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### Fast Facts

### Also in this Section:

                          - 2020 Fast Facts
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                          - 1950 Fast Facts
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### *POP*Culture: 1950

**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.

| The 1950 Census |   | 10 Largest Urban Places |
|-----------------|--------|-------------------------|
| 151,325,798     |
| 42.6            | 1      | New York City, NY       | 7,891,957 |
| 14.5            | 2      | Chicago, IL             | 3,620,962 |
| April 1         | 3      | Philadelphia, PA        | 2,071,605 |
| 48              | 4      | Los Angeles, CA         | 1,970,358 |
| $91,462,000     | 5      | Detroit, MI             | 1,849,568 |
| 60.4            | 6      | Baltimore, MD           | 949,708 |
| 61,700          | 7      | Cleveland, OH           | 914,808 |
| 142,962         | 8      | St. Louis, MO           | 856,796 |
| Roy Victor Peel | 9      | Washington, DC          | 802,178 |
| 20              | 10     | Boston, MA              | 801,444 |
| 18              |

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