January: Marilyn Monroe elopes with baseball legend Joe DiMaggio at San Francisco City Hall. She will file for divorce 274 days later.

February: Matt Groening is born. The cartoonist & animator is best known for 'The Simpsons' who he named after his own family members.

March: Castle Bravo, a hydrogen bomb test, is conducted on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It is much more powerful than predicted.

April: Arturo Toscanini. aged 87, has a lapse of memory whilst conducting a concert. It will be his last public performance.

May: United States Supreme Court rules state laws establishing separate schools for black & white students unconstitutional.

June: Joseph Welch, United States Army special counsel, asks Senator Joseph McCarthy: 'Have you, at long last, no decency?'.

July: 14 years after it began & nearly a decade after the end of World War II, food rationing finally ends in Great Britain.

August: James Cameron Canadian film director is born. His films include The Terminator, Avatar, The Abyss, Aliens & Titanic.

September: The last new episode of The Lone Ranger radio program is broadcast. The show begun in 1933 and ran for 2,956 episodes.

October: Texas Instruments announces the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1. The performance did not match its looks.

November: The first Godzilla film, directed by Ishiro Honda, premieres in Tokyo. It is the first Japanese Kaiju film, many more will follow.

December: United States Senate vote 67-22 to condemn McCarthy for 'conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor & disrepute'.