Monday, April 9 - 13

We are beginning our new unit of Lorianne Hansberry's play, "A Raisin in the Sun" this week!!!

Check out some fun facts from the 1950's...........

Popular Culture

• The US Grammy Music Awards Started
• The last musical from Rodgers and Hammerstein "The Sound of Music" opens on broadway
• The chartered plane transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper goes down in an Iowa snowstorm, killing all four occupants on board. The tragedy is later termed "The Day the Music Died," popularized in Don McLean's song, "American Pie."

Popular Films

• Ben-Hur
• Some Like It Hot
• Anatomy of a Murder
• North by Northwest
• Sleeping Beauty

Popular Singers

• Doris Day
• Frank Sinatra
• Connie Francis
• Jim Reeves
• Cliff Richard
• Ella Fitzgerald

Popular TV Programmes

• Bonanza premieres on NBC, the first weekly television series broadcast completely in color
• Juke Box Jury premieres on BBC Television
• Dixon of Dock Green (UK)
• The Huckleberry Hound Show

Technology

• Boeing 707 Jet Airliner comes into service cutting 8 hrs from transatlantic Flight
• USSR Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon as the first man-made object and Luna 3 sends back first photos of the far side of Earth's Moon
• First Pictures Of Earth From Space Taken By Explorer 6
• IBM shipped the transistor-based IBM 1401 mainframe.
• Full size hovercraft, the SR-N1 by Sir Christopher Cockerell tested at Cowes on the Isle of Wight
• Xerox launches the first commercial copier
• US Launches first Weather Station in Space
• First Section of M1 Motorway from London to Birmingham Opens
• De Beers manufactures a synthetic Diamond