To commemorate this special year, 50 years after I was born, I short-listed significant world events that happened in 1959. Here they are, in no particular order (kidding! in date order):
January 29 - Sleeping Beauty, Walt Disney's 16th animated film, is released.
February 3 - The day the music died. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper are killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
March 9 - Barbie is Born!
April 7 - The town of Jackpot, Nevada is founded near the border of Iowa (right after Iowa outlawed gambling).
May 11- The foreign ministers of Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States met in Geneva for a 17 day conference on the reunification of Germany, without coming to an agreement. Note: does this sound familiar? (as in they still can't agree on anything) 
June 13 - I am born!
June 14 - As beachgoers in La Jolla, California watched, 33 year old Robert Pamperin is attacked and devoured by a 20 foot great white shark, while skindiving 50 yards from shore. No trace of Pamperin was found, and it was speculated that the shark had swallowed him whole. Note: I was in La Jolla in 2005...didn't see any trace of Robert Pamperin either.
June 21 - Winnipeg, Manitoba, becomes the first city in North America to adopt the 999 number for emergency services. How cool is that?
July 16 - Seconds after liftoff, a Juno II rocket, and the satellite it was carrying, were destroyed by ground control when the rocket veered off course toward central Florida. (this could have ended badly)
Aug 14 - Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from space.
Sep 12 - Bonanza appeared for the first time on American television, premiering at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on NBC.
Oct 2 - The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS.
Nov 22 - In Minneapolis, on the morning of the American Football League's first owners' meeting, the Minneapolis Star-Journal carried the headline "MINNESOTA TO GET NFL FRANCHISE". The owners of the AFL Minneapolis team denied the story, but soon were awarded the NFL's 14th team, the Minnesota Vikings.
Interestingly (and I did not know this), the Minneapolis AFL team was replaced by the Oakland Raiders. More interestingly, I was at the game (fans posing below) in San Diego on Oct 14/07 - Oakland Raiders vs San Diego Chargers!! Chargers won. Of course. Raiders fans are a little scary...
Dec 13 - Three years after its first telecast, MGM's The Wizard of Oz is shown on television for only the second time, but it gains an even larger viewing audience than its first television outing, spurring CBS to make it an annual tradition.
And there it is, in black & white (and blue, and red...)Well, despite the time-stamp that will appear on this blog, (when I started this), the hour is late... I feel I've got to mooooove...into sleep mode.
G'nite football fans.
CFM
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