Abstract
1956: Eisenhower is still President, soon to be re-elected for a second term. Real Madrid wins the first European Cup ever, beating Stade de Rheims 4-3 in the final. The English league is won by Manchester United. In Sweden, Ingemar Stenmark and Bjørn Borg are born. The first volume of Acta Sociologica is published. It is eleven years after Hiroshima. Free-enterprise America is, in a rather strange fashion, some kind of model society for the more or less social democratic Scandinavian mini- states. Hungarian reform communism is overrun by Hungary's allies (in the fifties and sixties the rule is that countries are attacked by their allies; attacks from enemies are extremely rare). Puskas as a cold war refugee thus partly explains the power of Falangist Spanish soccer. In Suez, there is intervention by England and France; messing up the Middle East and making sure that ethnic and religious conflict in the area will remain insoluble for at least forty years. Meanwhile, in the US, C. Wright Mills publishes The Power Elite and Parsons & Smelser publish Economy and Society (I actually used to believe that the German guy, Max Whats hisname, wrote that one...). The new social science is imported from the North American continent; in a way reintroducing (Americanized) European ideas into the Old World. Elvis Presley releases 'Heart- break Hotel'.
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