Leon1959

Leon High School

Tallahassee, Florida

Class of 1959

What do you remember most about February 1956? Below are headlines for the month, followed by memories of the month. To view other months/years of the countdown,

click here to go back to the Countdown 1956 Page.

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February 1956 Headlines

(courtesy of http://dmarie.com/timecap/)

Marie's website is still down, so no headlines this month. Here are a few I found:

* February 22 - Elvis Presley enters the United States music charts for the first time, with "Heartbreak Hotel."

* February 23 - Nikita Khrushchev attacks the veneration of Joseph Stalin as a "cult of personality."

hahaha ... Elvis and Khrushchev sharing headlines! Since there were no earth-shaking headlines, how about

Top grossing films in North America:

1. Guys and Dolls

2. The King and I

3. Trapeze

4. tie High Society and I'll Cry Tomorrow

5. Picnic

6. War and Peace

7. The Eddy Duchin Story

8. Moby Dick - directed John Huston, star Gregory Peck

9. The Searchers with John Wayne

10. tie The Conqueror with John Wayne as Genghis Khan and Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean

COUNTDOWN TO GRADUATION - FEBRUARY 1956

Well, that's it for this month. Seems to get a little thinner each month, eh? If something doesn't break in the next couple of months, I guess maybe I'll drop this until something spurs me on - like maybe after I get my first car. Seems there were a lot more memories after I was driving, although I guess many of them can't be talked about here :)

As usual, PLEASE - if you have any walks down memory lane that you'd like to share, particularly in the March 1956 time frame, by all means email them to me! I really enjoy having something in here written by someone other than me!

Personal Memories of February 1956

February .. short month .. headlines site isn't working .. Rock n Roll hits site has no entry for February ... hmmm .. maybe I'm not meant to do anything on this for February. It's the 26th today, so I thought I'd better either do it today or forget it.

Only two headlines I could find were Elvis and Kruschev .. Elvis hitting the charts for the first time is big news in my world .. not so sure about the importance of Kruschev deciding to attack Stalin.

I certainly remember hearing Davy Crockett in the cafeteria! Must have been around this time, since it was in top 20 for UK (twice) this month. That Rock Island Line seems to ring a bell, also. Of course, good old Sixteen Tons is still there, and that rang out in the cafeteria many times throughout 1956.

From the AmericanHitNetwork.com, I found the #6 and #7 songs: Why Do Fools Fall in Love? (Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers) and Mack the Knife (Louis Armstrong). Now there are two that we all certainly new how to sing along with!

We have a hit! According to the Southside High School (Elmira, NY) Class of 1958 website, the top ten 45RPM records this month were: 1 Rock And Roll Waltz - Kay Starr, 2 Memories Are Made Of This - Dean Martin, 3 The Great Pretender - Platters, 4 Lisbon Antigua - Nelson Riddle, 5 See You Later, Alligator - Bill Haley and his Comets, 6 Sixteen Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford, 7 No, Not Much! - Four Lads, 8 Band of Gold - Don Cherry, 9 It's Almost Tomorrow - Dream Weavers, 10 Dungaree Doll - Eddie Fisher. By the way, that website has MUCHO INFO on the 1950's and a bunch of other topics of possible interest to all you oldsters out there. They must have more than one guy doing their site!

And here's the other biggie that I found for the month - UFOs at Orly airport!

Orly airport, France, February 1956

In the night from February 17 to 18, 1956, at 10:50 P.M., an echo corresponding to an object of a size twice higher than that of the largest planes then in service appeared on the radar of the international civilian airport of Orly, close to Paris. No plane was supposed to be there at this time. The radar technicians initially restricted themselves to following the manoeuvers of the object, manoeuvers which were completely different from all that they had been able to observe up to now.

Its speeds varied from total immobility to a speed of 1500 miles per hour.

Click the newspaper on the left for details.

That was hit #100 at Yahoo! Search and I decided that was as far as I wanted to go with it.