The 50's

•America's movement to suburbia spurs the growth of shopping malls, drive-ins, and supermarkets. •Disc jockey Allen Freed coins the term "rock 'n' roll." •The Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education declares segregation unconstitutional.

•Thirteen nuclear materials production reactors are operating during the decade. Two commercial nuclear reactors are operating in the United States by 1959.

In 1945, American troops returned home, many starting new lives and families. Between 1946 and 1964, 76.4 million baby boomers were born. Over 13 million homes went up from 1948 to 1958. Most were affordable, cookie-cutter houses fashioned after the phenomenally successful Levittown, Long Island. William J. Levitt had pioneered the suburb by building neighborhoods of nearly identical, quickly built housing. America's movement to the suburbs spurred the growth of shopping malls, drive-ins, and supermarkets. Many saw the 1950's as a return to prosperity and social "normality."

The prosperity and social normality was tinged with a "Red" hysteria, however. Americans saw communism on the march everywhere. By the end of the 1940's, Americans had seen the Soviets try to cut off Berlin from the West, Mao's Communist Party come to power in China, and the Soviet Union explode its first atomic bomb. In 1947, President Truman had outlined what became known as the Truman Doctrine: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." A State Department official, George Kennan, later fleshed out the Truman Doctrine, introducing the policy of "containment," which meant the United States would contain the Soviet Union's influence anywhere in the world. The "containment of the Communist threat" colored U.S. foreign policy decisions for decades to come.

At home, politicians found it politically expedient to be hard on communism. A former Communist Party member charged former Roosevelt advisor, Alger Hiss, with being a Communist spy. Hiss denied the charges before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which investigated alleged communist subversion in the U.S. government. The statute of limitations protected Hiss from espionage charges, but he was later found guilty of perjury. At the same time, Americans learned that respected Los Alamos scientist Klaus Fuchs had been passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Other conspirators testified that they had passed the secrets to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were convicted and executed as spies. Their defenders--then and now--claimed the Rosenbergs were framed, convicted, and executed in an anti-Semitic and anti-Communist frenzy.

• January 1950

  President Truman orders the Atomic Energy Commission to develop the hydrogen bomb (H-bomb).

• February 1950

  Senator Joseph McCarthy launches a crusade to rout out communism in America. "McCarthyism" is born.

• June 1950

  The Korean War begins as North Korean forces invade South Korea.

• December 1951

  The first usable electricity from nuclear fission is produced at the National Reactor Station, later called the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

• October 1952

  Operations begin at the Savannah River Plant in Aiken, South Carolina, with the startup of the heavy water plant.

• December 1953

  In his Atoms for Peace speech, President Eisenhower proposes joint international cooperation to develop peaceful applications of nuclear energy.

• January 1954

  U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces U.S. policy of massive retaliation, that the United States would respond to any Communist aggression.

  The first nuclear submarine, U.S.S. Nautilus, is launched.

• April 1954

  Army-McCarthy hearings are on TV for five weeks. By the end, Senator McCarthy is publicly disgraced.

• August 1954

  The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 is passed to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy through private enterprise and to implement President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Program.

• July 1955

  Arco, Idaho becomes the first U.S. town to be powered by nuclear energy.

• October 1956

  Hungarian revolution is crushed by Soviet tanks.

• November 1956

  Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev tells the West, "History is on our side. We will bury you."

• July 1957

  The Sodium Reactor Experiment in Santa Susana, California generates the first power from a civilian nuclear reactor.

• September 1957

  The United States sets off first underground nuclear test in a mountain tunnel in the remote desert 100 miles from Las Vegas.

• October 1957

  Radiation is released when the graphite core of the Windscale Nuclear Reactor in England catches fire.

  The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first spacecraft.

  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is formed to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to provide international safeguards and an inspection system to ensure nuclear materials aren't diverted from peaceful to military uses.

• December 1957

  The first U.S. large-scale nuclear powerplant begins operating in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

• October 1959

  The Dresden-1 Nuclear Power Station in Illinois achieves a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. It's the first U.S. nuclear powerplant built entirely without government funding.