- In 1953: Average wages per year were $4,000.00 ($36,923 in 2016); the average cost of new house - $9.550.00 ($88,153 in 2016); a gallon of gas - $.20 ($1.85 in 2016), and the average cost of a new car was $1,650.00 ($15,230 in 2016).
- In 1953: A teacher's average salary was $4,254, $39,267 in 2016 dollars adjusted for inflation.
- In 1953: The first color television sets appeared, selling for $1,175, $10,846 in 2016 dollars adjusted for inflation!
- In 1953: Popular movies were Abbot and Costello meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde, The Big Heat, From Here to Eternity, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, House of Wax, Niagra, Peter Pan, and The War of the Worlds.
- In 1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage (passing US nuclear bomb secrets to the Soviets). It took five tries to finally dispatch Ethel. At age 37, Julius was the first US civilian to be excuted for spying.
- In 1953: The Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb in August.
- In 1953: Time Magazine’s Man of the Year was Konrad Adenauer.
- In 1953: Piltdown Man, an archeologoical find from 1912, was exposed as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man.
- In 1953: RCA invented the first musical synthesizer.
- In 1953: After more than three years of conflict the Korean War ended. Casulties included 33,629 US troops, about 3,000 UN troops, about 50,000 South Koreans, and an estimated 1.5 million Communists from China and North Korea.
- In 1953: Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as President. His running mate was Richard Nixon.
- In 1953: American singer Pat Benatar, UK actress Linda Hayden, Cheap Trick rocker Lamont Robin Zander, US politician Jeb Bush, and Canadian actor Rick Moranis were born.
- In 1953: Soviet Premier Stalin, country singer Hank Williams, German Field Marshal Karl R G von Rundstedt, and American athlete Jim Thorpe died.
- In 1953: New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese Sherpa, became the first people to successfully climb to the summit of Mount Everest in May. Due to low oxygen they stayed at the summit for only about fifteen minutes.
- In 1953: Miss America was Neva Langley of Macon, GA.
- In 1953: The NFL champions were the Detroit Lions, and Indiana was the top NCAA basketball team.
- In 1953: The strongest storms ever recorded broke through flood defenses across the UK leaving 150 dead.
- In 1953: The City of Niagara Falls bought a plot of land called "Love Canal" for $1 from the chemical company Hooker Chemical. Hooker had used the area as a dump. Despite warnings from the company, a school was built on the land. From 1974–1978, 56% of children in the area were born with birth defects.
- In 1953: Biologists Watson and Crick published "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid". With little more than a drawing and some accompanying text, They discovered the structure of DNA, leading to a nobel prize in 1962.
- In 1953: Ore-Ida introduced 'Tater Tots' in grocery stores. There were simply pressed leftovers from their french fry line.
