I Love Lucy followed the life of Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), a young middle-class housewife in New York City, who is constantly concocting schemes with her neighbors Ethel and Fred Mertz to appear alongside her bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) in his nightclub.

When her father died in February 1952, Elizabeth II became head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. She would go on to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history, and the first to celebrate a sapphire jubilee.

Rosa Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white passenger, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott. Although widely honored in later years, she was initially fired from her job and received death threats for years afterwards.

On January 14, Marilyn and New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio were married at the San Francisco City Hall. Their union would be short-lived, however, ending in divorce after DiMaggio became infuriated over Marilyn's famous subway grate photoshoot.

The realization that the structure of DNA is that of a double-helix elucidated the mechanism of base pairing by which genetic information is stored and copied in living organisms and is widely considered one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century.

Sam and Friends (1955-1961) focused mostly on Sam, a bald-headed, big-eared human who escaped the harshness of everyday life with the help of abstract friends that he created. His friends included Yorick, Harry the Hipster, Professor Madcliffe, Chicken Liver, and a lizard-like character named Kermit. This prototype Kermit was created from a discarded turquoise spring coat belonging to Jim Henson's mother and two ping pong ball halves for eyes. He would subsequently make a number of television appearances before his status as a frog was established.

James Dean died in an automobile accident on September 30, 1955, when his Porsche 550 Spyder broadsided a Ford Tudor that had veered into his lane. Dean was rushed to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. He was only 24 years old.

Grace Kelly starred in several significant films in the 1950s, including High Noon, Dial M for Murder, and Rear Window, before retiring at the age of 26 to marry Prince Rainier III. The Prince and Princess had three children: Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stephanie.

The Barbie doll, invented by Ruth Handler in 1959, was named after her own daughter. The Ken Doll, likewise, was named after her son.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The new agency was to have a distinctly civilian orientation, encouraging peaceful applications in space science. Since its establishment, most US space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle.