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The Little Rock Nine was a group of African American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High back in 1957. The Little Rock Crisis ensued shortly after. The students were being prevented from entering the then racialy segregated school by Orval Faubus, the govenor of Arkansas. Through silent protest and a little help from President Eisenhower, they were then able to attend Central High in Little Rock. This event is considered to be one of the most important events in the African American Civil Rights Program.

Boris Pasternak was a Russian poet, whose novel Doktor Zhivago brought him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. Pasternak had to decline the honour because the protests in his home country. The novel was banned in the Soviet Union and Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers.

Mickey Mantle was born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma. His first semi-professional team was the Baxter Springs. Mantle's osteomyelitic condition exempted him from military service. On January 16, 1961, Mantle became the highest-paid baseball player by signing a $75,000 contract. ((Mickey was one of the most powerful players of the game. He also became one of the most popular. However, some people didn't like Mantle at first, he replaced Joe DiMaggio in centerfield, but not in the hearts of the fans. He received some hate mail when he didn't serve in the Korean war. He was unable to join up anyway, because of childhood record of osteomyelitis and numerous other injuries. Mantle himself dated his rise in popularity to 1961, when he and Roger Maris were involved in a chase for Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a season. Maris broke the record with 61, while injury and illness ruined Mantle's chances. 'I couldn't do anything wrong after Roger beat me,' Mantle said. 'I became the underdog; they hated him and liked me. Everywhere I went I got standing ovations. It was a lot better than having them boo you'.))

Jack Kerouac was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist from Lowell, Massachusetts. To many the archetypal 'road' author, Jack Kerouac reached the peak of his fame in 1957, the free-wheeling style of his bestseller, //On The Road//, revolutionising the lives of millions of American teenagers.

Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957, was the world's first artificial satellite.It was also part of the first Soviet satellite programme which consisted of four Sputnik or 'fellow traveller' satellites. It was relatively small having a mass of only 83.6 kg and its mission was to send back data concerning the density of the Earth's upper atmosphere, and ionosphere.This it did, but only for 21 days before it stopped transmitting signals.

Born into the gentry in 1898, Chou En-Lai first demonstrated his predilection for revolutionary politics when during the May Fourth movement of 1919 he led a raid on a local government office protesting against the humiliating Treaty of Versailles. Subsequently spending time mingling with radical Chinese students in France and then in Moscow, Chou was by 1924 a card-carrying Communist. It was during his participation in the Long March of 1934-35, when communists sought to escape from Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang (nationalists), that he secured his position as Mao's number two. In 1937, Chou En-Lai the political tactician brokered an alliance between Mao's communists and Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalists in order to pose a united front against Japanese Imperialism; the truce lasted until after World War II, when the communists drove the Kuomintang out of mainland China.

The 1957 film 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' was an epic World War II prisoner-of-war drama starring Alec Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins. The film is set in a POW camp in Burma[|6], in 1943. At the start of the film we see a column of British prisoners marching into camp, sent to build a bridge for a rail line the Japanese were building between Malaysia and Rangoon.