------------------------------------ The late 1950s is frequently portrayed
in popular culture as a tranquil period of prosperity and morality. But to tell
the truth, it was a violent and terrifying time to be alive.
The year 1957 was no exception. There was murder. A pandemic swept through the
world. There were multiple nuclear accidents. And a plane crash killed an elected leader.
Let’s start with one of the most disturbing events of that year.
--------------------------------------- Willie Edwards
Willie Edwards was a 24-year-old African American man. He was a husband and father. Willie’s
family lived in Letohatchee, Alabama. Willie worked as a driver for Winn-Dixie,
which is a popular supermarket chain in the south. He had just recently started
the job. The night of January 22 Willie returned home after working all day. The
phone rang and it was his boss saying someone called in sick and Willie needed to return.
Willie had just started the job. He didn’t feel comfortable saying no,
so he agreed to go back to work. It was the last time anyone would see him alive.
He didn’t know it, but several members of the local Ku Klux Klan were convinced
that Willie was sleeping with a white woman. They abducted him and drove Willie around Montgomery,
beating him along the way.�� Then they stopped on a bridge
over the Alabama River. The men took Willie out of the car and pointed a gun at him.�
He had a choice. They could shoot him, or he could jump. Willie decided to jump.
He fell 125 feet and did not survive. It took three months for Willie’s decomposed
body to be discovered. The local authorities said decomposition made
it impossible to determine a cause of death. In 1976 State Attorney Bill Baxley re-opened the
case. Four people were arrested and charged with murder, with one confessing in full. The judge
dismissed the case saying there was still no cause of death. The judge claimed that
just because Willie was forced to jump off a bridge didn’t mean that was why he died.
The murderers were never brought to justice. Influenza Pandemic
The 1957 to 1958 Asian Flu Pandemic originated in southern China.�
It was an influenza outbreak that killed between one and four million people worldwide, making it
among the deadliest pandemics in history.�� The first cases were detected in China in
late 1956. By the middle of March 1957, the virus had spread all over
the country. China did not immediately tell other countries about the virus.
By April, the virus had spread to Hong Kong. In June it was detected in the UK then the
United States. By the following year it was killing vulnerable people all over the world.
Maurice Hilleman, a microbiologist, saw pictures of the influenza victims from Hong
Kong. He decided to do something about it. He obtained samples of the virus from the US Navy.
Virus cultures were sent to vaccine manufacturers in April, and samples were being tested at Air
Force bases by July. By October, the vaccine was available in the United States and the UK.
Rapid deployment of the vaccine helped stop the pandemic. It is believed that Maurice
Hilleman’s actions helped save millions of lives. Had the vaccine not been created,
the death toll could have exceeded one million in the United States alone.
Mount Pinatubo Crash Ramon Magsaysay was the seventh
President of the Philippines. Originally, he was an automobile mechanic. During World War II
he was a well-known guerilla fighter. And after the war he served as Secretary of Defense.
His administration was one of the most corruption free in Philippines history. Some even refer to
his presidency as “The Golden Years”. Unfortunately, it would come to a sudden end in 1957.
The government had recently purchased a Douglas C-47 that had less than one hundred flight hours.�
It became the official Presidential plane. And it served the government well, until it didn’t.
On March 17, the plane was near Manila.� It took off around 1 am and was supposed
to return the President to his home around two hours later. The plane never arrived.�
Some observers noticed that the plane seemed to be flying too low when it approached a nearby
mountain range. A search was organized to try and find out what happened.
The plane was discovered in a mountain range later that day. Of the twenty-four
other passengers only one survived. At first sabotage was suspected. The subsequent
investigation found that the drive shaft failed and caused a power failure. Since it happened
when the plane was trying to climb above a mountain range there was no chance to recover.
Mark 17 Nuclear Bomb The United States spent a lot of
time on the development of nuclear weapons in the 1950s. It was almost an obsession at times.
The military liked to develop all kinds of nuclear weapons. They put them on artillery shells, and
they made compact nuclear devices. The Mark 17 was different. It was the largest nuclear weapon
to ever be developed by the United States. The Mark 17 bombs were twenty-four feet long
and weighed twenty-one tons. The yield of each device was 15 megatons. That is an order of
magnitude greater than the bombs dropped on Japan a decade earlier which released 15 kilotons.
The Mark 17 bomb was so large and heavy only one plane could carry it, a Convair B-36
Peacemaker. In 1957 this plane was carrying a lot of Mark 17 bombs because the military
was replacing them with smaller devices that didn’t need special airplanes to carry them.
Unfortunately, by this point the United States already had a long history of
accidentally dropping nuclear bombs.�� On May 27, a plane was carrying one of
these nuclear devices. As it passed south of Albuquerque, New Mexico it accidentally jettisoned
its Mark 17 device. Essentially a failure allowed it to fall through the bomb doors of the plane.
Conventional explosives attached to the Mark 17 destroyed it on impact
which prevented a nuclear explosion. It also spread radioactive material for over a mile.���
The military did their best to clean the area. Still,
even today people sometimes find radioactive pieces of the device.
Little Rock Nine In 1954 the US Supreme Court
ruling on Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation was illegal. �
Schools would be forced to integrate based on this decision. But it didn’t happen overnight.
Immediately after the decision the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
tried to register black students in all white schools throughout the south. Predictably
most of the schools didn’t want to follow the court order. The school board in Little Rock,
Arkansas agreed to integrate their schools though. The first black students would arrive in 1957.
The NAACP picked nine black students to attend Little Rock Central High.�
Most of Arkansas was not a fan of integration. The Governor of the state
called in the National Guard to prevent black students from entering the school.�
President Eisenhower placed the National Guard under Federal control and instructed
them to protect the new students instead. They began arriving at the school on September 24.
As the students arrived, they were surrounded by protestors.�
One of the nine students, Elizabeth Eckford, remembered that:
They moved closer and closer. ... Somebody started yelling. ... I tried to see a friendly
face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old
woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.
Without military protection the students would have never been able to enter the school.�
And despite this protection they still experienced constant abuse.
Melba Pattillo was another African American student who attended Little Rock Central.�
She recalled that one time she had acid
thrown in her eyes. On another occasion she was in a bathroom stall. White girls
trapped her there and dropped flaming pieces of paper on her head to try and set her on fire.
The attempts to stop integration were ultimately unsuccessful.
Windscale Fire Fire and hazardous
nuclear materials were constant companions in the 1950s. By the end of the decade, it wasn’t just
the United States creating nuclear disasters.� Other countries decided to get in on the fun.
During World War Two, the UK and the United States had a special relationship. They
shared intelligence and technical data. The UK expected this to continue after
the war ended. But by 1946 the United States had stopped sharing nuclear technology with anyone.
The United Kingdom decided in 1947 that it needed nuclear weapons. It wanted them by 1957. In order
to acquire the materials to develop the weapons it needed to build nuclear reactors. These reactors
would take uranium and convert it into isotopes that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
The reactors were built in the late 1940s and were known as Windscale Pile 1 and Windscale Pile 2.
Normally reactors like this are cooled using water. The designers in the UK were concerned
that if this system failed it could create a chain reaction. Unlike the United States, they didn’t
have the ability to evacuate the entire area. So, engineers developed an air-cooled system instead.
The facility did not work as well as intended in terms of containing radioactive materials.�
Scientists discovered radioactivity around the facility and a nearby town.�
The government kept it secret. It was a manageable situation. However,
in 1956 Winston Churchill decided that the UK needed to build a hydrogen bomb.�
To do that they needed a lot of isotopes and they needed them fast. The Windscale
facilities accomplished this by decreasing the cooling systems.�
They purposely allowed the reactors to heat up to increase production.
Unfortunately, the UK had less experience than the Americans when it came to dealing
with these reactions. They didn’t completely understand the risks, namely that hot spots
were forming within the reactors.�� On October 7 operators noticed that
the reactors began heating more than normal. They vented heat to try and deal with this,
but by October 10 it was obvious that something was wrong. They inspected the reactors and
discovered, to their horror, that one of them was on fire. Not only was it burning
but it had been in this state for two days! They tried everything to stop the fires. Carbon
dioxide was pumped into the facility. Water was used. Nothing seemed to work. By October 11
there were eleven tons of uranium burning in the reactors.
Eventually water was able to cool the reactors and stop the reaction. The tank was sealed shut with
about fifteen tons of uranium still inside. It isn’t scheduled to be decommissioned until 2037.
The fire did release plutonium into the atmosphere. The contamination was worse
than reported by the UK government, though not as bad as subsequent disasters such as Chernobyl.
Amazingly, a study in 2010 found that workers who cleaned up this disaster did not suffer
long term health effects. ------------------
There is much more that we did not cover about 1957. It was an eventful year
where troubling events are concerned.� For instance, the serial killer Ed Gein
was finally caught. A plane crash over a playground killed several children. And if
you care about entertainment, actor Humphrey Bogart died after a long battle with cancer.
Mostly it’s surprising that nuclear disasters didn’t kill everyone before the decade ended.
What do you think about this turbulent year? Is there anything important that we didn’t mention?
And finally, if you enjoyed this episode then please hit that like button and subscribe to our
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as opposed to feeding an unhealthy obsession with horrible events.
Thank you for watching Bad Things in History. -------------------