December 1958

At this time back in 1958, we were getting ready for Christmas, I guess, and looking forward to the holiday. In those days, the semester didn't end in December. We had a break for a couple of weeks, then went back to school for a few more weeks before the semester ended. When I was in college, I usually spent the Christmas break writing term papers. Anyway, here's what was going on in the world back in December 1958. (Iraq was in the news even then.) See how many of these events you can remember:

Dec 1, The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Flower Drum Song" opened on Broadway.

Dec 1, In Chicago Our Lady of Angels School burned. 92 students and 3 nuns were killed.

Dec 9, Robert H.W. Welch Jr. and 11 other men met in Indianapolis to form the anti-Communist John Birch Society.

Dec 10, The first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the United States as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York City to Miami.

Dec 13, Ahmed Mukhtar Baban, premier of Iraq, was executed along with Burhanuddin Bashajan, Iraqi minister of Foreign Affairs and Rafiq Aref, Iraqi chief-staff Arabs Statenbond.

Dec 14, The United States, Britain and France rejected Soviet demands that they withdraw their troops from West Berlin and agreed to liquidate the Allied occupation in West Berlin.

Dec 19, An Eisenhower White House memo gave authority to senior military commanders to retaliate with nuclear weapons if the president could not be reached or was unable to respond to a nuclear attack against the US in a policy known as "pre-delegation authority."

Dec 21, Charles de Gaulle was elected to a seven-year term as the first president of the Fifth Republic of France.

Dec 28, A Chipmunks song (Alvin, Simon & Theodore with David Seville) hit #1. "The Chipmunk Song" went on to win 3 statues in the Grammys.

Dec 31, Cuba’s dictator Juan Batista fled as Rebels under Fidel Castro marched into Havana.