1958

Events from the year 1958 in the United States.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-KS/PA)
* Vice President: Richard Nixon (R-CA)
* Chief Justice: Earl Warren (CA)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Sam Rayburn (D-TX)
* Senate Majority Leader: Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)
* Congress: 85th
==Events==
===January - March===
* January 8 – Bobby Fischer, 14 years old at the time, wins the United States Chess Championship.
* January 13 – In One, Inc. v. Olesen, the Supreme Court affirms that homosexual writing is not per se obscene.
* January 18
** Battle of Hayes Pond: Armed Lumbee Indians confront the Ku Klux Klan in Maxton, North Carolina.
** The first of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic is telecast by CBS. The Emmy-winning series (one concert approximately every 3 months except for the summer) will run for more than 14 years. It will make Bernstein's name a household word, and the most famous conductor in the U.S.
* January 28 – Hall of Fame baseball player Roy Campanella is involved in an automobile accident that ends his career and leaves him paralyzed.
* January 31 – The first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, is launched into orbit.
* February 5 – The Tybee Bomb, a 7,600 pound (3,500 kg) Mark 15 hydrogen bomb, is lost in the waters off Savannah, Georgia.
* February 11 – Ruth Carol Taylor is the first African American woman hired as a flight attendant. Working for Mohawk Airlines, her career lasts only six months, due to another discriminatory barrier, the airline's ban on married flight attendants.
* February 20 – A test rocket explodes at Cape Canaveral.
* February 28 – Prestonsburg, Kentucky bus disaster: The worst school bus accident in U.S. history up to this date occurs at Prestonsburg, Kentucky; 27 are killed.
* March 1 – Archbishop of Chicago Samuel Stritch is appointed Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith, thus becoming the first American to head a dicastery of the Roman Curia.
* March 8 – The USS Wisconsin is decommissioned, leaving the United States Navy without an active battleship for the first time since 1896 (it is recommissioned October 22, 1988).
* March 11 – 1958 Mars Bluff B-47 nuclear weapon loss incident: A U.S. B-47 bomber accidentally drops an atom bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Its conventional explosives destroy a house and injure several people, but no nuclear fission occurs.
* March 17
** The Convention on the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO) enters into force, founding the IMCO as a specialized agency of the United Nations.
** The United States launches the Vanguard 1 satellite.
* March 19
** Monarch Underwear Company fire in New York.
** Warner Bros. Records, the company which would later become Warner Records, is founded by its namesake, Warner Bros. Pictures.
* March 24 – The U.S. Army inducts Elvis Presley, transforming "The King Of Rock & Roll" into U.S. private #53310761.
* March 26
** The United States Army launches Explorer 3.
** The 30th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Bob Hope, Rosalind Russell, David Niven, James Stewart, Jack Lemmon and a premade animation of Donald Duck, is held at RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai wins seven awards, including Best Motion Picture and Best Director for Lean. Joshua Logan's Sayonara receives the most nominations with ten.
===April - June===
* April 1 – Unemployment in Detroit reaches 20%, marking the height of the Recession of 1958 in the United States.
* April 15 – The San Francisco Giants beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 8–0 at San Francisco's Seals Stadium, in the first Major League Baseball regular-season game ever played in California.
* April 21 – A United Airlines DC-7 and U.S. Air Force F-100 Super Sabre fighter jet collide near Las Vegas, Nevada, killing all 49 aboard the two aircraft.
* May 9 – Actor-singer Paul Robeson, whose passport has been reinstated, sings in a sold-out one-man recital at Carnegie Hall. The recital is such a success that Robeson gives another one at Carnegie Hall a few days later. But after these two concerts, Robeson is seldom seen in public in the United States again. His Carnegie Hall concerts are later released on records and on CD.
* May 12 – A formal North American Aerospace Defense Command agreement is signed between the United States and Canada.
* May 13 – During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, Vice President Richard M. Nixon's car is attacked by anti-American demonstrators.
* May 20 – A Capital Airlines airliner and Air National Guard jet collide near Brunswick, Maryland, killing 12.
* May 23 – Explorer 1 ceases transmission.
* May 30 – The bodies of unidentified soldiers killed in action during World War II and the Korean War are buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.
* June 2 – In San Simeon, California, Hearst Castle opens to the public for guided tours.
* June 8 – The SS Edmund Fitzgerald is launched; it will be the largest freighter on the Great Lakes for more than a dozen years.
* June 15 – The first Pizza Hut restaurant opens in Wichita, Kansas.
* June 17 – The U.S. condemns the execution of Imre Nagy as a "shocking act of cruelty".
===July - September===
* July 1 – The plastic hula hoop is first marketed.
* July 3 – 1958 US–UK Mutual Defense Agreement signed in Washington, D.C.
* July 7 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act into United States law.
* July 9 – 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami: A 7.8 Mw strike-slip earthquake in Southeast Alaska causes a landslide that produces a megatsunami. The runup from the waves reached 525 m (1,722 ft) on the rim of Lituya Bay.
* July 15 – During the 1958 Lebanon crisis, 5,000 United States Marines land in the capital Beirut in order to protect the pro-Western government there.
* July 29 – The U.S. Congress formally creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
* August 3 – The nuclear powered submarine USS Nautilus becomes the first vessel to cross the North Pole under water.
* August 12 – The Federal Switchblade Act is enacted in the United States.
* August 17 – The first Thor-Able rocket is launched, carrying Pioneer 0, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17. The launch fails due to a first stage malfunction.
* August 18 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States.
* August 21 – Illinois observes the centennial of the Lincoln–Douglas debates.
* August 23 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, transferring all authority over aviation in the U.S. to the newly created Federal Aviation Agency (FAA, later renamed Federal Aviation Administration).
* August 27 – Operation Argus: The United States begins nuclear tests over the South Atlantic.
* September 1
** The University of New Orleans begins classes as the first racially integrated public university in the South.
** The University of New Orleans begins classes as the first racially integrated public university in the Southern United States.
* September 15 – Newark Bay rail accident kills 48 people and injures the same number.
* September 23 – The Spirit of Detroit statue is dedicated in Detroit, Michigan.
===October - December===
* October 1 – NASA starts operations and replaces the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
* October 9 – The New York Yankees defeat the Milwaukee Braves, 4 games to 3, to win their 18th World Series Title.
* October 11 – Pioneer 1, the second and most successful of the three-project Able space probes, becomes the first spacecraft launched by the newly formed NASA.
* November 12 – The Nose as El Capitan in Yosemite National Park is first climbed, by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore in 47 days.
* November 20 – The Jim Henson Company is founded as Muppets, Inc.
* November 23 – Have Gun, Will Travel debuts on American radio.
* December 1 – Our Lady of the Angels School fire: At least 90 students and 3 nuns are killed in a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago.
* December 6 – A third Thor-Able rocket launch, carrying the Pioneer 2 probe, is unsuccessful due to a third-stage ignition failure.
* December 9 – The right-wing John Birch Society is founded in the U.S. by Robert W. Welch Jr., a retired candy manufacturer.
* December 19 – A message from President Dwight D. Eisenhower is broadcast from SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, launched by the U.S. the previous day.
* December 25 – Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (the George Balanchine version) is shown on prime-time television in color for the first time, as an episode of the CBS anthology series Playhouse 90.
* December 28 – 1958 NFL Championship Game: The Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants 23–17 in overtime to win the NFL Championship in American football.
==Memoriam==
* January 1
** Archie Alexander, designer (aged 69; Des Moines, IA, USA)
** Edward Weston, photographer (aged 71; Carmel Highlands, CA, USA)
* January 6 – Lois Irene Marshall as wife of Thomas R. Marshall, Second Lady of the United States (aged 84; Phoenix, AZ, USA)
* January 8 – Mary Colter, architect and designer (aged 88; Santa Fe, NM, USA)
* January 11 – Edna Purviance, silent film actress (aged 62; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* January 13 – Jesse L. Lasky, film producer (aged 77; Beverly Hills, CA, USA)
* February 1 – Clinton Davisson, physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1937 (aged 76; Charlottesville, VA, USA)
* February 2 – Bertrand Snell, politician (aged 87; Potsdam, NY, USA)
* February 4
** Monta Bell, actor and director (aged 66; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
** Henry Kuttner, author (aged 42; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* February 20 – Dwight H. Green, 30th Governor of Illinois (aged 61; Chicago, IL, USA)
* February 27 – Harry Cohn, film producer (aged 66; Phoenix, AZ, USA)
* March 22
** Mike Todd, film producer (aged 48; Grants, NM, USA)
** Art Cohn, screenwriter (aged 48; Grants, NM, USA)
* March 28
** W. C. Handy, African American blues composer (aged 84; New York City, NY, USA)
** Chuck Klein, baseball player (aged 53; Indianapolis, IN, USA)
* April 30 – Alvan T. Fuller, businessman, politician, art collector, and philanthropist (aged 80; Boston, MA, USA)
* May 5 – James Branch Cabell, fantasy writer (aged 79; Richmond, VA, USA)
* June 10 – Angelina Weld Grimké, African American lesbian journalist and poet (aged 78; New York City, NY, USA)
* July 9 – James H. Flatley, naval aviator and admiral (aged 52; Bethesda, MD, USA)
* July 26 – Eugene Millikin, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1941 to 1957 (aged 67; Denver, CO, USA)
* August 14 – Big Bill Broonzy, African American blues singer-songwriter (aged 55; Chicago, IL, USA)
* August 27 – Ernest Lawrence, nuclear physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 (aged 57; Palo Alto, CA, USA)
* August 29 – Marjorie Flack, artist, illustrator and writer (aged 60; Long Island, NY, USA)
* September 15 – Snuffy Stirnweiss, baseball player (aged 39; Newark Bay, NJ, USA)
* September 25 – John B. Watson, psychologist (aged 80; Woodbury, CT, USA)
* October 19 – Mary F. Hoyt, first woman appointed to the U.S. federal civil service, in 1883 (aged 100; New York City, NY, USA)
* October 27 – Marshall Neilan, actor and director (aged 67; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* October 29 – Zoe Akins, playwright, poet and author (aged 71; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* November 15
** Samuel Hopkins Adams, writer (aged 87; Beaufort, SC, USA)
** Tyrone Power, actor (aged 44; Madrid, Spain)
* November 21
** Mel Ott, baseball player (aged 49; New Orleans, LA, USA)
** Lion Feuchtwanger, German-American novelist and playwright (aged 74; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* November 24 – Parkyakarkus (Harry Parke), comedian (aged 54; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* December 29 – Doris Humphrey, dancer and choreographer (aged 63; New York City, NY, USA)
==External links==
* 1958 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 18