On this day

July 20, 1955

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from July 20, 1955

Notable Births

Desmond Douglas

1955Desmond Douglas, Jamaican-English table tennis player[†]

Desmond Douglas MBE is a British table tennis player. He lived and was brought up in the area of Handsworth, Birmingham, West Midlands. He was an attacking, left-handed, player, notable for his scissor jump smash. He was famous for his use of close to the table blocks on the backhand side, mixing pace with powerful topspin from his forehand side.

1955RenĂ©-Daniel Dubois, Canadian actor and playwright[†]

René-Daniel Dubois, OC is a Québécois playwright and actor.

Jem Finer

1955Jem Finer, English banjo player and songwriter[†]

Jeremy Max Finer is an English musician, artist and composer. He is one of the founding members of the Pogues.

Notable Deaths

Calouste Gulbenkian

1955Calouste Gulbenkian, Armenian businessman and philanthropist (born 1869)[†]

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was an Ottoman-born British Armenian businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development and is credited with being the first person to exploit Iraqi oil. Following the "Red Line Agreement", a fixed 5% of the shares of the Turkish Petroleum Company were to be consistently owned by him, for which he earned the nickname "Mr. Five Per Cent". Gulbenkian travelled extensively and lived in a number of cities including his birth city of Constantinople and later London, Paris, and finally Lisbon.

Historical Context for July 20, 1955

In 1955, the world population was approximately 2,740,213,792 people[†]