Timeline 1955

JANUARY 10
American contralto Marian Anderson becomes the first black person
to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

JANUARY 19
The board game Scrabble goes on sale for the first time.

FEBRUARY 2
William Inge's Bus Stop premiers in New York.

APRIL 15
The first McDonald's restaurant opens in Des Plaines, Illinois.�

APRIL 18
German-born physicist and creator of the Theory of Special Relativity, Albert Einstein, dies.

JUNE 3
Stan Musial hits his 300th homerun.

JUNE 6
Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets hits number 1
in the US charts.

JUNE 19
Mickey Mantel hits his 100th homerun.

JUNE 23
Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp is released.

JULY 18
A 160 acre, $17 million theme park opens in California, Walt Disney's Disneyland.�

AUGUST 5
Carmen Miranda, singer, actress and wearer of phenomenal fruit headdresses, dies aged 42.

AUGUST 12
Nobel Prize winner, and author of Death in Venice, Thomas Mann, dies.

AUGUST 27
The Guinness Book of World Records is published for the first time.

SEPTEMBER 9
Elvis Presley appears on the Ed Sullivan Show.

SEPTEMBER 30
Actor James Dean dies in a car crash aged 24.

OCTOBER 1
The Honeymooners premieres on television as do the programs Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
Captain Kangaroo, and The Mickey Mouse Club.

OCTOBER 16
James Dean's second movie, Rebel Without a Cause, opens in the US.
�
OCTOBER 26
New York newspaper The Village Voice is founded.

NOVEMBER 16
Donald Campbell sets a new world water speed record in the US at�
216.2 mph.

NOVEMBER 22
Three Stooges' Shemp Howard dies on this day aged 60.�

NOVEMBER 25
Rosa Parks is arrested in Alabama for refusing to give her bus seat to a white woman. 50,000 protesters led by Dr. Martin Luther King boycott buses and call for an end to segregation.�

DECEMBER 19
Singer Carl Perkins records Blue Suede Shoes.