The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.

Morley Callaghan publishes The Loved and the Lost

Nicholas Monsarrat publishes The Cruel Sea

Jacques Maritain publishes Man and the State

Hannah Arendt publishes The Origins of Totalitarianism (published in the U.K. as Burden of Our Time)

Wyndham Lewis publishes Rotting Hill

Francis King publishes The Dividing Stream

Robert Harling is born

Arthur C. Clarke publishes The Exploration of Space

Langston Hughes publishes Montage of a Dream Deferred

J. D. Salinger publishes The Catcher in the Rye

Samuel Beckett publishes Malone meurt (Malone Dies)

Carl Sandburg receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his Complete Poems

Camilo José Cela publishes Caminos inciertos: la colmena (The Hive,)

Marianne Moore publishes Collected Poems

Hortense Calisher publishes In the Absence of Angels

Paer Lagerkvist receives the Nobel Prize for Literature

William F. Buckley Jr. publishes God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom”

Adrienne Rich publishes A Change of World

Marguerite Yourcenar publishes Memoires d’Hadrien (Memoirs of Hadrian)

Herman Wouk publishes The Caine Mutiny

Color television debuts in the United States

War in Vietnam is waged between the French colonialists and the Viet-Minh

The Korean War is waged between the Communist-Chinese backed North and the U.N.-backed South; the war ends in a stalemate

Libya becomes an independent nation

Conrad Richter receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Town

Sinclair Lewis dies

Explore: Sinclair Lewis

Frank Peretti is born

Explore: Monster, This Present Darkness

André Gide dies

Explore: The Immoralist, André Gide, The Counterfeiters

Joy Harjo is born

Explore: Anniversary, Joy Harjo

Jorie Graham is born

Explore: Mind, Jorie Graham

Paul Muldoon is born

Explore: Pineapples and Pomegranates, Paul Muldoon, Meeting the British

Mark Stevens is born

Oscar Hijuelos is born

Explore: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Empress of the Splendid Season, Mr. Ives' Christmas, Oscar Hijuelos

Orson Scott Card is born

Explore: Ender's Game, Red Prophet, Seventh Son, Orson Scott Card

Timothy Zahn is born

Explore: Cobra, Deadman Switch, The Last Command

Roberto G. Fernandez is born

Terry McMillan is born

Explore: Mama, Terry McMillan, Disappearing Acts

Paula Vogel is born

Explore: How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel

Tomson Highway is born

Explore: The Rez Sisters, Tomson Highway