Some things that happen in 1951:
The Rosenbergs are sentenced to death for espionage.
A dozen eggs cost 24 cents.
In May, The United States performs the first thermonuclear test as part of Operation Greenhouse.
The first coast-to-coast telephone call is made in November.
J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is published by Little Brown.
I Love Lucy, one of the first scripted television shows using three cameras, debuts on CBS.
The term rock n’ roll is coined by the disk jockey Alan Reed.
Seasoned labor activists and Marxists launch a radical vision for gay liberation by founding what they call a “homophile” organization.
A photographer spots my mother, 19, at a local beach in New York. He takes her picture and she is reluctantly entered into a beauty contest.
In 1951, Patricia L. is crowned Miss Surfmaid. Accompanied by her mother, Pat travels for the first time on an airplane to Spain. In her designer wardrobe and jewels she tours Madrid and the countryside, crying at a bullfight, posing with a toreador. The press follows her, capturing the excitement, while she inhabits a Spanish alter-ego known as, Miss Playa de Nueva York.
