Events
January
January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan after 57 years. January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are killed for trespassing by the Waorani people of Ecuador, shortly after making contact with them. January 16 – Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser vows to Liberate Palestine. January 25–26 – Finnish troops reoccupy Porkkala, after Soviet troops vacate its military base. Civilians can return February 4. January 26 – The 1956 Winter Olympics open in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
February
February 11 – British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean resurface in the Soviet Union, after being missing for 5 years. February 14–25 – The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is held in Moscow. February 16 – The 1956 World Figure Skating Championships open in Garmisch, West Germany. February 25 – Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Joseph Stalin, in a speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", at a secret session concluding the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This is not officially made public in the Soviet Union at this time but becomes known in the West in June.
March
March 1 – The International Air Transport Association finalizes a draft of the radiotelephony spelling alphabet, for the International Civil Aviation Organization. March 2 – Morocco declares its independence from France. March 9 The British deport Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus to the Seychelles. The Soviet Armed Forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. March 10 – The Fairey Delta 2 breaks the World Air Speed Record, raising it to or Mach 1.73, an increase of some over the previous record, and thus becoming the first aircraft to exceed in level flight. March 12 – 96 U.S. Congressmen sign the Southern Manifesto, a protest against the 1954 Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) that desegregated public education. March 19 – At age 48, Dutch boxer Bep van Klaveren contests his last match in Rotterdam. March 20 – Tunisia gains independence from France. March 21 – The 28th Academy Awards Ceremony is held in Los Angeles. Marty is awarded Best Picture. March 23 – Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, and a national holiday is observed in the country, including the state of East Pakistan.
April
April 7 – Spain relinquishes its protectorate in Morocco. April 9 – Habib Bourguiba is elected President of the National Constituent Assembly of the Kingdom of Tunisia; on April 15 he becomes prime minister. April 14 – Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB (modern-day NAB) convention in Chicago, United States, by Ampex. It is the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex. April 18 – American actress Grace Kelly legally marries Rainier III, Prince of Monaco; a religious ceremony follows next day. April 19 British diver Lionel (Buster) Crabb (working for MI6) dives into Portsmouth Harbour, to investigate a visiting Soviet cruiser, and vanishes. The 5.0 1956 Atarfe-Albolote earthquake strikes southern Spain killing 12 and injuring dozens more.
May
May 1 – Minamata disease is discovered in Japan. May 2 – The United Methodist Church in America decides, at its General Conference, to grant women full ordained clergy status. It also calls for an end to racial segregation in the denomination. May 8 – The constitutional union between Indonesia and the Netherlands is dissolved. May 9 – Manaslu, eighth highest mountain in the world (in the Nepalese Himalayas) is first ascended, by a Japanese team. May 18 – Lhotse main summit, the fourth highest mountain (on the Nepalese–Tibetan border) is first ascended, by Fritz Luchsinger and Ernst Reiss. May 23 – French minister Pierre Mendès France resigns, due to his government's policy on Algeria. May 24 – The first Eurovision Song Contest is broadcast from Lugano, Switzerland. The winning song is the host country's Refrain by Lys Assia (music by Géo Voumard, lyrics by Émile Gardaz). May 25 – India announces the institution of diplomatic relations with Francoist Spain.
June
June 1 – Vyacheslav Molotov resigns as foreign minister of the Soviet Union; he later becomes ambassador to Mongolia. June 4 – Montgomery bus boycott: The related civil suit is heard in federal district court; the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the ruling in November. June 5 – The text of Nikita Khrushchev's February attack on Stalin's reputation, "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", is first published in the West, in The New York Times. June 6 – In Singapore, chief minister David Marshall resigns a little over a year into his chief ministership, after the breakdown of talks regarding internal self-government in London. June 8 – General Electric/Telechron introduces model 7H241 "The Snooz Alarm", the first snooze alarm clock ever. June 10 – 1956 Summer Olympics: Equestrian events open in Stockholm, Sweden (all other events are held in November in Melbourne, Australia). June 13 The International Criminal Police Organization adopts Interpol as its official name. Real Madrid beats Stade Reims 4–3 at Parc des Princes, Paris and wins the 1955–56 European Cup (football). June 14 – The Flag of the United States Army is formally dedicated. June 15 – Eindhoven University of Technology is founded in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. June 21 – Playwright Arthur Miller appears before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D.C. June 23 – Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes the 2nd president of Egypt, a post he holds until his death in 1970. June 28 Poznań 1956 protests: Labour riots in Poznań, Poland, are crushed with heavy loss of life. Soviet troops fire at a crowd protesting high prices, killing 53 people. The film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, is released only a few months after the film version of R&H's Carousel. It becomes the most financially successful film version of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical up to this time, and the only one to win an acting Oscar (Yul Brynner wins Best Actor for his performance as the King of Siam). It is also one of two Rodgers and Hammerstein films to be nominated for Best Picture (which it does not win). June 29 Actress Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller, in White Plains, New York. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating the Interstate Highway System in the United States. June 30 – 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision: A TWA Lockheed Constellation and United Airlines Douglas DC-7 collide in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft, in the deadliest civil aviation disaster to date; the accident leads to sweeping changes in the regulation of cross-country flight and air traffic control over the United States.
July
July 2 – A laboratory experiment involving scrap thorium at Sylvania Electric Products in Bayside, New York, results in an explosion that causes the death of an employee. July 4 – An American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft makes its first flight over the Soviet Union. July 9 – The 7.7 Amorgos earthquake shakes the Cyclades island group in the Aegean Sea, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The shaking and the subsequent tsunami leave 53 people dead. July 13 – John McCarthy (Dartmouth), Marvin Minsky (MIT), Claude Shannon (Bell Labs) and Nathaniel Rochester (IBM) assemble the first coordinated research meeting on the topic of artificial intelligence, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. July 25 – The Italian ocean liner sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS Stockholm in heavy fog south of Nantucket island, killing 51. July 26 – Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, sparking international condemnation. July 30 – A joint resolution of Congress is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorizing "In God we trust" as the U.S. national motto.
August
August 7 – Seven ammunition trucks loaded with 1,053 boxes of dynamite explode in Cali, Colombia. Death estimates range from 1,300 to 10,000, in a city that at this time has 120,000 inhabitants. August 8 – 262 miners (chiefly Italian nationals) die in a fire at the Bois du Cazier coal mine, in Marcinelle, Belgium. August 12 – Around 5,000 members of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church hold a mass outside Cluj-Napoca Piarists' Church to demonstrate that their church, proscribed by the government in 1948, has not ceased to exist as the regime claims. August 17 – West Germany bans the Communist Party of Germany. The first interfaith dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims with over 850 participants takes place at the monastery of Toumliline in Azrou, Morocco.
September
September 13 The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team, led by Reynold B. Johnson. The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed. September 16 – Television broadcasting in Australia commences. September 25 – The submarine transatlantic telephone cable opens. September 27 – The Bell X-2 becomes the first crewed aircraft to reach Mach 3.
October
October 10 Finland joins UNESCO. The prototype Lockheed L-1649 Starliner, the final Lockheed Constellation model, makes its first flight. October 14 – Dalit Buddhist movement (India): B. R. Ambedkar, Dalit leader, converts to Buddhism, along with 500,000 followers. October 15 – The British Royal Air Force retires its last Avro Lancaster bomber. October 17 The world's first industrial-scale commercial nuclear power plant is opened at Calder Hall in the UK. The Game of the Century (chess): 13-year-old Bobby Fischer beats grandmaster Donald Byrne, in the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament in New York City. October 19 – The Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 is signed in Moscow, ending the legal state of war between the Soviet Union and Japan (with effect from December 12) and making possible the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two nations. October 23 – The Hungarian Revolution breaks out against the pro-Soviet government, originating as a student demonstration in Budapest. Hungary attempts to leave the Warsaw Pact. October 24 – The Protocol of Sèvres, a secret agreement between Israel, France and the United Kingdom, is signed, allowing the former to invade the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and occupy the Suez Canal with the support of the other two governments, giving rise to the Suez Crisis. October 26 – Soviet Red Army troops invade Hungary. October 29 Suez Crisis: Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula and pushes Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal. Tangier Protocol: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco. The Huntley-Brinkley Report debuts on NBC-TV in the United States. October 31 Suez Crisis: The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal. A United States Navy team becomes the third group to reach the South Pole (arriving by air), and commences construction of the first permanent Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.
November November 1 – The States Reorganisation Act of India reforms the boundaries and names of Indian states. Three new states, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, are formed. November 3 – Khan Yunis massacre (Suez Crisis): Israeli soldiers shoot dead hundreds of Palestinian refugees and local inhabitants in Khan Yunis Camp. November 4 – Hungarian Revolution of 1956: More Soviet troops invade Hungary, to crush the revolt that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.