Bits of Nostalgia from 1957, 5-11

Here is the continuation of our bits of nostalgia from 1957.

5. And the Oscar goes to . . .

. . . The Bridge on the River Kwai, for Best Picture. Alec Guinness also won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in the movie. Joanne Woodward claimed her statue for Best Actress in The Three Faces of Eve. Other favorites were An Affair to Remember, 12 Angry Men, and that kid who swivels his hips in a movie called Jailhouse Rock. With the average price of a movie ticket at just 50 cents, you could afford to see them all!

6. The Braves win the World Series!

They weren't from Atlanta, however. In 1957, they were the Milwaukee Braves (just four years earlier they were the Boston Braves). In the 1957 World Series, the Braves, led by Hank Aaron, beat Mickey Mantle and the New York Yankees, but it wasn't easy; it took all seven games.

7. Does this price include the white picket fence?

The American dream was a whole lot cheaper in 1957. You could buy your very own house for about $12,200. A custom built, split-level cost a little
more -- around $19,000. For those who weren't quite ready to buy, rent was only about $90 a month!

8. It's all relative.

Those house prices look pretty good, but what was the average household income in 1957? On average, people made around $4,500 a year. If you sold cars, you made $7,000 to $10,000 a year. A secretary made about $3,900 a year. So, could you afford to own?

9. It was a small world, after all.

In 1957, the Census Bureau reported that there were 171,984,130 people in the United States, and 2,889,768,830 in the entire world. Today, there are 6.6 billion people in the world, including more than 300 million Americans.

10. Rabbit ears were popping up all over the place.

In 1957, there were 47,200,000 TV sets in America; the RCA Victor model cost $78. What was everybody watching? Top shows included Gunsmoke, The Danny Thomas Show, I Love Lucy, and The Ed Sullivan Show.

11. What's a Sputnik?

Before astronauts, space missions flew without a crew. The first of these, Sputnik, came from the Soviet Union. Sputnik technically wasn't a satellite, it was a 184-pound basketball-size bundle of radio transmitters that took only 98 minutes to orbit Earth. When it was launched on October 4, 1957, during the height of the Cold War, the United States was caught completely by surprise and the "Space Race" was on!

Discover even more highlights from 1957 on the next page.