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1954
• On 1 March, the United States announces that it has tested a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific that is over 500 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. • On 18 April in Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes prime minister and military governor. On 14 November, President Neguib is deposed and Nasser becomes head of state. • On 7 May, French colonial troops surrender to the Communist Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam. In the armistice signed on 20 July, Indochina is divided into North and South Vietnam, with Laos and Cambodia as independent states. Ho Chi Minh forms a Communist government in North Vietnam. • On 15 June, nationalist leader Kwame Nkrumah forms government of the British colony of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). • On 30 October, Ahmed Ben Bella and the National Liberation Front begin the Algerian war of independence against France (ends 1962). • On 14 December, riots break out in Athens, caused by the supporters of the union (enosis) of Cyprus (a British crown colony) with Greece. In Cyprus, Colonel George Grivas and EOKA (National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) attack British troops. • The polio vaccine, developed by Dr Jonas Salk in 1952, is used for the first time in mass inoculations. • British novelist William Golding publishes Lord of the Flies, a pessimistic look at what happens to a group of children after a nuclear war. • British academic J R R Tolkien publishes The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, the first two parts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a fantasy adventure story. • American rock 'n' roll musician Bill Haley releases 'Rock around the Clock'. The first portable transistor radios are marketed. |
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