1956

1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday in the Gregorian calendar.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1920s  1930s  1940s  – 1950s –  1960s  1970s  1980s
Years:	1953 1954 1955 – 1956 – 1957 1958 1959

1956 in other calendars

Gregorian calendar	1956 MCMLVI
Ab urbe condita	2709
Armenian calendar	1405 ԹՎ ՌՆԵ
Assyrian calendar	6706
Bahá'í calendar	112–113
Balinese saka calendar	1877–1878
Bengali calendar	1363
Berber calendar	2906
British Regnal year	4 Eliz. 2 – 5 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2500
Burmese calendar	1318
Byzantine calendar	7464–7465
Chinese calendar	乙未年 (Wood Goat) 4652 or 4592     — to — 丙申年 (Fire Monkey) 4653 or 4593
Coptic calendar	1672–1673
Discordian calendar	3122
Ethiopian calendar	1948–1949
Hebrew calendar	5716–5717
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2012–2013
- Shaka Samvat	1877–1878
- Kali Yuga	5056–5057
Holocene calendar	11956
Igbo calendar	956–957
Iranian calendar	1334–1335
Islamic calendar	1375–1376
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 31 (昭和３１年)
Javanese calendar	1887–1888
Juche calendar	45
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4289
Minguo calendar	ROC 45 民國45年
Nanakshahi calendar	488
Thai solar calendar	2499
Tibetan calendar	ཤིང་མོ་ལུག་ལོ་ (female Wood-Sheep) 2082 or 1701 or 929     — to — མེ་ཕོ་སྤྲེ་ལོ་ (male Fire-Monkey) 2083 or 1702 or 930

Events

Ercole Baldini, olympic gold medal winner from Italy

• The Summer Olympics were held in Melbourne, Australia.
• The Winter Olympics were held in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. This was the first Olympic Games in which the USSR competed.
• February 11 – British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean appear in the Soviet Union after being missing for 5 years
• March 2 – Morocco declares its independence from France
• April 19 – American actress Grace Kelly marries Rainier III, Prince of Monaco
• May 2 – The United Methodist Church in America grants women full ordained clergy status
• June 5 – Elvis Presley performs "Hound Dog", on The Milton Berle Show. His dancing causes a scandal.
• July 25 – The Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS Stockholm, killing 51
• August 17 – West Germany bans the Communist Party of Germany
• September 16 – Television broadcasting begins in Australia
• October 26 – Red Army troops invade Hungary
• October 29 – November 7 – Suez Crisis: France, Israel and the United Kingdom in war with Egypt.
• November 30 – Floyd Patterson wins the world heavyweight boxing championship
• December 5 – Rose Heilbron becomes Britain's first female judge

Births

Dwight Hicks in 2008

• January 3 – Mel Gibson, American-Australian actor
• January 28 – Dario Chioli, Italian poet
• February 6 - Jerry Marotta, American drummer (Orleans)
• February 16 – Peter Hook, English bass guitarist
• February 26 – Emanuel Radovan, Romanian politician of Albanian nationality.
• February 27 – Csaba Vrabie, Romanian politician of Hungarian nationality from UDMR.
• February 27 – Angela Aames, American actress (d. 1988)
• February 29 – Aileen Wuornos, American serial killer (d. 2002)
• March 12 – Michael Catain, American businessman and convicted criminal
• March 24 – Steve Ballmer, American business person, CEO of Microsoft
• April 5 – Dwight Hicks, American NFL player
• April 12 – Andy García, American actor
• April 19 - Lane Hoppen, American singer-songwriter and musician (Orleans)
• May 7 – Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime minister of the Netherlands
• May 17 – Bob Saget, American actor and comedian
• June 2 – Mani Ratnam, Indian movie director
• June 4 – Martin Adams, English darts player
• June 11 – Joe Montana, American NFL player
• June 11 – Ray Nagin, American politician, mayor of New Orleans
• July 9 – Tom Hanks, American actor
• July 13 – Michael Spinks, American boxer
• July 15 – Joe Satriani, Italian-American guitar virtuoso
• August 4 – Margaret Whitman, American business person, CEO of Ebay
• August 26 – Sally Beamish, English composer
• August 28 - Adrian Schervan Romanian water polo player
• August 31 – Masashi Tashiro, Japanese television performer
• August 31 - Mark Mangini, American sound editor
• September 14 – Maxime Verhagen, Dutch politician
• September 17 – Andreas Starke, German politician, Lord Mayor of Bamberg
• September 27 – Milan Smrčka, Czech musician
• October 1 — Theresa May, British Prime Minister
• October 2 – Mike Scully, American television writer
• October 28 – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 6th President of Iran
• November 11 – Ian Craig Marsh, English musician
• December 4 - Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, 9th President of Mauritania
• December 6 - Peter Buck, American guitarist (R.E.M.)
• December 8 - Warren Cuccurullo, American guitarist (Duran Duran)
• December 9 - Jean-Pierre Thiollet, French author
• Glen Hill (actor), actor
• Hugh Cook, English-born New Zealand writer
• Hans Enoksen, Prime minister of Greenland

Deaths

Elpidio Quirino

• January 18 – Konstantin Päts, 1st President of Estonia (b. 1874)
• January 27 – Erich Kleiber, German conductor (b. 1890)
• February 10 – Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard, British marshal of the Royal Air Force (b. 1873)
• February 29 – Elpidio Quirino, 6th President of the Philippines (b. 1890)
• March 8 – Drastamat Kanayan, Armenian military leader and politician (b. 1884))
• March 17 – Irène Joliot-Curie, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (b. 1897)
• April 13 – Emil Nolde, German-Danish painter (b. 1867)
• May 18 – Maurice Tate, English cricketer (b. 1895)
• June 22 – Walter de la Mare, English poet, short story writer, and novelist (b. 1873)
• June 26 – Clifford Brown, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1930)
• July 11 – John T. Raulston, Scopes Monkey Trial judge (b. 1868)
• August 11- Jackson Pollack, American painter
• August 14 – Bertolt Brecht, German playwright (b. 1898)
• August 25 – Alfred Kinsey, American sex researcher (b. 1894)
• September 22 – Frederick Soddy, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877)
• October 25 – Risto Ryti, 5th President of Finland (b. 1889)
• October 30 – Pio Baroja, Spanish writer (b. 1872)
• November 22 – Theodore Kosloff, Russian-born ballet dancer, choreographer and actor (b. 1882)
• December 14 – Juho Kusti Paasikivi, 7th President of Finland (b. 1870)
• December 16 – Nina Hamnett, Welsh artist (b. 1890)

Nobel Prizes

• Nobel Prize in Physics won by William Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain for inventing the point-contact transistor
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry won by Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, English physical chemist, and Nikolay Semyonov, Russian/Soviet physicist and chemist
• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine won by André Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann, and Dickinson W. Richards for the development of cardiac catheterization
• Nobel Prize in Literature won by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish poet
• Nobel Peace Prize – Not Awarded

Movies released

Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson in Giant

• Around the World in 80 Days winning the Academy Award for Best Picture
• Bus Stop starring Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray
• Giant starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean
• Hollywood or Bust the final Martin and Lewis movie
• The King and I winning Best Actor for Yul Brynner
• The Searchers starring John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter
• The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner
• War and Peace starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda

New books

• Agatha Christie – Dead Man's Folly
• Arthur C. Clarke – The City and the Stars
• Ian Fleming – Diamonds Are Forever
• Fred Gipson – Old Yeller
• Alf Prøysen – Little Old Mrs Pepperpot