Sweden switched to driving on the right despite a referendum.
In 1955, 83% voted to stay on the left, but car numbers kept rising, and in 1967 the country changed sides anyway, in a single morning.
The event
More amazing facts
- 1954 In 1954 'the fastest man on Earth' was a doctor.
- 1955 Einstein's brain weighed 1,230 grams, well within the normal human range.
- 1955 The Guinness Book of Records was created to settle pub arguments.
- 1955 · 1957 The Frisbee is named after a bakery and started out as the 'Pluto Platter'. Yale students tossed empty pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Company, so in 1957 the maker renamed its plastic disc the Frisbee.
- 1955 · 1956 · 1957 Artificial intelligence is older than the Space Age. The term was coined in 1955 for the Dartmouth workshop held in the summer of 1956, while the first satellite flew only in October 1957.
- 1956 In autumn 1956 the world watched two crises at once: the Anglo-French landing at the Suez Canal and Soviet tanks in Budapest.