January
2nd	José Antonio Remón Cantera, president of Panama, is assassinated at a racetrack in Panama City
7th	Marian Anderson is the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City
22nd	The Pentagon announces plan to develop ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) armed with nuclear weapons
23rd	The Sutton Coldfield rail crash happens killing 17 and injuring 43
25th	The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union announces end of the war between the USSR and Germany, which began during World War II in 1937. Until then, despite the end of World War II 10 years earlier, the USSR was formally at war with Germany
28th	The United States Congress authorises President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Formosa from the People's Republic of China

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February
10th	The seventh fleet of the United States Navy helps the Republic of China evacuate Chinese Nationalist army and residents from Tachen Islands to Taiwan
12th	U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam
16th	Nearly 100 die in fire at a home for the elderly in Yokohama, Japan

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March
17th	The Richard Riot occurs in Montreal following the suspension of ice hockey player, Maurice Richard
20th	Blackboard Jungle opens in movie theatres in America featuring the song "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and his Comets, thus propelling Rock and Roll as a musical genre. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song

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April
5th	Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
6th	Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
12th	The Salk polio vaccine is introduced
15th	Ray Kroc opens a McDonald's fast food restaurant; it is the company's ninth since it was founded in 1940, but Kroc would later take over the company and oversee its worldwide expansion
17th	Imre Nagy, Premier of Hungary, is ousted for being too moderate

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May
5th	West Germany becomes a sovereign state
9th	West Germany joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
10th	Newcastle United won The FA cup
11th	Japanese ferry Shiun Maru sinks off of Takamatsu, Shikoku. 168 are killed
14th	Eight communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defence treaty called the Warsaw Pact

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June
7th	Iconic US Game Show, The $64,000 Question premieres on CBS television, with Hal Marks as the host
11th	83 are killed and at least 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide in the 1955 Le Mans disaster
13th	Mir Mine, the first diamond mine of the USSR, is discovered
16th	Lady and the Tramp, Walt Disney's fifteenth animated feature film, debuts in U.S. movie theatres

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July
7th	The New Zealand Special Air Service was formed
13th	Ruth Ellis (b. 1926) is hanged for murder in London. She is to be the last woman ever to be executed in the United Kingdom
17th	Disneyland opens, in Anaheim, California
18th	The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially
19th	Estonian Television (ETV) begins broadcasting
27th	El Al Airlines Flight 402 from Vienna to Tel Aviv-Yafo via Istanbul shot down over Bulgaria. All passengers and crew aboard the Lockheed Constellation are killed

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August
19th	Hurricane Diane hits the northeast United States, killing 200 and causing over $1 billion in damage
20th	Hundreds are killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria
25th	The last Soviet forces leave Austria
27th	The first copy of a Guinness World Records book is published

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September
15th	Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is published in Paris by Olympia Press
19th	President of Argentina Juan Peron is ousted in a military coup
19th	Hurricane Hilda kills 200 in Mexico
22nd	Independent (Commercial) Television begins broadcasting in UK with the launch of ITV
30th	Actor James Dean is killed when his Porsche 550 Spyder collides with another automobile at a highway junction near Cholame, California

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October
4th	The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is released from prison in Seoul, Korea
11th	70 mm film is introduced with the theatrical release of Oklahoma!
20th	First film footage of Elvis Presley in a planned film short about Cleveland disc jockey Bill Randle
20th	Cardiff is proclaimed as the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom
26th	After the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares its permanent neutrality
26th	Ngo Dinh Diem proclaims Vietnam a republic with himself as president

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November
1st	A time bomb explodes in the cargo hold of United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B airliner flying above Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and five crew members on board the aircraft
5th	Racial segregation is forbidden on trains and buses in U.S. interstate commerce
20th	Bo Diddley makes his television debut on Ed Sullivan's Toast Of The Town show for the CBS network
23rd	The Cocos Islands are transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia

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December
1st	Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white person, and the national civil rights movement begins
5th	The Montgomery Improvement Association is formed in Montgomery, Alabama by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Black ministers to coordinate a Black boycott of city buses
14th	Tappan Zee Bridge in New York opens to traffic
14th	Bulgaria joins the United Nations
22nd	Joe Hin Tjio discovers correct number of human chromosomes
31st	General Motors becomes the first American corporation to make over USD $1 billion in a year