Important Historical Events of the year 1958, Year 1958 in History
List of 1958 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1958
What happened in the year 1958?
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 1, 1958 | The European Economic Community is established. |
| January 3, 1958 | The West Indies Federation is formed. |
| January 4, 1958 | Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit. |
| January 13, 1958 | The Moroccan Army of Liberation ambushes a Spanish patrol in the Battle of Edchera. |
| January 18, 1958 | Willie O'Ree, the first Black Canadian National Hockey League player, makes his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. |
| January 23, 1958 | After a general uprising and rioting in the streets, President Marcos Pérez Jiménez leaves Venezuela. |
| January 28, 1958 | The Lego company patents the design of its Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced today. |
| January 31, 1958 | Cold War: Space Race: The first successful American satellite detects the Van Allen radiation belt. |
| February 3, 1958 | Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community. |
| February 5, 1958 | Gamal Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic. |
| February 5, 1958 | A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered. |
| February 6, 1958 | Eight Manchester United F.C. players and 15 other passengers are killed in the Munich air disaster. |
| February 21, 1958 | The CND symbol, aka peace symbol, commissioned by the Direct Action Committee in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom. |
| February 22, 1958 | Following a plebiscite in both countries the previous day, Egypt and Syria join to form the United Arab Republic. |
| February 23, 1958 | Five-time Argentine Formula One champion Juan Manuel Fangio is kidnapped by rebels involved in the Cuban Revolution, on the eve of the Cuban Grand Prix. He was released the following day after the race. |
| February 28, 1958 | A school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in what remains one of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history. |
| March 1, 1958 | Samuel Alphonsus Stritch is appointed Pro-Prefect of the Propagation of Faith and thus becomes the first U.S. member of the Roman Curia. |
| March 3, 1958 | Nuri al-Said becomes Prime Minister of Iraq for the eighth time. |
| March 17, 1958 | The United States launches the first solar-powered satellite, which is also the first satellite to achieve a long-term orbit. |
| March 19, 1958 | The Monarch Underwear Company fire leaves 24 dead and 15 injured. |
| March 26, 1958 | The United States Army launches Explorer 3. |
| March 26, 1958 | The African Regroupment Party is launched at a meeting in Paris. |
| March 27, 1958 | Nikita Khrushchev becomes Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. |
| March 31, 1958 | In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265. |
| April 4, 1958 | The CND peace symbol is displayed in public for the first time in London. |
| April 5, 1958 | Ripple Rock, an underwater threat to navigation in the Seymour Narrows in Canada is destroyed in one of the largest non-nuclear controlled explosions of the time. |
| April 6, 1958 | Capital Airlines Flight 67 crashes into Saginaw Bay near Freeland, Michigan, killing 47. |
| April 13, 1958 | American pianist Van Cliburn is awarded first prize at the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. |
| April 14, 1958 | The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days. This was the first spacecraft to carry a living animal, a female dog named Laika, who likely lived only a few hours. |
| April 21, 1958 | United Airlines Flight 736 collides with a United States Air Force fighter jet near Arden, Nevada in what is now Enterprise, Nevada. |
| April 26, 1958 | Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives. |
| May 13, 1958 | During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, the US Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by anti-American demonstrators. |
| May 13, 1958 | May 1958 crisis: A group of French military officers lead a coup in Algiers demanding that a government of national unity be formed with Charles de Gaulle at its head in order to defend French control of Algeria. |
| May 13, 1958 | Ben Carlin becomes the first (and only) person to circumnavigate the world by amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by sea and 62,000 kilometres (39,000 mi) by land during a ten-year journey. |
| May 22, 1958 | The 1958 riots in Ceylon become a watershed in the race relations of various ethnic communities of Sri Lanka. The total deaths are estimated at 300, mostly Tamils. |
| May 24, 1958 | United Press International is formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service. |
| May 27, 1958 | First flight of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. |
| May 28, 1958 | Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, heavily reinforced by Frank Pais Militia, overwhelm an army post in El Uvero. |
| May 30, 1958 | Memorial Day: The remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War respectively, are buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. |
| June 1, 1958 | Charles de Gaulle comes out of retirement to lead France by decree for six months. |
| June 16, 1958 | Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising are executed. |
| June 17, 1958 | The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing 18 ironworkers and injuring others. |
| July 1, 1958 | The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation links television broadcasting across Canada via microwave. |
| July 1, 1958 | Flooding of Canada's Saint Lawrence Seaway begins. |
| July 7, 1958 | US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act into law. |
| July 9, 1958 | A 7.8 Mw strike-slip earthquake in Alaska causes a landslide that produces a megatsunami. The runup from the waves reached 525 m (1,722 ft) on the rim of Lituya Bay; five people were killed. |
| July 14, 1958 | In the 14 July Revolution in Iraq, the monarchy is overthrown by popular forces led by Abd al-Karim Qasim, who becomes the nation's new leader. |
| July 25, 1958 | The African Regroupment Party holds its first congress in Cotonou. |
| July 26, 1958 | Explorer program: Explorer 4 is launched. |
| July 29, 1958 | U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). |
| August 3, 1958 | The world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, becomes the first vessel to complete a submerged transit of the geographical North Pole. |
| August 6, 1958 | Law of Permanent Defense of Democracy, outlawing the Communist Party of Chile and banning 26,650 persons from the electoral lists,[7] is repealed in Chile. |
| August 17, 1958 | Pioneer 0, America's first attempt at lunar orbit, is launched using the first Thor-Able rocket and fails. Notable as one of the first attempted launches beyond Earth orbit by any country. |
| August 18, 1958 | Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States. |
| August 18, 1958 | Brojen Das from Bangladesh swims across the English Channel in a competition as the first Bengali and the first Asian to do so, placing first among the 39 competitors. |
| August 23, 1958 | Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy. |
| August 25, 1958 | The world’s first publicly marketed instant noodles, Chikin Ramen, are introduced by Taiwanese-Japanese businessman Momofuku Ando. |
| August 29, 1958 | United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado. |
| September 2, 1958 | A USAF RC-130 is shot down by fighters over Armenia when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a sigint mission. All crew members are killed. |
| September 12, 1958 | Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments. |
| September 14, 1958 | The first two German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reach the upper atmosphere. |
| September 15, 1958 | A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train runs through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 48. |
| October 1, 1958 | The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is replaced by NASA. |
| October 2, 1958 | Guinea declares its independence from France. |
| October 4, 1958 | The current constitution of France is adopted. |
| October 7, 1958 | The 1958 Pakistani coup d'état inaugurates a prolonged period of military rule. |
| October 7, 1958 | The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed to Project Mercury. |
| October 11, 1958 | NASA launches Pioneer 1, its first space probe, although it fails to achieve a stable orbit. |
| October 23, 1958 | Canada's Springhill mining disaster kills seventy-five miners, while ninety-nine others are rescued. |
| October 26, 1958 | Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris. |
| October 27, 1958 | Iskander Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, is deposed by General Ayub Khan, who had been appointed the enforcer of martial law by Mirza 20 days earlier. |
| October 28, 1958 | John XXIII is elected Pope. |
| November 10, 1958 | The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston. |
| November 12, 1958 | A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completes the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. |
| November 25, 1958 | French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community. |
| November 28, 1958 | Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French Community. |
| November 28, 1958 | First successful flight of SM-65 Atlas; the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. |
| December 1, 1958 | The Central African Republic attains self-rule within the French Union. |
| December 1, 1958 | The Our Lady of the Angels School fire in Chicago kills 92 children and three nuns. |
| December 5, 1958 | Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh. |
| December 5, 1958 | The Preston By-pass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. (It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.) |
| December 11, 1958 | French Upper Volta and French Dahomey gain self-government from France, becoming the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and the Republic of Dahomey (now Benin), respectively, and joining the French Community. |
| December 14, 1958 | The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition becomes the first to reach the southern pole of inaccessibility. |
| December 18, 1958 | Project SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, is launched. |
| December 28, 1958 | "Greatest Game Ever Played": The Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the first ever National Football League sudden death overtime game at New York's Yankee Stadium to win the NFL Championship. |
| December 30, 1958 | The Guatemalan Air Force sinks several Mexican fishing boats alleged to have breached maritime borders, killing three and sparking international tension. |