Execution of the Rosenbergs
The US executes a couple convicted of spying for the USSR
On 19 June 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of spying for the USSR, including on the atomic bomb, died in the electric chair at Sing Sing, the first US civilians executed for espionage in peacetime. The key witness was Ethel's brother David Greenglass, who admitted in 2001 that he had lied about his sister typing the notes.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 14 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 8 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 6 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 5 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 4 years earlier
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 25 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 20 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 17 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 12 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — same year
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 12 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 11 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 8 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 4 years later
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 8 years later
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 5 years earlier
- 1948–1949 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba — 5 years earlier
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — same year
- 1958 14 July Revolution in Iraq — 5 years later
- 1960 Founding of OPEC — 7 years later
Africa
- 1948 Apartheid begins in South Africa — 5 years earlier
- 1952 Egyptian revolution of 1952 — 1 year earlier
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 3 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 5 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 7 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 8 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — same year
- 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu — 1 year later
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 13 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 22 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 17 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 12 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 11 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 1 year later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 6 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 79)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 75)
- Albert Einstein (aged 74)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 72)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 64)
- Mao Zedong (aged 60)
- Georgy Zhukov (aged 57)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 35)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 24)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 23)