1955

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• On 6 April, Winston Churchill resigns as British prime minister due to ill health. He is succeeded by Anthony Eden.

• From 18 to 24 April, Achmad Sukarno hosts the Bandung Conference, attended by ministers from 29 Asian and African post-colonial 'non-aligned' states.

• On 9 May, West Germany joins Nato. As a consequence, the Warsaw Treaty is signed on 14 May by the East European Communist countries, forming the Warsaw Pact.

• On 19 September, the Argentinian army takes power, forcing President Perón to resign and go into exile in Spain.

• In Alabama on 1 December, Rosa Parks, a black woman, refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her arrest for this triggers Martin Luther King's successful boycott of the Montgomery bus system (lasts until November 1956).

• Velcro is patented.

• On 18 July, the first Disney theme park opens in California.

• French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss publishes Tristes tropiques (A World on the Wane in the US), an account of his travels among tribal societies.

• Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov publishes Lolita, the story of a middle-aged man's love affair with a young girl.

• American film-maker Nicholas Ray makes Rebel without a Cause, starring popular icon James Dean.

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