History

ICONS: Rock & Roll, Civil Rights Movement, Television

• RCA broadcasts the first color television program on June 25, 1951.
• Sam Phillips opens the "Sun Records" record label in Memphis, TN, March 27, 1952.
• Francis Crick and James Watson discover the spiral structure of DNA on February 28, 1953, and report the findings in Nature on April 25, 1953.
• Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips introduced radio listeners to Elvis Presley on July 8, 1953, when he played "That's All Right" on his "Red, Hot, and Blue show."
• Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea receives a 1953 Pulitzer Prize. In 1954, the author is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, launches on January 21, 1954.
• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refuses to vacate her seat aboard a Montgomery, AL, bus.
• Fred Gipson publishes the novel, Old Yeller in 1956 and receives a Newbury Honor in 1957.
• CBS debuts Leave It to Beaver on October 4, 1957.
• Brazil wins its first Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup, beating Sweden 5-2, on June 29, 1958.
• Alaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th states, respectively, in 1959.
• Rod Serling's Twilight Zone begins airing October 2, 1959.