Welcome to part 2 of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious 50’s

Click on here for Part 1

.

 

If you didn’t already check out Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious 50’s Part 1

Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World is a unique podcast that explores the mysterous world around us from the perspectives of Catholic fatih and sound human reason. It is not to be mistaken for other similar shows such as Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World which was  a thirteen-part British television series looking at unexplained phenomena from around the world.

1955

Area 51

The Nevada Test and Training Range is used to train aircraft crews in combat scenarios and for live munitions training, according to the Air Force, as well as operational testing. In the past, the site has been used to test and develop new helicopters, airplanes, unmanned drones and other top-secret military technologies. One of these was the famous U-2 spy plane, an ultra-high-altitude aircraft used for reconnaissance. This plane’s very first flight took place at Area 51 (officially known as Groom Lake) in August 1955.
Learn More about Area 51 @ Ep. #58 – What If You Visited Area 51? · The What If? Podcast (spotify.com) WARNING!!! Some Language

 

 

Astrology Findings

In 1955, the astrologer and psychologist Michel Gauquelin stated that though he had failed to find evidence that supported indicators like zodiacal signs and planetary aspects in astrology, he did find positive correlations between the diurnal positions of some planets and success in professions that astrology traditionally associates with those planets. The best-known of Gauquelin’s findings is based on the positions of Mars in the natal charts of successful athletes and became known as the Mars effect. A study conducted by seven French scientists attempted to replicate the claim, but found no statistical evidence.  They attributed the effect to selective bias on Gauquelin’s part, accusing him of attempting to persuade them to add or delete names from their study.

Branch Davidans

The Branch Davidians (also known as “The Branch”) are a religious group that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Shepherd’s Rod (Davidians) following the death of the Shepherd’s Rod founder Victor Houteff. Houteff founded the Davidians based on his prophecy of an imminent apocalypse involving the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the defeat of the evil armies of Babylon. As the original Davidian group gained members, its leadership moved the church to a hilltop several miles east of Waco, Texas, which they named Mount Carmel, after a mountain in Israel mentioned in Joshua 19:26 in the Bible’s Old Testament.  A few years later, they moved again to a much larger site east of the city.

Columbo

The character of Columbo was created by the writing team of Richard Levinson and William Link, who said that Columbo was partially inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky‘s Crime and Punishment character Porfiry Petrovich as well as G. K. Chesterton‘s humble cleric-detective Father Brown. Other sources claim Columbo’s character is also influenced by Inspector Fichet from the French suspense-thriller film Les Diaboliques (1955)

Disneyland Opens

July 17, 1955 The Disneyland theme park opens in Anaheim, California, an event broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company television network.

Denver Airport Disaster

Before the Denver Airport Conspiracies, there was the Denver Airport Disaster. On Nov. 1, 1955, United Flight 629 took off from Stapleton Airport in Denver. Eleven minutes later, the plane exploded. The investigators soon learned that the tragedy was a bombing – and that a 23-year-old man from Denver was responsible. Full story

Einstein Dies

Albert Einstein  (March 14, 1879 – 18 April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest physicists of all time. Einstein is known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are together the two pillars of modern physics.  His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from relativity theory, has been dubbed “the world’s most famous equation”. His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”,  a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality resulted in “Einstein” becoming synonymous with “genius”. He meet with Fr. Georges Lemaître  (July 17, 1894 – 20 June 20, 1966) several times in 1927. Fr. Georges is the creator of the “Big Bang theory” of the origin of the universe.
Learn More @ Albert Einstein: Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century | Full Documentary | Biography

 First Cloning

Leo Szilard  gave essential advice to Theodore Puck and Philip I. Marcus for their first cloning of a human cell in 1955.

Good Authors Are Hard To Fine

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955) by Flannery O’ Connor is published.
The Daughter of Catholic Sci-Fi Author Jerry Pournelle  Dr. J.R. (Jennifer) Pournelle, PhD is born on  May 1, 1955.  She is  an archaeologist and anthropologist best known for reconstructing landscapes surrounding ancient cities. The  younger Pournelle engages similar themes (war and its aftermath, environmental constraints, aliens encounters), but with a very different point of view and writing style. She summarizes their differences thusly: “We both believe profoundly in the individual right to be left the hell alone. But we also disagree profoundly about who it is that’s most likely to mess with that right, and fundamentally about the best way to stop it happening.”
Learn more about A Good Man @ Ep 146  Overdue (overduepodcast.com)/Story 032: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Kelly–Hopkinsville Encounter

On the evening of August 21, 1955, five adults and seven children arrived at the Hopkinsville police station claiming that small alien creatures from a spaceship were attacking their farmhouse and they had been holding them off with gunfire “for nearly four hours”. Two of the adults, Elmer Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor, claimed they had been shooting at “twelve to fifteen” short, dark figures who repeatedly popped up at the doorway or peered into the windows.

Learn more about the shooting aliens @ Episode 137: Elusive — Lore (lorepodcast.com)

Invention of Time Travel

Eccentric scientist Doctor Emmett “Doc” Brown invents Time Travel on November 5, 1955. He is later visited by Teenager  Marty McFly  who  traveled to 1955 from 1985  in a time-traveling DeLorean automobile that he built. Later other versions of Doc and Marty and a guy named Biff Tannen also show up in 1955 and interact with their past selves.

This time traveling group of individuals would have great effects on these individuals.

Robert  Zemeckis born on  May 14, 1951
Alan Silvestri, born on March 26, 1950
Huey Lewis is born on born July 5, 1950
Mary Steenburgen born on February 8, 1953
Thomas F. Wilson born on April 15, 1959

Interestingly some group of other time travelers located a suitcase of equipment from the future and suspected someone was trying to prevent the Montgomery bus boycott from occurring, The boycott happen after an African American woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white person, she was sitting in the first row of the middle section.

JFK’s Book

Profiles in Courage by  John F. Kennedy,  Caroline Kennedy (Introduction),  Robert F. Kennedy (Foreword) is  published

Lie Detectors!

A polygraph, popularly referred to as a lie detector test, is a device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked and answers a series of questions. The belief underpinning the use of the polygraph is that deceptive answers will produce physiological responses that can be differentiated from those associated with non-deceptive answers. In about 1955, the Stoelting Company of Chicago, Illinois which has been producing polygraph instruments since 1935, introduced the Deceptograph model 22500.

Meeting the Mummy

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) is released.

Missing Boats

Mary Celeste  was an American merchant brigantine discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores Islands on December 4, 1872. The Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia found her in a dishevelled but seaworthy condition under partial sail and with her lifeboat missing. The last entry in her log was dated ten days earlier. She had left New York City for Genoa on November 7 and was still amply provisioned when found. Her cargo of denatured alcohol was intact, and the captain’s and crew’s personal belongings were undisturbed. None of those who had been on board were ever seen or heard from again.
Learn more about the MC @ ‎Blanket Fort Mysteries (In Sight Jr): The Mary Celeste Ghost Ship on Apple Podcasts

In October 1955, MV Joyita, a 70-ton motor vessel, disappeared in the South Pacific while traveling between Samoa and Tokelau, with 25 people on board  The vessel was found a month later, deserted and drifting north of Vanua Levu, 600 miles (970 km) from its route.[133] None of those aboard were seen again, and a commission of inquiry failed to establish an explanation. David Wright, the affair’s principal historian, has described the case as “… a classic marine mystery of Mary Celeste proportions. Learn more about MV Joyita @ ‎GONE: MV Joyita – Lost & Found at Sea on Apple Podcasts

Nostradamus

Nostradamus  (depending on the source, December 14 or 21 1503 –July 1 or 2 1566), was a French astrologer, physician and reputed seer, who is best known for his book Les Prophéties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains  allegedly predicting future events. The book was first published in 1555 and 1955 marks its 400^th anniversary of publication.

In the 50’s this short movie was released. Let’s Ask Nostradamus (Prophecies of Nostradamus #2) (1953)

The Philadelphia Experiment

The Philadelphia Experiment is an alleged military experiment supposed to have been carried out by the U.S. Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, sometime around October 28, 1943. The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge was claimed to have been rendered invisible (or “cloaked“) to enemy devices.

The story first appeared in 1955, in letters of unknown origin sent to UFO writer Morris K. Jessup. It is widely understood to be a hoax; the U.S. Navy maintains that no such experiment was ever conducted, that the details of the story contradict well-established facts about USS Eldridge, and that the alleged claims do not conform to known physical laws.

The Philadelphia Experiment, a 1984 science fiction film starring Michael Paré

Learn more about the PE @ Montauk – Part 1 – The Philadelphia Experiment – Strange Matters Podcast

Polio Vaccine

Jonas Edward Salk   October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine. 

In 1947, Salk accepted a professorship in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. It was there that he undertook a project to determine the number of different types of poliovirus, starting in 1948. For the next seven years Salk devoted himself towards developing a vaccine against polio.

Salk was immediately hailed as a “miracle worker” when the vaccine’s success was first made public in April 1955, and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution. An immediate rush to vaccinate began in both the United States and around the world. Many countries began polio immunization campaigns using Salk’s vaccine, including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium. By 1959, the Salk vaccine had reached about 90 countries. Less than 25 years later, domestic transmission of polio had been completely eliminated in the United States.
Learn more about the polio vaccine @ Good, Bad and Ugly: The History of Polio Vaccines – Professor Gareth Williams

Regulating Acupuncture

In France, the Académie Nationale de Médecine (National Academy of Medicine) has regulated acupuncture since 1955.

Seven Cities of Gold

The Seven Cities of Gold, also known as the Seven Cities of Cibola   is a myth that was popular in the 16th century. It is also featured in several works of popular culture. According to legend, the seven cities of gold could be found throughout the pueblos of the New Mexico Territory. 

Besides “Cibola”, names associated with similar lost cities of gold also include: El Dorado, Paititi, City of the Caesars, Lake Parime at Manoa, Antilia, and Quivira.

The 1955 film Seven Cities of Gold starring Richard Egan, Anthony Quinn, and Michael Rennie tells the story of a 1769 Spanish expedition to California led by Gaspar De Portola to search of gold and to set up Spanish colonies. However, Father Junipero Serra is there to set up a network of Roman Catholic missions. Learn more about The Seven Cities of Gold @ The Discovery Of The Lost City Of Cibola And The Legendary 7 Cities Of Gold EXPLAINED

Science Fiction Standouts 1955

The Honeymooners (TV Series) The Man from Space (1955)

This Island Earth (1955)

Could Time Travel to prevent crime be moral? The Time Patrol (1955–1995) by Poul Anderson may be able to answer that question as it is about an organization which protects the past.

Tunnel in the Sky (1955) (The ninth book in the Heinlein’s Juveniles series) by Robert Heinlein

Hugo Award Best Novel: They’d Rather Be Right (also known as The Forever Machine)(1955) by  Mark Clifton and Frank Riley.

Terry Lovelace, Esq

Terry Lovelace, Esq, (1955) is born. In 1977, Terry and another Air Force medics had a frightening encounter while camping in an Arkansas state park named Devil’s Den. He has written a best selling book about that incident named Incident at Devils Den, a true story (2018).

Trip to Santa’s

Christmas Eve, dated 1955, a boy starts to become skeptical of the existence of Santa Claus. Struggling to fall asleep, he witnesses a steam locomotive arrive on the street and goes outside to examine it, ripping a hole in his dressing gown pocket on the way. The conductor introduces the train as the Polar Express, which was on its way to the North Pole. Initially reluctant, the boy jumps aboard as the train departs.

We Three Kings

“We Three Kings“, original title “Three Kings of Orient“, also known as “We Three Kings of Orient Are” or “The Quest of the Magi“, is a Christmas carol that was written by John Henry Hopkins Jr. in 1857. At the time of composing the carol, Hopkins served as the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and he wrote the carol for a Christmas pageant in New York City. Many versions of this song have been composed and it remains a popular Christmas carol. 1957 celebrates the 100^th anniversary of the hymn. Learn More about We Three Kings @ We Three Kings of Orient Are… From Where?

Additional 1955 Trivia

• February 9 – Apartheid in South Africa: 60,000 non-white residents of the Sophiatown suburb of Johannesburg are forcibly evicted.
• March 2 – Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African-American girl, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards, while being kicked, handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station. She becomes a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle (1956), which rules bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
• April 15 – Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald’s, in Des Plaines, Illinois.
• April 15 – A young Jim Henson introduces the earliest version of Kermit the Frog (made in March), in the premiere of his puppet show Sam and Friends, on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.
• May 25 – Joe Brown and George Band are the first to attain the summit of Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, as part of the British Kangchenjunga expedition led by Charles Evans.
•  August 27 – The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records is published, in London.
• August 28 – Black 14-year-old Emmett Till is lynched and shot in the head for allegedly grabbing and threatening a white woman in Money, Mississippi; his white murderers, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, are acquitted by an all-white jury.
• November 1– Official start date of the Vietnam War between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Republic of Vietnam; the north is allied with the Viet Cong.^[6]
• November 27 – The Westboro Baptist Church holds its first service in Topeka, Kansas.
• General Motors becomes the first American corporation to make a profit of over 1 billion dollars in 1 year.

Some more notable births and deaths

Births
Mr. Bean, January 6, 1955
Kevin Costner January 18, 1955,
Jeff Daniels February 19, 1955 American actor
Kelsey Grammer, February 21, 1955
Bruce Willis March 19, 1955
Steven Wright, December 6, 1955

Deaths
James Dean, (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955). Only 24, American actor, Hill Number On as John the Beloved Disciple ine Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, East of Eden, Learn more @ james dean – Astonishing Legends

St. Katharine Drexel (November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955)

1956

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was an American woman tried and acquitted of the August 4, 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. She popped up alot in media and plays in the 1950’s. One of the places was on the Alfred Hitchcock tv show. Carmen Matthews played Lizzie Borden in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents season 1 episode “The Older Sister”, with Joan Lorring as Emma and Hitchcock’s daughter Pat as the servant Margaret. The episode aired on January 22, 1956, and takes place in 1893, with a determined woman reporter trying to interview the sisters one year after the murders. The Borden house is now a museum, and operates a bed and breakfast with 1890s styling.[102] Pieces of evidence used in the trial, including the axehead, are preserved at the Fall River Historical Society. It was recently up for sale.

Learn More about Lizzie @ INFAMOUS: Lizzie Borden | Crime Junkie Podcast

The case was memorialized in a popular skipping-rope rhyme

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Baseball Greatness

Don James Larsen (August 7, 1929 – January 1, 2020) was an American professional baseball pitcher. Larsen pitched the sixth perfect game in MLB history, doing so in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. It is the only no-hitter and perfect game in World Series history and is one of only two no-hitters in MLB postseason history (the other being Roy Halladay’s in 2010). He won the World Series Most Valuable Player Award and Babe Ruth Award in recognition of his 1956 postseason. Learn More @ Don Larsen’s Perfect Game Biography

Batteries Then and Now

Then

The story of the “Baghdad Battery” is a staple on many paranormal, “alternative history” and “ancient astronaut” websites. According to the lore, the “battery” indicates that ancient people in the Middle East knew about and used electricity some 2,000 years before the Europeans supposedly discovered it.   The Baghdad Battery or Parthian Battery is a set of three artifacts which were found together: a ceramic pot, a tube of copper, and a rod of iron. It was discovered in modern Khujut Rabu, Iraq, close to the metropolis of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian (150 BC – 223 AD) and Sasanian (224–650 AD) empires, and it is believed to date from either of these periods.

Its origin and purpose remain unclear. It was hypothesized by some researchers[who?] that the object functioned as a galvanic cell, possibly used for electroplating, or some kind of electrotherapy, but there is no electroplated object known from this period. An alternative explanation is that it functioned as a storage vessel for sacred scrolls. Learn more about the BB @ The Mystery Of Baghdad Battery Did Ancient People Enjoy Electricity

Now

The nine-volt battery, or 9-volt battery, is a common size of battery that was introduced for the early transistor radios. Historically, the now popular PP3 battery size was a member of the PP (Power Pack) battery series that was originally manufactured by Ever Ready in the United Kingdom and Eveready in the United States. The company claims that it introduced the PP3 battery in 1956,  then it was added as an ANSI standard in 1959, currently known as ANSI-1604A.

 

Bobby Dunbar

A young child goes missing, the whole country starts looking for him, and eventually, the family gets him back, only to realize that he wasn’t their kid after all.

No, this isn’t the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) or an episode of the Twilight Zone (1959), but an actual event that happened in Louisiana in 1912 to the Dunbar family. And in the end, the truth was stranger than fiction. Bobby Dunbar: The Boy Who Vanished And Came Back As A New Child (allthatsinteresting.com) Learn more about BD @ The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar – This American Life

Charles Manson

Charles Manson Jr. was born in 1956 to his father’s first wife, Rosalie Jean Willis. Charles Sr. married Willis in 1955, when she was a hospital waitress and, a year later, their first child was born. Willis was 15 at the time and Charles Sr. was 20 and in prison for theft by the time his son was born. Charles Manson (November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal and cult leader. In mid-1967, he formed what became known as the “Manson Family”, a quasi-commune based in California. His followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. Although the motive for the murders was disputed by Manson, the Los Angeles County District Attorney believed that Manson intended to start a race war.  In 1971, he was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, including the film actress Sharon Tate. The prosecution contended that, while Manson never directly ordered the murders, his ideology constituted an overt act of conspiracy

Dark Matter

Hot dark matter consists of particles whose FSL is much larger than the size of a protogalaxy. The neutrino qualifies as such particle. They were discovered independently, long before the hunt for dark matter: they were postulated in 1930, and detected in 1956.

Helen Duncan, a Scottish medium was the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735. A fraudulent medium, Duncan’s ectoplasm was found to be made from cheesecloth mixed with egg whites and toilet paper. Her spirit guide “Peggy” was really a doll made from a painted papier-mache mask draped in an old sheet. In 1944, Duncan was convicted of falsely claiming to procure spirits. She was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment. Upon her release, she promised to stop conducting séances, but she was arrested while conducting one in 1956.

Fairy Investigation Society

Walt Disney, is also considered an important member of the Fairy Investigation Society. He was certainly a member through 1956 and 1957,  but sources speculate that he may have been interested in the group nearly 10 years earlier. In 1947, Disney visited Ireland to experience Irish history and gain experience on Irish Folklore for storyboard research. They visited “when he and his writers began exploring the idea of a film that would centre on ‘the little people’ in 1946” focusing on leprechauns and fairies. It is here that he may have become interested in the mythology of fairies.

In 1917 The Cottingley Fairies appeared in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked.

FBI Secrets

COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) (1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to “increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections” inside the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In the year I was born, 1971, A shadowy group of people decided they needed to begin an investigation of the FBI, something that just needed to be done because nobody else was doing it. And they decided to do this with a burglary and expose the FBI. This particular podcast has a mention of an inclusive interview given to the Catholic Bard about his JAM W.

First Time in TV and the Movies

February 16– Only a little more than four months after the release of the 70 mm version of Oklahoma!, the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s Carousel, starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, is released in CinemaScope 55. MacRae and Jones had previously starred in Oklahoma! Carousel, intended for showing in 55 mm, ends up being shown only in 35 mm.

On March 11,1959 , after having opened in London the previous year, Laurence Olivier‘s film, Richard III, adapted from Shakespeare‘s play, has its U.S. premiere in theatres and on NBC-TV on the same day. On television it is not shown in prime time, but as an afternoon matinée, in a slightly cut version. It is one of the first such experiments of its kind. Olivier is later nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

On November 3, 1956,MGM’s film The Wizard of Oz is the first major Hollywood film running more than 90 minutes to be televised uncut in one evening, in the United States. It is one of the true classics in which causes one to ponder and think of such questions such as If you baptize the Wicked Witch of the West with water, is it an act of charity or an act of murder?

Flat Earth

The International Flat Earth Society was formally founded in 1956 by Samuel Shenton, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Geographic Society.

Jesus Birth with Ronald Regan

Video footage of the live G.E. Theater production of “A Child is Born” composed (and conducted) by Bernard Herrmann. It is adapted from a play by Stephen Vincent Benet. Ronald Reagan is the host. December 23, 1956. Bernard Herrmann’s “A Child Is Born” – YouTube

The Knights

The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem  commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller , the Knights of Rhodes, the Knights of Malta, or the Order of Saint John or even the Knights of St. John (by the Maltese populace), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order like their rival order, The Knights Templar. They both became the most formidable military orders in the Holy Land back in the 12^th Century. One of the children of the  KH is The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, better known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM).  It is a Catholic lay religious order and the world’s oldest surviving order of chivalry. Its sovereign status is recognized by membership in numerous international bodies and observer status at the United Nations and others. The large passage fees collected by the American Association of SMOM in the early 1950s may well have tempted Charles Pichel to create his own “Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller” in 1956.

 

Martyrs for the Faith

January 8, 1956 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are killed for trespassing by the Huaorani people of Ecuador, shortly after making contact with them. Learn more about these 5 martyrs @ Jim Elliot, US, Missionary | 365 Christian Men

Reincarnation

The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956) by Morey Bernstein is published. It is the Reincarnation  tale of Bridey Murphy, the Irish woman who spoke of her past life hypnotized.
Does the book give good evidence for reincarnation?

Science Fiction Standouts 1956

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, (1956) starring Hugh Marlowe

Forbidden Planet (1956) is released.

“A Gun for Dinosaur” by L. Sprague de Camp is published in  Galaxy, Mar 1956

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is released.

The Last Question :Are you familiar with Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Last Question”? How do you understand the final sentence with in the whole of the story? And what was the message Isaac was trying to convey?

You can read the story and find out for yourself.  It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). It was Asimov’s favorite short story of his own authorship,  and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy.

Andre Norton‘s The Crossroads of Time (1956) by Andre Norton is published.  The story takes its protagonist through several versions of Earth as it might have been if history had gone a little differently. The book has been translated into Spanish, Italian, and German. Tacitly postulating a kind of two-dimensional time, Norton anticipated Hugh Everett III’s many-worlds interpretation of the quantum theory by one year. She called it the “possible worlds” theory of history.

Hugo Award Best Novel: Double Star(1956) by  Robert A. Heinlein,

 Titanic Fever

The mid-1950s is generally considered to represent the second wave of Titanic fever. In the midst of the cold war—when there was a perceived threat that, at any moment, the world could end in nuclear Armageddon—the Titanic represented a containable, understandable tragedy. In the creation of the Titanic myth there were two defining moments,” wrote one commentator, “1912, of course, and 1955.” The publication of A Night to Remember—together with its serialization in the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal in November 1955—had an immediate effect on the remaining survivors, almost as if the Titanic had been raised from the murky depths of their collective consciousness.
Why the Titanic Still Fascinates Us | History | Smithsonian Magazine

The book became an American television play broadcast live on March 28, 1956, as part of the NBC television series, Kraft Television Theatre. In 1958 it was made into a theatrical feature. The movie Titanic came out in 1953. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and was nominated for the Best Art Direction. The film was also nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award. James Cameron  (born August 16, 1954) directed the 1997 version of Titanic.

Learn more about the Titanic @ Titanic: Voyage To The Past : NPR

 

Additional 1956 Trivia

• February 11– British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean resurface in the Soviet Union, after being missing for 5 years.
• February 22– Elvis Presley enters the United States music charts for the first time, with “Heartbreak Hotel“.
• March 23– Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, and a national holiday is observed in the country, including the state of East Pakistan.
• August 6 – After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network airs its final broadcast, an episode of its sports series Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena.
• August 12 – Around 5,000 members of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church hold a mass outside Cluj-Napoca Piarists’ Church to demonstrate that their church, proscribed by the government in 1948, has not ceased to exist as the regime claims.
• April 14– Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB (modern-day NAB) convention in Chicago by Ampex. It is the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2″ Quadruplex
• May 2-The United Methodist Church in America decides, at its General Conference, to grant women full ordained clergy status. It also calls for an end to racial segregation in the denomination.
• December 4 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio, for the first and last time in history.
• Yahtzee is first released.
• White Out  was invented by Betty Nesmith Graham the mother of Michael Nesmith of the music group the Monkees.

Some more notable births and deaths

Births
Mel Gibson Born on January 3,1956
Tom Hanks, Born on July 9, 1956
Danny Boyle born on October 20, 1956

Deaths
Fred Allen, (May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956) Learn more about Fred @ Fred Allen (sqpn.com)
Robert Newton, (June 1, 1905 – 25 March 25, 1956)
A. A. Milne, (January 18, 1882 –January 31, 1956)

1957

Alien Implants

Alien implants is a term used in Ufology to describe a physical object placed in someone’s body after they have been abducted by aliens. Claimed abilities of the implants range from telepresence to mind control to biotelemetry (the latter akin to humans tagging wild animals for study). As with UFO subjects in general, the idea of “alien implants” has seen very little attention from mainstream scientists because of a lack of verifiable evidence. The March 1957 edition of the Long John Nebel radio show featured John Robinson, a sidekick of Jim Moseley reporting a dramatically spooky, if not very plausible, abduction tale. It is in this unlikely tale that we first encounter the implants (behind the ears, as in Invasion of the Martians) and other abductionist staples such as the paralyzing rods and the doorway amnesia.

The Apalachin Meeting

The Apalachin meeting was a historic summit of the American Mafia held at the home of mobster Joseph “Joe the Barber” Barbara, at 625 McFall Road in Apalachin, New York, on November 14, 1957. Allegedly, the meeting was held to discuss various topics including loansharking, narcotics trafficking, and gambling, along with dividing the illegal operations controlled by the recently murdered Albert Anastasia. An estimated 100 Mafiosi from the United States, Italy, and Cuba are thought to have attended this meeting.  Immediately after the Anastasia murder that October, and after taking control of the Luciano crime family, renamed the Genovese crime family, from Frank Costello, Vito Genovese wanted to legitimize his new power by holding a national Cosa Nostra meeting.

Local and state law enforcement became suspicious when numerous expensive cars bearing license plates from around the country arrived in what was described as “the sleepy hamlet of Apalachin”.  After setting up roadblocks, the police raided the meeting, causing many of the participants to flee into the woods and area surrounding the Barbara estate.

More than 60 underworld bosses were detained and indicted following the raid.

Learn more about the AM @ What Happened at The Apalachin Meeting in 1957?

Aryan Nations

Ruby Ridge was the site of an 11-day siege in 1992 in Boundary County, Idaho, near Naples. It began on August 21, when deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) initiated action to apprehend and arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant after his failure to appear on firearms charges.

In 1984, Randy Weaver and his neighbor Terry Kinnison had a dispute over a $3,000 land deal. Kinnison lost the ensuing lawsuit and was ordered to pay Weaver an additional $2,100 in court costs and damages. Kinnison wrote letters to the FBI, Secret Service, and county sheriff alleging Weaver had threatened to kill Pope John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan, and Idaho Governor John V. Evans.

In January 1985, the FBI and Secret Service began an investigation of allegations that Weaver had made threats against Reagan and other government and law enforcement officials.  On February 12, Randy and Vicki Weaver were interviewed by two FBI agents, two Secret Service agents, and the Boundary County sheriff and his chief investigator. The Secret Service had been told that Weaver was a member of the white supremacist group Aryan Nations and that he had a large weapons cache at his residence. Weaver denied these allegations, and the government filed no charges.  On three or four occasions, the Weavers had attended Aryan Nations meetings at Hayden Lake, where there was a compound for government resisters and white separatists

The beliefs of Aryan Nations are based on the teachings of Wesley A. Swift, a leading figure in the early Christian Identity movement. Swift combined British Israelism, extreme antisemitism, and political militancy. He founded his own church in California in the mid-1940s. He hosted a daily radio broadcast in California during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1957, the name of his church was changed to the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, which continues to be used by Aryan Nations churches.

Bed-Knob and Broomstick

Bed-Knob and Broomstick (1957) omnibus is released. Just like the Randonautica phone app promises to take you on a magical, mystery journey in reality, This omnibus collection of the two books by Mary Norton takes you on journey in your imagination.

Betty and Barney Hill UFO Encounter

Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple who claimed they were abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of the state of New Hampshire from September 19 to 20, 1961. It was the first widely publicized report of an alien abduction in the United States. They were driving a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air when the abduction supposedly took place.

The Boy in the Box

The “Boy in the Box” is the name given to an unidentified murder victim, a 4-to 6-year-old boy, whose naked, battered body was found in a bassinet box in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 25, 1957. He is also commonly called “America’s Unknown Child.” His identity has never been discovered, and the case remains open. Learn more the BITB @ Boy in the Box | Thinking Sideways Podcast

Brazilian UFO’s

When strange objects appeared over Colares, Brazil in 1977, locals were terrified as light rays from the UFOs struck and injured people on the ground and some even died. But this is not the first Brazilian UFO encounter. On the evening of November 4, 1957, two sentinels at the Itaipu Fort, (Praia Grande, São Paulo) suffered moderate burns after being hit by a heat wave from an unidentified flying object, which allegedly came descending from the sky. The entire electricity of the fort, including the emergency circuits, went down during the incident. Afterwards, Brazilian Army and United States Air Force (USAF) personnel, along with investigators of the Brazilian Air Force, flew to the fort to interview the soldiers.

In a neighboring South American country are the equally mysterious Nazca Lines  which are a group of very large geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru.

Carlos Castaneda: Godfather of the New Age (Death Cult?)

In the late 1960s, Carlos Castaneda claimed to reveal the drug-fueled, mystical teachings of a Native American sorcerer, launching the New Age movement. Castaneda moved to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized citizen on June 21, 1957.

Coldest Cold Case

Maria Ridulph was 7 when she was kidnapped from a street corner in Sycamore, Illinois, on December 3, 1957. Her murder went unsolved for half a century. Taken: The coldest case ever solved – CNN.com

 

Crystal Skull Found

Archaeologist Dr. Henry Jones discovers the legendary Crystal Skull. It was sought after by the Soviet Union because it was believed that the crystal skull belonged to an alien life form that holds great psychic power. Finding more skulls in Akator will grant the Soviet Union the ability to control the world via telepathy. Dr. Jones is the same guy who found the The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail .  He also uncovered  the India based Thuggee cult who worships Kali with human sacrifice, and freed the kidnapped children being held captive as slaves by them who were from nearby village.

Death at the National Hotel!

1957 marks the 100^th Anniversary of the National Hotel Deaths in Washington D.C. A mysterious sickness which afflicted persons who stayed at the National Hotel, began in early January 1857. At the time, the hotel was the largest in the city. By some accounts, as many as 400 people became sick and nearly three dozen died.

Although there was speculation of an attempt to poison hotel guests, this theory was not proven. The outbreak affected mostly patrons of the hotel’s dining room and not those who frequented the bar.  It began to spread more noticeably by the middle of January 1857. New cases of the illness began to decrease in number by the end of January 1857 and continued to abate until the middle of February. When the numbers of guests increased for the presidential inauguration of March 4, 1857, the sickness returned again forcefully. 21st-century medical experts attribute the outbreak to “dysentery because of the hotel’s primitive sewage system

The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa took over the presidency of the Teamsters in 1957, at the convention in Miami Beach, Florida.  His predecessor, Beck, had appeared before the John L. McClellan-led US Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor or Management Field in March 1957 and took the Fifth Amendment 140 times in response to questions. Beck was under indictment when the IBT convention took place and was convicted and imprisoned in a trial for fraud held in Seattle.Hoffa had first faced major criminal investigations in 1957, as a result of the McClellan Committee. On March 14, 1957, Hoffa was arrested for allegedly trying to bribe an aide to the Select Committee.    Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975. He is believed to have been murdered by the Mafia and was declared legally dead in 1982. Hoffa’s legacy continues to stir debate

The Disappearance of The Eilean Mòr Lighthouse Keepers

Flannan Isles Lighthouse is a lighthouse near the highest point on Eilean Mòr, one of the Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of mainland Scotland. It is best known for the mysterious disappearance of its keepers in 1900. One theory about the disappearance  is based on the first-hand experiences of Walter Aldebert, a keeper on the Flannans from 1953 to 1957. He believed one man may have been washed into the sea but then his companions, who were trying to rescue him, were washed away by more freak waves. Learn more about the EMLK @ Eilean Mor: The Missing Lighthouse Keepers – The Dark Histories Podcast

Fake Secret Government Space Prom.

Alternative 3 is a television program , broadcast once only in the United Kingdom in 1977, and later broadcast in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles’ radio production of The War of the Worlds. In the Show it was claimed that scientists had determined that the Earth’s surface would be unable to support life for much longer, due to pollution leading to catastrophic climate change. Physicist “Dr Carl Gerstein” (played by Richard Marner) claimed to have proposed in 1957 that there were three alternatives to this problem. The first alternative was the drastic reduction of the human population on Earth. The second alternative was the construction of vast underground shelters to house government officials and a cross section of the population until the climate had stabilised, a solution reminiscent of the finale of Dr Strangelove. The third alternative, the so-called “Alternative 3”, was to populate Mars via a way station on the Moon. This is part of the Fake Secret Government Space Program.

First Contact

Humanity’s first contact with an alien culture was  on  April 5, 2063 in the Bozeman, Montana, USA Vulcan race. But contrary to human belief  the first contact between humans and Vulcans occurred in 1957, when a Vulcan craft  crash-lands in Pennsylvania. The crew successfully integrate themselves in to 1950’s American life. The  Vulcan crew did witness the launch of Sputnik, the planet’s first artificial satellite.

The Vulcans landing had an effect on these indiviuals lives.

Jonathan Frakes, born on August 19, 1952)
Michael Dorn born on December 9, 1952)
Dr. Samuel Beckett  born on August 8, 1953 or October 9, 1954, and would grow up to become a very unique form of time traveler.
Whoopi Goldberg, born on November 13, 1955
LeVar Burton born on February 16, 1957

Giant Robot Crashes to Earth

During the Cold War, shortly after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in October 1957, an object from space crashes in the ocean just off the coast of Maine and then enters the forest near the town of Rockwell. The following night, nine-year-old Hogarth Hughes investigates and finds the object, a 50-foot tall alien robot attempting to eat the transmission lines of an electrical substation. Hogarth eventually befriends the Giant, finding him docile and curious.

 

Homer Hickam’s Rocket

In October 1957, news of the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1 reaches the town of Coalwood, West Virginia, where most male residents work in the coal mines. As the townspeople gather outside to see the satellite orbit across the sky, Homer Hickam is inspired to build his own rockets to escape the tedium of Coalwood. His family and classmates do not respond kindly, especially his father John, the mine superintendent, who wants Homer to join him in the mines.
Learn more about HH @ Homer Hickam: The Rocket Boys

 

Killer Bees Escape

The Africanized bee, also known as the Africanized honey bee and known colloquially as the “killer bee“, is a hybrid of the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), produced originally by crossbreeding of the East African lowland honey bee (A. m. scutellata) with various European honey bee subspecies such as the Italian honey bee (A. m. ligustica) and the Iberian honey bee (A. m. iberiensis).

The East African lowland honey bee was first introduced to Brazil in 1956 in an effort to increase honey production, but 26 swarms escaped quarantine in 1957. Since then, the hybrid has spread throughout South America and arrived in North America in 1985. Hives were found in south Texas in the United States in 1990. Learn more about Killer Bees @ Killer Bees! | National Geographic

Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

When integration began on September 4, 1957, the Arkansas National Guard was called in to “preserve the peace”. Originally at orders of the governor, they were meant to prevent the black students from entering due to claims that there was “imminent danger of tumult, riot and breach of peace” at the integration. However, President Eisenhower issued Executive order 10730, which federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them to support the integration on September 23 of that year, after which they protected the African American students. Learn more about the LRN @ The Little Rock Nine Come Face-To-Face With Their Tormentors | The Oprah Winfrey Show | OWN

Mad Bomber

The New York City “Mad Bomber”, George P. Metesky, was arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut, in  January 1957  and charged with planting more than 30 bombs.
Learn more about the MB @ A 16-Year Hunt For New York’s ‘Mad Bomber’ : NPR

The Pollock Twins

6 year-old Jacqueline and 11 year-old Joanna Pollock were killed  by a suicidal driver on May 5, 1957.  On October 4, 1958 the sisters parents John and Florence Pollock, had  twins who ended up having a lot of similarties to their two deceased daughters. Although the parents were both Catholic John thought his daugters had been reincarnated. Learn more about the twins @ Episode 142: Reflections — Lore (lorepodcast.com)

Science Fiction Standouts 1957

Big Planet (1957) by  Jack Vance

Dandelion Wine (1957)   by Ray Bradbury

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) by Robert A. Heinlein

The Door Into Summer (1957) by Robert A. Heinlein

“Double Indemnity” by Robert Sheckley is published in Galaxy, Oct 1957

How did the animals get to places like Australia after the Great Flood? How did they get to another planet? Earthman’s Burden is by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson (1957) can help with the question. It is a collection of stories involving a teddy bear-like alien race known as Hokas, and spoof a variety of fictional genres. The fact that Hokas resemble Teddy Bears reminds one that Teddy Bears resemble real bears but are not real bears. Just like Koala’s resemble real bears but are not actually real bears. And just like Australasian Drop Bears resemble Koala’s but are not real Koalas.

I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) starring Michael ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Landon was released. Learn More about Werewolfs @ REMASTERED – Episode 3: The Beast Within — Lore (lorepodcast.com)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) Movie

Hugo Award Best Novel: None

Skinwalker Ranch Owner

On Sunday May 12, 1957 Robert Thomas Bigelow turned 12. He decided that his future lay in space travel, despite his limitations in mathematics, and he resolved to choose a career that would make him rich enough that, one day, he could hire the scientific expertise required to launch his own space program. In 1995, Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Science to research and advance study of various fringe sciences and paranormal topics, most notably ufology. In 1996, Bigelow purchased Skinwalker Ranch, a 480-acre cattle ranch located in Utah that some believe is the site of an interdimensional doorway used by alien shape-shifters. It  has been referred to as the UFO Alley since the early 1950s. Bigelow founded The National Institute for Discovery Science, which operated from 1995 to 2004. They studied Skin walker’s study anecdotal sightings of UFOs, bigfoot-like creatures, crop circles, glowing orbs and poltergeist activity reported by its former owners.

The Sky at Night

The Sky at Night is a monthly documentary television programme on astronomy produced by the BBC. The show had the same permanent presenter, Patrick Moore, from its first broadcast on  April 24, 1957 until January 7, 2013.

Soviet Missile

Before the Soviets built a doomsday machine, The Soviet Union announced on August 26, 1957, the first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range, and successfully launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit on October 4.

For the next four years, Premier Nikita Khrushchev misled the West with claims that the Soviet Union was turning out missiles “like sausages,” that super-missiles were in “serial production” and “mass production.”
-David E. Hoffman The Dead Hand.

Learn more about the SUIBM @ Sputnik – 60 years on from the Start of the Space Race

Space Race

As Russia launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit, beginning the space age in October 1957, the US launches its first satellite, Explorer 1, four months later. Learn more about the Space Race @ The Space Race (1955-1975)

Steven Spielberg’s First Movies

Steven’s first 8mm amateur film: In The Last Train Wreck (3 minutes, silent) he meticulously stages a train wreck sequence – inspired by Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – by using his toy Lionel trains. Since he does not own an editing machine, 10-year-old Steven shoots all his takes in chronological order (In-Camera Editing), a technique that he will continue to apply as a professional director.

 

Transhumanism

The term “transhumanism” was coined by Brave New World Writer Aldous Huxley’s brother, the evolutionary biologist and First Director-General of UNESCO, Julian Huxley (1887–1975):

“I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.” (“Transhumanism.” Julian Huxley. In New Bottles for New Wine, pp 13-17.London: Chatto & Windus, 1957).

The Third Secret of Fatima

The third part of the secret of Fatima was written down “by order of His Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and the Most Holy Mother” on 3 January 1944. In June 1944, the sealed envelope containing the third secret was delivered to Silva, where it stayed until 1957, when it was finally delivered to Rome.

In early September 2007, archbishop Loris Francesco Capovilla, private secretary to Pope John XXIII, who witnessed Pope John open the envelope of the third secret, said there was no truth in the rumor that the Vatican was suppressing a vision of the end of the world.

“There are not two truths from Fatima and nor is there any fourth secret. The text which I read in 1959 is the same that was distributed by the Vatican.” Capovilla is also quoted as saying “I have had enough of these conspiracy theories. It just isn’t true. I read it, I presented it to the Pope and we resealed the envelope.

Woody’s Roundup

A children’s puppet show that ran from   1949–1957.  It gained a great deal of popularity, especially for its lead character, Sheriff Woody. However, the show was prematurely canceled after the launch of Sputnik 1.

Woody Woodpecker

Woody Woodpecker cartoons were first broadcast on television in 1957 under the title The Woody Woodpecker Show, which featured Lantz cartoons bookended by new footage of Woody and live-action footage of Lantz.

 

Additional 1957 Trivia

• January 3– Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
• January 4– After 69 years, the last issue of Collier’s Weekly magazine is published in the United States.
• January 13– Wham-O Company produces the first Frisbee.
• January 23– Ku Klux Klan members force African-American truck driver Willie Edwards to jump off a bridge, into the Alabama River; he drowns as a result.
•  February – 1957–58 influenza pandemic (also called “Asian flu”): Influenza A virus subtype H2N2, first identified in Guizhou province of China, spreads to Singapore. It reaches Hong Kong by April and the United States by June, killing at least 1 million people worldwide
• March 8– Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal.
• July 6– John Lennon and Paul McCartney first meet as teenagers at a garden fete at  Peter’s Church, Woolton, Liverpool, England, at which Lennon’s skiffle group, The Quarrymen, is playing, 3 years before forming The Beatles.
• October 25– Mafia boss Albert Anastasia is assassinated in a barber shop, at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City.
• December 6– The first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite fails, when the Vanguard rocket blows up on the launch pad.
• December 19– Meredith Willson‘s classic musical The Music Man, starring Robert Preston, debuts on Broadway.

Some more notable births and deaths

Births
John Lasseter born on January 12, 1957
Singer Michael Card Born on April 11, 1957
Hans Zimmer Born on September 12, 1957
Brad Bird born on September 24, 1957
Singer Michael W. Smith Born on October 7, 1957
Dr. Scott Hahn born on October 28, 1957

Deaths
Humphrey Bogart, (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957)
James Whale, (July 22, 1889 – May 29, 1957) , British director, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man
Oliver Hardy, (January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957)
Louis B. Mayer, (July 12, 1884 – October 29, 1957)
Solanus Casey (November 25, 1870 – July 31, 1957)

1958

 

Amelia Earhart Airport

Amelia Earhart Airport (1958) located in Atchison, Kansas opens.

Bigfoot

In 1958, Jerry Crew, a logging company bulldozer operator in Humboldt County, California, discovered a set of large, 410 millimetres (16 in) human-like footprints sunk deep within the mud in the Six Rivers National Forest near the Trinity River. Upon informing his coworkers, many claimed to have seen similar tracks on previous job sites as well as telling of odd incidents such as an oil drum weighing 450 pounds (200 kg) having been moved without explanation. The logging company men soon began utilizing the term “Big Foot” to describe the mysterious culprit who had apparently left the prints and moved their equipment; causing a sense of paranoia among the workers. This story was told to newspaper reporters and made the front page of the newspaper on October 6th, 1958.As a result, the term “Bigfoot” became widespread as a reference to an apparently large, unknown creature leaving massive footprints in Northern California. Willow Creek and Humboldt County are considered by some to be the “Bigfoot Capital of the World”. 

The Business Plot of 1934

The Business Plot (also called the Wall Street Putsch  and The White House Putsch) was a political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a dictator.  Retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler testified that Gerald C. MacGuire attempted to recruit him to lead a coup, promising him an army of 500,000 men for a march on Washington, D.C., and financial backing. Butler testified that the pretext for the coup would be that the president’s health was failing. ,Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. said in 1958 of the plot, “Most people agreed with Mayor La Guardia of New York in dismissing it as a ‘cocktail putsch'”.   In Schlesinger’s summation of the affair in 1958, “No doubt, MacGuire did have some wild scheme in mind, though the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable, and it can hardly be supposed that the Republic was in much danger.”

Children of Thalidomide:

Many pregnant women taking the drug Thalidomide had children born with congenital birth defects. Learn more about the COT @ The Shadow of the Thalidomide Tragedy | Retro Report | The New York Times

Doorway to 1958

In June 2011, a man named Jake stops by a local diner and speaks with the proprietor, Al Templeton, who asks Jake to meet him at his diner the next day. When Jake arrives, he is shocked to see that Al seems to have aged years since the previous day. Al explains that he is dying and that his appearance is attributable to his having time traveled and lived for years in the past. Al’s method of time travel is a time portal he discovered in his diner’s pantry, which he used to transport himself to 1958. Doubting Al’s story at first, Jake travels through the portal, where he encounters an addled wino whom Al has dubbed the “Yellow Card Man” due to the color of a card on the man’s hat. Jake spends an hour in 1958 before returning to the present, after which Al explains that he’s figured out the basics of how the portal functions:

• Every journey through the portal transports the traveler to September 9, 1958, at 11:58 a.m.
• No matter how long someone stays in the past—hours, days, weeks, or years—only two minutes have elapsed when they return to 2011.
• Past events can be changed; however, subsequent use of the portal “resets” the timeline and nullifies all changes made on the previous excursion.
• The “obdurate” past throws up obstacles to prevent history from being changed. Such resistance is proportional to the magnitude of the change.

Learn more about this doorway to 1958 @ Perri Nemiroff

First Video Game

In 1958, a computer game called “Tennis for Two” was created by Willy Higginbotham which simulated a tennis game between two players who could both play at the same time using hand controls and was displayed on an oscilloscope. This was one of the first electronic video games to use a graphical display.

Easter Island

Aku-Aku; The 1958 Expedition to Easter Island. (1958) by Thor Heyerdahl is published.

Easter Island  is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.

Learn more about EI @ Scientists Finally Discovered the Truth About Easter Island

The Fuenta Magna

The Fuenta Magna is a large stone vessel, resembling a libation bowl, that was found in 1958 near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. It features beautifully engraved anthropomorphic characters, zoological motifs characteristic of the local culture, and, more surprisingly, two types of scripts —a proto-Sumerian ancient alphabet and a local language of the ancient Pukara, forerunner of the Tiahuanaco civilization. Often referred to as “the Rosetta Stone of the Americas,” the stone vessel is one of the most controversial artifacts in South America as it raises questions about whether there may have been a connection between the Sumerians and the ancient inhabitants of the Andes, located thousands of miles away.

Learn more about the FM and other related things @ 12 Most Incredible Discovered Artifacts Scientists Still Can’t Explain

Hope Diamond Curse

The Hope Diamond is one of the most famous jewels in the world, with ownership records dating back almost four centuries. Its much-admired rare blue color is due to trace amounts of boron atoms. Weighing 45.52 carats, its exceptional size has revealed new findings about the formation of diamonds. After going through numerous owners, it was sold to Washington socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean, who was often seen wearing it. It was purchased in 1949 by New York gem merchant Harry Winston, who toured it for a number of years before giving it to the National Museum of Natural History of the United States in 1958, where it has since remained on permanent exhibition. The diamond has been surrounded by a mythology of a reputed “curse“ to the effect that it brings misfortune and tragedy to persons who own it or wear it.  According to specious accounts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the original form of the Hope Diamond was stolen from an eye of a sculpted statue of the goddess Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh Avatar of Vishnu. A report in 2006 in The New York Times, however, suggested that “any hard evidence linking it to tragedy has yet to be officially proven.

Learn more about the Hope Diamond @ Ep. 1 | The Curse of the Hope Diamond| Smithsonian Institution (si.edu)

Living Like It’s 1958 in 2019

The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold

The 1958 film The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels refers to the Seven Cities of Gold several times in this movie. The Lone Ranger and Tonto investigate the brutal murders of three Native Americans who each possessed a silver medallion. The silver medallions together created a treasure map giving the location of one of the Seven Cities of Gold. At the end of the movie, the Lone Ranger and Tonto do find the City of Gold in a cavern, but they turn it over to a doctor, a priest, and the local Native Americans so they can build a hospital.

Lost Gospel

Morton Smith (May 28, 1915 – July 11, 1991) was an American professor of ancient history at Columbia University. He is best known for his reported discovery of the Mar Saba letter, a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria containing excerpts from a Secret Lost Gospel of Mark, during a visit to the monastery at Mar Saba in 1958. This letter fragment has had many names, from The Secret Gospel through The Mar Saba Fragment and the Theodoros.

Mark P. Shea

Mark P. Shea is born on August 5, 1958. He is an best selling American author, blogger, and speaker working in the field of Roman Catholic apologetics. He is a very big super Jimmy Akin fan.

Reader: Jimmy, if teleportation is ever invented, then would a teleported Eucharist still be the body of Christ?

Jimmy Akin: Depends on the type of teleportation. If it’s non-destructive teleportation then definitely yes. If it’s destructive teleportation then presumably no.

****

Moses Book

Moses, Prince of Egypt (1958) A novel by Howard Fast is published.

NASA

As far as the general public are concerned, the American space program is run by NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was signed into existence by Dwight D Eisenhower in 1958. NASA was primarily a civilian organization built upon earlier military space programs. It was newly created by the United States to catch up with Soviet space technologies.It absorbs all research centers and staffs of the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), an organization founded in 1915. Learn more about NASA @ A Brief History of NASA

Papal Transfer

Ven. Pius XII (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958) was to be buried in the crypt of Saint Peter’s Basilica on the last day Our Lady of Fatima appeared to the young seers in Fatima, on October 13, 1958. Pope John XXIII was elected Pope on October 28, 1958.

Pashtuns

Pashtuns historically known as Afghans are an Iranian ethnic group native to Central and South Asia. There is a tradition among the Pashtuns of being descended from the exiled lost tribes of Israel. The traditions surrounding the Pashtuns being remote descendants of the “Lost Tribes of Israel” is to be distinguished from the historical presence of the Jewish community in eastern Afghanistan which flourished from about the 7th century to the early 20th century, but has essentially disappeared due to its emigration to Israel since the 1950s. Pashto is the mother tongue of Pashtuns. The first Pashto alphabet was developed by Pir Roshan in the 16th century.  In 1958, a meeting of Pashtun scholars and writers from both Afghanistan and Pakistan, held in Kabul, standardized the present Pashto alphabet.

The Phaistos Disc

The Phaistos Disc  is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium B.C.). The disk is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and its original place of manufacture remain disputed. It is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion.

The disc was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, and features 241 tokens, comprising 45 distinct signs, which were apparently made by pressing hieroglyphic “seals” into a disc of soft clay, in a clockwise sequence spiraling toward the center of the disk.

A sealing found in 1955 shows the only known parallel to sign 21 (the “comb”) of the Phaistos disc. 

Learn more about the PD @ Decrypting the Phaistos Disk: Gareth Owens at TEDxHeraklion

Our Lady of Lourdes

St. Bernadette is best known for experiencing Private Marian apparitions of a “young lady” who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto at Massabielle in Lourdes France. These apparitions are said to have occurred between February 11 and July 16, 1858, and the woman who appeared to her identified herself as the “Immaculate Conception.” 1958 marks the 100-year anniversary of the event.

Oak Island Mystery

The Oak Island Mystery (1958) Reginald Vanderbilt Harris (1881–1986) is published. The Oak Island Mystery refers to stories of buried treasure and unexplained objects found on or near Oak Island in Nova Scotia. Since the 18th century, a number of attempts have been made to locate treasure and artifacts. Theories about artifacts present on the island range from pirate treasure, to Shakespearean manuscripts, to possibly the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant, with the Grail and the Ark having been buried there by the Knights Templar.

Quiz Show Scandals

The American quiz show scandals of the 1950s were a series of revelations that contestants of several popular television quiz shows were secretly given assistance by show producers, to prearrange the outcome of ostensibly fair competitions. The 1950s quiz show scandals were driven by a variety of reasons, including greed, willing contestants, and the lack of regulations prohibiting such conspiracy in game show productions.

Some of the Winners to achieving a scandal status were…

• Dotto(August 15, 1958)
• The $64,000 Challenge(September 7) 
• Twenty-One(October 16)
• The $64,000 Question(November 2) 
• Tic-Tac-Dough,primetime edition (December 29)
• For Love or Money(January 30, 1959) 

Learn more about the Quiz Show Scandals @ Quiz Show Scandal – Decades TV Network

Rennes-le-Château

Noël Corbu (April 27, 1912 – May 20, 1968) is best known as a former restaurateur in the Southern French village of Rennes-le-Château who, between 1955 and 1962 circulated the story that the 19th-century French priest Bérenger Saunière discovered the treasure of Blanche of Castile.

Corbu’s story inspired author Robert Charroux to develop an active interest and in 1958, with his wife Yvette and other members of The Treasure Seekers’ Club (that he founded in 1951), scanned the village of Rennes-le-Château and its church dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene for treasure using a metal detector. The Dowsing-by-Pendulum enthusiast and hypnotist Rolland Domergue, with medium Germaine Goyard, joined Corbu in 1958 to look for the treasure, and thus began the extensive accumulation of pilgrimages to the site by many various people from all over France, that on 28 July 1965 forced the local Municipal council to introduce a local By-law prohibiting excavations in the village.

The village received up to 100,000 tourists each year at the height of popularity of Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code The modern reputation of Rennes-le-Château rests mainly in claims and stories, dating from the mid-1950s, concerning the 19th-century parish priest Bérenger Saunière, leading researchers Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln to write The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which became a bestseller in 1982; their work in turn fueled the premise of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003.

Rosslyn Chapel, formerly known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, is a 15th-century chapel located in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland. Since the late 1980s, the chapel has been the subject of speculative theories concerning a connection with the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail, and Freemasonry. It was prominently featured in this role in Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) and its 2006 film adaptation. Medieval historians say these accounts have no basis in fact.

Learn more about Rennes-le-Chateau @ This Youtube Playlist

Science Fiction Standouts 1958

Aliens and Religion: Did Jesus die to save extraterrestrials, too? A Case of Conscience is a science fiction novel by American writer James Blish, that combines Aliens and Religion. It is the story of a Jesuit who investigates an alien race that has no religion yet has a perfect, innate sense of morality, a situation which conflicts with Catholic teaching.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (!958) is released.

The Blob (1958) is released.

The Fly (1958) is released.

The Men Who Murdered Mohammed (1958) by Alfred Bester is published.
A professor travels back in time and kills his wife’s grandfather so that his wife will never have existed. However, the results confound him.

Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958) by Philippa Pearce is published.
In this children’s novel, a boy is living in medical quarantine in a 1950s apartment building. He finds himself in the building’s garden of the 1880s and there is a girl there with whom he can play.

Time Travel Inc. by Robert F. Young found in Super-Science Fiction (February 1958). is published.
Did the two men who were crucified alongside Jesus also carry their crosses to Cavalry? Was Jesus the only one to do this? Well, In this tale two men find a way to travel back in time through a company called Time Travel Inc. You can read the whole story linked above for the little details of how time travel works in that story, but to sum it up shortly, their mind can transfer to a body that is similar to who they are now.  And SPOILERS they end up being significant characters in the crucifixion story.

The Lincoln Hunters by Wilson Tucker (1958) is published.

Hugo Award Best Novel: The Big Time (1958) by Fritz Leiber

The Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin, also known as the Holy Shroud  , is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man. Some claim the image depicts Jesus of Nazareth and the fabric is the burial shroud in which he was wrapped after crucifixion. In 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, and declared its feast to be celebrated every year the day before Ash Wednesday. Following the approval by Pope Pius XII, Catholic devotions to the Holy Face of Jesus have been almost exclusively associated with the image on the shroud.

Learn more about the Shroud @ 5 Mysteries About The Shroud Of Turin That Cannot Be Explained

Starkweather Homicide

Charles Raymond “Charlie” Starkweather (November 24, 1938 – June 25, 1959)  was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between December 1957 and January 1958, when he was 19 years old.  He killed ten of his victims between January 21 and January 29, 1958, the date of his arrest. During his spree in 1958, Starkweather was accompanied by his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate.

Both Starkweather and Fugate were convicted on charges for their parts in the homicides; Starkweather was sentenced to death and executed seventeen months after the events. Fugate served seventeen years in prison, gaining release in 1976. Starkweather’s execution by electric chair in 1959 was the last execution in Nebraska until 1994.

Learn more about SH @ Charles Starkweather | Crimes and Consequences Podcast | (tntcrimes.com)

Steven Spielberg Becomes a Boy Scout

Steven becomes a Boy Scout in 1958. In the assembly hall, he sees a painting by Norman Rockwell (Spirit of America). He is so impressed that he will acquire the original when he is a famous director.
The Rockwell painting Freedom from Fear (shown above) is used as a metaphor for lost childhood in Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987). In the prologue of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) young Indy, played by River Phoenix, is a Boy Scout.

It is as boy scout that he makes  his next film. The Last Gunfight is a 9-minute silent film – inspired by John Ford’s western movies – for which Steven gets the Boy Scouts photography merit badge.

“My dad’s still-camera was broken, so I asked the scoutmaster if I could tell a story with my father’s movie camera. He said yes, and I got an idea to do a Western. I made it and got my merit badge. That was how it all started.” For A Day in the Life of Thunder he ties a small camera vehicle to his Cocker Spaniel “Thunder” and lets the dog “direct” the film. Spielberg picks up this idea for the opening sequence of Poltergeist (1982).

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical Sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. William Gowland oversaw the first major restoration of the monument in 1901, which involved the straightening and concrete setting of sarsen stone number 56 which was in danger of falling. In straightening the stone he moved it about half a metre from its original position. In 1958 the stones were restored again, when three of the standing sarsens were re-erected and set in concrete bases. The last restoration was carried out in 1963 after stone 23 of the Sarsen Circle fell over. It was again re-erected, and the opportunity was taken to concrete three more stones. The Modern Day equivalent to the Stonehenge monument is The Georgia Guidestones which some have concluded have inscribed on them the 10 commandments of the Anti-Christ.

In Wiltshire England, where the first British crop circle appeared, is located near Stonehenge. It is a region rife with ancient burial mounds and marker stones. New Age types had long that claimed those landmarks were linked to others throughout Britain via “leys” – mysterious energy paths. For years, the region had also been a hotbed for UFO watch parties – England’s Roswell, if you would. So, it seemed apt that the first crop circles, or saucer nests, would appear in its vicinity.

It was not long before ridiculous theories combining Stonehenge, ancient Druids, mystic energy paths, and the recently revealed crop circles, were combined in a complex explanation for the phenomenon. The circles themselves became magnets for New Age mystical tourism. In reality, however, the crop circles had been the brainchild of Doug Bower, an English prankster. One night in 1976, he had been drinking with his friend Dave Chorley, and the two got to talking about UFOs, aliens, flying saucers and the mysterious Australian circles. Midway through the conversation, Bower suddenly said: “Let’s go over there and make it look like a flying saucer has landed“.Ridiculous Symbols, Beliefs, and Habits From History (historycollection.com)

Story of Smithfield

The story of Smithfield (Middleway), Jefferson County, West Virginia,  (January 1, 1958) is published.

The town has also been known as “Wizard Clip” or “Clip”, and townspeople as “Clippers”. This is the result of a legend from the 1790s, in which a traveler lodged with Adam Livingston and his family. During the night, the traveler died, calling for a priest, though Livingston refused to let a Catholic priest enter his home. After the stranger’s burial, Livingston saw various disturbing supernatural phenomena: heads and legs falling off chickens, all the crockery spontaneously falling to the floor, etc. The most common experience was a constant clipping sound, like that of scissors, pervaded the house, giving the legend its name. Anyone entering the house had their clothes cut into tatters or half-moon crescents. Livingston dreamed of a priest, and found in Shepherdstown Father Dennis Cahill, a Catholic priest who appeared in his dream. This priest exorcised the spirit and the family converted to Catholicism. Afterwards they would frequently hear a disembodied voice who provided advice, tell them to pray, and told them to be better Catholics.

Susuwatari from Japan

In 1958 Japan, university professor Tatsuo Kusakabe and his two daughters, Satsuki and Mei, move into an old house to be closer to the hospital where the girls’ mother, Yasuko, is recovering from a long-term illness. The house is inhabited by tiny creatures called susuwatari—small, dark, dust-like house spirits seen when moving from light to dark places.

Time Traveling for Milk Shakes

A Mysterious Time Traveler from another planet known as The Tenth Doctor previously visited the United States in 1958 when he took his former companion Martha Jones to Wisconsin in order to sample milkshakes. The stop was part of a larger hunt for the greatest milkshakes in the universe. (COMIC: Agent Provocateur)

Tiny Blue Creatures Discovered

A man named Peyo discovers a race of small blue humans who live like a villiage of communists with no females  and decides to write a comic book about them.

Tunguska

The Tunguska event was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908 (N. S.). The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history, though much larger impacts have occurred in prehistoric times. It has been mentioned numerous times in popular culture, and has also inspired real-world discussion of asteroid impact avoidance.

Most expeditions to Tunguska in the late 1950s and early 60s concentrated on finding the effects of radioactivity on the site. After the 1958 expedition, the Soviet Academy of Sciences decided against any new expedition, but to concentrate on the study of rock and soil samples already collected. This decision led to the formation of the Interdisciplinary Independent Tunguska Expedition (IITE, known as KSE in Russian). The KSE was formed in 1958 in the Siberian city of Tomsk, under the leadership of Gennady Plekhanov, a physician as well as an engineer at the Betatron Laboratory of the Tomsk Medical Institute. KSE was, in fact, formed to discount spaceship theories. The founders even jokingly suggested that ‘we must find a nozzle from the spaceship’. Radioactive Tunguska – Tunguska – Fossil Hunters

Additional 1958 Trivia

• January 4-Edmund Hillary‘s Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third overland journey to the South Pole, the first to use powered vehicles. 
• January 31– The first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, is launched into orbit.
• February 17– Pope Pius XII declares Saint Clare the patron saint of television.
• May 30 – The bodies of unidentified United States soldiers killed in action during World War II and the Korean War are buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns, in Arlington National Cemetery.
• June 15– Pizza Hut is founded by Dan and Frank Carney, in Wichita, Kansas.
• July– The plastic hula hoop is first marketed in the United States.
• Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel, “The Beast of Birkenshaw”, is hanged at Barlinnie Prisonin Glasgow, for the murder of 7 people.
• The Beatles, at this time known as The Quarrymen, pay 17 shillings and 6 pence to have their first recording session where they record Buddy Holly‘s “That’ll Be the Day” and “In Spite of All the Danger“, a song written by Paul McCartne yand George Harrison.
• November 20 – The Jim Henson Company is founded as Muppets, Inc. in the United States.
• Based on birth rates (per 1,000 population), the post-war baby boom ends in the United States as an 11-year decline in the birth rate begins (the longest on record in that country

Some more notable births and deaths

Births
Tim Burton, Born on August 25, 1958
Kevin Bacon Born on July 8, 1958
Michael Jackson, (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
Chris Columbus born on September 10, 1958,

Deaths
Henry Kuttner, (April 7, 1915 – February 3, 1958) American science fiction author
Ronald Colman, (February 9, 1891 – 19 May 19, 1958)

1959

Before James Bond

007 Sean Connery starred in director Robert Stevenson‘s Walt Disney Productions film Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)
A wily old codger matches wits with the King of the Leprechauns and helps play matchmaker for his daughter and the strapping lad who has replaced him as caretaker.

007 Roger Moore starred in  director Irving Rapper’s The Miracle (1959)
During the Napoleonic era, in Spain, a young postulant called Teresa falls in love with handsome British captain Michael Stuart, who is recovering with others of his regiment after being wounded. Before leaving, Michael asks Teresa to leave the convent and marry him. Devoted to the statue of the Virgin Mary, Teresa asks for a heavenly sign, but leaves when nothing happens. Then the statue of the Virgin descends from its pedestal and takes Teresa’s place, as the young woman joins a gypsy caravan believing Michael has been killed.—Albert Sanchez Moreno <a.moreno@mindspring.com> IMDB

Bishop Robert Barron

Bishop Robert Barron is born November 19, 1959. You can see his work at Word on Fire.

Bob Lazar and Area 51

Bob Lazar is born January 26, 1959. He  is an American conspiracy theorist who claims to have been hired in the late 1980s to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology at what he described as a secret site called “S-4”. Lazar alleges that this subsidiary installation is located several kilometres south of the United States Air Force facility popularly known as Area 51.

 

Clutter Family Murders

In the early morning hours of November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family – Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie, and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon – were murdered in their rural home, just outside the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. Two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death. Both Smith and Hickock were executed by the state of Kansas on the same day, April 14, 1965. The murders were detailed by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.  Learn more about the Clutter’s @ THE SOLVED CLUTTER FAMILY MURDERS | MIDWEEK MYSTERY

David Koresh

David Koresh (August 17, 1959 – April 19, 1993) is born. He grew up to be an American cult leader who played a central role in the Waco siege of 1993.  As the head of the Branch Davidians sect,  an offshoot of the Davidian Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Koresh claimed to be its final prophet.

The Day the Music Died

On February 3, 1959, American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, together with pilot Roger Peterson. The event later became known as “The Day the Music Died“, after singer-songwriter Don McLean referred to it as such in his 1971 song “American Pie“. It could have been Dion of Dion and the Belmonts on the plane instead, but Richie’ La Bamba’ Valens went on the plane instead.

Divine Mercy

On March 6, 1959  the Holy Office issues a notification banning Divine Mercy devotion. It was lifted on April 15, 1978 by the  Prefect of Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith  as it declared the Notification ban no longer binding. This is due in part to the influence of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow (Pope John Paul II) He also started the process of Beatification of Sr. Faustina  January 31, 1968.

Dead Mother’s Voice

In 1959, the Swedish film maker and painter Friedrich Jurgenson played back tapes of birdcalls he had recorded in a Swedish forest. To his astonishment, he heard what he believed to be his dead mother’s voice on the tape! This began a series of experiments to record spirit voices. Hundreds of voices have been heard on his tapes.

Dyatlov Pass

The Dyatlov Pass incident   was an event in which nine Russian hikers died in the northern Ural Mountains between February 1 and 2 1959, in uncertain circumstances. The experienced trekking group from the Ural Polytechnical Institute, led by Igor Dyatlov, had established a camp on the eastern slopes of Kholat Syakhl. During the night, something caused them to cut their way out of their tent and flee the campsite while inadequately dressed for the heavy snowfall and subzero temperatures. Learn More @ Episode 38: The Mountain — Lore (lorepodcast.com)/The Devil’s Pass/Why Can Nobody Solve the Mystery of Dyatlov Pass?/Return to Dyatlov Pass by J.H. Moncrieff

Golden State Killer

Joseph James DeAngelo was born on November 8, 1945, in Bath, New York, to Joseph James DeAngelo Sr., a sergeant in the United States Army, and Kathleen Louise DeGroat.  He has two younger sisters and a younger brother. A relative reported that when DeAngelo was a young child, he witnessed his seven-year-old sister’s rape by two airmen in a warehouse in West Germany, where the family was stationed at the time.  Following his conviction, one of DeAngelo’s sisters claimed that he was abused by their father while he was growing up.

Between 1959 and 1960, DeAngelo attended Mills Junior High School in Rancho Cordova, California. He grew up to be the Golden State Killer.

Hauntings

1959 is haunted.

The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. A finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the 20th century.

Learn more about HOHH @ A Good Story is Hard to Find: Good Story 071: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

 House on Haunted Hill is a 1959 American campy supernatural horror film directed by William Castle. The film was written by Robb White and stars Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart. Price plays an eccentric millionaire, Frederick Loren, who, along with his wife Annabelle, has invited five people to the house for a “haunted house” party. Whoever stays in the house for one night will earn $10,000. As the night progresses, the guests are trapped within the house with an assortment of terrors.

The film uses many props used in carnival haunted houses to generate fear and terror. The film is in the public domain.

Lee Harvey Oswald

Oswald (the man who killed JFK)  traveled to the Soviet Union just before he turned 20 in October 1959. JFK is assassinated November 22^nd, 1963. The same day as C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley. In 1982 Peter Kreeft publishes the first of his many dialog books, “Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, : The first of Dr. Kreeft’s many dialogue formats books.  In the book U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and authors C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) meet in Purgatory on the day that they all die . They engage in a philosophical discussion on faith, life and death. Doctor Who first appeared on BBC TV at 17:16:20 GMT on Saturday November 23, 1963; this was eighty seconds later than the scheduled programme time, because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy the previous day.

In 1964 a year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a list appeared in the mainstream media connecting U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. With some of connections such as…

• Both assassins, John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, were born in ’39 and were known by their three names, composed of fifteen letters. 
• Booth ran from Ford’s Theatre and was caught in a warehouse; Oswald ran from the Dealey Plaza warehouse and was caught in a theater
• Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Ford car: a Lincoln limousine.

Loch Ness Monster

The Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie  is a creature in Scottish folklore that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is often described as large, long-necked, and with one or more humps protruding from the water. Popular interest and belief in the creature has varied since it was brought to worldwide attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with a number of disputed photographs and sonar readings. In August 1933, Italian journalist Francesco Gasparini submitted what he said was the first news article on the Loch Ness Monster. In 1959, he reported sighting a “strange fish” and fabricated eyewitness accounts: “I had the inspiration to get hold of the item about the strange fish. The idea of the monster had never dawned on me, but then I noted that the strange fish would not yield a long article, and I decided to promote the imaginary being to the rank of monster without further ado.”

Learn more about Nessie @ IN SEARCH OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER (audacy.com)

Mad Gasser of Mattoon

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (also known as the “Anesthetic Prowler,” Friz, the “Phantom Anesthetist,” or simply the “Mad Gasser”) was the name given to the person or people believed to be responsible for a series of apparent gas attacks that occurred in Mattoon, Illinois, during the mid-1940s. Commissioner of Public Health, Thomas V. Wright and  Chief of Police C. E. Cole thought that there had likely been no gas attacks at all, and that the reported incidents had probably been triggered by chemicals carried on the wind from nearby industrial facilities and then exacerbated by public panic.

Wright and Cole’s diagnosis was given further validity in 1945 when the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology published “The ‘phantom anesthetist’ of Mattoon: a field study of mass hysteria” by Donald M. Johnson, which documented the Mattoon incident as a case study in mass hysteria. In 1959, his opinion was seconded by psychologist James P. Chaplin, and went on to form the basis for several subsequent studies of the phenomena of mass hysteria.

Moon Base

Government psychic Ingo Swann claimed in a 1998 book called “Penetration” that he was asked by a secret agency to do remote reviewing experiments suggesting an alien presence on the Moon. But was the US Government already there?  Project Horizon had its origins in the latter part of the 1950s. The plan was to take the first steps towards constructing an installation on the surface of the Moon by the mid-1960s. The goal was for the base to be armed with nuclear weapons and which could be used to decimate the Soviet Union if the United States was hit by a sneak attack and the infrastructure of the nation was significantly destroyed. After much preliminary discussion, it was in late March 1959 that the ambitious program was finally put into place. The Moon Base That Never Was | Mysterious Universe

New States

January 3, 1959-Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
August 21, 1959 – Hawaii is admitted as the 50th U.S. state.

Nanotechnology Beginnings

Physicist Richard P. Feynman presents the lecture, There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, suggesting the possibility of the manipulation of atoms in synthetic chemistry. The lecture will later inspire the field of nanotechnology.

Operation Northwoods

Fidel Castro had taken power in Cuba in 1959 and began allowing communists into the new Cuban government, nationalizing US businesses and improving relations with the Soviet Union, arousing the concern of the U.S. military due to the Cold War. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government. To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:

The desired result from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

Pre Scooby Doo

Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated is the best and most imaginative installment of the Scooby-Doo franchise so far. I love big stories, and this show tells a single story that spans 52 episodes. It also has strong character development arcs, good humor, and—of course—mysteries.- Jimmy Akin

An all-American athletic boy with blonde hair. A beautiful popular girl. A lazy beatnik with a goatee who peppers his speech with “like” and “man.” A brainy, petite brunette.

That sounds like a quite familiar quartet, right? Perhaps one that drives around in a green and blue van with a Great Dane?

Those descriptions apply to the core characters of The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis ( September 29, 1959, to June 5, 1963.)  or Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!  (September 13, 1969, -October 31, 1970) and with good reason. The latter Hanna-Barbera cartoon, which premiered in 1969, was based on the former black & white teen sitcom from a decade earlier.  Jinkies! The characters of ‘Scooby-Doo’ were based on ‘The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis’ (metv.com)

Phone Booth Stuffing Rage

Like the “Keep Calm and Carry On” mantra, phone booth stuffing first gained popularity outside the US. But once it arrived stateside, in the spring of 1959, kids couldn’t help but join in.

People would cram their bodies into the narrow spaces like olives in a jar. Some adopted other methods, such as stacking themselves horizontally.

The world record for phone booth stuffing came in March of 1959, when 25 people in South Africa piled into a booth. Incidentally, the phone rang during the stunt, but no one could answer it.

Sadly, the trend died by the end of 1959.

Phone booth stuffing took off all over the world in the late 1950s. | BusinessInsider India

Science Fiction Standouts 1959

All You Zombies (1959) by Robert A. Heinlein
A circular paradox in which a man discovers that he is his own mother and father.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man’s scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.

The novel is a fix-up of three short stories Miller published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that were inspired by the author’s participation in the bombing of the monastery at the Battle of Monte Cassino during World War II. The book is considered one of the classics of science fiction and has never been out of print. Appealing to mainstream and genre critics and readers alike, it won the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research. A sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was published posthumously in 1997.

Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959)  starring The Three Stooges.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

On The Beach (1959)

The Time Machine series of science fiction stories for young adults, published between 1959 and 1989 in Boys’ Life magazine, featured a group of American Boy Scouts who acquire an abandoned time machine. The Polaris Patrol visited the future and the past, sometimes recruiting new Scouts. The stories used the time machine as a framework for history lessons, but also explored the consequences of having a time machine (as well as the various technologies the boys who discovered it obtain from the future

Twilight Zone

Rod Serling‘s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS on October 2, 1959.

Learn more about the TZ @ Why This One TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE Was BANNED For 52 YEARS!

Hugo Award Best Novel: A Case of Conscience (1958) by  James Blish,

Siegfried And Roy

Siegfried Fischbacher (June 13, 1939 – January 13, 2021) and Roy Horn (born Uwe Ludwig Horn; October 3, 1944 – May 8, 2020)

Siegfried and Roy first met in 1959 on the luxury liner Bremen, where they were both working: Fischbacher as a magician and Horn as a waiter. After Roy saw Siegfried make a rabbit disappear, he challenged him.

“Roy had something better,” Siegfried recalled: “a cheetah.” The pet cheetah, which Roy had smuggled aboard in a laundry bag, was named Chico. “Now in show business, you don’t have to be just good,” Siegfried said. “You have to be different. And Roy made all the difference in the world.” How Siegfried And Roy Helped Steve Wynn Build The New Las Vegas (forbes.com)

Learn more about S & R @ Siegfried & Roy: Behind the Magic l 20/20 l PART 1

Space Race Continues

Russia and the US both launch probes to the Moon, but NASA’s Pioneer probes all failed. The Russian Luna program was more successful.  On August 14, 1959 – Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from orbit .Luna 2 crash-lands on the Moon’s surface in September, and Luna 3 returns the first pictures of the Moon’s far side in October. A rhesus macaque and a squirrel monkey become the first two animals to be launched by NASA into space and survive.

Somerton Man

On Dec. 1, 1948, an unknown man died on a beach in Somerton, South Australia and in his pocket was a piece of paper with the words “tamám shud.” On 22 November 22, 1959 it was reported that one E.B. Collins, an inmate of New Zealand’s Whanganui Prison, claimed to know the identity of the dead man.

Superman Curse

The Superman curse refers to a series of supposedly related misfortunes that have plagued creative people involved in adaptations of Superman in various media, particularly actors who have played the role of Superman on film and television.  The “curse” is frequently associated with George Reeves, (January 5, 1914 – June 16, 1959) who starred in Adventures of Superman on television from 1952 to 1958, and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 45. His death  remains a controversial subject; the official finding was suicide, but some believe that he was murdered or the victim of an accidental shooting. The curse also is associated with  Christopher Reeve, (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) the portrayer of the superhero in four theatrical films from 1978 to 1987, who was paralyzed in a 1995 horseback riding accident, and died nine years later at age 52 from heart failure. 

The curse is often invoked whenever misfortune is experienced by actors and other personnel who work on Superman adaptations, so much so that some talent agents cite the curse as the reason for the difficulty in casting actors in the role in live-action feature films. 

A more prosaic explanation for the alleged ‘curse’ is that given the high number of people involved in the many adaptations and treatments of the Superman story over the years, a number of significant misfortunes would inevitably occur, as they would do in any substantial sampling of random individuals

Learn more about the SC @ Episode 139: Cursed Hollywood: The Curse of Superman

Stephen Hawking

Hawking begins his university education at University College, Oxford, in October 1959 at the age of 17. Hawking is the only person, to date, to have played himself on Star Trek (excluding historical people who have appeared via stock footage), appearing as his own holographic counterpart in the Star Trek: The Next Generation sixth season episode “Descent” in 1993.

Learn more about SH @ Top 10 MIND-BLOWING Things About Stephen Hawking

 

Trek to Find Dead Body

Four boys in 1959 Castle Rock, Oregon, go on a hike to find the dead body of a missing boy.  Learn more about this story @ This Link

Vatican 2 Announcement

Pope John XXIII’s announcement on January 25, 1959, in the chapter hall of the Benedictine monastery attached to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, of his intention to call a general council came as a surprise even to the cardinals present.  The Pontiff informally announced the council under a full moon to a crowd gathered in St. Peter’s square

Learn more about Vatican II @ Vatican II FAQs – Word on Fire

Wow signal from space

In a 1959 paper, Cornell University physicists Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi had speculated that any extraterrestrial civilization attempting to communicate via radio signals might do so using a frequency of 1420 megahertz (21 centimeters), which is naturally emitted by hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and therefore likely familiar to all technologically advanced civilizations.

The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal received on August 15, 1977, by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope in the United States, then used to support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The signal appeared to come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and bore the expected hallmarks of extraterrestrial origin.

Learn more about WOW @ Was Ohio State’s discovery an alien signal?

Additional 1959 Trivia

• January 7 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
• March 8 – The Marx Brothers make their last television appearance, in The Incredible Jewel Robbery, part of General Electric Theatre.
•  March 31 –  The original Busch Gardens amusement park opens in Tampa, Florida, U.S.
•  May 8 – The first Little Caesars pizza restaurant is opened, in Detroit.
•  July 15 – A strike occurs against the United States’ steel industry.
• October 16 – Founding of the Boston Patriots, AFL American football club.
• November 16 – The Sound of Music, written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, premiered on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
• November 20 – The Declaration of the Rights of the Child is adopted by the United Nations.
• Mattel‘s Barbie doll, The Skateboard and Toy Trolls debuts are introduced.
• The first known human with HIV dies in the Congo. 

Some more notable births and deaths

Births –
Marie Osmond, Born on October 13,1959 American singer
Sam Raimi, Born on October 23, 1959
Val Kilmer Born on December 31, 1959

Deaths
Max Baer, (February 11, 1909 – November 21, 1959) 50, American boxer and actor, The Prizefighter and the Lady, The Harder They Fall
Lou Costello, (March 6, 1906 – March 3, 1959), half of Abbott and Costello comedy team,
Carl Switzer, (August 8, 1927 – January 21, 1959) Starred in Our Gang comedies
Cecil B. DeMille, (August 12, 1881 – January 21, 1959) director and producer, The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Show on Earth
Errol Flynn, (June 20, 1909 – October 14, 1959) The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood
Lupino Lane (June 16, 1892 –November 10, 1959)

Beyond 1950’s

We have had 11 sections of this article. 1950’s something, 1950 -1959.

Q: Why this particular section?

A: Because of a obsession with a number symbolism way of writing that I suppose is a sort of Biblical numerology, which is the use of numbers in the Bible to convey a meaning outside of the numerical value of the actual number being used. Twelve. Reflects the 12 lunar months in a lunar year and refers to completeness, often associated with the people of God. There are twelve tribes of Israel and Jesus made the decision to have twelve apostles. There are also 12 donuts when you buy a dozen at Dunkin’s. So thus I try to use 12 examples or sections when I write things.

1349

Eifelheim

In 1349, Eifelheim, a small town in the Black Forest of Germany, vanished: it ceased to appear on any maps or in any documents, having apparently been abandoned and never resettled by its community. The disappearance is no mystery — the Black Death devastated Europe. But why was the area never resettled, unlike most other depopulated areas? The mystery intrigues cliometric historian Tom Schwoerin, who sets out to solve the puzzle with the help of his partner, theoretical physicist Sharon Nagy. They gradually uncover evidence of an alien crash-landing in the area.

1750

Mountain Exploration

April 13,1750 – Dr. Thomas Walker and five other men (Ambrose Powell, Colby Chew, William Tomlinson, Henry Lawless and John Hughes) cross through the Cumberland Gap, a mountain pass through the Appalachian Mountains, to become the first white people to venture into territories that had been inhabited exclusively by various Indian tribes. On April 17, Walker’s party continues through what is now Kentucky and locates the Cumberland River, which Walker names in honor of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland.

June 19, 1750– At a time when mountain climbing is still relatively uncommon, Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson scale their first peak, the 4,892 feet (1,491 m) high Icelandic volcano, Hekla.

1755

Chemical Discovery

June 5, 1755 – Scottish chemist Joseph Black describes his discovery of carbon dioxide (fixed air) and magnesium, in a paper to the Medical Society of Edinburgh. The paper is published in 1756 with the title Experiments upon Magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other alkaline Substances

1856

In 1856, Paul Du Chaillu ventured into the African jungle in search of a mythic beast, the gorilla. After wild encounters with vicious cannibals, deadly snakes, and tribal kings, Du Chaillu emerged with 20 preserved gorilla skins—two of which were stuffed and brought on tour—and walked smack dab into the biggest scientific debate of the time: Darwin’s theory of evolution. Quickly, Du Chaillu’s trophies went from objects of wonder to key pieces in an all-out intellectual war. He intereacted with such  people as Abraham Lincoln, Arthur Conan Doyle, P.T Barnum, Thackeray, and of course, Charles Darwin. His story is told in the book.-  Between Man and Beast (2013) by Monte Reel

1885

Mark Twain‘s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and   H. Rider Haggard‘s King Solomon’s Mines  are published.

July 6,1885 – Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux successfully test their rabies vaccine. The patient is Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog. They had help from a man dressed in white wearing a cowboy hat they simply called Bright White Miracle.

Wendesday September 2 1885: Marty McFly arrives in 1885 to rescue Doc and accidentally rips the fuel line in the time machine. While running from a bear, he hits the fence of the McFly farm, leading him to meet his ancestors Seamus and Maggie McFly.

1985

September 1, 1985– The wreck of the RMS Titanic is located by a joint American-French expedition led by Dr. Robert Ballard (WHOI) and Jean-Louis Michel (IFREMER) using side-scan sonar from RV Knorr. There are reports they had help from a man dressed in a white suit with a cowboy hat, they simply called the Cowboy.

Saturday, October 26, 1985 1:35 a.m. Marty McFly becomes the first official human time traveler when he  arrives at November 5th, 1955 after accidentally going to 88 mph. in his friend Doc Brown’s Delorian time machine while being chased by terrorists.

November 18, 1985- The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes is first published.

2015 

NASA’s Dawn probe enters orbit around Ceres, becoming the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet and NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft performs a close flyby of Pluto, becoming the first spacecraft in history to visit the distant world. There is this weird astroid that seemed to be following both NASA spacecraft. Was the astroid an alien ship in disguise?

Wednesday, October 21, 2015 Doc Brown, Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker arrive in 2015 to save Martin McFly, Jr. from being set up for a crime by Griff Tannen on the same day the Chicago Cubs win the World Series against Miami’s Major League Baseball team

2054

Preventing Future Crime

In April 2054 Washington, DC’s prototype “PreCrime” police department prevents murders, via three clairvoyant humans (“Precogs”) attached to a computer, who have an innate ability to “previsualize” crimes of extreme emotion and violence, before the offending suspect even begins the fatal deed. Would-be murderers are then imprisoned in a benevolent virtual reality state. Almost all premeditated, 1st degree murder has ceased, as people have “got the message”, however spontaneous “crimes of passion” are still problematic, as the police have limited time to intercept the killer. The federal government is on the verge of adopting this controversial program nationwide.

Now that we have gone through the years, here are…

Questions at the End of the Decade

Jimmy Akin’s Time Lord Status answered by the man himself.

If I’m a time lord (and I’m neither confirming nor denying), I would answer the questions as follows:

1) Since whether I’m a time lord has been a subject of speculation among Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World listeners, I’ve thought about letting them vote on what it should be (e.g., the Professor, the Sage, the Detective, the Investigator, the Cowboy).

2) My TARDIS has a functioning chameleon circuit, so it wouldn’t have a single, stable shape.

3) White cowboy hat, white jacket, white slacks, cowboy boots. (Shirt varies by episode.)

4) Younger versions of me, of course!

5) Can’t say. I wouldn’t want time-traveling Daleks going after them!

And the Weirdest thing to come out of the 1950’s?

The birth of “Weird Al” Yankovic born on October 23, 1959.

 

And these Weird News of the 1950s (weirduniverse.net) stories.

And one last thing, it’s time we

Bring Back the 50’s Curse Words

11 Curse Words From The ‘50s We Need To Bring Back (bustle.com)

 

If you like what you read here, click on the links, listen to an episode and leave Jimmy some Feedback.