1959 History, Fun Facts, and Trivia

In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states, and the United States became geographically what it is today. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in an Iowa field on February 3, though the phrase “the day the music died” would not be coined for another twelve years. The Guggenheim Museum opened in New York. Barbie arrived at the American International Toy Fair. Berry Gordy founded Tamla Records in Detroit, which would become Motown. Ben-Hur spent the year in theaters. The Twilight Zone premiered in October. Bobby Darin spent nine weeks at number one. It was the last year of the 1950s, and it felt like one — optimistic on the surface, anxious underneath, and moving faster than anyone was fully prepared for.

Quick Facts from 1959

• World-Changing Events: Alaska became the 49th state on January 3; Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21; the Antarctic Treaty was signed on December 1 by 12 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union
• Top Song: Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin, the best-performing single of the year on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100, spending 9 weeks at number one
• Influential Songs: Sea of Love by Phil Phillips, Peter Gunn by Ray Anthony, La Bamba by Ritchie Valens
• Must-See Movies: Ben-Hur, Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, On the Beach, Rio Bravo, Anatomy of a Murder, Pillow Talk, and The 400 Blows
• Most Famous Person in America: Elvis Presley, who spent much of 1959 in the Army at a post in West Germany
• Notable Books: Hawaii by James A. Michener and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, the latter finally published legally in the United States
• Price of Kellogg’s Variety Cereal 10-Pack: 49 cents
• The Fad: Phone booth stuffing — students competing to pack as many people as possible into a telephone booth
• The Funny Duo: Mike Nichols and Elaine May
• The Funny Satirist: Tom Lehrer
• Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Pig, associated with generosity, diligence, and an appreciation for comfort — all of which found expression in the American prosperity of the late 1950s
• The Habit: Watching Ben-Hur at the local theater
• The Conversation: Did you see Ben-Hur? And isn’t it something about Buddy Holly?

Top Ten Baby Names of 1959

Girls: Mary, Susan, Linda, Karen, Donna Boys: Michael, David, James, John, Robert

Mary remained at the top of the girls’ list, a position it had held for most of the decade. Michael continued its long dominance for boys. Donna had entered the top five for girls — a name whose presence reflected both the Donna Reed Show’s cultural visibility and the decade’s naming patterns.

Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols of 1959

Carroll Baker, Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Doris Day, Angie Dickinson, Anita Ekberg, Annette Funicello, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Karina, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Julie Newmar, Kim Novak, Stella Stevens, Elizabeth Taylor, Mamie Van Doren

Marilyn Monroe had Some Like It Hot in theaters, in which her comic performance was considered some of the best work of her career despite the legendary difficulty of its production — director Billy Wilder later said that some scenes required over 50 takes, and that Monroe had eaten so many chocolates during repeated takes of one scene that she became ill. Elizabeth Taylor was in the middle of a run of commercial success that made her one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. Audrey Hepburn had won the Academy Award the previous year for Roman Holiday and was consolidating a film career that would make her one of the most iconic presences in cinema history.

Hollywood Hunks and Sex Symbols of 1959

Warren Beatty, Harry Belafonte, Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley spent 1959 stationed at Ray Barracks in Friedberg, West Germany, having been drafted in March 1958. He was promoted to Specialist 4th Class and later to Sergeant. He bought a house near the base and lived off-post with his father and grandmother. He met a 14-year-old named Priscilla Beaulieu at a party in September 1959.

The Quotes

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man … This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.” — Rod Serling, narrating the opening of The Twilight Zone, which premiered October 2, 1959, on CBS, in an introduction that remains one of the most recognized pieces of broadcast narration in American television history

“Well, nobody’s perfect.” — Joe E. Brown as Osgood Fielding III in Some Like It Hot, the film’s final line, delivered after learning that the woman he has been pursuing throughout the film is actually a man. It was written because no better conclusion could be found; its perfection is entirely accidental.

“I have discussed this with my doctor and my psychiatrist and they tell me I’m too old and too rich to go through this again.” — Director Billy Wilder, when asked if he would work with Marilyn Monroe on another film after Some Like It Hot, a statement that communicates both genuine exasperation and a grudging acknowledgment that the results justified the process

Time Magazine’s Man of the Year

Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his second selection for the honor, for his role in managing American foreign policy and the Cold War during a year that included the Kitchen Debate with Khrushchev in Moscow, the USSR’s Luna 2 spacecraft reaching the Moon, and the continuing management of international crises without escalation to open conflict. Eisenhower’s farewell address was still two years away, but his presidency was in its final period, and the recognition carried a valedictory quality.

Miss America and Miss USA

Miss America: Mary Ann Mobley, Brandon, Mississippi
Miss USA: Terry Huntingdon, California

We Lost in 1959

Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959, when the small Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft they had chartered from the Mason City, Iowa, airport crashed into a cornfield approximately five miles from the runway shortly after takeoff. All three performers and the pilot, Roger Peterson, were killed. Holly was 22, Valens was 17, Richardson was 28. They had been touring the Midwest in winter on a package tour called the Winter Dance Party; Holly had chartered the plane to avoid the tour bus, which had a broken heater and had given several musicians frostbite. Their final performances had been at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on the evening of February 2.

Buddy Holly’s contributions to rock and roll — his use of the Stratocaster, his band configuration, his recording techniques, his songwriting — were foundational. He had been making records for four years. Ritchie Valens had been making records for eight months. La Bamba, his adaptation of a traditional Mexican folk song, was the first Spanish-language rock and roll record to reach the top twenty. The phrase “the day the music died” was not applied to the crash until Don McLean used it in American Pie in 1971.

Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect whose work — including Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, Unity Temple, and hundreds of other buildings — had made him the most influential American architect of the 20th century, died April 9, 1959, at age 91. The Guggenheim Museum, which he had designed and which was under construction at the time of his death, opened on October 15, 1959, six months after he died.

Billie Holiday, the jazz singer and songwriter whose recordings — Strange Fruit, God Bless the Child, Lady Sings the Blues — had made her one of the most distinctive voices in American music and whose personal life had been defined by racism, addiction, and institutional persecution, died July 17, 1959, at age 44, of cirrhosis of the liver. She died in a hospital room under police guard, having been arrested for drug possession while bedridden.

Lou Costello, the comedy performer who had been the physical and verbal center of the Abbott and Costello partnership, whose routines — including Who’s on First?, widely considered the finest comedy sketch in American entertainment history — had made them one of the most popular acts in Hollywood through the 1940s, died March 3, 1959, at age 52, of a heart attack.

America in 1959 — The Context

The Eisenhower administration’s final full year was dominated by Cold War management. Khrushchev visited the United States in September 1959, traveling across the country and meeting with Eisenhower at Camp David. He was denied admission to Disneyland on security grounds, a disappointment he expressed publicly. Vice President Nixon had visited the Soviet Union in July for the American National Exhibition in Moscow, where the famous Kitchen Debate occurred — Nixon and Khrushchev arguing the relative merits of American and Soviet consumer goods in a model kitchen. The debate was televised in both countries.

The Antarctic Treaty was signed on December 1, 1959, by 12 nations, including the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and nine others. The treaty designated Antarctica as a scientific preserve, prohibited military activity and nuclear testing, and established the principle that territorial claims would be frozen — neither recognized nor denied — for the treaty’s duration. It remains one of the most successful international environmental agreements.

Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and Hawaii became the 50th on August 21 — the two most recent additions to the union and the only states not contiguous with the continental United States. Their admission required the redesign of the American flag; the current 50-star flag was adopted July 4, 1960.

The Day the Music Died

The Winter Dance Party was a package tour of the upper Midwest in January and February 1959, featuring Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, Dion and the Belmonts, and several other acts traveling by bus in severe winter weather. The tour bus was inadequately heated. Several musicians contracted frostbite. Holly chartered a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza for the segment from Clear Lake, Iowa, to Moorhead, Minnesota, intending to arrive ahead of the bus and have time to do laundry.

The Big Bopper took Waylon Jennings’s seat on the plane when Jennings gave it up; Jennings spent the rest of his life regretting not being on that plane and then grateful he wasn’t. Ritchie Valens won his seat in a coin toss with Tommy Allsup. The plane took off at approximately 1:00 a.m. on February 3 in conditions of light snow and poor visibility. It crashed within minutes of takeoff.

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, where they gave their last performances the evening of February 2, has held an annual Winter Dance Party in their honor every February since 1979.

Pop Culture Facts and History

Some Like It Hot, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon, was released March 29, 1959. The film, in which two musicians witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and escape by disguising themselves as women in an all-female band, produced one of the most celebrated final lines in film history. Monroe’s performance as Sugar Kane required an extraordinary number of takes on several scenes — the sequence where she opens a bureau drawer reportedly required 59 takes, and one scene required more than 50 takes because Monroe kept saying “Where’s the bourbon?” instead of “Where’s the whisky?” The results are widely considered her finest comic performance.

Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston, was released on November 18, 1959, and ran in theaters throughout the year and into 1960. It won 11 Academy Awards at the 32nd ceremony on March 4, 1960 — a record that was not matched until Titanic in 1998 and The Return of the King in 2004. The chariot race sequence remains one of the most celebrated action sequences in cinema history. It required several months to film and involved 15,000 extras.

North by Northwest, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, was released on July 1, 1959. The film’s crop-duster sequence — a man in a suit being chased by an airplane across an empty landscape — became one of the most imitated shots in cinema and one of the most referenced in subsequent discussions of visual suspense.

The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS on October 2, 1959, with the episode Where Is Everybody? Rod Serling had created the series after years of network battles over the content of his television dramas; the anthology science fiction format allowed him to address social and political themes — racism, McCarthyism, nuclear anxiety — in ways that direct drama could not. The show ran for five seasons and 156 episodes. Its influence on American science fiction, horror, and television generally has been continuous.

Barbie — officially Barbara Millicent Roberts — debuted at the American International Toy Fair in New York City on March 9, 1959. Created by Ruth Handler of Mattel, who had observed her daughter Barbara playing with paper dolls and imagining them as adults, Barbie was the first mass-produced doll with adult proportions. She wore a black-and-white striped bathing suit. She has since sold over a billion units and is the best-selling fashion doll in history. Ken, her boyfriend, arrived in 1961 and was named after Ruth Handler’s son.

Berry Gordy Jr. founded Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, in Detroit with a $800 loan from his family. The label’s first release was Come to Me by Marv Johnson. Tamla became the umbrella for what Gordy called Motown — a name he took from Detroit’s nickname — and the label’s subsequent output included some of the most commercially successful recordings in American music history.

The Guggenheim Museum opened on October 15, 1959, at 1071 Fifth Avenue in New York City, six months after Frank Lloyd Wright died. Wright had been designing the building since 1943 and had fought with both the city and the museum over his specifications throughout the construction process. The building’s spiral ramp — which allows visitors to take an elevator to the top and walk down through the museum — was a radical departure from conventional gallery design. It remains one of the most recognizable buildings in New York.

Nils Bohlin, a Volvo engineer who had previously designed aircraft ejection seats for Saab, invented the three-point seatbelt, and it was introduced in Volvo’s 1959 PV544 model. Volvo’s decision to make the patent freely available to all automobile manufacturers rather than keeping it proprietary is estimated to have saved over a million lives. It is one of the most consequential decisions in automotive history.

The Dyatlov Pass incident occurred when nine experienced hikers from the Ural Polytechnical Institute died under unexplained circumstances in the Ural Mountains between February 1 and 2, 1959. They had abandoned their tent from the inside in the middle of the night in extreme cold, most in inadequate clothing. Several had severe internal injuries without external wounds. Soviet investigators concluded that an “unknown compelling force” had caused the deaths. Theories have included an avalanche, military weapons testing, infrasound panic, and others. The case remains officially unsolved.

Jack Brabham ran out of fuel in his Cooper-Climax with approximately 500 yards remaining in the 1959 United States Grand Prix at Sebring and pushed his car across the finish line to clinch the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship. He finished fourth in the race. It was sufficient.

The Soviet Union’s Luna 2 spacecraft became the first man-made object to reach the Moon on September 14, 1959, impacting the lunar surface east of Mare Imbrium. It carried pennants bearing the Soviet coat of arms. Luna 3, launched October 4, 1959, became the first spacecraft to photograph the far side of the Moon. The Space Race was proceeding on the Soviet Union’s schedule.

Neil Sedaka recorded Oh! Carol in 1959, a song addressed to his high school girlfriend Carole Klein. She later changed the spelling of her first and last names — becoming Carole King — and wrote songs including “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,“ “I Feel the Earth Move,” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” which made her one of the most successful songwriters in American music history. Sedaka wrote his own answer to King’s eventual response song — she recorded Oh! Neil — in what remains one of pop music’s more charming exchanges.

Colonel William Rankin became the only known person to survive a fall through an active cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud on July 26, 1959, when he was forced to eject from his F-8 Crusader jet at 47,000 feet over North Carolina. His pressure suit failed partially. He spent approximately 40 minutes falling through the storm — normal free-fall from that altitude would take about 12 minutes — because the updrafts inside the cloud repeatedly carried him upward before he could descend. He landed in a tree. He suffered frostbite, welts, bruises, and severe decompression but survived.

Nobel Prize Winners in 1959

Physics was awarded to Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain for their discovery of the antiproton — the antimatter counterpart of the proton — which they had produced and identified using the Bevatron particle accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1955. The discovery confirmed the existence of antimatter and opened new fields in particle physics.

Chemistry went to Jaroslav Heyrovský of Czechoslovakia for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis — electrochemical techniques for analyzing the composition of solutions that became standard tools in analytical chemistry and had applications in medicine, industry, and environmental monitoring.

Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Severo Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid — essentially, for explaining how the cell copies its genetic material, foundational work in molecular biology with implications for every subsequent advance in genetics.

Literature went to Salvatore Quasimodo of Italy, for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times. Quasimodo had been associated with the Italian Hermetic poetry movement of the 1930s and 1940s.

Peace was awarded to Philip Noel-Baker of Britain, a lifelong campaigner for disarmament and international cooperation who had been involved in the establishment of both the League of Nations and the United Nations.

1959 Toys and Christmas Gifts

Barbie, in her inaugural year, was the dominant toy story of the 1959 holiday season. RISK, the board game of global military strategy designed by Albert Lamorisse and published by Parker Brothers, also debuted in 1959, giving players the opportunity to attempt global domination on a tabletop. Troll Dolls, created in 1959 by Danish woodcarver Thomas Dam, were beginning their commercial life. The BIC Crystal ballpoint pen was available for 19 cents and has remained available at approximately the same price ever since.

Broadway in 1959

The Sound of Music, the final collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein, opened November 16, 1959, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. Mary Martin starred as Maria von Trapp. The show ran until June 15, 1963, completing 1,443 performances and winning six Tony Awards including Best Musical. The 1965 film adaptation starring Julie Andrews became one of the highest-grossing films in history. Hammerstein died of cancer nine months after the show’s opening; it was the last work he completed.

Best Film Oscar Winner

Gigi, the MGM musical directed by Vincente Minnelli and based on Colette’s novella, won Best Picture at the 31st Academy Awards on April 6, 1959, for the 1958 film year. The film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was the last of the great MGM musicals and the culmination of producer Arthur Freed’s two-decade run of musical film production at the studio.

Top Movies of 1959

1. Ben-Hur
2. Some Like It Hot
3. Anatomy of a Murder
4. The Diary of Anne Frank
5. On the Beach
6. Pillow Talk
7. North by Northwest
8. Rio Bravo
9. Porgy and Bess
10. Gidget

Ben-Hur was so far ahead of everything else commercially that it functioned almost as a category of its own. Some Like It Hot was the most acclaimed comedy. North by Northwest demonstrated Hitchcock at the peak of his commercial period. On the Beach, Stanley Kramer’s film about survivors of a nuclear war waiting for radiation to reach the southern hemisphere, was the year’s most serious film — a meditation on extinction that arrived at the height of the nuclear anxiety period and was received with the kind of attention that suggests its subject matter was not entirely theoretical to its audience.

Most Popular TV Shows of 1959

1. Gunsmoke (CBS)
2. Wagon Train (NBC)
3. Have Gun, Will Travel (CBS)
4. The Danny Thomas Show (CBS)
5. The Red Skelton Show (CBS)
6. Father Knows Best (CBS)
7. 77 Sunset Strip (ABC)
8. Wanted: Dead or Alive (CBS)
9. Perry Mason (CBS)
10. The Real McCoys (ABC)

Westerns dominated American television in 1959 in a way that has no modern equivalent — 26 separate Western series were running simultaneously, and six of the top ten shows were Westerns. Gunsmoke, based on a radio drama that had run since 1952, had been on television since 1955 and was establishing itself as the longest-running primetime drama in American television history. The Twilight Zone premiered in October and was not yet in the top ten, but Rod Serling’s combination of science fiction and social commentary was generating exactly the kind of discussion that ratings numbers could not fully capture.

1959 Billboard Number One Hits

December 27, 1958 – January 18, 1959: The Chipmunk Song — David Seville and the Chipmunks (carryover from late 1958)
January 19 – February 8: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes — The Platters
February 9 – March 8: Stagger Lee — Lloyd Price (4 weeks)
March 9 – April 12: Venus — Frankie Avalon (5 weeks)
April 13 – May 10: Come Softly to Me — The Fleetwoods (4 weeks)
May 11 – May 17: The Happy Organ — Dave “Baby” Cortez
May 18 – May 31: Kansas City — Wilbert Harrison
June 1 – July 12: The Battle of New Orleans — Johnny Horton (6 weeks)
July 13 – August 9: Lonely Boy — Paul Anka (4 weeks)
August 10 – August 23: A Big Hunk O’ Love — Elvis Presley
August 24 – September 20: The Three Bells — The Browns (4 weeks)
September 21 – October 4: Sleep Walk — Santo and Johnny
October 5 – November 15: Mack the Knife — Bobby Darin (9 weeks)
November 16 – December 13: Mr. Blue — The Fleetwoods (4 weeks)
December 14 – December 27: Heartaches by the Number — Guy Mitchell
December 28, 1959 – January 3, 1960: Why — Frankie Avalon (carrying into 1960)

Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin spent nine consecutive weeks at number one — the longest run of the year — and was the best-performing single on the Billboard Year-End chart. Darin’s swinging interpretation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Die Moritat von Mackie Messer from The Threepenny Opera was a remarkable commercial translation of a German cabaret song into an American pop hit. The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton spent six weeks at number one and won the Grammy for Best Country and Western Performance. Venus by Frankie Avalon spent five weeks at number one and was his biggest hit. At the first Grammy Awards ceremony, held in May 1959 for 1958 recordings, Alvin and the Chipmunks won three Grammys while Frank Sinatra won one — a result that Sinatra reportedly did not find amusing.

Sports Champions of 1959

World Series: The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Chicago White Sox four games to two, the Dodgers’ first World Series championship in their new Los Angeles home after moving from Brooklyn in 1958. The White Sox had not been in the World Series since the 1919 Black Sox scandal — a 40-year drought. The Dodgers drew 92,706 fans to Game 5 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a World Series attendance record.

NFL Champions: The Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 31-16 on December 27, 1959. The Colts had won the previous year’s championship in overtime, a game considered one of the greatest ever played. The back-to-back championship established the Colts as the dominant team of the era and Johnny Unitas as the defining quarterback of his generation.

NBA Champions: The Boston Celtics defeated the Minneapolis Lakers four games to none, completing a sweep that extended their dynasty and established Bill Russell as the most dominant defensive player in the league’s history.

Stanley Cup: The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs four games to one, winning their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup. Maurice “Rocket” Richard, Jean Béliveau, and Jacques Plante anchored a dynasty that had been dominant since 1956.

U.S. Open Golf: Billy Casper won at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York. Casper was one of the most underrated players of his era — he won 51 PGA Tour events and three majors, but his quiet personality and unglamorous style kept him from the cultural prominence of Palmer and Nicklaus.

U.S. Open Tennis: Neale Fraser of Australia won the men’s title and Maria Bueno of Brazil won the women’s, the first Brazilian to win a Grand Slam singles title.

Wimbledon: Alex Olmedo of Peru — representing the United States, where he was a student at USC — won the men’s title, and Maria Bueno won the women’s, her first Wimbledon championship.

NCAA Football: Syracuse won the national championship with a perfect 11-0 season under coach Ben Schwartzwalder. Running back Ernie Davis, a sophomore, was the team’s dominant player; he would win the Heisman Trophy in 1961, becoming the first Black player to do so.

NCAA Basketball: California defeated West Virginia 71-70 in the national championship game in Louisville. Jerry West scored 28 points for West Virginia in a losing effort; he would go on to a Hall of Fame professional career.

Kentucky Derby: Tommy Lee, a California-bred colt, won in an upset, ridden by Bill Shoemaker. It was one of Shoemaker’s many Derby victories in a career that made him the winningest jockey in American racing history.

Frequently Asked Questions About 1959

Q: What happened on “The Day the Music Died”?
A: On February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, shortly after takeoff from Mason City airport. Pilot Roger Peterson also died. Holly was 22, Valens was 17, Richardson was 28. They had been on a winter concert tour and chartered the plane to avoid the unheated tour bus. The phrase “the day the music died” was coined by Don McLean in his 1971 song American Pie.

Q: What was the significance of the Volvo seatbelt?
A: Nils Bohlin at Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt in 1959, and it was introduced in the 1959 Volvo PV544. Crucially, Volvo made the patent freely available to all automobile manufacturers rather than keeping it proprietary. The three-point seatbelt is estimated to have saved over one million lives since its introduction. It is considered one of the most significant safety inventions in automotive history.

Q: Why did the Guggenheim Museum open after Frank Lloyd Wright died?
A: Wright died April 9, 1959, at age 91, having spent 16 years fighting with the city of New York and with museum officials over his specifications for the building. Construction had been delayed repeatedly; the building was completed and opened on October 15, 1959, six months after his death. Wright had designed approximately 1,000 structures over his career; the Guggenheim is among the most recognized.

Q: When did Alaska and Hawaii become states?
A: Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and Hawaii became the 50th on August 21, 1959. They are the two most recent states and the only ones not part of the contiguous continental United States. Their admission required the redesign of the American flag; the current 50-star version was adopted on July 4, 1960.

Q: What was the Dyatlov Pass incident?
A: Nine experienced hikers from the Ural Polytechnical Institute died under unexplained circumstances in the Ural Mountains on the night of February 1-2, 1959. They had abandoned their tent from the inside in extreme cold, in inadequate clothing, and died in conditions that investigators could not fully explain. Several had severe internal injuries without corresponding external wounds. Soviet investigators concluded an “unknown compelling force” had caused the deaths. The case has never been officially resolved.

Q: What was Barbie’s debut?
A: Barbie debuted at the American International Toy Fair in New York City on March 9, 1959. Created by Ruth Handler of Mattel and named after her daughter Barbara, she was the first mass-produced doll with adult proportions. She wore a black-and-white striped bathing suit. She has since sold over a billion units worldwide and generated a franchise that includes accessories, playsets, clothing, and a 2023 film that grossed over $1.4 billion.

In a year when Alaska and Hawaii completed the union, when Buddy Holly died in an Iowa cornfield and Billie Holiday died in a New York hospital under police guard, when Ben-Hur set records and Bobby Darin spent nine weeks at number one, when Barbie arrived and the Guggenheim opened and The Twilight Zone premiered and Volvo gave away the patent for the three-point seatbelt, 1959 delivered the last full year of a decade that had defined American optimism and its limits. The 1960s were coming. Nobody knew exactly what that meant yet.

More 1959 Facts & History Resources:

BabyBoomers.com (1959)
Most Popular Baby Names (BabyCenter.com)
Popular and Notable Books (popculture.us)
Broadway Shows that Opened in 1959X
1959 Calendar, courtesy of Time and Date.com
Fact Monster
Fifties Web (1959)
1950s, Infoplease.com World History
1959 in Movies (according to IMDB)
Retrowaste Vintage Culture
1959 Television
1950s Slang
Wikipedia 1959