1956

**1956** (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday in the Gregorian calendar.

## Events 
, olympic gold medal winner from Italy]]
* The Summer Olympics were held in Melbourne, Australia.
* The Winter Olympics were held in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. This was the first Olympic Games in which the USSR competed.
* February 11 &ndash; British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean appear in the Soviet Union after being missing for 5 years
* March 2 &ndash; Morocco declares its independence from France
* April 19 &ndash; American actress Grace Kelly marries Rainier III, Prince of Monaco
* May 2 &ndash; The United Methodist Church in America grants women full ordained clergy status
* June 5 &ndash; Elvis Presley performs "Hound Dog", on *The Milton Berle Show*. His dancing causes a scandal.
* July 25 &ndash; The Italian ocean liner SS *Andrea Doria* sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS *Stockholm*, killing 51
* August 17 &ndash; West Germany bans the Communist Party of Germany
* September 16 &ndash; Television broadcasting begins in Australia
* October 26 &ndash; Red Army troops invade Hungary
* October 29 &ndash; November 7 &ndash; Suez Crisis: France, Israel and the United Kingdom in war with Egypt.
* November 30 &ndash; Floyd Patterson wins the world heavyweight boxing championship
* December 5 &ndash; Rose Heilbron becomes Britain's first female judge

## Births 
 in 2008]]
* January 3 – Mel Gibson, American-Australian actor
* January 28 – Dario Chioli, Italian poet
* February 6 - Jerry Marotta, American drummer (Orleans)
* February 16 – Peter Hook, English bass guitarist
* February 26 – Emanuel Radovan, Romanian politician of Albanian nationality.
* February 27 – Csaba Vrabie, Romanian politician of Hungarian nationality from UDMR.
* February 27 – Angela Aames, American actress (d. 1988)
* February 29 – Aileen Wuornos, American serial killer (d. 2002)
* March 12  Michael Catain, American businessman and convicted criminal
* March 24 – Steve Ballmer, American business person, CEO of Microsoft
* April 5 – Dwight Hicks, American NFL player
* April 12 – Andy García, American actor
* April 19 - Lane Hoppen, American singer-songwriter and musician (Orleans)
* May 7 – Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime minister of the Netherlands
* May 17 – Bob Saget, American actor and comedian
* June 2 – Mani Ratnam, Indian movie director
* June 4 – Martin Adams, English darts player
* June 11 – Joe Montana, American NFL player
* June 11 – Ray Nagin, American politician, mayor of New Orleans
* July 9 – Tom Hanks, American actor
* July 13 – Michael Spinks, American boxer
* July 15 – Joe Satriani, Italian-American guitar virtuoso
* August 4 – Margaret Whitman, American business person, CEO of Ebay
* August 26 – Sally Beamish, English composer
* August 28 - Adrian Schervan Romanian water polo player
* August 31 – Masashi Tashiro, Japanese television performer
* August 31 - Mark Mangini, American sound editor
* September 14 – Maxime Verhagen, Dutch politician
* September 17 – Andreas Starke, German politician, Lord Mayor of Bamberg
* September 27 – Milan Smrčka, Czech musician
* October 1 — Theresa May, British Prime Minister
* October 2 – Mike Scully, American television writer
* October 28 – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 6th President of Iran
* November 11 – Ian Craig Marsh, English musician
* December 4 - Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, 9th President of Mauritania
* December 6 - Peter Buck, American guitarist (R.E.M.)
* December 8 - Warren Cuccurullo, American guitarist (Duran Duran)
* December 9 - Jean-Pierre Thiollet, French author 
* Glen Hill (actor), actor
* Hugh Cook, English-born New Zealand writer
* Hans Enoksen, Prime minister of Greenland

## Deaths 
]]
* January 18 &ndash; Konstantin Päts, 1st President of Estonia (b. 1874)
* January 27 &ndash; Erich Kleiber, German conductor (b. 1890)
* February 10 &ndash; Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard, British marshal of the Royal Air Force (b. 1873)
* February 29 &ndash; Elpidio Quirino, 6th President of the Philippines (b. 1890)
* March 8 – Drastamat Kanayan, Armenian military leader and politician (b. 1884))
* March 17 &ndash; Irène Joliot-Curie, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1897)
* April 13 &ndash; Emil Nolde, German-Danish painter (b. 1867)
* May 18 &ndash; Maurice Tate, English cricketer (b. 1895)
* June 22 &ndash; Walter de la Mare, English poet, short story writer, and novelist (b. 1873)
* June 26 &ndash; Clifford Brown, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1930)
* July 11 &ndash; John T. Raulston, Scopes Monkey Trial judge (b. 1868)
* August 11- Jackson Pollack, American painter
* August 14 – Bertolt Brecht, German playwright (b. 1898)
* August 25 – Alfred Kinsey, American sex researcher (b. 1894)
* September 22 &ndash; Frederick Soddy, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877)
* October 25 &ndash; Risto Ryti, 5th President of Finland (b. 1889)
* October 30 – Pio Baroja, Spanish writer (b. 1872)
* November 22 &ndash; Theodore Kosloff, Russian-born ballet dancer, choreographer and actor (b. 1882)
* December 14 &ndash; Juho Kusti Paasikivi, 7th President of Finland (b. 1870)
* December 16 &ndash; Nina Hamnett, Welsh artist (b. 1890)

## Nobel Prizes
* Nobel Prize in Physics won by William Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain for inventing the point-contact transistor
* Nobel Prize in Chemistry won by Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, English physical chemist, and Nikolay Semyonov, Russian/Soviet physicist and chemist
* Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine won by André Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann, and Dickinson W. Richards for the development of cardiac catheterization
* Nobel Prize in Literature won by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish poet
* Nobel Peace Prize &ndash; Not Awarded

## Movies released 
 and Rock Hudson in *Giant*]]
* *Around the World in 80 Days* winning the Academy Award for Best Picture
* *Bus Stop* starring Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray 
* *Giant* starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean
* *Hollywood or Bust* the final Martin and Lewis movie
* *The King and I* winning Best Actor for Yul Brynner
* *The Searchers* starring John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter
* *The Ten Commandments* starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner
* *War and Peace* starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda

## New books 
*Agatha Christie – ''Dead Man's Folly*
*Arthur C. Clarke – *The City and the Stars*
*Ian Fleming – *Diamonds Are Forever*
*Fred Gipson – *Old Yeller*
*Alf Prøysen – *Little Old Mrs Pepperpot''