On January 24, 1956, Look magazine publishes the confessions of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, two white men from Mississippi who were acquitted in the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till, an African American teenager from Chicago. In the Look article, titled “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi,” the men detailed how they beat Till with a gun, shot him and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River with a heavy cotton-gin fan attached with barbed wire to his neck to weigh him down. The two killers were paid a reported $4,000 for their participation in the article.

On January 30, 1956, an unidentified suspected white supremacist terrorist bombed the Montgomery home of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. No one was harmed, but the explosion outraged the community and was a major test of King’s steadfast commitment to non-violence.

On February 25, 1956, Sylvia Plath meets her future husband, Ted Hughes, at a party in Cambridge, UK. The two poets fell in love at first sight and married four months later.

Noted for his innovative use of wide-angle shots, low-key lighting and deep focus, cinematographer James Wong Howe becomes the first Asian American to win an Academy Award on March 21, 1956.

On April 19, 1956, American film actress Grace Kelly, 26, marries Prince Rainier of Monaco, 32, in a spectacular ceremony—a "royal wedding of the century" watched by more than 30 million viewers on live television. The two had begun a secret correspondence after the Hollywood star was introduced to the prince in May of 1955 during a trip to the Cannes Film Festival. The prince proposed eight months later.

On April 27, 1956, world heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano retires from boxing at age 32, saying he wants to spend more time with his family. Marciano ended his career as the only heavyweight champion with a perfect record–49 wins in 49 professional bouts, with 43 knockouts.

On May 4, 1956, rockabilly legend Gene Vincent records the smoldering early-rock classic “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” in Nashville, Tennessee.

The United States conducts the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on May 21, 1956. (Because of the time difference, it was still May 20 in the U.S.) The successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons and that the arms race had taken another giant leap forward.

On June 3, 1956, Santa Cruz, California captured national attention when city authorities announced a total ban on rock 'n' roll at public gatherings. Officials called the music “detrimental to both the health and morals of our youth and community.”

On June 5, 1956, in an appearance on "The Milton Berle Show," Elvis Presley he set his guitar aside and put every part of his being into a blistering, scandalous performance of “Hound Dog.”

On June 9, 1956, one of the world’s top-selling crime novelists, Patricia Cornwell, best known for her forensic pathologist character Dr. Kay Scarpetta, is born in Miami, Florida.

Playwright Arthur Miller defies the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refuses to name suspected communists.

On June 23, 1956, 99.95 percent of Egyptian voters mark their ballots to elect Gamal Abdel Nasser as the first president of the Republic of Egypt. Nasser, who toppled the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 in a military coup, was the only presidential candidate on the ballot. In the same ballot, Nasser’s new constitution, under which Egypt became a one-party socialist state with Islam as the official religion, was approved by 99.8 percent of voters.

The last Packard—the classic American luxury car with the famously enigmatic slogan “Ask the Man Who Owns One”—rolls off the production line at Packard’s plant in Detroit, Michigan on June 25, 1956.

On June 26, 1956, the U.S. Congress approves the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which allocates more than $30 billion for the construction of some 41,000 miles of interstate highways; it will be the largest public construction project in U.S. history to that date.

On June 29, 1956, Hollywood film actress Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller in a four-minute civil ceremony at the Westchester County Courthouse in New York state. Writer Norman Mailer famously calls the union a meeting of “The Great American Body” and “The Great American Brain.”

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces that the United States is withdrawing its offer of financial aid to Egypt to help with the construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile River. The action drove Egypt further toward an alliance with the Soviet Union and was a contributing factor to the Suez Crisis later in 1956.

At 11:10 p.m. on July 25, 1956, 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish ocean liner Stockholm collide in a heavy Atlantic fog. Fifty-one passengers and crew were killed in the collision, which ripped a great hole in the broad side of the Italian vessel. Miraculously, all 1,660 survivors on the Andrea Doria were rescued from the severely listing ship before it sunk late the next morning. Both ships were equipped with sophisticated radar systems, and authorities were puzzled as to the cause of the accident.

The Suez Crisis begins when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the British and French-owned Suez Canal.

On July 30, 1956, two years after pushing to have the phrase “under God” inserted into the pledge of allegiance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be the nation’s official motto. The law, P.L. 84-140, also mandated that the phrase be printed on all American paper currency. The phrase had been placed on U.S. coins since the Civil War when, according to the historical association of the United States Treasury, religious sentiment reached a peak. Eisenhower’s treasury secretary, George Humphrey, had suggested adding the phrase to paper currency as well.

Seven army ammunition trucks explode in Cali, Colombia, killing more than 1,000 people and injuring thousands more on August 7, 1956. The cause of the explosions remains a mystery.

The King of Rock and Roll teams up with TV’s reigning variety program, as Elvis Presley appears on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time on September 9, 1956.

On Oct. 8, 1956, Don Larsen of the New York Yankees throws the only perfect game in World Series history. "I was so happy. I felt like crying," he tells reporters after New York's 2-0 win in Game 5 over the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees go on to win the World Series in seven games.

Israeli armed forces push into Egypt toward the Suez Canal, initiating the Suez Crisis. They would soon be joined by French and British forces, creating a serious Cold War problem in the Middle East.

A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.

The French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre—long an admirer of the Soviet Union—denounces both the USSR and its communist system following the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary.

On November 15, 1956, Love Me Tender, featuring the singer Elvis Presley in his big-screen debut, premieres in New York City at the Paramount Theater. Set in Texas following the American Civil War, the film, which co-starred Richard Egan and Debra Paget, featured Elvis as Clint Reno, the younger brother of a Confederate soldier.

On December 22, 1956, a baby gorilla named Colo enters the world at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, becoming the first-ever gorilla born in captivity. Weighing in at approximately 4 pounds, Colo, a western lowland gorilla whose name was a combination of Columbus and Ohio, was the daughter of Millie and Mac, two gorillas captured in French Cameroon, Africa, who were brought to the Columbus Zoo in 1951. Before Colo’s birth, gorillas found at zoos were caught in the wild, often by brutal means. In order to capture a gorilla when it was young and therefore still small enough to handle, hunters frequently had to kill the gorilla’s parents and other family members.

On December 26, 1956, the visionary carmaker Preston Tucker dies of lung cancer. He was just 53 years old.