Week of December 25, 1955
In his annual Christmas message - Pope Pius Xii proposes a ban on all nuclear
tests and an international agreement on disarmament to save the world from a
man-made catastrophe.
The President and Mrs. Eisenhower spend their first old-fashioned family
Christmas in the White House. The President started the day playing Santa for
his grandchildren and ended it with a turkey dinner in the newly decorated State
Dining Room.
Communists knock the spirit out of East Berlin’s
Christmas and order border police to enforce a ban
on shopping in West Berlin’s sops filled with
delicacies unavailable in the drab and empty
government-run stores of the Soviet sector. In
addition, the Communists forbade possession of
West marks by East Berliners, and help up for
inspection thousands of Christmas packages
mailed by West Germans to friends and kin in the
East.
Nikita Khrushchev makes a bristling attack on all
major aspects of American foreign policy and at
one point, accused President Eisenhower of “crude
interference” in Communist nations’ affairs.
At Key West, President Eisenhower plays a little golf and begins work on two oil
paintings and strolls along Truman Beach.
President Eisenhower serves notice on Russia that peaceful liberation of captive
peoples in Red satellite nations “will continue to be a major goal of U.S. foreign
policy.”
American air traffic breaks all growth
records in 1955 according to the civil
Aeronautics Administration. Airlines
carried nearly 42 million passengers -
19% more than 1954.
Sports - Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees - the American League home
run king last season, captures the circuit’s slugging title. Mantle pounded out 316
