January
8th	Five U.S. missionaries are killed by the Huaorani tribe of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them
16th	Gamal Abdal Nasser, leader of Egypt, vows to reconquer Palestine
26th	1956 Winter Olympic Games open in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy

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February
11th	British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean resurface in the Soviet Union after being missing for five years
16th	The film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, is released
22nd	Elvis Presley enters the United States music charts for the first time, with "Heartbreak Hotel."
23rd	Norma Jean Mortenson legally changes her name to Marilyn Monroe
25th	Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Joseph Stalin as a "cult of personality"

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March
1st	the International Air Transport Association finalises a draft of the Radiotelephony spelling alphabet for the International Civil Aviation Organisation
2nd	Morocco declares its independence from France
13th	Elvis Presley releases his first Gold Album titled Elvis Presley
15th	The Broadway musical My Fair Lady opens in New York City
20th	Tunisia gains independence from France
21st	The 28th Academy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles, California
23rd	Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic and a national holiday is observed in the country including the former East Pakistan state

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April
7th	Spain relinquishes its protectorate in Morocco
14th	Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB (now NAB) convention in Chicago by Ampex. It was the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex
19th	British diver Lionel "Buster" Crabb dives into the Portsmouth harbor to investigate visiting Soviet cruiser and vanishes
19th	Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco

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May
2nd	The Methodist Church in America decides at its General Conference to grant women full ordained clergy status. It also calls for an end to segregation in the denomination
8th	John Osborne's play, "Look Back in Anger" opens at the Royal Court Theatre, London
9th	First ascent of Manaslu, eighth highest mountain in the world
10th	Manchester City win The FA cup
18th	First ascent of Lhotse (main), fourth highest mountain
23rd	French Minister of State Pierre Mendès-France resigns due to his government's policy on Algeria
24th	The first Eurovision Song Contest is broadcast from Lugano, Switzerland. The winning song is Refrain by Lys Assia (music by Géo Voumard, text by Émile Gardaz)

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June
1st	Vyacheslav Molotov resigns as a foreign minister of Soviet Union; he later becomes ambassador in Mongolia
3rd	British Rail renamed 'Third Class' passenger facilities as 'Second Class' (Second Class facilities had been abolished in 1875, leaving just First Class and Third Class)
8th	General Electric/Telechron introduces model 7H241 "The Snooz Alarm", first snooze alarm clock commercially available
10th	1956 Summer Olympics: Equestrian events open in Stockholm, Sweden. (All other events held in November in Melbourne, Australia.)
14th	President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorises the phrase "under God" should be added to the Pledge of Allegiance
23rd	Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes the second president of Egypt
28th	MP Sydney Silverman's bill for abolition of death penalty passes the British House of Commons
28th	The film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, is released only a few months after the film version of another Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, Carousel
29th	Actress Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller
30th	A TWA Lockheed Constellation and United Airlines Douglas DC-7 collide in mid-air over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and crash. All 128 people aboard the two aircraft are killed in the disaster. The accident prompts tighter air traffic control to be implemented in the United States

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July
10th	British House of Lords defeats the abolition of death penalty
24th	At New York City's Copacabana Club, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together which started on July 25, 1946
25th	72 kilometers (45 miles) south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria sinks after colliding with the Swedish ship SS Stockholm in heavy fog, killing 51
26th	Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser nationalises the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation
31st	Jim Laker sets extraordinary record at Old Trafford in the fourth Test of taking nineteen wickets in a first class cricket match (the previous best was seventeen)

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August
6th	After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network has its final broadcast, a boxing match from St. Nicholas Arena
8th	262 miners die in fire in a coal mine in Marcinelle, Belgium
11th	Artist, Jackson Pollock dies after crashing his car, aged 44
17th	West Germany bans Communist Party of Germany

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September
9th	Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time
13th	The Hard Disk Drive is invented by an IBM team led by Reynold B. Johnson
16th	Television broadcasting begins in Australia
21st	Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García is assassinated
25th	Submarine Transatlantic telephone cable opened

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October
14th	Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Indian Untouchable leader, converts to Buddhism along with 385,000 followers. See Neo-Buddhism
15th	RAF retires its last Lancaster bomber
15th	Fidel Castro and Che Guevara depart from Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico, enroute to Santiago de Cuba aboard the yacht Granma with 82 men. After the ship passes a storm, it lands at Belici, Cuba, on December 2nd
23rd	Hungarian revolution against the pro-Soviet government. Soviet Union intervenes. Hungary attempts to leave the Warsaw Pact
26th	Red Army troops invade Hungary
29th	The Suez Crisis begins as Israel invade the Sinai Peninsula and push Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal
31st	The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal

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November
4th	More Soviet troops invade Hungary to crush a revolt that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded and nearly a quarter million leave the country
6th	U.S. presidential election, 1956: Republican incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected by defeating Democrat challenger Adlai E. Stevenson in a rematch of their contest four years earlier
7th	Suez Crisis: The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the United Kingdom, France and Israel to withdraw their troops from Arab lands immediately
13th	United States Supreme Court declares Alabama and Montgomery, Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal; thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott
20th	In Yugoslavia, former prime minister Milovan Djilas is arrested after he criticises Josip Broz Tito
22nd	The 1956 Summer Olympics open in Melbourne, Australia
23rd	The on-going Suez Crisis leads to petrol rationing in Britain

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December
2nd	Fidel Castro and his followers land on Cuba in the boat Granma
5th	Rose Heilbron becomes Britain's first female judge
9th	Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810 crashes into a mountain in British Columbia. All 62 people on board die, making this one of the worst airline crashes in the world at that date
12th	Japan becomes member of the United Nations
19th	John Bodkin Adams arrested for the murder of two patients in Eastbourne, Great Britain
23rd	British and French troops leave Suez Canal region