Legend has it that the fad was popularized by a group South African students when 25 of them managed to cram into a booth in 1959. As word of their exploit spread, other colleges couldn’t help challenging it. Some students went so far as fasting and many small teens were recruited for the cause. The fad lost momentum by the end of 1959.
Although the most famous person in the country was probably Elvis Presley, the top song was Mack The Knife by Bobby Darin, who later was to become a chess patron. DETAILS
In the housing market, a lot of new homes included bomb shelters in case the Russians attacked. Bomb shelters were built underground and their sales fueled a whole new industry.
The Federal Civil Defense Administration (later the Office of Civil Defense), which was formed in 1950 to prepare civilians for a nuclear attack, dispersed information mostly for suburban and country dwellers...it was assumed big cities would be bombed out of existence.
In a letter published in the September 1961 issue of Life magazine, even President Kennedy urged Americans to build personal fallout shelters. Most of those that did build shelters stockpiled food and many talked of keeping guns and ammunition handy to defend their family against neighbors who might try to claw their way into they shelters.
The truth is the shelters would have offered almost no protection in the case of a nuclear attack, but the Cold War was all about perception and deception, and this was one lie a lot of people believed. Houses with bomb shelters for sale HERE.
As an elementary school student we were shown movies describing atomic bombs and then practiced "bomb drills" where we got under our desks and covered out heads with folded arms. Teachers reminded us that this was serious because nearby Cleveland, Ohio was targeted by the Russians. If that was the case, the bomb drills were a waste of time because we would have been toast.
Tragedy struck on February 3, 1959, when rock and rollers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. (The Big Bopper) Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, along with the pilot, Roger Peterson. See my post The Day Music Died HERE.
There was also the mysterious violent death of TV's Superman George Reeves who died of a gunshot wound. Was it murder or suicide?
In testimony before congress, game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted he had been coached before appearing on a game show called "21" in 1956 and it ended games shows on television for several years.
Bobby Fischer won the US Championship again. In late March and early April the 16-year old Fischer played in Mar del Plata and his fans were somewhat disappointed by his tie for third place with Ivkov, a half point behind joint winners Njdorf and Pachman. Fischer drew with Najdorf and lost to Pachman, but it was his loss to 5th place finisher Rene Letelier of Chili that cost him a share of first place. In that game Fischer, in the lead, tried hard for a win, but met excellent resistance. They played on until the board was almost empty and the draw virtually a fact. That's when Fischer made an inexplicable blunder and lost.
From there he headed to a big tournament in Santiago, Chile where his result was a huge disappointment. He scored as many wins as the two first place finishers, Ivkov and Pachman at seven wins each; he suffered four losses while only drawing one game to finish +4 at the final to tie for 4th-6th place with Sanchez and Sanguineti. Pilnik was third.
The really big news was the Candidates Tournament that was held in Bled. On October 31, Mikhail Tal (1936-1992) emerged the winner. Tal made headlines for trying to unnerve his opponents by staring at them while they were thinking. Some players thought he was trying to hypnotize them and Pal Benko even wore a pair of dark sunglasses to wear during their game. He later claimed it was just a stunt when a couple of Yugoslav reporters asked him to wear them to provide a little sensationalism for their paper.
Tal won the Candidates followed by Keres, Petrosian, Smyslov, Fischer, Gligoric, Benko and Olafsson. Fischer lost all four of his games to Tal.
In 1959, the Soviet Chess Federation was formed and it took over the Chess Section of the Sports Committee. The Soviet union had 19 Grandmasters. By contrast, the USCF rating list published on February 5, 1959 had GMs Reshevsky, Fischer, Bisguier, Benko and Evans. Though well qualified two of the top players on the rating list didn't get the GM title until later: Lombardy in 1960 and Robert Byrne in 1964. GM Nicolas Rossolimo had been living in the US since 1952, but he was inactive.
The 26th Soviet Chess Championship took place in Tbilisi from January 9th to February 11th, 1959. Twenty of the Soviet Union's best players participated. Tigran Petrosian went undefeated and won his first of four USSR Championships (1959, 1961, 1969 and 1975) ahead of a field that included over 10 past and future winners of the Soviet championship.
You just know that in a championship with some of the best players in the world and playing 190 games, this tournament was a gold mine.
The following game is more like a comic relief that anything. After an opening experiment by Bronstein went awry, Krogius was cruising to victory when the wily Bronstein set a trap and Krogius walked right into it and found himself facing a mate in two.
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