The News of 1957.

January:

• Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch
• Russell Endean becomes the first batsman in test cricket to be dismissed for having handled the ball
• Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns due to ill health and is replaced by Harold Macmillan
• American toy company Wham-O produces the first frisbee
• The Cavern Club opens
• Dwight D Eisenhower is sworn in for his second term as President of the United States
• The New York City “Mad Bomber”, George P Metesky is arrested and charged with planting over thirty bombs
• Ku Klux Klan members force African-American truck driver Willie Edwards to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River, where he drowns
• Sunday Express newspaper editor John Junor is reprimanded for contempt of Parliament, the last non-politician to be so called

February:

• “Asian flu” pandemic: Influenza A virus subtype H2N2 first identified in the Guizhou province of China, spreads to Singapore. It reaches Hong Kong by April and the UK and US by June, killing at least 1 million people worldwide
• France prohibits UN involvement in Algeria
• The Confederation of African Football is founded
• The “Toddler’s Truce”, a British policy requiring television transmissions to terminate between the end of children’s broadcasting at 18:00 and the start of the evening schedule at 19:00, is abolished
• Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi is executed by the British colonial government
• The last person to be executed in New Zealand is hanged at Mount Eden prison for poisoning his wife
• Norwich City Council becomes the first British local authority to install a computer

March:

• Dr Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat is first published
• Standard & Poor’s first publishes the S&P 500 Index in the US
• British colonies Gold Coast and British Togoland become the independent nation of Ghana
• United States Congress approves the Eisenhower Doctrine, an assistance to Communist-threatened foreign regimes
• The FBI arrests labour union leader Jimmy Hoffa on charges of bribery
• President Sukarno declared martial law in Indonesia
• Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others are killed in a plane crash
• The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community between Italy, France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg
• Copies of Allan Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, printed in England, are seized by US Customs Service officials in San Francisco on the grounds of obscenity
• Elvis Presley buys Graceland for $100,000

April:

• Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal
• Indian politician EMS Namboodiripad becomes the first democratically elected communist head of government in the world
• Suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams is controversially found not guilty of murder at the Old Bailey, political interference is suspected
• The Sky at Night is first broadcast in the UK
• Panorama present a report showing spaghetti being harvested from trees in Switzerland, it’s believed to be the first April’s Fools joke on television
• Royal Court Theatre premiers John Osborne’s The Entertainer with Laurence Olivier in the title role
• Manchester United retain the Football League First Division title with a 4-0 win over Sunderland

May:

• At Malden Island, as part of Operation Grapple, the UK tests its first hydrogen bomb, which fails to detonate properly
• Stanley Matthews plays his final game for England, ending an international career of almost 23 years, at the age of 42 years and 104 days
• Real Madrid beat Fiorentina 2-0 to win the 1956-57 European Cup
• Aston Villa win a record seventh FA Cup with a 2-1 win over league winners Manchester United
• Petrol rationing ends in the UK following the Suez Crisis

June:

• Broad Peak, the 12th highest mountain in the world, on the China-Pakistan border is first ascended
• John Diefenbaker becomes the 13th Prime Minster of Canada
• The first premium bond winners are selected by the computer ERNIE
• A report by the Medical Research Council reveals there is evidence to support a link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer

July:

• Hugh Everett III publishes the first scientifically founded many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, asserting that the universal wave function is objectively real
• John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time at a garden fête in Woolton
• Rawya Ateya takes her seat in the National Assembly of Egypt, thereby becoming the first female parliamentarian in the Arab world
• Tunisia becomes a republic with Habib Bourguiba as its first president
• A high point of the Khrushchev Thaw, the World Festival of Youth and Students is held in Moscow
• The International Atomic Energy Agency is established

August:

• President Eisenhower announces a 2-year suspension of nuclear testing
• The longest ever single-Senator filibuster is delivered by US Senator Strom Thurmond in a 24-hour and 18-minute speech opposing a civil rights bill
• The Federation of Malaya gains independence from the UK
• The cartoon character Andy Capp makes his first appearance in northern editions of the Daily Mirror
• Central Scotland’s independent channel, Scottish Television, goes on air, the first 7-day-a-week ITV franchise to do so
• ZETA fusion reactor begins operation at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Hartwell, Oxfordshire

September:

• The Wolfenden Report on homosexuality is published in the UK
• Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus calls on the National Guard to prevent African-American students from enrolling at Little Rock Central High School
• The first edition of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road goes on sale in the US
• The Civil Rights Act of 1957 is enacted, establishing the United States Commission on Civil Rights
• Olav V becomes King of Norway following the death of his father Haakon VII
• Camp Nou officially opens
• Leonard Bernstein’s musical West Side Story makes its first appearance on Broadway
• The Kyshtym disaster occurs at the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant
• Tony Lock becomes the last bowler to reach 200 wickets in a first class season, a feat subsequently impossible due to limited overs cricket and covered pitches

October:

• Which? magazine is first published by The Consumers’ Association in the UK
• The Africanised “killer” bee is accidentally released in Brazil
• The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth
• A fire at the Windscale nuclear reactor in Cumbria releases radioactive material into the surrounding environment, including iodine-131
• The Jodrell Bank radio telescope opens in Cheshire
• Brazilian farmer, Antônio Vilas Boas, claims to have been abducted by extraterrestrials, the first famous alien abduction case
• The US military sustains its first combat fatality in Vietnam
• Morocco begins its invasion of Ifni
• Mafia boss Albert Anastasia is assassinated in a barber shop in New York City
• The UK introduces a vaccine against the influenza pandemic
• Today is first broadcast as a daily early-morning topical radio show on the BBC Home Service, it will still be running 60 years later

November:

• The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2 with the first animal to orbit Earth, Laika the dog, though there is no technology available to return the craft
• The Gaither Report into US preparedness for nuclear war calls for more missiles and fallout shelters
• Gordon Gould invents the laser
• Yugoslavia announces the end of an economic boycott of Francoist Spain
• President Eisenhower suffers from a stroke
• Indonesian president Sukarno survives a grenade attack at a school in Jakarta, but six children are killed

December:

• The Boeing 707 airliner flies for the first time
• The first US attempt to launch a satellite fails when the Vanguard rocket blows up on the launch pad
• Canadian diplomat Lester B Pearson receives the Nobel Peace Prize for organising the resolution of the Suez Crisis
• The Royal Christmas Message is broadcast on television with the Queen on camera for the first time

Other:

• Chairman Mao admits that 800,000 “class enemies” had been summarily liquidated in China between 1949 and 1954
• Operation Dropshot, an expected all-out war between the US and the Soviet Union triggered by the latters takeover of Western Europe, as prepared for by the US Department of Defence in 1949, does not materialise
• David Lean’s war epic The Bridge on the River Kwai sweeps the Academy Awards and earns $15 million worldwide, the highest grossing film of 1957
• Though there is no universally recognised end-of-year best-sellers list, in 2011 the Official Charts Company determined that the best-selling single of 1957 was “Diana” by Paul Anka