Timeline August 1955

Events in August 1955 4

• 1909 – 1955 Carmen Miranda (1909-1955) Died 5 August 1955, aged 46 Carmen Miranda was a Portuguese-born Brazilian singer and actress famed for her flamboyant fruit-hat costumes in Hollywood films. She became one of the highest-paid entertainers in the United States during the 1940s. She died of a heart attack in Beverly Hills shortly after a live television performance.
• 1955 TR-55 — Japans first transistor radio Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo launches the TR-55 in August 1955 — Japan's first commercially produced transistor radio. It is small enough to fit in a shirt pocket (just barely — Morita reportedly had shirts made with slightly larger pockets for demonstrations) and runs on batteries. The TR-55 is a sensation. The same year, the company renames itself Sony — a combination of 'sonus' (Latin for sound) and 'sonny' (American slang for a bright young man) — choosing a name that sounds the same in every language.
• 1955 US Championships 1955 Men: Tony Trabert · Women: Doris Hart
• 1955 Murder of Emmett Till Lynching of a Black teenager galvanizes the civil rights movement Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was abducted and murdered in Money, Mississippi, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's store. His mother's decision to hold an open-casket funeral exposed the brutality of the killing to a national audience. The all-white jury's acquittal of his killers helped spark the civil rights movement.