January:
- A crowd crush and stampede during a New Year’s event results in 124 deaths and 77 injuries at the Yahiko Shrine in Niigata Prefecture, Japan
- A fire damages the top floors of the Eiffel Tower
- Five US evangelical Christian missionaries are killed for trespassing by the Huaorani people of Ecuador
- The 1956 Winter Olympics open in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy; the Soviet Union top the medal table with 7 gold and 16 overall medals
- Possession of heroin becomes fully criminalised in the UK
February:
- Two of the “Cambridge spies”, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, resurface in the Soviet Union after vanishing as diplomats in mysterious circumstances in 1951
- Elvis Presley enters the United States music charts for the first time with “Heartbreak Hotel”
- Norma Jean Mortenson legally changes her name to Marilyn Monroe
- Doris Day records “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)”
- Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Joseph Stalin in his speech “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”
- The first AEC Routemaster bus in London starts public service
- Double yellow lines to prohibit parking are introduced in Slough
March:
- The International Air Transport Association finalises a draft of the radiotelephony spelling alphabet (later NATO phonetic alphabet) for the International Civil Aviation Organisation
- Morocco declares independence from France
- Soviet Armed Forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgia Soviet Socialist Republic, responding to Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation policy
- The Fairey Delta 2 breaks the World Air Speed Record by reaching 1,132mph (Mach 1.73), 300mph more than the previous record
- 96 US Congressmen sign the Southern Manifesto, a protest against the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on desegregated public education
- The Broadway musical My Fair Lady opens in New York City
- Tunisia gains independence from France
- The 28th Academy Awards are held in Los Angeles, Marty is awarded Best Picture
- Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic
- A memorial to Karl Marx is unveiled at the new site of his grave in Highgate Cemetery, London
April:
- Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB convention in Chicago by Ampex
- The Queen inaugurates the 4.9km² Chew Valley Lake in Somerset as a reservoir for the Bristol area
- British diver Lionel Crabb, working for MI6, dives into Portsmouth Harbour to investigate a visiting Soviet cruiser and vanishes
- Heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano retires undefeated with 49 wins, 43 by knockout
- Manchester United win the First Division title with the team having an average age of just 24
- Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan announces the launch of Premium Bonds
May:
- John Osbourne’s Look Back in Anger opens at the Royal Court Theatre, London
- The first Eurovision Song Contest is broadcast from Lugano, Switzerland; the host country’s Lys Assia wins with her song “Refrain”
- Granada Television launches with a base in Manchester
- Manchester City win the FA Cup 3-1 against Birmingham City; goalkeeper Bert Trautmann plays the final fifteen minutes despite what is later diagnosed as a broken neck
- Minister of Health Robin Turton rejects a call for the government to lead an anti-smoking campaign arguing that no ill-effects have yet been proven
- The Gower Peninsula becomes the first area of the British Isles to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
June:
- The civil suit relating to the Montgomery bus boycott is heard in federal district court
- Elvis Presley’s infamous performance of “Hound Dog” on The Milton Berle Show scandalises American television audiences
- General Electric/Telechron introduces model 7H241 “The Snooz Alarm”, the worlds first snooze alarm clock
- The equestrian events for the 1956 Summer Olympics are held in Stockholm, the rest of the Games will be staged in Melbourne at the end of November
- The International Criminal Police Organisation adopts Interpol as its official name
- Real Madrid defeat Stade Reims 4-3 in Paris to win the 1955-56 European Cup
- Labour riots in Poznań are crushed with heavy loss of life; Soviet troops fire at a crowd protesting high prices, killing 53 people
- President Dwight D Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating the Interstate Highway System in the US
- A TWA Lockheed Constellation and a United States Douglas DC-17 collide in mid-air over the Grand Canyon killing all 128 people onboard both aircraft, leading to sweeping changes in regulation and air traffic control
July:
- The House of Lords defeats the abolition of the death penalty
- The first coordinated research meeting on artificial intelligence is held at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
- At New York City’s Copacabana nightclub, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their final comedy show together
- Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, sparking international condemnation
- “In God we trust” is authorised as the US National motto
- In the fourth Ashes test held at Old Trafford, Jim Laker takes 19 wickets for 90 runs; his 10-53 in the first innings remains a record to this day
- Parliament passes the Clean Air Act, largely in response to the Great Smog of 1952
- The first UK albums chart is published in Record Mirror, Frank Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! tops it for the first two weeks
- The first Berni Inn opens in Bristol
August:
- Seven ammunition trucks loaded with 1,053 boxes of dynamite explode in Cali, Colombia; death estimates range from 1,300 to 10,000
- 262 miners die in a fire at the Bois du Cazier coal mine in Marcinelle, Belgium
- West Germany bans the Communist Party of Germany
September:
- The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team led by Reynold B Johnson
- Television broadcasting in Australia commences
- The submarine transatlantic telephone cable opens
- French Prime Minister, Guy Mollet visits London and proposes a France-UK merger; the idea is rejected by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden
October:
- Don Larsen of the New York Yankees throws the only perfect game in World Series history, against the Brooklyn Dodgers
- Finland joins UNESCO
- The Royal Air Force retires its last Lancaster bomber
- The world’s first industrial-scale commercial nuclear power plant opens at Calder Hall in England
- Thirteen year old Bobby Fischer beats chess grandmaster Donald Byrne in what is dubbed “The Game of the Century”
- Protocol of Sèvres: The UK, France and Israel secretly agree upon plans to invade Egypt, initiating the Suez Crisis
- The Hungarian Revolution breaks out against pro-Soviet government, originating as a student demonstration in Budapest; Hungary attempts to leave the Warsaw Pact, causing Soviet Red Army troops to invade
- Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco
November:
- City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco publishes Allen Ginsberg’s Howl
- Suez Crisis: Israeli soldiers shoot dead hundreds of Palestinian refugees and local inhabitants in Khan Yunis Camp
- More Soviet troops invade Hungary; thousands are killed, more are wounded and nearly a quarter of a million leave the country
- Republican incumbent Dwight D Eisenhower defeats Democratic challenger Adlai Stevenson in the US presidential election, a repeat of the result from four years earlier
- Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia join the United Nations
- The United States Supreme Court declares illegal the state and municipal laws requiring segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, thus ending the Montgomery bus boycott
- The 1956 Summer Olympics begin in Melbourne; the Soviet Union top the medal table with 37 gold and 98 overall medals, several countries boycott the Games in protest over the IOC’s decision not to suspend the USSR after the invasion of Hungary
- Fidel Castro and Che Guevara depart from Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico en route to Santiago de Cuba aboard the yacht Granma, along with 82 fighters for the purpose of overthrowing the regime of Fulgencio Batista
December:
- Japan becomes a member of the United Nations
- British doctor John Bodkin Adams is arrested for the murder of two patients in Eastbourne, he is suspected of committing up to 400
- British and French troops leave the Suez Canal region under UN and US pressure
- PG Tips launches its long-running chimpanzee tea party advertising campaign
Other:
- The Asian flu pandemic originates in China
- Tesco opens its first self-service stores in St Albans and Maldon
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