15

I'm wondering what people were doing and thinking on December 7th 1956.

A sampling one supposes:

The NFL was just starting to matter nationally, the NY Giants were the first football celebrities and had just one their first NFL championship. The Super Bowl was still a dozen years away.

The Yankees and Dodgers had just played an epic World Series that saw Don Larson throw a perfect game.

The NBA was underground.

Rock and Roll was booming, but it was still American. It was all Elvis and Chuck Barry and Jerry Lee Lewis. No Brits yet.

Speaking of, that year the Brits had just been humiliated by Eisenhower in their Suez debacle.

The Cold War was in full swing.

TV was the new, hot technology.

We were in the middle of a baby boom, Its not as if that generation didn't know about birth control. Every last one of the 12 million men in WWII were issued condoms with their K rations. These people had babies by choice, as if it was an end unto itself. For all the talk of post war prudishness, the teen pregnancy rate was some like 100 per 1000 people. Today its about 25. That generation liked sex and had lots of it.

60 percent of America smoked.

The Civil Rights movement was getting into full swing.

We actually deported Illegal Mexicans, see Operation Wetback. That said, Latin music was all the rage. In fact, the most popular show on TV was about Lucy and Ricky, an inter-racial couple.

My grandmother in Kansas got a really great spaghetti sauce recipe from an Italian woman who married  GI. Italians were the put upon latin demo of the age.

No one was giving a thought to Japan and Germany. Heck, Lucy took a hilarious trip to Italy. Try going to Afghanistan, see how that goes.