istoryworld
Events relating to america
A country doctor, François Duvalier, is elected president of Haiti on a massive popular vote
The success of the USSR in launching Sputnik prompts the establishment of NASA in the USA
Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Stephen Sondheim create the Broadway musical West Side Story
Oscar Niemeyer is appointed chief architect for his country's new capital, Brasilia
Latvian-Canadian dancer Ludmilla Chiriaeff founds the Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal
The Venezuelan dictator Marcos Jiménez escapes to the USA with an estimated fortune of $200 million
In The Affluent Society US economist John Kenneth Galbraith criticizes wasteful modern consumerism
Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita is published in Paris
Paul Newman stars in the film version of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Truman Capote publishes a short novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's, with a bewitching central character, Holly Golightly
Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka's play The Swamp Dwellers is produced in London
The baseball teams Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants move to California
Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson complete a skyscraper for Seagram in New York
Dictator Fulgencio Batista flees from Cuba, leaving Havana open to Fidel Castro and his victorious guerrillas
Fidel Castro begins more than four decades of authoritarian rule in Cuba
Alaska becomes the 49th state of the USA
Alfred Hitchcock directs Cary Grant in North by Northwest
Vice-president Richard Nixon engages in a 'kitchen debate' with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev at a US exhibition in Moscow
Billy Wilder directs Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot
Saul Bellow publishes Henderson the Rain King, in which an American millionaire acquires a strange role in an African tribe
West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott founds the Trinidad Theatre Workshop
Hawaii becomes the 50th state of the USA
The St Lawrence Seaway, a joint Canadian and US project, links the Great Lakes and the sea
US author William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, an account of the horrors of a junkie's life, is published in Paris
Philip Roth publishes his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a novella and five short stories
