On this day
Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Investigating subcom hearing; J D Mazzei, FBI ex-agent in Communist party, testifies that L Bortz said party assigned him to 'liquidate' Sen McCarthy; Bortz refuses to testify on this and other alleged Communist activities; Mazzei, Bortz illus
Allied comdrs and High Comrs demand USSR end martial law; W Berliner W Goettling executed as alleged instigator; rioters calmed but many stay away from work; area sealed off from W Ger; E Ger news agency reveals rioting in other cities; 21 persons held, E Berlin; Nuschke still held by W Berlin police; Dibelius appeals for his return; illus; map
Named Deputy Premier and Interior Min
P-H Teitgen lays Min Marie's rejection as French Premier to stand on ratification
union raises wage increase demand to 5%; rejected by tanker operators com; hope for strike end fades; union council votes formal strike; Sword Line, Orion Shipping, Isbrandtsen and Luckenbach break from bargaining com
1953Ethel Rosenberg, American spy (born 1915)[†]
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. They were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 using New York's state execution chamber in Sing Sing in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime. Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, was convicted in the United Kingdom. For decades, many people, including the Rosenbergs' sons, have maintained that Ethel was innocent of spying and have sought an exoneration on her behalf from multiple U.S. presidents.
1953Julius Rosenberg, American spy (born 1918)[†]
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. They were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 using New York's state execution chamber in Sing Sing in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime. Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, was convicted in the United Kingdom. For decades, many people, including the Rosenbergs' sons, have maintained that Ethel was innocent of spying and have sought an exoneration on her behalf from multiple U.S. presidents.
1953Cold War: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.[†]
The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.
In 1953, the world population was approximately 2,634,106,235 people[†]