Year retrospective · 1950s

1959

1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1959th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 959th year of the 2nd millennium, the 59th year of the 20th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1950s decade.

Recorded events

10

top entries

Notable births

30

Notable deaths

30

Decade

1950s

Timeline

Defining events of 1959

  1. 1959 The Saint Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping.

    System of waterways in Canada and the US

    The St. Lawrence Seaway is a system of rivers, locks, canals, and channels in Eastern Canada and the Northern United States that permits oceangoing vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes of North America, as far inland as Duluth, Minnesota, at the western end of Lake Superior. The seaway is named for the St.

  2. 1959 A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.

    U.S. naval officer and computer scientist (1906–1992)

    Grace Brewster Hopper was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.

  3. 1959 The Organization of American States drafts an agreement to create the Inter-American Development Bank.

    International organization

    The Organization of American States is an international organization founded on 30 April 1948 to promote cooperation among its member states within the Americas.

  4. 1959 Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".

    Initial American crewed spaceflight program (1958–1963)

    Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights, and six successful flights by astronauts.

  5. 1959 Sheremetyevo International Airport, the second-largest airport in Russia, opens.

    International airport serving Moscow, Russia

    Sheremetyevo International Airport is one of four international airports that serve the city of Moscow. It is the busiest airport in Russia and the post-Soviet states, as well as the ninth-busiest airport in Europe. Originally built as a military airbase, Sheremetyevo was converted into a civilian airport in 1959.

  6. 1959 Founding and first official meeting of the American Football League.

    League that merged with the NFL in 1970

    The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL) and became that league's American Football Conference (AFC). The upstart AFL operated in direct competition with the more established NFL throughout its existence. It was more successful than earlier rivals to the NFL, including not only the organizations founded under the AFL name in 1926, 1936, and 1940, but also the later All-America Football Conference (AAFC), which existed between 1944 and 1950 but conducted operations only between 1946 and 1949.

  7. 1959 American Airlines Flight 514, a Boeing 707, crashes near the Calverton Executive Airpark in Calverton, New York, killing all five people on board.
  8. 1959 Quake Lake is formed by the magnitude 7.2 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake near Hebgen Lake in Montana.
  9. 1959 United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii's admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day.
  10. 1959 Portugal's state police force PIDE fires upon striking workers in Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, killing over 50 people.

Arrivals

Born in 1959

John Middendorf 1959– American mountain climber and inventor (1959–2024)
Susan Faludi 1959– American feminist author and journalist
Perry Haddock 1959– Australian rugby league footballer
Tim Jacobus 1959– American artist (born 1959)
Robert Smith 1959– English rock musician (born 1959)
Terry Francona 1959– American baseball player and manager (born 1959)
Ryan Stiles 1959– American-Canadian comedian (born 1959)
Rajendra Singh 1959– Indian environmentalist (born 1959)
Joyce Sims 1959– American singer and songwriter (1959–2022)
Johnny Whitaker 1959– American actor (born 1959)
Christian Schreier 1959– German footballer (born 1959)
Lawrence Taylor 1959– American football player (born 1959)

Farewells

Died in 1959

József Révai Hungarian politician
Rosanjin Japanese artist
Owen Willans Richardson British physicist (1879–1959)
The Day the Music Died American musician (1930–1959)
The Day the Music Died American musician (1936–1959)
The Day the Music Died American rock musician (1941–1959)
Nap Lajoie American baseball player and manager (1874–1959)
Daniel François Malan Prime Minister of South Africa from 1948 to 1954
Guitar Slim American guitarist (1926–1959)
Hermann Brill German politician (1895–1959)
Lester Dent American writer
József Révai Hungarian politician

On the charts

Culture of 1959

By month

Across the calendar of 1959

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