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1950s

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TV Time TogetherA happy family cheerfully sits in their living room and watches a televisied clown and puppet show, 1957. The father holds an newspaper open to the financial section in his hands. (Photo by Lambert/Getty Images)

Featured

The 1950s

The Postwar Booms Historians use the word “boom” to describe a lot of things about the 1950s: the booming economy, the booming suburbs and most of all the so-called “baby boom.” This boom began in 1946, when a record number of babies–3.4 million–were born in the United States. About 4 million babies were born each […]

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Interstate 405, California

The Interstate Highway System

“The Last Call of the Wild” Today, there are more than 250 million cars and trucks in the United States, or almost one per person. At the end of the 19th century, by contrast, there was just one motorized vehicle on the road for every 18,000 Americans. At the same time, most of those roads […]

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Baby Boomers

The Baby Boom What explains this baby boom? Some historians have argued that it was a part of a desire for normalcy after 16 years of depression and war. Others have argued that it was a part of a Cold War campaign to fight communism by outnumbering communists. Did you know? In 1966, Time magazine […]

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A group of Hollywood celebrities are shown here as they arrived at the Capitol this morning to protest the tactics of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee's Investigation into alleged Hollywood Communism

HUAC

The Cold War: Investigating the Red Menace Upon its formation in 1938, the official role of the House Un-American Activities Committee was to investigate Communist and fascist organizations that had become active during the Great Depression, though it also examined the activities of other groups on the political left. From the outset, the committee proved […]

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Stories

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How ‘Project Blue Book’ Production Designers Evoked the Golden Age of UFOs

Designers fashioned a mid-century world visually inspired by Dr. Strangelove, Edward Hopper paintings and more.

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The First Birth Control Pill Used Puerto Rican Women as Guinea Pigs

Eugenics and unethical clinical trials are part of the pill’s legacy.

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Nettie Hunt explaining to her daughter Nickie the meaning of the high court's ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education

Deceptively simple doll tests helped convince the Supreme Court to strike down school segregation.

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Inside the Rise and Fall of Toys ‘R’ Us

The retailer turned everyone into a “Toys ‘R’ Us kid”… by driving its competition out of existence.

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This Day in History


1954

Bill Haley and His Comets record “Rock Around The Clock”

Art, Literature and Film History
1959

Hawaii becomes 50th state

1950s
1947

“A Streetcar Named Desire” opens on Broadway

Art, Literature and Film History
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