In half a century of Miss World contests, nations have seen more than their fair share
of tragedies, celebrations, breakthroughs and near-misses. Here are, perhaps, each year's
most important event.
1951: Festival of Britain takes place -- and the first Miss World competition is
held!
1952: IBM builds its first public computer -- the IBM-701.
1953: Coronation of HRH Queen Elizabeth II.
1954: Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run a mile in less than four
minutes.
1955: Disneyland opens in Anaheim, Calif.
1956: American Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier II of Monaco.
1957: A Russian dog called Laika is sent to orbit the Earth in a
satellite.
1958: Pop star Michael Jackson is born on 29 August.
1959: Ben Hur wins 11 Oscars, a record matched only by Titanic in
1997.
1960: John F. Kennedy wins the U.S. presidential election on 9 November.
1961: Jodrell Bank scientists in the UK send a telegraph to Australia by bouncing
the signal off the moon.
1962: The Beatles are rejected by recording company Decca, whose expert panel
believes they would never succeed.
1963: More than 200,000 civil rights campaigners hear Martin Luther King's I
Have A Dream speech, in Washington D.C.
1964: Cassius Clay (who later became Muhammad Ali) shocks the boxing world by
beating Sonny Liston to become the new heavyweight champion.
1965: In fashion, the miniskirt -- designed by Mary Quant -- appears in London and
will soon be all the rage.
1966: England, the country that gave football to the world, hosts the World Cup and
celebrates by winning it for the first time.
1967: The first heart transplant is performed by South African surgeon Dr.
Christiaan N. Barnard in Cape Town.
1968: The Olympic Games are held in Mexico, where Dick Fosbury famously wins the
high jump gold medal with his controversial jumping style called The Fosbury Flop.
1969: Astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first man to set foot on the moon, delivering
the immortal line, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
1970: The Indian-Pacific Express railway opens, crossing Australia from one end to
the other. Running twice a week, it travels more than 2,000 miles between Sydney and
Perth.
1971: The first Video Cassette Recorder is sold by Philips, setting a new trend in
home entertainment.
1972: The Volkswagen Beetle becomes the biggest-selling car ever.
1973: U.S. troops withdraw from Vietnam.
1974: Disposable plastic razors are invented by Gillette.
1975: Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to climb Mount Everest.
1976: On the Fourth of July, the United States celebrates its 200th birthday with 1
million people partying in the streets of Washington.
1977: Star Wars breaks all box office records, taking in $185 million.
1978: Louise Brown, the world's first test tube baby, is born in Manchester,
England.
1979: Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat sign a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel
that ends 30 years of hostilities. All eyes turn now to Palestine.
1980: The Rubik's Cube is voted Toy of the Year.
1981: Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles are married in a ceremony watched by a
phenomenal TV audience of 700 million people worldwide.
1982: Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, is opened to the public.
1983: Madonna releases her first album. She becomes an instant hit, and introduces
a new style of sexy-strong-woman pop that goes on to dominate the charts worldwide.
1984: Joe W. Kittinger makes the first solo transatlantic balloon flight in the
helium-filled Rosie O'Grady's Balloon of Peace. He travels 3,535 miles from
Caribou, Maine to Savona, Italy.
1985: Bob Geldof's Live Aid concert is watched by 1.5 billion people in
160 countries, raising a staggering £50 million for Africa's famine-stricken poor.
1986: Prince Charles admits on UK television that he talks to his plants.
1987: The value of paintings reaches an all-time high. The highlight of the year's
auctions is Van Gogh's Sunflowers, which is sold for some £25 million.
1988: Ben Johnson is stripped of his 100-metre gold medal after testing positive
for steroids. He had clocked a world record-breaking time of 9.79 sec, which was later
revoked.
1989: Germany celebrates as the Berlin Wall is knocked down. It had been standing
since 1961 after the division of the German capital between America and Russia following
the World War II.
1990: Nelson Mandela is freed after 27 years in a South African prison. After
several years of secret talks, Mandela met with President P.W. Botha and his successor F.
W. de Klerk in 1989. As a result of those talks, he was freed on 11 February 1990.
1991: The USSR officially ends, as the Baltic republics declare independence and
the Communist party is stripped of its power. The Commonwealth of Independent States
becomes a loose federation of most former Soviet republics, and Boris Yeltsin becomes
president of the newly reconstituted Russia.
1992: The World Wide Web becomes available for home use. The Internet Society is
chartered, and 1 million host computers are connected in a network. The term "surfing
the Net" is coined by Jean Polly as an increasing number of people begin exploring
the online world.
1993: Queen Elizabeth II opens Buckingham Palace to tourists in order to raise
money to repair Windsor Castle, which was damaged by fire the previous year.
1994: A new era in European train travel is inaugurated as the 31-mile Channel
tunnel linking England and France is declared open.
1995: Four Weddings star Hugh Grant is arrested in Hollywood for having a
very public liaison with Divine Brown, an alleged prostitute.
1996: At age 20, Tiger Woods wins the U.S. Amateur golf tournament for the third
year in a row and turns to a professional career.
1997: James Cameron's movie Titanic, based on the infamous 1912 tragedy,
costs more than $250 million to make but becomes a blockbuster hit. Its theme song, My
Heart Will Go On recorded by Celine Dion, wins the Oscar for Best Song of 1997. The
film takes home a total of 11 Oscars, including Best Picture.
1998: Northern Ireland acquires a fragile peace when the Good Friday Accord is
signed after 22 months of negotiations and three decades of violence.
1999: Billions celebrate the coming of the new millennium. Despite widespread
predictions of doom, the millennium bug turns out to be something of a hoax.
2000: The 50th Miss World competition is held in London. It is won by
...?
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In honor of the 50th Anniversay of the Miss World
Pagent, here are lists of:50 Health and Beauty tips
50 Quotes on Friendship
50 Quotes on Success
50 Years of History |
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