360What happened in 1954?
5 moments from 1954 on 360n60, each told in 60 words or fewer.
- On this day · 6 May 1954
Roger Bannister runs the first four-minute mile
On 6 May 1954, the British medical student Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, at a track in Oxford, timing 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. Many had thought it impossible. His record lasted just 46 days.
- On this day · 29 September 1954
CERN is founded
On 29 September 1954, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, came into being near Geneva, set up by 12 European countries to study the basic building blocks of matter. CERN discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, and the World Wide Web was invented there.
- 1954 · from Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant
The first successful kidney transplant
- 1954 · from The Salk polio vaccine is declared safe and effective
The Salk vaccine trial
- 1954 · from Bell Labs scientists build the first transistor
The first transistor radio goes on sale