Act I
The World Stage
World Population
How many people shared the planet
people on Earth when you were born
5.4 billion more people have arrived since
You are among the last humans who will ever know a world with fewer than 3 billion people.
1 in 82 people alive today was born in 1956.
World Leaders
Who was in charge
United States President
Dwight D. Eisenhower
President
UK Prime Minister
Anthony Eden
Prime Minister
UN Secretary-General
Dag Hammarskjöld
United Nations
World Events
Defining moments of 1956
Khrushchev delivers 'Secret Speech' denouncing Stalin's cult of personality at the 20th Party Congress
Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal, triggering the Suez Crisis with Britain, France, and Israel
Hungarian Revolution begins; Soviet tanks crush the uprising within weeks
Suez Crisis: Britain and France invade Egypt to retake the canal, forced to withdraw under US and UN pressure
Dwight D. Eisenhower re-elected US President in a landslide over Adlai Stevenson
Baby Names
Most popular names in 1956 (US)
Boys
Michael, David, James
Girls
Mary, Debra, Linda
Atmosphere
CO₂ in the air you first breathed
CO₂ concentration (Keeling Curve)
+109.5 ppm since your birth
The air has 35% more CO₂ now than the day you took your first breath.
Act II
What Things Cost
Average Annual Salary
What workers took home
$4.7k US median household incomeAdjusted for inflation, that's worth about $54k in today's dollars.
Today: $80kPurchasing Power
Are we actually better off today?
What $5k in 1956 is worth right now
32% less purchasing power than today's median
Wages have grown, but housing, healthcare, and education have grown faster. The math isn't in your favor.
The Birth Lottery
Same year. Different world.
life expectancy at birth in 1956
life expectancy at birth in 1956
A 36.7-year gap, decided entirely by where you happened to be born. Same year, different world.
Everyday Prices
What things cost
Housing
Homes vs. salaries - then and now
Median home cost 2.5x the average annual salary
Median home now costs 5.3x the average annual salary
Housing has gotten 2.1x harder to afford relative to income. Your parents weren't exaggerating about how cheap houses were.
Act III
What Was Playing
Billboard Year-End #1
Heartbreak Hotel
Elvis Presley
Oscar Best Picture
Marty
Directed by Delbert Mann
TV Premieres
Shows born the same year as you
Sports
Champions of the year
World Series
New York Yankees
Baseball
F1 Champion
Juan Manuel Fangio
Formula One
NBA Champion
Philadelphia Warriors
Basketball
Wimbledon Men's
Lew Hoad
Tennis
Screen & Page
What everyone was watching and reading
Most-Watched Show
I Love Lucy
Television
Fiction Bestseller
Don't Go Near the Water
William Brinkley
Box Office #1
The Ten Commandments
Film
Act IV
The State of Technology
Technology Milestone
Where technology stood
First commercial transatlantic telephone cable (TAT-1) laid between Scotland and Newfoundland
Notable Tech Releases
What launched that year
First transatlantic telephone cable (TAT-1) begins service
IBM introduces the RAMAC 305, the first computer with a hard disk drive (5 MB)
Fortran programming language developed at IBM by John Backus
Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by 60 million viewers
Social Media Timeline
How old were you when these launched?
The Universe
Worlds discovered beyond our solar system
No exoplanets confirmed yet
confirmed and counting
When you were born, humanity had no proof that planets existed outside our solar system. Now we know they're everywhere.
Act V
Your Place in Time
🇺🇸 United States
Your country the year you arrived
Population
169M
people in United States
GDP per Capita
$2,121
per person per year
Your Birth Cohort
100M
babies born worldwide that year
Your birth year is closer to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat than to today.
Notable Births
Born the same year as you
Tom Hanks·Mel Gibson·Larry Bird·Björn Borg·Joe Montana
Life Expectancy
Have we made progress?
United States life expectancy at birth
United States life expectancy today
9 years of progress. Steady gains from better medicine, nutrition, and public health.
Computing Power
How much faster the machines have gotten
34.4 billion times more powerfulComputing power has roughly doubled every two years since you were born. That adds up to 34.4 billion×.
35 doublings since 1956Milestone Years
Your milestone birthdays
You turn 100 in 2056
Language
Words that didn't exist when you were born
Still Alive
Jonathan the tortoise was already 124 years old
a Seychelles giant tortoise living on Saint Helena island. He was already 124 years old the year you were born. He's still alive today at 194.
You arrived in a world of 2.8 billion people. Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House. Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley was on the radio. The world you were born into would be unrecognizable today. Television was new, air travel was rare, and your parents had never heard the word 'computer.'
In 1956, recording your voice meant a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Today, you can clone your own voice with a few minutes of audio.
Hear what that sounds like →keep exploring