1950 (U.S. CENSUS: 150.7 MILLION PEOPLE)
• World War II-era G.I. Bill of Rights (1947 to 1956).
• First modern credit card introduced.
• January 27: Klaus Fuchs confession of spying for the Soviets implicates his
sister-in-law and her husband, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
• January 31: President Harry Truman announces development of the hydrogen
bomb.
• February 9: Senator Joseph McCarthy gives Wheeling, West Virginia, speech
claiming Communist infiltration in U.S. government.
• June: Korean War begins and military advisors sent to South Vietnam.
1951
• Color tele vi sion introduced to market.
• March 29: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted of espionage.
• September 4: Truman speaks in first coast-to-coast live tele vi sion broadcast.
• December: Buckminster Fuller patents “Geodesic Dome.”
1952
• Mr. Potato Head is the first toy advertised on tele vi sion.
• July 25: Puerto Rico becomes a U.S. Commonwealth.
• November 1: The United States explodes first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok
Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific.
• November 4: Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president over Adlai Stevenson.
Timeline