On this day
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Defense spending under '55-56 budget set at $4,304,000,000
Estimate Bd authorizes $225-million program including 9 Fed low-income and 8 city middle-income projects; Housing Authority dir Moscow repts it is most balanced program ever offered and one of largest; repts Chmn Cruise will go to Washington to urge raising income limits on low-income projects
Repts Fed audit vindicates his handling of finances for his anti-Communist campaign; says audit took 3 yrs and covered '47-52; gets $1,054 tax refund; illus with check; Secret Service says McCarthy may have violated law by having photo copies of check made; McCarthy scores Sen coms and Washington Star for '54 story on owing back taxes; may sue for libel
Baumgartner urges NYC delay setting vaccine control rules pending White House conf; Councilman Ross proposal and Law Dept draft for Sanitary Code regulation noted; City Council congratulates Salk; Foundation repts over 4 million cc shipped; table shows mfrs and amts shipped; Gov Meyner urges some Fed control
Chou blames US for Formosa tension, s, Asian-African Conf; says he did not submit issue to Conf to avoid controversy
1955Donald Pettit, American engineer and astronaut[†]
Donald Roy Pettit is an American astronaut and chemical engineer best known for his orbital astrophotography and in-space inventions such as the Zero G Cup, which received the first ever patent for an object invented in space. He is a veteran of three long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station, one Space Shuttle mission, and a six-week expedition to find meteorites in Antarctica. As of 2025, at age 70, he is NASA's oldest active astronaut and the third oldest person to reach orbit, behind John Glenn and Larry Connor. He has accumulated 590 days in space, behind only Peggy Whitson and Suni Williams.
1955Svante Pääbo, Swedish geneticist and Nobel Laureate[†]
Svante Pääbo is a Swedish geneticist and Nobel Laureate who specialises in the field of evolutionary genetics. As one of the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome. In 1997, he became founding director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Since 1999, he has been an honorary professor at Leipzig University; he currently teaches molecular evolutionary biology at the university. He is also an adjunct professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
In 1955, the world population was approximately 2,740,213,792 people[†]