WHAT ALL HAPPENED APRIL TO AUGUST 1953
Find out what all happened April to August 1953

Warner Bros. premieres the first 3-D film from a major American studio, entitled House of Wax. (10. April 1953)

Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. (24. April 1953)

Nippon Television broadcasts Japan's first television show, including its first TV advertisement. (28. August 1953)

East Germany Workers Uprising: in East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion. (17. June 1953)

Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier. (18. May 1953)

Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday. (29. May 1953)

The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, who is crowned Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Her Other Realms and Territories & Head of the Commonwealth, the first major international event to be televised. (2. June 1953)

Addiction: First meeting of Narcotics Anonymous in Southern California. (17. August 1953)

The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston. (25. May 1953)

The largest number of United States midshipman casualties in a single event results from an aircraft crash in Florida killing 44. (17. July 1953)

American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechoslovakia. (16. May 1953)

The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: an F5 tornado hits downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114. (11. May 1953)

An F5 tornado hits Beecher, Michigan, killing 116, injuring 844, and destroying 340 homes. (8. June 1953)

Fighting in the Korean War ends when the United States, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refuses to sign but pledges to observe the armistice. (27. July 1953)

Nuclear weapons testing: the Soviet atomic bomb project continues with the detonation of Joe 4, the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon. (12. August 1953)

CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program MKULTRA. (13. April 1953)

Ernesto "Che" Guevara sets out on a trip through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. (7. July 1953)

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York. (19. June 1953)

Queen Elizabeth II launches the Royal Yacht HMY Britannia. (16. April 1953)

In Warner Robins, Georgia, an F4 tornado kills 18 people. (30. April 1953)