1953 – Elvis demo, Cold War, H-Bomb and a bad education act.

In 1953 I would turn six, memories were being formed. As a family we had moved to the suburbs to a new housing estate on the Cape Flats. Thornton at that time was a young people’s town, I remember the white sand and the Port Jackson forest that covered vast areas. The trees had been brought in to keep the sand down. My parents bought a house on the edge of town, I have memories of my father walking to the station and coming back at night crossing the field where we children would play cricket, we never had a car and in winter the ground became a sea of mud, I still remember the galoshes that were taken off and left at the door.

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Galoshes

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This was the year of the “Doctor’s Plot” in the Soviet Union. An anti-Semitic crack-down on a so called fifth column that was supposed to be plotting to poison communist leaders. A plot which was later discovered to have never existed.

Stalin

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Lavrenti Beria

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Later that year Stalin would die, his body was left unattended for some time, his passing had created situation that his followers and enemies found difficult to come to terms with. Nikita Khrushchev became First Secretary and in December the notorious Lavrenti Beria, head of the secret service, a poisonous individual behind the purges of the 1930’s was executed. As a point of interest, after Stalin’s death many members of the “Thieves World” were released from prison and later became the backbone of the Russian Mafia.

North Sea Floods

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In the Netherlands the North sea floods wreaked havoc on the low-lying coastal areas, 1836 people lost their lives, the storm batted England, Belgium and Scotland with 700 fatalities on land and at sea.
On a more positive note, James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel prize for their pioneering work on the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. On the same note Jonas Salk announced the production of the first Polio vaccine. I remember lining up to get my shot in school.

DNA Structure

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Further north in Kenya Jomo Kenyatta was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for his part in the Mau-Mau uprising. The hangings in Kenya were quite extreme even for this time, 2609 Kikuyu were tried on capital charges and 1574 were sentenced to death by hanging.

In the USA, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. That year both the USA and the Russians announced the successful test of a hydrogen bomb. Maybe this activity was being observed from above, because UFO reports warranted the setting up of the Robertson Panel by the CIA, to investigate the phenomena. This Year Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as the 34th President of the United States.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi - Shah of Iran

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Not only was the CIA investigating UFO’s they also found time to assist in the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddegh and replace him with Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. We still sit with the fallout of that decision. It all looks so clear from our perspective today, perfect 20/20 hindsight.

Mescaline

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In England Queen Elizabeth 2 is crowned queen . Aldous Huxley a prominent member of the Huxley family, publishes his book “The Doors of Perception” after experimenting with mescaline. Over in Nepal Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay successfully reach the summit of Mount Everest.
This year the first issue of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy goes on sale and the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming is published.

Aldous Huxley

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At home the Bantu Education Act is passed, this has an effect on an entire generation of school children, the Nationalist government wants a class of citizen that has just enough education to perform the tasks that are allotted to them. Again we sit with the results of this policy today. I remember this as a carefree time; I had no idea of what was happening around me. Only time would bring the results of this world-view to mind.

UNIVAC

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Scientifically the first computer UNIVAC using random access memory is created for commercial use. Piltdown man is exposed as a hoax and the first colour TV goes on sale in the USA.

In West Germany the prisoners from the USSR held since the end of WW2 start arriving home. Only a handful will make it back.

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On July18th an unknown American musical prodigy named Elvis Presley walks into the Sun Record Company and pays $3.18 to cut the first of two double-sided acetates, they are “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. Musical history is made and music will follow another path.

That’s When Your Heartaches Begin

Hit parade 1953