1959

World Events

• Alaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th states in the United States.

• Fidel Castro takes control of Cuba and turns it into a communist country.
• Louis Leakey finds a skull in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. This leads scientists to believe that human evolution began in Africa, not Asia.
• Vice President Richard Nixon meets with Soviet Premiere Nikita Khruschev at a display of an American kitchen in a U.S. exhibition in Moscow.
• An international treaty establishes Antarctica as a scientific reserve.

San Diego History

• Defense builder Convair lays off 21,000 workers.

Arts

• The Guggenheim Museum in New York City opens. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who dies later in the year at age 89.
• Architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson finish the Seagram Building in New York City, New York.
• Bobby Darin's Mack the Knife is the number one song.

• Rockers Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and "The Big Bopper" die in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. Besides some great tunes, Buddy leaves behind another important legacy. He makes it OK to wear glasses.
• Otto Preminger releases Anatomy of a Murder, considered by many to be the best courtroom drama ever made. Small-town lawyer in Michigan faces an explosive case as he defends an army officer who killed a man he suspected was his philandering wife's rapist.

American Life

• Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank shocks America with his candid photographs of the American people. His book, The Americans, shows a materialistic, vain, and empty nation.

• Sony introduces their portable television.
• One billionth can of SPAM sold. If you laid all those cans end to end, they'd circle the globe 2 1/2 times.
• The Barbie Doll makes her glamourous debut. Legos begin building their successful place in the toy world.
• Du Pont trademarks Lycra.
• Silicone chips first made.

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