one member of a spiritual lineage of Supreme Buddhas going back to the dim
past and forward into the distant future. His immediate predecessor was
Dipankara Buddha, and his successor will be named Maitreya.
Buddhism
spread slowly in
After
about 500 AD, Buddhism showed signs of waning in
Elements
of Buddhism have remained within
Buddhism
also remained in the rest of the world although in Central Asia and later
Buddhism
initially came to notice in the West in the
The first modern sustained
persecution of Buddhism occurred in
1951
GENERAL
*Eastern Bloc Demographic
Decline: The East German population begins to decline (from 18.3m now to
16.7m in the 1970s at which it levels off). Other Communist nations later
experience a death rate exceeding birth rate. Soviet ideology hinders effective
contraception in
MIGRATION
& REFUGEES
*The UN Refugee Convention:
26 (mostly Western nations) sign the convention, which defines a refugee (as
any person outside their country/habitual residence who has a well-founded fear
of persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion, and who is unable / unwilling to
avail themselves of the protection of that country or return there for fear of
persecution) and the kind of legal protection, other assistance and social
rights he or she should receive from states party to the document. In order to address
concerns of would-be participating countries that the Convention will be a
migratory blank check (and see waves of Third World residents try and claim
refugee status to enter Western nations), a compromise is reached concerning a
time limit (limiting refugee status to refugees created by the Second World War
and only applying to the period before 1951).
*
POLITICS
WORLD
*Russian hostility towards the UN
grows as Joseph Stalin begins to perceive the organisation as becoming an
aggressive weapon of war (in the service of the
*UN headquarters opens in
*The Treaty of San Francisco: In San Francisco,
California, 48 nations sign a peace treaty with
*
*Iranian parliament votes to
nationalise the country’s oil industry after negotiations with British
companies for higher oil royalties break down. Prime Minister Ali Razmara (1901
– 1951) opposes the legislation on technical grounds but is assassinated.
He is succeeded by Mohammad Mossadeq (1882 – 1967), who enforces the new
Act.
*
*After repeated attacks
on Jews in
*King Abdullah I (1882 –
1951) of
*
*The Treaty of Paris
establishes the European Coal and Steel Community (forerunner to the European Union). The inaugural
members are
*In
*President Truman signs an act
formally ending the state of war with
*Twenty-second Amendment to the US
Constitution,
limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.
*Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán
(1913 – 1971) is elected president of Guatemala,
and introduces land reforms (primarily because 2% of the country’s
population controls 72% of all arable land, but only 12% of it is being
utilized) and seizes some idle lands of the United Fruit Company (which has extensive interests in the country - unlimited use of most of the best
land, complete access to all natural resources, and exemptions from almost all
taxes), proposing to pay for them the value the US-based corporation claims on
its tax returns. Guzmán’s actions (including legalising the
Communist Party, which then gains considerable minority influence over
important peasant organizations, labour unions, and the governing party) are
greeted with alarm in Washington (after United Fruit lobbies the
Eisenhower administration for action) (see 1954).
*The Korean War continues
– Chinese and North Korean forces capture
*Three-Anti Campaign: Mao Zedong launches the
targeting corruption, waste and
bureaucratic practice (from the days of KMT rule) among capitalists, merchants, financiers, officials and Communist Party
members. The crackdown is expanded two years later as the “Five-Anti
Campaign.”
*Indian leader Jawarhalal Nehru
criticises both the
*
*Assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan (1896 –
1951), the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, unleashing much political instability
in the new nation (already beset by economic difficulties).
*After a lengthy fact finding
inquiry by the allied powers and then the UN, the former Italian colony
of
*
*ANZUS defence treaty is
signed by
CONFLICT
NATION STATES
*British forces aid
CIVIL WAR
*Greek Cypriots launch a guerrilla
insurgency against British rule (lasts until 1959; 600 killed).
*Popular revolt overthrows the
Bolivian government.
*Rebel insurgency against
government rule in
COUPS
*Coup in
*Coup in
CIVIL UNREST & ETHNIC CLASHES
*Revolt in
*British diplomats and Soviet spies
Guy Burgess (1911 – 1963) and Donald Maclean (1913 – 1983) flee to
the
*Espionage trial of Ethel Rosenberg
(1915 – 1953) and Julius Rosenberg (1918 – 1953). The pair are convicted of spying for the
GENERAL
*Over the next dozen years, Indian
Prime Minister Jawarhalal Nehru’s central planning policies allow for the
growth of a few very large corporations but little dynamism or innovation in
the economy as a whole.
CORPORATISATION &
NATIONALISATION
*The Japan Development Bank
is established as a special bank for granting long term loans for industrial or
regional development.
*Japanese companies license the
technology of the transistor from the
*Matsushita
(founded 1918), a Japanese electrical components maker, enters the
MARKETING &
CONSUMPTION
*Influential ad campaign: Speedy Alka-Seltzer,
the walking talking tablet from early 1950s-style stop motion process. Later
reappears in the famous 1970s “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” jingle.
*First cameras with built-in flashes.
*First plastic chairs.
*Gerber Products starts
using MSG (monosodium glutamate) in its baby foods to make them taste better.
*Super glue is invented.
CREDIT & DEBT
*The first British
credit card, Finders Services, is issued, influenced by Diner’s
Club (see 1950).
*First bank credit card:
Franklin National Bank is the first bank to offer approval on credit
purchases which secure the retailer financially. Approved customers are given a
card they could use to make retail purchases. The merchant copies the customer
information from the sales slip and calls the bank for approval of transactions
over a certain amount.
ENERGY & RESOURCES
---OIL, GAS & FOSSIL FUELS
*The Marshall Plan (see
1948) is somewhat hampered by the Iranian oil crisis (see above) in the
first post-war instance of a potential threat to world oil supplies. The US
more so than other Western nations feels particularly vulnerable, given the oil
requirements of a superpower and the fact that, local supplies notwithstanding,
America will become more and more dependent on imported oil (such that it
consumes 2/3 of global supply by the late 1990s and, in essence, its standard
of living and rank as a world power is based largely on this volume of
consumption).
---WATER
*Jordan makes public its plans to
irrigate the Jordan Valley by tapping the Yarmouk River; Israel responds by
commencing drainage of the Huleh swamps located in the demilitarised zone
between Israel and Syria; border skirmishes ensue between the two.
EMPLOYMENT
*The International Labour
Organisation passes the Convention concerning Equal Remuneration for Men
and Women Workers for Work of Equal Value (see below), which calls
on signatory members, by means appropriate to the methods in operation for
determining rates of remuneration, to promote and, in so far as is consistent
with such methods, ensure the application to all workers of the principle of
equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value.
*The Bracero Program (see
1940) is formalised as the Mexican Farm Labor Supply Program and the
Mexican Labor Agreement, and will bring an annual average of 350,000
Mexican workers to the
*A prolonged waterfront dispute in
POVERTY, AID & CHARITY
*The
SOCIOLOGY
DRUGS, TOBACCO & ALCOHOL
---NARCOTICS
*A UN report estimates there
are 200m marijuana users in the world (mainly located in
*The Boggs Amendment to the Harrison
Narcotics Act (of 1914, which regulated the opium industry) provides for
mandatory jail terms for narcotic violations.
*The Golden Triangle: The
Chinese crackdown on the opium trade (see 1950) drives the centre of the
Asian drug trade south/west to
---NICOTINE
*Consumers in many countries now
spend from 3-5% of their total income on tobacco products.
*The
National Cancer Institute of
ACTIVISM & ADVOCACY
*In one of the first
post-war grassroots Western mass rallies, 600,000 march for peace and freedom
in
CENSORSHIP
*A brief nude scene in the German
film The Story of a Sinner scandalises Roman Catholic authorities.
*The US Supreme Court rules
that the conviction of a Communist Party leader (for teaching, conspiring and
organising for the wilful overthrow and destruction of the
*The Hays Code now
specifically prohibits films dealing with abortion or narcotics.#
RACE RELATIONS
*The Conference on Jewish
Material Claims is founded. Its task is to negotiate for and distribute
payments from
*The Indian Act of Canada
establishes the rights of registered Indians and of their bands. A large part
of the Act deals with the rights of tribal members living on reserves.
*The George Washington Carver
(1860 – 1943) National Monument becomes the first
*Educational psychologist Kenneth
Clark (1915 – 2005) publishes a study on the effects of segregation on
black children. In the research,
*Frantz Fanon (1925
– 1961) publishes Black Skin, White Mask, an analysis of the impact of colonial
subjugation on the black psyche and a personal account of his experience being
black: as a man, an intellectual, and a party to a French education. The work
is highly influential in black liberation movements (and later also influences
the development of post-colonial critiques of Western thought and practice (see
1978). Fanon is lionised in several intellectual circles as the preeminent
thinker on the issue of decolonisation and the psychopathology of colonisation
(see 1963).
WOMEN, MARRIAGE & DIVORCE
*Female suffrage in Antigua and
*The International Labour Organisation
passes the Convention concerning Equal Remuneration for Men and Women
Workers for Work of Equal Value (see above).
*American distance swimmer Florence
Chadwick (1918 – 1995) becomes the first woman to swim the
DISABILITIES
*Howard Rusk (see 1944)
opens the Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University
Medical Center. Staff at the Institute, including people with
disabilities, begins work on such innovations as electric typewriters, mouth
sticks, and improved prosthetics, as adaptive aids for people with severe
disabilities.
EDUCATION
*Distance Education: In
*Philosopher and socialist Bertrand
Russell, in The Impact of Science on Society, says:
The social psychologists
of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they
will try different methods of producing an unshakeable conviction that snow is
black. Various results will be arrived at. First, that the influence of the
home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done
unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to
music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that
snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity.
...Although
this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the
governing class. The population will not be allowed to know how its convictions
were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that
has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its
subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.
*
SEX & SEXUALITY
---GENERAL
*Clellan S. Ford (1909 - 1972) and
Frank A. Beach (1911 - 1988) publish Patterns Of
Sexual Behaviour, which utilises a multicultural approach in comparing the
sexual behaviour of almost 200 societies (and inadvertently succeeds in helping
to undermine the traditional moral absolutism of the West).
---MEDICAL
*The Catholic Church remains
resolutely opposed to artificial birth control, but Pope Pius XII announces
that the Church will sanction the use of the rhythm method as a natural form of
birth control. Previously, the only option approved by
*The Pill: Planned Parenthood runs 200 birth control
clinics in the
---HOMOSEXUALITY, TRANSVESTISM & TRANSGENDERISM
*
*
*The California
Supreme Court rules in favour of
ECOLOGY &
ENVIRONMENTALISM
WEATHER & CLIMATE
*The World Meteorological
Organization established to facilitate worldwide cooperation in the establishment
of networks of stations for making meteorological observations as well as
hydrological and other geophysical observations related to meteorology. It
becomes a specialised agency of the UN for meteorology (weather and climate),
operational hydrology (the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of
water throughout the Earth) and related geophysical sciences.
NATURAL
*An eruption of Mt. Hibok-Hibok in the
*An eruption of
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & HUMAN
ACHIEVEMENT
PHYSICS &
MATHEMATICS
*Erwin Mueller (1911
– 1977) invents the field-ionisation microscope, which can be used to
image the arrangement of atoms at the surface of a sharp metal tip.
NUCLEAR ENERGY, WEAPONRY
& BALLISTIC MISSILES
*The second British
plutonium reactor starts operation in Windscale,
*
*The first atmospheric
nuclear test occurs at the new Nevada Test Site.
*Atomic Energy
*A
*President Harry Truman
approves a military request to use atomic weapons in
*The first nuclear
fallout shelter is built (in
*Seeds of the Nuclear
Energy Industry: The first usable electricity (powering lightbulbs) from
nuclear fission is produced at the National Reactor Station, later
called the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. Soon after, the first
electricity producing breeder reactor is built by the Atomic Energy
Commission (see 1954).
*First radioactive cell
(battery that converts nuclear energy to electrical energy).
*Worldwide stockpile of
nuclear warheads: US – 640,
ASTRONOMY & SPACE
EXPLORATION
*First space flight by
living creatures when the
*Walter Baade (1893
– 1960) and Rudolf Leo Minkowsky (1895 – 1976) confirm the identity
of the two strongest radio sources in the sky, Cassiopeia A and Cygnus
A.
*Ludwig F. Biermann
(1907 – 1986) suggests the ion tails of comets, which always stream away
from the Sun, are accelerated by a moving plasma of
solar origin and proposes the Sun emits a continuous flow of solar corpuscles
of the same type as those causing geomagnetic storms.
*Dirk Brouwer (1902
– 1966) becomes the first astronomer to use a computer to calculate
planetary orbits, using data collected since 1653 and predicting the orbits of
the five outer planets through 2060.
*Gerard Kuiper (1905
– 1973) proposes that comets with periods of less than 200 years
originate in a flatted belt of comets whose inner edge lies just beyond the
orbit of
*Otto Struve (1897
– 1963) suggests the transit method of planet detection: In stars with a
fortuitous alignment with the Earth, when a planet transits, or eclipses, the
star, it will dim slightly.
GEOSCIENCES
*Discovery of the Challenger Deep,
the deepest point on Earth, located in the
PSYCHOLOGY
*Gestalt Therapy:
Fritz Perls (1893 – 1970) publishes Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and
Growth in the Human Personality, in which he advocates gestalt therapy:
taking approaches from a wide variety of psychological and philosophical
disciplines and integrating them into a therapeutic approach based on the idea
of a complete organism (mind and body as an integrated whole or
‘gestalt’). The objective of this therapy is, to help the person to
obtain a greater independence (seen as freedom and responsibility) in their
actions, and the ability to face up to the blockages that prevent them
developing naturally.
*Eric Hoffer publishes The
True Believer, a study of the psychological causes of fanaticism and mass
movements. Hoffer contends that frustration with one's life is a peculiarity of
fanatics, and assumes that this mindset is necessary for techniques of
conversion to achieve their deepest penetration and most desirable results with
regard to the fanatic’s twisted adherence to his new faith. Faith in a
holy cause becomes to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in
oneself.
People with a sense of
fulfilment think the world is good while the frustrated blame the world for
their failures. Therefore a mass movement's appeal is not to those intent on
bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of
an unwanted self…[The trur believer] cannot be convinced, only
converted…all mass movements strive to impose a fact proof screen between
the faithful and the realities of the world.
Hoffer also quotes J. B. Haldane (see
1942) who counted fanaticism among the only four really important
inventions made between 3000BC and 1400AD: “It was a Judaic-Christian
invention. And it is strange to think that in receiving this malady of the soul
the world also received a miraculous instrument for raising societies and
nations from the dead - an instrument of resurrection.”
*Humanistic
Psychology: Carl Rogers (1902 - 1987) publishes Client-Centered Therapy,
in which he advocates his basic tenet that if unconditional positive regard,
genuineness, and empathic understanding is present in any relationship (though
he starts out by focusing on counsellor-client relationships), that growth and
psychological healing will occur. Rogerian psychotherapy (now widely perceived
by the patient lying on a couch and pouring their heart out to a therapist
taking notes) subsequently becomes hugely influential.
ANTHROPOLOGY & LINGUISTICS
*Zellig Harris (1909
– 1992), a student of Leonard Bloomfield (see 1941), publishes Methods in Structural
Linguistics,
in which he carries his mentor’s ideas to their extreme development: the
investigation of discovery procedures for phonemes (theoretical basic units of
sound that can be used to distinguish words) and morphemes (the smallest
lanmguage units carrying semantic interpretation – e.g.
“unbelievable” contains three: “un-,”
“-believe-” and “-able”), based on the distributional
properties of these units.
*Project Viki: Husband-and-wife psychologists Cathy and Keith Hayes
publish their findings after failing to teach a chimpanzee called Viki how to
speak. The Hayes have spent four years raising Viki their own home from the age
of three days to about six and a half years, treating her essentially as one of
their own children. However, as with an earlier, similar experiment in 1931 (Project Gua, in which the primate
concerned displayed considerable non-verbal communication of intent and needs,
as well as a certain degree of comprehension of English, but never developed
any articulate speech), the Hayes study fails. Viki is never able to say more
than about three or four crudely articulated words: 'mama', 'papa', 'cup', and
possibly 'up' (see 1966).
HEALTH & MEDICINE
*An outbreak of Western
Nile Virus (first identified in
*The artificial heart
valve is developed and first artificial valve implantation surgery in a human
patient takes place the following year.
*Carl Djerassi (1923 - )
synthesises norethindrone, an inhibitor of ovulation when taken orally, paving
the way for the development of the oral contraceptive pill (see 1960).
CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY &
GENETICS
*Robert Woodward
synthesises cholesterol (a steroid found in the cell membranes of all body
tissue) and cortisone (a hormone released by the body during stress).
ENGINEERING
*Using
a field ion microscope, scientists are able to observe single atoms for the
first time.
*First hard rock
tunnel-boring machine is invented (after it is found that if a sharp-edged
metal wheel is pressed on a rock surface with the correct amount of pressure,
the rock shatters).
AVIATION, TRANSPORT
& SHIPPING
*
*First jet to make an
unrefuelled crossing of the
*Aerial refuelling is
used under combat conditions for the first time (over
*First mass combat
deployment by helicopter (in the Korean War).
*William Bridgeman sets
a new airspeed record in the Douglas Skyrocket of Mach 1.88 (1992 km/h / 1245
mph).
*Introduction of the
B-47 jet bomber.
*Introduction of the
B-52 jet bomber which has eight engines, a total bomb load
of 50,000 pounds and can fly non-stop for a total of 15,000 miles.
*For the first-time, US
annual air passenger-miles exceed travelled train passenger-miles.
*First Electronic Flight
Simulator.
*Charles Blair (1909
– 1978), flying a converted Mustang fighter, sets a new
*First solo flight over
the North Pole completed by Charles Blair.
*Power steering is invented.
COMMUNICATIONS
*Direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone
service begins in the
*First test broadcasts of
colour television.
COMPUTERISATION &
AUTOMATION
*Western Electric
starts the commercial production of transistors.
*Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer (the world’s
first commercial computer) to the US Census Bureau (see also 1952).
*In Britain, J. Lyons
& Co. uses the world’s first business computer to calculate
payrolls and optimum mixes for tea blending.
*The military
supercomputer Atlas, named after a character in the comic strip Barnaby,
is equipped with magnetic drums with a capacity of 16,384 words of 24 bits
each.
*Jay Forrester, working
for the US Navy, completes the Whirlwind real-time computer. Taking
twice the space of ENIAC, it can constantly monitor its inputs, making
it suitable for simulations. Whirlwind’s success causes the Air
Force to fund Project Lincoln, which uses Whirlwind as the test bed for
the air defense system. This system requires analog-digital telecommunication
and its engineers build a device called a modulator-demodulator, or
‘modem.’
*Grace Hopper develops
the first compiler, called A0, which translates the codes used by programmers
into binary machine code.
*An Wang (1920 –
1990) develops ferrite core memory (or magnetic core memory), a system of
copper wires mounted on a frame for which, at cross points, a ferrite core is
mounted. When a cross point becomes conductive (electrical current is running
through the wires) the ferrite core becomes magnetic. By detecting which core
is magnetic and which is not, an observer can ‘determinate’ certain
values with which can be made calculations. The core memories are made by hand,
therefore very expensive, but they are more solid and reliable than vacuum
tubes.
*Maurice Wilkes (1913 -
) revolutionises computer design when he devises microprogramming: wherein a miniature, highly-specialised software program controls
the different parts of a computer’s central processing unit (i.e. its
‘brain’). The memory in which it resides is called a control store.
It is the modern form of the logic of a computer’s control unit
(previously, the control logic for central processing units was designed by ad
hoc methods).
ENTERTAINMENT
*The first 33 1/3 (LP)
album
is introduced (in
MISCELLANEOUS
*Erwin Mueller (1911 – 1977)
invents the field-ionization microscope, which can be used to image the
arrangement of atoms at the surface of a sharp metal tip.
ARTS & CULTURE
GENERAL
*The Festival of Britain is
held, an attempt to give Britons a feeling of recovery and progress and promote
better quality of design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities
following the war. The Festival is extremely popular and makes a profit.
London’s South Bank is developed with several buildings - included the Dome
of Discovery (perhaps later the inspiration for the Millennium Dome
– see 1999), the Skylon, an unusual cigar-shaped steel
tower supported by cables, the Lion and the Unicorn pavilion celebrating
the history of the British nation, and the Guinness Festival Clock -
reflecting the style of international modernism (little seen in Britain thus
far).
*Cultural Nationalism: The Massey
Report: After the two-year Royal Commission on National Development in
the Arts, Letters and Sciences, a report is issued which asserts Canadian
culture is dominated by American influences. To develop a unique cultural
identity, it advocates federal government patronage of a wide range of cultural
activities and proposes the establishment of a
PHILOSOPHY, POLITICAL SCIENCE &
HISTORY
*The
*Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) publishes The Origins
of Totalitarianism, in which she traces the rise of Anti-Semitism in
Central and Western Europe in the early and mid 19th century and continues with
an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of
WWI, concluding that the apparatus of totalitarian regimes (the role of
propaganda and terror, etc) still requires widespread societal alienation
(which breeds a sense of loneliness and isolation in individuals) as a
precondition for total domination.
*The same year he is recruited by
the CIA, conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr (1925 - ) publishes God
and Man at Yale, criticising his alma mater and its faculty for departing
from its original, Christian mission and forcing liberal ideology on its
students (attacking individual professors by name in the book for their
stomping out of students’ religious beliefs through their teaching).
Buckley, who argues Yale was denying its students any
sense of individualism by forcing them to embrace post-war liberalism (see
1946). Although receiving mixed reviews, with many commentators perceiving
the book will fade quickly into the background, the opposite happens as Buckley
uses it as a platform to launch himself into the public eye and initiate a
revolution on the conservative side of
*Albert Camus (see 1942)
publishes The Rebel, in which he examines the metaphysical and the historical
development of the revolution in modern society. He posits that the urge for
revolt always comes from an urge for justice but that once a revolution is
established it will become more tyrannic than the original government because
the ideal of a utopia justifies everything (including murder).
Yes, Zarathustra
bewitched too many of us with his dangerous catchwords. Let us be hard! Let us
defy the code of Christian ethics! Re-evaluate all values!...How
thrillingly adventurous life seemed, up there, in glacial height, immeasurably
beyond all good and evil. How enthralling it was, to disregard all conventions,
to transgress all taboos. The call of instinct and intuition; the worship of
energy; the panegyrics [praiseworthy public speech] of élan vital [the
hypothesised vital force that drives all human action] – it was stirring
and intoxicating. But from Nietzsche’s Power philosophy it is only one
stop to [Georges]
*Sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916
– 1962) publishes White Collar: The American
Middle Classes, in which he asserts that
LITERATURE & LANGUAGES
*J.D. Salinger (1919 - ) publishes Catcher
in the Rye, a coming-of-age novel on the theme of the agile and powerful
mind of disturbed young men, and the redemptive capacity of children in the
lives of such men. The work is controversial in many conservative regions of
the
CINEMA
*Film Criticism: French film
critic and theorist Andre Bazin (1918 – 1958) establishes the influential
and distinguished Cahiers du Cinéma (literally ‘cinema
notebooks’), arguably the most influential film magazine in film history.
Future filmmakers and critics, such as Jean-Luc Godard (1930 - ), Francois
Truffaut (1932 - 1984) and Claude Chabrol (1930 - ) contribute to the
publication, with many later advocating the auteur theory (that
filmmakers should act as artists with their own unique vision) – an idea that forever
influences film criticism and theory) and proposing the use of more
individualistic styles. Their ideas and writing eventually give rise to the
French New Wave (see 1958) as well as the New American Cinema (see
1967), and bring hitherto unknown respectability to the medium and the
concept of film as a legitimate field of study.
*Hollywood Epics /
Sword & Sandal Films: In combating the rise of television,
*Marking the decline of the old
MEDIA
---GENERAL
*Marshall McLuhan publishes The
Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, in which he surveys the means
used in the US today to persuade people into something (e.g. film posters, comic
strips, advertisements, magazine covers, newspaper layout and articles, etc) to
discern the subtle and sometimes venomous effects of media and modern mass
communication. The approach stands as a jargon-free precursor of latter-day
deconstructive literary and cultural criticism.
---TELEVISION
*First coast-to-coast television
broadcast sees 40m Americans watch the signing of the Japanese peace treaty (see
above).
MUSIC & POP SUBCULTURES
---GENERAL / TECHNOLOGY
*The
first 33 1/3 (LP) album is introduced (in
---AVANT-GARDE / CLASSICAL
*Computer Music: Australian
programmer Geoff Hill generates the first music from a computer, the Council
for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer (CSIRAC), built
in 1949. It takes another six years for the first significant electronic
composition using a computer, when Lejaren Hiller (1924 - 1994) composes the
‘Illiac Suite.’ Much electronic composition will be undertaken on
American and European universities through the 1970s, where state of the art
electronic music systems (including synthesisers – see 1955) will
be installed (see also 1974).
---POP / ROCK
*Rhythm & Blues: A more
rollicking variant on urban electric blues develops, evolving out of jump blues,
bebop jazz and black gospel music. Overlapping with jazz, many musicians pay
little attention to stylistic distinctions and frequently record in both. B.B.
King (1925 - ), hailing from Arkansas and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee,
becomes one of the titans of the genre, recording numerous R&B hits in the
early 1950s (having been inspired by blues guitarists like T-Bone Walker [1910
- 1975] and jazz guitarists like Charlie Christian [1916 - 1942] as well as
having spent significant time cultivating his musical skills singing in gospel
choir). Regional variations of R&B also develop, notably a New Orleans
style initially based around a rolling piano style (as played by Professor
Longhair [1918 - 1980] and Fats Domino [1928 - ], the latter becoming a rock
‘n’ roll star later in the decade).
*The release of “Rocket 88,”
an early R&B number by Jackie Brenston (1930 – 1979) and his Delta Cats, is later considered the first rock ‘n’
roll recording (see 1955).
*Cleveland DJ Alan Freed (1922 –
1965) is the firt person to play ‘race music’ (as the music
industry refers to blues, R&B and black music styles) for a white audience.
BEAUTY & FASHION
*The Miss World competition
is begun by a British ballroom operator (who figures that a beauty contest will
bring more patrons to his establishment). Bikinis are banned from the contest
at this stage./ Te contest eventually grows to more than 100 countries entering
contestants and will have a more diverse judging panel than other contests
(making the winner less ‘predictable’ than any other international
beauty competition) (see 1960).####
SPORTS & HOBBIES
*The Harlem Globetrotters, a
theatrical, exhibition game-playing basketball team from the
CHRISTIANITY
*The Catholic Church is expelled
from
*Pope Pius XII issues Evangelii
Praecones, in which he comments
Venerable Brethren, you
are well aware that almost the whole human race is today allowing itself to be
driven into two opposing camps, for Christ or against Christ. The human race is
involved today in a supreme crisis, which will issue in its salvation by
Christ, or in its dire destruction.
*
*The Full Gospel Business
Men’s Fellowship (later Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship
International) is set up in
*H. Reinhold Niebuhr publishes Christ
and Culture, in which he surveys several positions Christians have
historically taken in response to culture:
1. Christ against culture –
which focuses on the opposition of the sacred to the profane, being set apart
from the world to the point of separation. He critiques this approach by arguing
it ultimately it leads to an otherworldly Christianity which can have minimal,
if any impact on the world.
2. The Christ of culture
- from this viewpoint, the sacred is discovered in culture. That which is most
Christlike in culture is celebrated, the spiritual
teachings which bring man into community, which find meaning in the
“ordinary” take precedence. The danger of this approach,
is that belief will merge with society, and the sacred will be, eventually,
completely lost.
3. Christ above culture –
which compartmentalises the sacred and the profane. Christ is for church and
bed-time prayers, culture is the realm of business. At best,
spiritually-informed morals guide behaviour in culture. However, by
compartmentalising the sacred as separate from the profane, this approach
de-vitalises the profane and disempowers the sacred.
4. Christ and culture in
paradox – an approach that sees man as sinful and grounded in culture.
Man cannot escape the profane - this is part of his nature. Christ, on the
other hand, calls man into the sacred. This is the paradox - called to the
sacred, a part of the profane. The only resolution is seen as God’s
redeeming grace.
5. Christ, the transformer of
culture – wherein Jesus presents the permeation of all life by the immanent
presence of divinity. This lays a spiritual responsibility upon the believer to
manifest the Divine within culture, leading to spiritual, practical, political
and social action.
Niebuhr refers the last, although
he proposes that Christians must make their own decisions in faith and that
none of the approaches can lay claim to being the one, true Christian approach.
*Paul Tillich (1886 – 1965)
publishes the first volume (of three) of Systematic Theology, in which
he perceives Christianity through the prism of modern existentialism (see
1943). Tillich’s radical departure from traditional Christian
theology is his view of Christ. According to Tillich, Christ is the “New
Being,” who rectifies in himself the alienation between essence and
existence. Essence fully shows itself within Christ, but Christ is also a
finite man. This indicates, for Tillich, a revolution in the very nature of
being. The gap is healed and essence can now be found within existence. Christ
is not God per se in himself but is the revelation of God. Whereas traditional
Christianity regards Christ as a wholly alien kind of being, Tillich believes
Christ is the emblem of the highest goal of man, what God wants men to become.
Christ is no different than you or I except insofar as he fully reveals God
within his own finitude (revealing the essence inherent in all existence,
including mine and your own), something you and I can also do in principle:
“God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence.
Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.” And so, to be a
Christian, for Tillich, is to make oneself progressively
“Christ-like,” in his (existential) sense of the term.
ISLAM
*Sayyid Qutb, having returned to
BUDDHISM
*Japanese professor D.T. Suzuki
(1870 – 1966), a writer on Buddhism and Zen (the branch of Buddhism that
emphasises the role of sitting meditation in pursuing enlightenment), goes on a
lecture tour of the
NEW AGE, SPIRITUALITY & CULTS
*Anti-witchcraft laws
are repealed in
*Carl Jung (see 1940,
1980) publishes Aion, in which he discusses the concept of a new age
dawning on humanity in which the human race’s central motifs for
lifestyle and behaviour will undergo a radical transformation. He examines the
Age of Pisces, which he purports humanity has been living in since the advent
of Christianity. The zodiacal sign of Pisces is symbolised by two fish, each
swimming in a different direction and connected by a cord. The fish has been a
major symbol for the Christian religion which has been a predominant influence
on the world since the inception of the Age, during which the world has been
dominated by people who worshipped a god with Piscean qualities and values:
sacrifice, denial of the physical, denigration of the flesh, the earth and the
feminine. The religion elevated suffering to an ecstatic art (personified in
the suffering of Christ immediately prior to and on the Cross) and sought to
serve a spiritual calling to go without in this life in order to triumph in the
next. Indeed, during the Middle Ages, “this earthly life” was
considered of no value, only something to be suffered through (hence, the
god-symbol of a tortured and dying Jesus could give strength to people in the
Middle Ages who had lives of short span and possibilities). The dominance of
the European peoples during the 2000 years of the Age of Pisces held forth this
suffering image and conquered others in its name (although people and cultures
which did not project images into the heavens in the form of Zodiac
constellations have had other collective mythologies and worldviews which
include other images, time frames and mythologies). (Previous to the Piscean
era was the Age of Aries, in which humanity followed the god represented by
Yahweh of the Old Testament, a wrathful and tyrannical god befitting the
warlike nature of the cultures which sprang up between 2400BC and 500BC.)
Jung proposes that the change in symbolism (fishes to water carrier/bearer),
suggests the new epoch in which the Self is a central figure: Instead of being
a fish contained in a psychic fish pond, the individual becomes a conscious
dispenser of the psyche. Hence, the psyche will no longer be carried by
religious communities but instead it will be carried by conscious individuals.
Jung’s interest in such fare is cultural rather than spiritual (one
academic argues that the tome single-handedly lays the foundation for a whole
new department of human knowledge, a scholarly discipline one might call
archetypal psychohistory – based on the insights of depth psychology to
the data of cultural history, wherein the historical process can now be seen as
the self-manifestation of the archetypes of the collective unconscious as they
emerge and develop in time and space through the actions and fantasies of
humanity). However, in popularising the idea of a new cosmological age, Jung
inadvertently influences movements engaged in esoteric spirituality such as the
Theosophists (see 1940, 1955).
*Scientology: Science
fiction author L. Ron Hubbard (1911 - 1986) establishes a new religious
movement intended as an alternative to psychotherapy (and re-characterised two
years later as an “applied religious philosophy”). Having been
involved with occultists performing rites developed by Aleister Crowley (1875 -
1947) (see 1966), Hubbard creates a cosmology informed by Hindu concepts
of karma (see 1949) and the less metaphysical theories of Sigmund Freud (see
1939) and Carl Jung (see 1980): He proposes (i) A person is an
immortal spiritual being (termed a thetan) who possesses a mind and a body;
(ii) the thetan has lived through many past lives and will continue to live
beyond the death of the body; (iii) a person is basically good, but becomes
“aberrated” by moments of pain and unconsciousness in his life;
(iv) what is true is what is true for you - no beliefs should be forced as
“true” on anyone but, rather, the tenets of Scientology are
expected to be tested and seen to be true, or not, by its practitioners’
(v) Scientology can help the world on a large scale with problems such
as drugs, crime, illiteracy, human rights, etc. Hubbard asserts that a series
of self-imrpovement techniques (known as ‘Dianetics’) put forward
as a therapy to alleviate unwanted sensations and emotions, irrational fears
and psychosomatic illnesses. Hubbard’s cult will create much controversy
over the coming decades, primarily for the way it is said to brainwash its
followers into parting with large amounts of money for practices that are
pseudoscientific and as fictional as Hubbard’s second-rate sci-fi novels.
#
[Edited from Wikipedia]
Before the adoption of the Production
Code, many perceived motion pictures as being immoral and thought they
promoted vice and glorified violence. Numerous local censorship boards had been
established, and approximately 100 cities across the country had local
censorship laws. Motion picture producers feared that the federal government
might step in.
In the 1920s, major scandals rocked
Hays spent eight years attempting
to enforce a moral authority over
With the advent of talking
pictures, it was felt that a more formal written code was needed. The Production
Code was written, and adopted in 1930. A campaign by the Catholic League
of Decency against what it perceived as the violent and racy nature of many
films being produced even after the Code was introduced saw it strengthened. An
amendment to the code, adopted on June 13, 1934, established the Production
Code Administration, and required all films to obtain a certificate of
approval before being released. Catholic newspaperman Joseph I. Breen was
appointed head of the new Production Code Administration.
Typifying Breen’s no nonsense
attitude to what he considered ‘filth,’ is a letter he wrote to
powerful US Jesuit Father Wilfrid Parsons (1887 – 1958):
Here in
Although it also betrays
Breen’s own forceful anti-Semitism:
These Jews [who Breen
saw as the kingpins of
Under Breen’s leadership,
enforcement of the Production Code was rigid. The Code prohibited
any reference in a motion picture to illicit drugs, homosexuality, premarital
sex, profanity, prostitution, and white slavery. Films could still be violent,
and feature heterosexual romance, smoking cigarettes was still allowed and even
encouraged. They could not endorse hatred of a racial or ethnic group, but the Code
also prohibited interracial relationships or marriages. The power of Breen to
change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors, and
The Code remained in force
until 1967 (see).
##
Marxists across the
continent believed that the European working class would overthrow the
bourgeoisie in the aftermath of World War I, taking the opportunity afforded by
the war-driven social dislocation to find solidarity in class consciousness
with their fellow proletarians in other nations and rise up (rather than unite
under the anachronistic banner of nationalism). Yet, apart from
Two thinkers emerged at this time
to address the conundrum of worker apathy for revolution. Italian Marxist
Antonio Gramsci, whose ideas would later be published in a series of Prison
Notebooks (1929 - 1935), the title alluding to his incarceration at the
hands of Mussolini’s Fascist regime, proposed that
a) Bourgeois cultural hegemony was
a cornerstone in the maintenance of the capitalist state
b) Popular education for the masses was needed to cultivate a group of working class intellectuals (to counter the bourgeois academic elite) – a process later described by German sociologist and 1960s radical Rudi Dutschke (1940 – 1979) as a “long march through the institutions” (i.e. a cultural war to ‘cap