23rd December 1953: Australian soldiers finish decorating a Christmas tree near the new border between North and South Korea. The tree is decorated with electric lights, to be powered by a generator.
The Korean War ended earlier that year, in July. 17 000 Australians served in Korea between 1950 and 1953.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
January 1953: Evelyn Stillwell teaches a ballet class in Sarasota, Florida, USA.
Photographed by Charles Barron.
This image is of the “Labour Day” float in the May Day parade in Queensland, Australia in 1953.
Ukrainians in Sydney, Australia march against Russian communism on the 28th of June, 1953. This image appeared in The Canberra Times the following day.
More Ukrainians died under Stalin’s rule than the entire death toll of the Holocaust, with ethnic Ukrainians singled out by Soviet authorities for a genocide barely recognised by the world until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The couple after being found guilty. X
On the 19th of June, 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair in Ossining, USA after being convicted of spying for the Kremlin.
Alongside several others, who were imprisoned but not executed (including Ethel’s brother), they were found guilty of passing on information to Moscow about the atomic bomb.
Julius and Ethel under arrest.
The Rosenbergs were the only two people in the United States executed for espionage during the Cold War. Their crime was considered worse because the judge also considered them responsible for deaths in the Korean War.
On the 19th of February, 1953, the United States’ first literature censorship board was established in Georgia.
Misleadingly named the Georgia Literature Commission, the first publication targeted was God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell.
Facing legal challenges from the outset, the board lasted about two decades and then was left to die out.
Dwight D. Eisenhower at the U.S. Capitol on the 20th of January, 1953, being inaugurated as President of the United States.
On the 24th of March, 1953, Mary of Teck – Elizabeth the Second’s grandmother – died of a heart attack. She was eight-five years old.
You can see the similarities between her and her most famous granddaughter.
In Times Gone By... 
