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1952 in the United States
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1930s  1940s  – 1950s –  1960s  1970s
Years:	1949 1950 1951 – 1952 – 1953 1954 1955
Flag:	48 stars (1912 – 1959)

Events from the year 1952 in the United States.

Events

January–March

• January 14 – The Today Show premieres on NBC, becoming one of the longest-running television series in America.
• February 2 – A tropical storm forms just north of Cuba moving northeast. The storm makes landfall in southern Florida the next day. It is the earliest reported landfall from a tropical storm, and the earliest formation of a tropical storm on record in the Atlantic basin.
• February 6 – In the United States, a mechanical heart is used for the first time in a human patient.
• February 20 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball, by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
• March 20 – The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan.
• March 21 – Tornadoes ravage the lower Mississippi River Valley, leaving 208 dead, through March 22.
• March 22 – Wernher von Braun publishes the first in his series of articles entitled Man Will Conquer Space Soon!, including ideas for manned flights to Mars and the Moon.
• March 29 – U.S. President Harry S. Truman announces that he will not seek reelection.

April–June

• April 8 – Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer: The U.S. Supreme Court limits the power of the President to seize private business, after President Harry S. Truman nationalizes all steel mills in the United States, just before the 1952 steel strike begins.
• April 15 – The United States B-52 Stratofortress flies for the first time.
• April 23 – A nuclear test is held in the Nevada desert.
• April 28 – The Treaty of San Francisco goes into effect, formally ending the occupation of Japan.
• April 29 – Lever House officially opens in New York City, heralding a new age of commercial architecture in the United States.
• May 3 – U.S. lieutenant colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the geographic North Pole.
• June 5 – Remains of a Viking ship are found near Boston, Massachusetts.
• June 14 – The keel is laid for the U.S. nuclear submarine USS Nautilus.
• June 19 – The United States Army Special Forces is created

July–September

• July 19–26 – Washington D.C. is "buzzed" by several alleged UFOs tracked on multiple radars. Jets scramble on several occasions and the objects take evasive action, only to return after the jets leave the area.^[1]
• July 21 – A magnitude 7.5 earthquake (Richter scale) strikes Tehachapi, California, destroying unreinforced brick buildings.
• July 25 – Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
• August 29 – John Cage's 4' 33" premieres in Woodstock, New York.
• September 2 – Dr. C. Walton Lillehei and Dr. F. John Lewis perform the first open-heart surgery at the University of Minnesota.

October–December

November 1: Ivy Mike

November 4: Eisenhower re-elected in a landslide

• October 12 – The Gamma Sigma Sigma National Service Sorority is founded in New York City at Panhellenic Tower.
• October 14 – The United Nations begins work in the new United Nations building in New York City.
• October 16 – Limelight opens in London; writer/actor/director/producer Charlie Chaplin arrives by ocean liner; in transit his re-entry permit to the USA is revoked by J. Edgar Hoover.
• November 1 – Nuclear testing: Operation Ivy: The United States successfully detonates the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike", at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, with a yield of 10.4 megatons.
• November 4 – United States presidential election, 1952: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeats Democrat Adlai Stevenson (correctly predicted by the UNIVAC computer).
• November 4 – The U.S. National Security Agency is founded.
• November 20 – The first official passenger flight over the North Pole is made from Los Angeles to Copenhagen.
• November 29 – Korean War: U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfills a political campaign promise, by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict.
• December 1 – The New York Daily News carries a front page story announcing that Christine Jorgensen, a transsexual woman in Denmark, has become the recipient of the first successful sexual reassignment operation.
• December 14 – The first successful surgical separation of Siamese twins is conducted in Mount Sinai Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio.
• December 20 – The crash of a U.S. Air Force C-124 Globemaster at Moses Lake, Washington kills 86 servicemen.

Undated

• Nearly 58,000 cases of polio are reported in the U.S.; 3,145 die and 21,269 are left with mild to disabling paralysis.^[2]
• The National Prohibition Foundation is incorporated in Indiana.

References

External links

• Media related to 1952 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons