Chronopin: upcoming release dates, events and other important dates

At Ann Arbor, Thomas Francis Jr announced the results of the largest medical field trial ever run - 1.8 million children - and pronounced Jonas Salk's polio vaccine safe, effective and potent. Church bells rang across the United States; within two years American cases had fallen by almost 90 per cent.

On 15 April 1955 Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's franchise restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, the ninth McDonald's overall, a date the present McDonald's Corporation credits as its founding.

Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 American animated musical romantic comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. It reached US theaters on 22 June 1955.

Walt Disney's $17 million theme park, built on former orange groves in Anaheim after a chaotic construction rush, opened to press and invited guests as Disneyland.

On 17 January 1956 Ford sold 10.2 million shares at US$64.50 in an offering run by Goldman Sachs, with the Ford Foundation as the only seller, ending 53 years as a privately held company.

On 26 July 1956 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in a broadcast from Alexandria, while Egyptian officials took over its offices. Britain and France were outraged, setting up the Suez Crisis.

Israeli forces attacked across the Sinai Peninsula on 29 October 1956 as part of a secret plan with Britain and France to retake the Suez Canal. British and French landings followed within days, then a UN-backed ceasefire and withdrawal under US pressure.

On 12 September 1958 Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby successfully tested the first working integrated circuit, a phase-shift oscillator on a sliver of germanium with its components linked by wires.

Yang Bing-yi founded Din Tai Fung in Taipei in 1958, first as a cooking-oil retailer and then as a dumpling house when the oil business failed. Its xiaolongbao, pleated to a standard count of folds, turned a single shop on Xinyi Road into a chain across Asia and the United States.

Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. It reached US theaters on 29 January 1959.

The first Grammy Awards were held on 4 May 1959 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, with a simultaneous event in New York; Domenico Modugno's "Volare" won Record and Song of the Year and Henry Mancini's The Music From Peter Gunn won Album of the Year.

H.J. Heinz opens its Kitt Green factory near Wigan, which grows into the company's largest food processing plant in the world and Europe's biggest.

The thin arch Malpasset Dam on the Reyran River collapsed on the night of 2 December 1959 after weeks of rain, flooding Fréjus on the French Riviera and killing 423 people.

Harry Barberian opened his steak house on Elm Street in 1959, in a row of Victorian houses behind Yonge Street, and it has outlasted most of what grew up around it - a dark room of oil paintings and charcoal-grilled beef with one of the deepest wine cellars in Canada dug out beneath it.

A magnitude 9.5 megathrust rupture off southern Chile shook for ten minutes — the strongest earthquake ever instrumentally recorded. Its tsunami crossed the Pacific and struck Hilo, Hawaii, with waves 10.7 m high.

In 1961 General Motors installed the Unimate, the world's first industrial robot, at its New Jersey factory to lift and stack hot die-cast metal parts. Industry 4.0 opens its history of factory automation with this machine.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (also known as 101 Dalmatians) is a 1961 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions with distribution by Buena Vista Distribution. It reached US theaters on 25 January 1961.

On 1 May 1962 the Dayton Company opened the first Target discount store, a 68,800-square-foot, one-floor store at 1515 County Road B in Roseville, Minnesota.

Sam Walton opened Wal-Mart Discount City on Rogers' Highway 71, his first store under the name after a decade running Ben Franklin variety stores. The format was the bet: lower margins on everything, in towns the big chains had written off as too small.

On the night of 9 October 1963 a landslide from Monte Toc into the Vajont reservoir sent a wave over the 262 m dam, destroying Longarone and nearby villages and killing roughly 2,000 people.

The Sword in the Stone is a 1963 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney, based on the 1938 novel by T. H. White. It reached US theaters on 25 December 1963.

The hazelnut and cocoa spread that grew out of Pietro Ferrero's post-war Giandujot is first jarred as Nutella at Ferrero's plant in Alba on 20 April 1964.

On October 1, 1964, just nine days before the Tokyo Olympics opened, Japan's Tokaido Shinkansen began carrying passengers between Tokyo and Osaka at over 200 km/h.

After a gruelling test series that Rolex and Longines-Wittnauer chronographs failed, NASA completed its trials on 1 March 1965 and the Omega Speedmaster became the watch qualified for all manned space missions.

The Houston Astrodome, the world's first fixed-roof, air-conditioned multipurpose stadium, opened on 9 April 1965 with an exhibition game between the Astros and Yankees — though it's stood closed and searching for a new use since 2008.

The 7th Grammy Awards on 13 April 1965 gave the Beatles Best New Artist; Getz/Gilberto won Album of the Year, "The Girl From Ipanema" Record of the Year and "Hello, Dolly!" Song of the Year.

Gordon Moore's four-page article in Electronics observes that the number of components per chip has been doubling yearly and projects it forward a decade. The observation becomes Moore's law and the semiconductor industry's roadmap.

Mercedes-Benz's Wörth am Rhein plant, which had assembled only truck cabs since opening in 1963, produced its first complete vehicle, a green LP 608, on 14 July 1965. The plant has since grown into the world's largest truck factory, building models including the Actros.

London's cylindrical BT Tower (originally the GPO Tower) began carrying live microwave telecommunications traffic in 1965, its concrete core partly designed to survive a nuclear blast.

Swiss inventor Ernst Menzi's company launched the Menzi Muck 2500 in 1966, the world's first all-terrain walking (spider) excavator, built to work steep Alpine slopes conventional machines could not reach.

The Academy of Country & Western Music held its first awards dinner at the Hollywood Palladium on 28 February 1966, naming Roger Miller Man of the Year, Buck Owens top male vocalist and Bonnie Owens top female vocalist.

Opel opened its Dudenhofen proving ground near Frankfurt in April 1966, the most modern car test center in Europe at the time. Six decades on, its more than 70 kilometers of track still put prototype technologies like automated driving through secretive testing before they reach the road.

BMW's newly built assembly line at its Berlin-Spandau plant produces its first complete motorcycle, an R 60/2 with a swinging-fork chassis, kicking off the relocation of BMW motorcycle manufacturing from Munich to Berlin.

First Lady Lady Bird Johnson formally dedicated Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona on 22 September 1966, three years after its last concrete was poured and the river began backing up into Lake Powell.

The US Army shut down Camp Century, its secret nuclear-powered base carved into the Greenland ice sheet to conceal a mobile missile network under Project Iceworm, after the tunnels it depended on began collapsing.

Boeing finished construction of its Everett, Washington factory in 1967 to build the 747, creating what is still the world's largest building by volume. Aerospace Manufacturing features the plant, which now also produces the 767, 777 and 787.

The Academy of Country & Western Music's second awards dinner was held on 6 March 1967 at the Beverly Hilton, hosted by Lorne Greene, with Merle Haggard top male vocalist, Bonnie Guitar top female, Dean Martin Man of the Year and "Apartment #9" Song of the Year.

Moshe Safdie's modular housing experiment, conceived as his student thesis, opened to the public as a pavilion of Montreal's 1967 World's Fair.

Egypt closed the Suez Canal on 6 June 1967, the day after the Six-Day War began, and it stayed shut for eight years. Fourteen or fifteen cargo ships caught inside became the 'Yellow Fleet' in the Great Bitter Lake.

The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated musical adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution. It reached US theaters on 18 October 1967.

The 10th Grammy Awards on 29 February 1968 gave Album of the Year to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the first rock album to win; the 5th Dimension's "Up, Up and Away" won Record and Song of the Year and Bobbie Gentry Best New Artist.

The third Academy of Country & Western Music awards dinner was held on 4 March 1968 at the Century Plaza Hotel, hosted by Pat Buttram, where Glen Campbell took Top Male Vocalist plus Album and Single Record of the Year for "Gentle on My Mind".

The Thomas Crown Affair is a 1968 American heist film directed by Norman Jewison and written by Alan R. Trustman. Starring Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, and Jack Weston, the film follows Vicki Anderson (Dunaway), who is hired to investigate the culprits of a multi-million dollar bank heist orchestrated by Thomas Crown (McQueen).

Zenith announced the El Primero on 10 January 1969, a high-frequency 36,000 vph automatic chronograph movement that beat the Chrono-matic group by almost two months and later powered the Rolex Daytona.

The first Jumbo Jet flew from Paine Field with test pilots Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle at the controls. Despite a minor flap problem the flight confirmed the 747 handled well and was largely immune to the Dutch roll that had plagued early swept-wing jets.

The Anglo-French supersonic airliner, built by Sud Aviation and the British Aircraft Corporation under a 1962 treaty, flew for the first time from Toulouse. Four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets drove an ogival delta wing carrying 92 to 128 passengers.

On 3 March 1969 Heuer, Breitling, Hamilton-Buren and Dubois-Dépraz presented the Calibre 11 Chrono-matic, the first micro-rotor automatic chronograph, at simultaneous press conferences in Geneva and New York.

Glen Campbell dominated the fourth Academy of Country & Western Music awards on 28 April 1969 at the Hollywood Palladium, winning Top Male Vocalist and Album of the Year with Bobbie Gentry, while "Wichita Lineman" took Song of the Year.

When Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong onto the lunar surface on 20-21 July 1969 he wore an Omega Speedmaster, the first wristwatch worn on the Moon, earning the model its Moonwatch nickname.

Seiko put the Quartz Astron on sale on 25 December 1969, the first quartz wristwatch, at 450,000 yen; it began the quartz revolution that upended Swiss watchmaking.