• Mount Everest - Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing completed the first successful ascent to the world's high point, Mt. Everest.
• The Korean War Ends - the conflict that started in June 1950 ended in July 1953. After lengthy peace negotiations a cease-fire was established. A de-militarized zone around the 38 th parallel is still defended by both sides 50 years later. No peace treaty was ever signed.
• Baseball - April 17, 1953, the New York Yankee's Mickey Mantle hits a 565 foot home run off right handed pitcher Chuck Stobbs at Washington, DC‘s Griffith Stadium.
• United Kingdom - June 2, 1953, London, England: The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II as monarch of the United Kingdom took place at Westminster Abbey.
• Entertainment - December, Hugh Hefner published the first issue of an American men's entertainment magazine named Playboy. The magazine featured a centerfold photograph of a nude of Marilyn Monroe. The first issue sold 54,175 copies at a cost of $0.50 each.
Notable Deaths -
Joseph Stalin, 1879-1953, was the second leader of the Soviet Union.
Hank William, 1923-1953, an American icon, the self-destructive country western singer died of an alcohol and drug related heart attack.
Jim Thorpe, 1888-1953, the greatest athlete of his times, he was an All-American football player from the small Carlisle Indian Industrial School. He won both the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 Summer Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. (* See L'Equipe athlete of the decade 1910 ).
