1953 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Harry S. Truman , Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Vice President: Alben W. Barkley , Richard Nixon
• Chief Justice: Fred M. Vinson , Earl Warren
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Sam Rayburn , Joseph William Martin, Jr.
• Senate Majority Leader:
• * until January 3: Ernest McFarland
• * January 3 – July 31: Robert A. Taft
• * starting August 3: William F. Knowland
• Congress: 82nd, 83rd

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 7 – President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.
• January 14 – The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon.
• January 19 – 68% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth.
• January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as the 34th President of the United States.
• January 22 – The Crucible, a drama by Arthur Miller, opens on Broadway.
• February 5 – Walt Disney's 14th animated film, Peter Pan, premieres at Chicago.
• February 11 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower refuses a clemency appeal for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
• February 13 – Transsexual Christine Jorgensen returns to New York after successful sexual reassignment surgery in Denmark.
• February 19 – Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.
• March 17 – The first nuclear test of Operation Upshot–Knothole is conducted in Nevada, with 1,620 spectators at.
• March 19 – The 25th Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• March 31 – Due to increasingly lower ridership, Staten Island Rapid Transit closes two of its three-passenger lines.

  April–June

• May 11 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: an F5 tornado hits in the downtown section of Waco, Texas, killing 114.
• May 25 – Nuclear testing: at the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test: Upshot–Knothole Grable.
• June 8 – Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: a tornado kills 115 in Flint, Michigan.
• June 9
• *CIA Technical Services Staff head Sidney Gottlieb approves of the use of LSD in a MKULTRA subproject.
• *Flint–Worcester tornado outbreak sequence: a tornado spawned from the same storm system as the Flint tornado hits in Worcester, Massachusetts, killing 94.
• June 19 – The U.S. executes Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for spying for the USSR.
• June 30 – The first Chevrolet Corvette is built at Flint, Michigan.

  July–September

• July 18 – Howard Hawks's musical film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, is released by 20th Century Fox.
• July 26 – The Short Creek raid is carried out on a polygynous Mormon sect in Arizona.
• July 27 – The Korean War ends: The United States, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea sign an armistice agreement.
• July 28 – Burger King opens its first restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida.
• August 5 – Operation Big Switch: Prisoners of war are repatriated after the Korean War.
• August 17 – The first planning session of Narcotics Anonymous is held in Southern California. Its first meeting is held October 5.
• August 18 – The second Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, on American sexual habits, is issued.
• August 19 – Cold War: 1953 Iranian coup d'état – The CIA helps to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and retain Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne.
• August 20 – The U.S. returns to West Germany 382 ships it had captured during World War II.
• September 9 – The Supreme Court decision in Rumely v. United States affirms that indirect lobbying in the U.S. by distribution of books intended to influence opinion is a public good and not subject to regulation by Congress.

  October–December

• October – The Soviet Union tests the hydrogen bomb.
• October 5 – Earl Warren is appointed Chief Justice of the United States by U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• * The New York Yankees defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4 games to 2, to win their 16th World Series Title.
• October 10 – Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea is concluded in Washington D.C.
• October 12 – The play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial opens at Plymouth Theatre, New York.
• October 19 – Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is published
• October 30 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document of the United States National Security Council NSC 162/2, which states that the United States' arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.
• December – Hugh Hefner publishes the first issue of Playboy magazine: it sells 54,175 copies at $.50 each.
• December 6 – With the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Arturo Toscanini performs what he claims is his favorite Beethoven symphony, Eroica, for the last time. The live performance is broadcast nationwide on radio, and later released on records and CD.
• December 8 – U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his Atoms for Peace address to the UN General Assembly in New York City.
• December 25 – Amami Islands are returned to Japan after 8 years of United States Military occupation.

  Date unknown

• Harold Butler and his first partner open Danny's Donuts in Lakewood, California.
• Swanson introduce the TV dinner.

  Ongoing

• Cold War
• Second Red Scare
• Korean War

  Births

• January 1
• *Gary Johnson, 29th Governor of New Mexico, Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 and 2016 elections
• *Lynn Jones, baseball player and coach
• January 2 – Vincent Racaniello, American virologist, author, and academic
• January 4 – James Warren, journalist and publisher
• January 5 – Steve Archer, singer-songwriter and producer
• January 13 - Luann Ryon, archer
• January 15 – Kent Hovind, Christian fundamentalist evangelist and tax protester
• January 20 – Jeffrey Epstein, financier and philanthropist
• January 21
• * Paul Allen, entrepreneur and co-founder of Microsoft
• * Glenn Kaiser, Christian blues-rock, heavy metal and R&B singer-songwriter and guitarist
• January 23 – Robin Zander, singer and guitarist
• January 24 – Tim Stoddard, baseball player and coach
• January 29
• *Nate Barnett, basketball player
• *Caesar Cervin, soccer player and coach
• *Dennis Delaney, actor and playwright
• *Paul Fusco, puppeteer and voice actor
• *Steve March-Tormé, singer-songwriter
• *Louie Pérez, singer-songwriter and guitarist
• *Dwight Takamine, lawyer and politician
• *Charlie Wilson, singer-songwriter; producer
• February 3 – Ron Williamson, baseball player wrongly convicted of rape and murder
• February 11 – Jeb Bush, 43rd Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, second son of President George H. W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush; younger brother of President George W. Bush; and the older brother of Neil Bush, Marvin Bush and Dorothy Bush Koch
• February 15 – John Goodsall, guitarist
• March 1 – Luther Strange, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 2017 to 2018
• March 2 – Russ Feingold, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011
• March 13 – Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church from 2015
• March 26 – Lincoln Chafee, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1999 to 2007
• April 16
• *Douglas M. Fraser, general
• *J. Neil Schulman, author, actor, director and producer
• April 20 – Carrie Mae Weems, photographer
• April 26 – Linda Thompson, lawyer and conspiracy theorist
• May 12 – Kevin Grevey, basketball player and sportscaster
• May 26 – Kay Hagan, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 2009 to 2015
• June 10 – John Edwards, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1999 to 2005
• June 13 – Tim Allen, comedian, actor, voice-over artist and entertainer
• July 24 – Claire McCaskill, U.S. Senator from Missouri from 2007 to 2019
• July 28 – Don Black, white supremacist
• October 25 – Ajamu Baraka, human rights activist and the Green Party's nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2016 election
• November 14 – Phil Baron, voice actor, puppeteer and songwriter
• November 15 – James Widdoes, actor, director and producer
• November 18 - Kath Soucie, voice actor
• November 25 – Katherine Zappone, human rights activist and independent politician in the Republic of Ireland
• December 10 – Chris Bury, journalist and academic
• December 13 – Larry Doby, 7-time all star black baseball player
• December 27 – Sheila Dixon, Democrat mayor of Baltimore and criminal

  Deaths

• January 1 – Hank Williams, country singer-songwriter
• January 7 – Osa Johnson, adventurer and filmmaker, wife of Martin Johnson
• March 12 – James Hard, last verified living Union combat veteran of the American Civil War
• May 30 – Dooley Wilson, African American actor, singer and drummer
• June 3 – Florence Price, African American classical composer
• September 2 – Jonathan M. Wainwright, general
• September 5
• * Francis Ford, actor and director
• * Rudolf Höber, German-American physician
• September 8 – Fred M. Vinson, Chief Justice of the U.S.
• September 13 – Mary Brewster Hazelton, portrait painter
• September 28 – Edwin Hubble, astronomer
• October 3 - Florence R. Sabin, medical scientist
• November 18 – Ruth Crawford Seeger, modernist composer and folk music arranger
• November 21 – Larry Shields, dixieland jazz clarinetist
• November 27 – Eugene O'Neill, playwright
• December 14 – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, novelist
• December 19 – Robert Andrews Millikan, physicist Nobel Prize laureate
• December 21 – Nicholas H. Heck, geophysicist, oceanographer and surveyor