Atomic Age

The **Atomic Age** is a period of history, part of modern times. It started in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1964, the beginning of the Age of Aquarius.

## Timeline

### 1945

**August 25:** Death of John Birch--China.

**September 20:** Operation Paperclip relocates Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun to the United States to work on missile programs--Wilmington, Delaware

**December 5:** Flight 19, a squadron of Navy bombers, disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.

Mob boss Vito Corleone (1887-1955) survives an assassination attempt.

**December 24:** Clarence the Angel shows George Bailey what a terrible life it would be if he had never existed--Bedford Falls, New York.

### 1946

Formation of U.N.C.L.E. as a U.N. secret service.

**March:** Greek Civil War breaks out.

**December 19:** Fighting breaks out in Hanoi between French forces and the Viet Minh, forcing Ho Chi Minh to flee to the countryside.

### 1947

Andy Dufresne begins serving two consecutive life sentences for the murder of his wife and her lover--Shawshank, Maine

**January 15:** The Black Dahlia killing--Los Angeles

**April 15:** Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American player in the Major Leagues--Brooklyn

**June 14:** An extraterrestrial craft crashes and is recovered--Roswell, N.M.

**June 20:** Bugsy Malone rubbed out--Las Vegas.

**June 22:** First modern report of the Men in Black, mysterious figures who appear after a UFO sighting.

**June 24:** First sighting of flying saucers--Mount Ranier, Washington.

**July 6:** Birth of John Rambo--Phoenix, Arizona.

**July 17:** Jack Kerouac goes on the road for the first time, taking a bus from New York City to Denver.

**October:** The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigating Communist infiltration of Hollywood.

**October 14:** Captain Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier--Muroc Army Air Field, California.

### 1948

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello meet Frankenstein's Monster--as well as Dracula and the Wolf Man--LaMirada, Florida.

**January 3:** Alfred Kinsey publishes his Report--Bloomington, Indiana.

**January 30:** Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi--New Delhi.

**May 14:** Arab–Israeli War begins.

Sgt. Joe Friday begins work for the LAPD; he retires in 1970.

**July:** Admiral Miles Messervy--better known as M--becomes head of MI6.

**October 28:** The USS *Eldridge* disappears from Philadelphia and reappears in Norfolk, Virginia, in an incident known as the Philadelphia Experiment.

**October:** Batman first confronted by the psychotic puzzles of Edward Nigma, calling himself The Riddler--Gotham City.

**October:** Harry Lime is revealed to be the Third Man--Vienna.

### 1949

Peter, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, their cousin Eustace Scrubb and their friends Digory Kirke, Polly Plummer and Jill Pole are killed in a British Rail accident.

**December 10:** Holden Caulfield (b. 1933) begins a weekend in New York City after losing the Pencey Prep fencing swords.

**December 13:** Mossad, Israel's secret service, is formed--Tel Aviv.

### 1950

**February 9:** Sen. Joe McCarthy (1908-1957) declares he has in his hand a list of known Communists at the State Department--Wheeling, West Virginia.

**May:** L. Ron Hubbard publishes *Dianetics*.

**June 25:** Korean War begins.

**July:** The 4077th MASH unit established in South Korea, with Frank "Hawkeye" Pierce as chief surgeon.

**July:** James Bond (b. 1921) assigned to the 00 section of British intelligence, given a license to kill--London.

**October:** Alan Turing proposes his Test for the demonstration of artificial intelligence.

### 1951

Tommy becomes deaf, dumb and blind.

Johnny Cash shoots a man in Reno just to watch him die; ends up in Folsom State Prison.

Justice Society disbands.

A thing from another world goes on a rampage after being unfrozen--North Pole.

**February 14:** Sugar Ray Robinson defeats Jake LaMotta to become Middleweight Boxing Champion--Chicago.

**April 11:** President Truman removes General Douglas MacArthur from command of U.S. forces in Korea.

**May:** James Bond, working for the first time with CIA Agent Felix Leiter, confronts a SMERSH operative trying to recoup lost funds at Casino Royale

**July 18:** Klaatu lands his flying saucer, causes Earth to stand still--Washington, D.C.

### 1952

Sgt. Raymond Shaw captured, brainwashed during the Korean War--Manchuria.

The Mau Mau rebellion

Michael Corleone (b. 1920) assumes control of the Corleone Family--Long Island.

Hickory Huskers become Indiana State Basketball Champions--Indianapolis.

**January 4:** Having completed his medical exams, Ernesto "Che" Guevara sets off across South America on a motorcycle--Buenos Aires.

**February:** James Bond tracks down SMERSH operative Mr. Big in Jamaica.

**March:** The Air Force launches Project Blue Book to investigate UFO reports. The project is terminated in 1970.

**November 4:** Dwight Eisenhower elected president.

### 1953

Sir Edmund Hillary conquers Mt Everest, reports seeing Yeti footprints.

It comes from outer space--Sand Rock, Arizona

**March 5:** Joseph Stalin dies of a stroke--Moscow.

**April 13:** CIA Director Allen Dulles orders the creation of the mind-control research program MK-ULTRA.

April 25: James Watson and Francis Crick crack the DNA code--Cambridge, England.

**June 19:** Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed--Sing Sing, New York.

**August 21:** J.R. "Bob" Dobbs founds the Church of the SubGenius on instructions from alien space monster JHVH-1--Dallas.

**December:** L. Ron Hubbard incorporates the Church of Scientology--Camden, New Jersey.

### 1954

Irradiated giant ants attack in New Mexico, the first of a number of giant invertebrate incidents.

**March:** Ichthyoid Creature from the Devonian Era discovered and is presumed slain after abducting an ichthyologist's girlfriend--Black Lagoon, Brazil.

Vito Corleone, retired head of the Corleone crime family, dies of a heart attack.

**January 14:** Marilyn Monroe marries Joe DiMaggio, and is divorced later in the year.

**March 1:** The United States detonates a hydrogen bomb--Bikini Atoll, Pacific Ocean.

**March 9:** Edward R. Murrow condemns Joe McCarthy on CBS News.

**May 1:** Sun Myung Moon founds the Unification Church--Seoul.

**June:** SMERSH's Rosa Klebb plots to assassinate James Bond--London.

**June 9:** Joe McCarthy is asked if, at long last, he had any sense of decency; end of his era--Washington, D.C.

**June 29:** Buckminster Fuller patents the geodesic dome--Black Mountain, North Carolina.

**November:** Gojira, a giant dinosaur revived and mutated by nuclear testing, attacks Tokyo, the first of a number of Atomic Age
monsters to cause havoc around the world.

### 1955

**May:** The Creature From the Black Lagoon is captured and taken
for study to the United States, where he escapes into the
Everglades--Ocean Harbor Park, Florida.

**April:** Area 51 established in Nevada.

**April 12:** Dr. Jonas Salk develops a vaccine for polio.

**June:** Alden Pyle, quiet American, is killed in Saigon.

**September 30:** Actor James Dean (b. 1931) dies in an accident in his Porsche 550 Spyder--Cholame, California.

**November:** J’onn J’onzz, the last of his Martian species, accidentally teleported from Mars to Earth, where he disguises himself as private detective John Jones while fighting superpowered adversaries as the Martian Manhunter.

**November 5:** Marty McFly arrives from 1985 in a retrofitted DeLorean--Hill Valley, California.

**November 12:** McFly goes back to the future.

**December 1:** Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus--Montgomery, Alabama.

### 1956

Napoleon Solo becomes an agent of U.N.C.L.E.

**April:** The Creature From the Black Lagoon is recaptured and subjected to bizarre experiments before escaping once again into the Atlantic Ocean--Ocean Harbor Park, Florida.

Rodan, a mutant pterosaur, terrorizes Japan.

**April 19:** Grace Kelly marries Prince Ranier of Monaco.

**March:** James Bond confronts Doctor Julius No--Crab Key, Caribbean.

**June 29:** Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller.

**August 16:** Bela Lugosi (b. 1882) is dead.

**September 30:** The start of the Battle of Algiers.

**October 23:** Barry Allen becomes the second Flash.

**October 29:** Suez Crisis

**November 4:** Hungarian Revolution squashed as Soviet tanks roll into Budapest.

Body Snatchers begin invasion--Santa Mira, California.

### 1957

Hugh Carey becomes the Incredible Shrinking Man--off the coast of California.

**May:** James Bond foils SMERSH operative Auric Goldfinger's plan to raid Fort Knox, defeating his henchman Oddjob and seduces his ally Pussy Galore.

**June 13:** Jason Voorhees (b. 1946) drowns while counselors are distracted at Camp Crystal Lake, New Jersey.

**July:** Guy Debord forms the Situationist International.

**July 6:** John Lennon meets Paul McCartney, asks him to join his band--Liverpool.

**September 4:** Ford introduces the Edsel.

**October 4:** Launch of Sputnik.

**November 16:** Arrest of psychotic killer Ed Gein (1906-1984) in Plainfield, Wisc.

**December:** Hugh Hefner publishes the first issue of *Playboy*.

### 1958

**July:** Extraterrestrial Blob battles teenagers--Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Attack of a 50-foot Woman--Las Vegas, Nevada.

Lt. Frank Columbo (born c. 1930) joins the LAPD.

### 1959

**January 1:** The Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, unseats the Batista dictatorship--Havana.

**February 3:** On the Day the Music Died, a plane crash kills Buddy Holly (b. 1936), Ritchie Valens and The [Big Bopper]]--Clear Lake, Iowa.

**May:** James Bond for the first time confronts Ernst Blofeld and SPECTRE--New Providence Island, Bahamas.

**July:** Outer Space implements Plan 9.

Katar Hol arrives on Earth from Thanagar to become Hawkman.

Kara Zor-El arrives on Earth from Argo City, becomes Supergirl.

Hal Jordan becomes Earth's second Green Lantern.

**July:** Summer loving happens so fast for Sandy Olsson and Danny Zucko--Venice, California.

**November 15:** The "In Cold Blood" murders--Holcomb, Kansas

**December 12:** Hotelier Norman Bates kills a guest in the shower of her motel room--Kern County, California.

### 1960

**February:** Justice League of America founded by Superman,
Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash (Barry Allen), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter--Happy Harbor, Rhode Island.

**February 1:** Black students at the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, sit down at the whites-only lunch counter and insist on being served.

**May 1:** Gary Powers shot down in a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union.

**May 11:** Adolf Eichmann captured by Mossad agents--Buenos Aires.

**August:** John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best name their band The Beatles and start a series of gigs in Hamburg, Germany.

**September 26:** John Kennedy debates Richard Nixon--Chicago.

**October:** Don Draper becomes a partner at the Sterling Cooper ad agency--Manhattan.

**November 8:** John F. Kennedy elected President of the United States--with the help of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.

**December 25:** Nazi scientists produce the first of 94 Hitler clones--Brazil.

### 1961

**January 20:** President Kennedy tells you to ask what you can do for your country--Washington, D.C.

**April 12:** Yuri Gagarin launched into space.

**April 17:** CIA-backed invasion fails to overthrow Castro--Bay of Pigs, Cuba.

James Bond encounters Ernst Blofeld of SPECTRE.

Noam Chomsky becomes a professor at MIT.

**August 4:** Barack Hussein Obama born in Kenya, though his parents forge birth certificates and plant a birth announcement in the Honolulu newspaper, making it appear that he was born in Hawaii.

**August 13:** Berlin Wall constructed.

**November:** Reed Richards’ experimental space flight turns himself, Ben Grimm, and siblings Sue and Johnny Storm into the Fantastic Four.

### 1962

**January 1:** James Bond is married, but his bride is gunned down by Ernst Blofeld and Irma Bunt on their wedding day--Germany.

**May:** Gamma Bomb accident turns scientist Bruce Banner into The Hulk--New Mexico.

**May:** *The Corny Collins Show* is racially integrated--Baltimore.

**May 19:** Marilyn Monroe sings "Happy Birthday Mr. President" to JFK at Madison Square Garden--New York City.

**August 5:** Nelson Mandela (b. 1918) imprisoned by South Africa with help of CIA--Rivonia, South Africa.

**August 5:** Marilyn Monroe found dead of a barbiturate overdose in her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles.

**August:** Student Peter Parker (b. 1947), bitten by a radioactive spider, begins fighting crime--New York City.

**August:** The god Thor reappears on Earth after a long absence--Norway.

**August:** The giant gorilla Kong battles Godzilla--Tokyo.

**October 14:** Cuban Missile Crisis brings the United States and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

**November:** Dean Vernon Wormer puts Bluto Blutarsky and the rest of Delta Tau Chi, aka Animal House, on double secret probation--Faber College, Tennessee.

Giant caterpillar attacks Tokyo, later transforms into Mothra.

### 1963

Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown (age 10) opens a detective agency in Idaville, Florida.

**March:** Tony Stark develops the Iron Man armor while a prisoner in Viet Nam.

**April:** James Bond, with the help of Tiger Tanaka and Kissy Suzuki, tracks down and kills Ernst Blofeld--Japan

Strange attacks by birds--Bodega Bay, California

Gloria Steinem works undercover as a Playboy bunny.

Inspector Clouseau recovers the Pink Panther diamond.

Dr. Steven Strange begins a career as a mystic after an accident ends his medical career.

**August 28:** Martin Luther King declares he has a dream at the March on Washington

**September:** The Avengers founded by Iron Man, Thor and The Hulk.

In the same month, Professor Charles Xaxier opens his School for Gifted Youngsters in Salem Center, N.Y., secretly a haven for teenagers with mutant superabilities. His students confront the superpowered mutant known as Magneto for the first time.

**October 31:** Michael Meyers kills his sister and is committed to a mental institution.

**November 22:** Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunmen, part of a conspiracy or an innocent patsy. Lyndon Johnson becomes president.

Double agent Kim Philby defects to Moscow.