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New In 1959 Panty Hose. Alaska and Hawaii become 49th and 50th states. Submarine with ballistic missile. Deaths Frank Lloyd Wright Notes U.S. restores full citizenship to Japanese- Americans who were interned during WWII. U.S. Steel Workers strike for 116 days. |
.. | Castro Begins Reign On New Year's Day, 1959, a fiery young lawyer named Fidel Castro and his "Fidelistas" took Havana. Fulgencio Batista, Cuba's dictator, had fled the previous day, after pocketing most of the national treasury. Assuming total power in 1959, Castro lead aggressive agrarian and industrial reform measures, eventually expropriating a billion dollars in American properties. Castro inked a five million- ton sugar deal with the Soviet Union; later, when U.S. refineries in Cuba refused Soviet oil, Castro seized them. Eisenhower responded with a trade embargo; a year later he severed diplomatic relations. Inevitably, Castro moved closer to the Soviets. And after an attempted U.S. invasion, he declared his revolution was Communist - the first in the Western Hemisphere. Leakeys Find a Link
A century after Darwin's death, British anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey discovered a clue to one of evolution's basic questions: At what point did modern humans break off from chimpanzees and gorillas in the evolutionary chain? In 1959, Mary recovered a fossilized skull of Zinjanthropus boisei. The fossil was dated at 1.75 million years. More than a million years older than the most ancient hominid remains previously found. |
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The
Kitchen Debate The 1959 meeting of Vice President Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow turned into a verbal slugfest. The highlight of the running battle came in the kitchen of a model American house. Khrushchev belittled the gadgetry- lemon juicers, built- in- washing machines: It evoked "the capitalist attitude toward women." He doubted American workers could afford such useless finery anyway. Nixon, jabbing his finger at Khrushchev's chest, defended the $14,000 house: Any American steel worker could buy one. In modern times, two world leaders have rarely, if ever, spoken face to face so sharply or candidly. Antarctic Treaty Representatives of twelve nations agreed to preserve the world's last undeveloped continent. The Antarctic Treaty, signed on December 1, 1959, made the continent a military- free zone reserved for cooperative scientific research. Alcohol OK |
