1954

1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1954th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 954th year of the 2nd millennium, the 54th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1950s decade.

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1920s  1930s  1940s  – 1950s –  1960s  1970s  1980s
Years:	1951 1952 1953 – 1954 – 1955 1956 1957

Events

• October 18 – Texas Instruments announces the worldwide first transistor radio.

Births

• January 6 - Anthony Minghella, British movie director (d. 2008)
• January 29 – Oprah Winfrey, American talk show host
• February 7 - Dieter Bohlen, German music mogul
• February 15 - Matt Groening, American creator of The Simpsons and Futurama
• February 16 - Iain Banks, Scottish writer
• February 18 - John Travolta, American actor
• February 20 - Patty Hearst, American heiress
• February 21 - Ivo van Damme, Belgian athlete (d. 1976)
• March 1 – Ron Howard, American actor, director
• March 1 - Catherine Bach, American actress
• April 11 - Abdullah Atalar, Turkish academic
• April 19 - Trevor Francis, English footballer
• April 23 – Michael Moore, documentary movie maker
• April 23 – Tony Atlas, American professional wrestler
• May 13 - Johnny Logan, Irish singer
• May 20 - David Paterson, former Governor of New York
• June 30 - Serzh Sargsyan, President of Armenia
• July 17 - Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
• July 28 - Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela (d. 2013)
• July 28 - Gerd Faltings, German mathematician
• August 12 - Francois Hollande, President of France
• August 15 - Stieg Larsson, Swedish writer (d. 2004)
• August 16 - George Galloway, British politician
• August 25 – Elvis Costello, British singer
• September 21 - Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan
• October 9 – Scott Bakula, actor
• November 14 - Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State
• December 25 - Annie Lennox, Scottish singer
• December 28 - Denzel Washington, American actor
• December 29 – Albrecht Böttcher, German mathematician
• December 30 - Pnina Rosenblum, Israeli business woman and politician
• December 31 - Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland
• December 31 - Hermann Tilke, German racing circuit designer

Deaths

• May 19 – Charles Ives, American composer
• June 7 – Alan Turing, mathematician
• June 9 - Alain LeRoy Locke, American writer
• July 13 – Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter
• August 6 – Emilie Dionne, one of the Dionne Quintuplets
• November 3 – Henri Matisse, painter
• November 29 – Enrico Fermi, physicist

Movies released

• Devil Girl from Mars
• On the Waterfront
• Rear Window
• The Seven Samurai
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 movie)

Hit songs

• Sh-Boom – Crew Cuts

New books

• The Acrobats – Mordecai Richler
• Benton's Row – Frank Yerby
• The Bridge on the River Kwai (Le pont de la rivière Kwai) – Pierre Boulle
• The Caves of Steel – Isaac Asimov
• The Egyptian – Mika Waltari
• Explorers on the Moon- Hergé
• Histoire d'O (Story of O) – Pauline Réage
• The Horse and His Boy – C. S. Lewis
• I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
• Ideas and Opinions – Albert Einstein
• Katherine – Anya Seton
• Live and Let Die – Ian Fleming
• Lord of the Flies – William G. Golding
• The Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring – J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers – J. R. R. Tolkien
• Love Is Eternal – Irving Stone
• Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
• Mandarins – Simone de Beauvoir
• Mary Anne – Daphne du Maurier
• Nectar in a Sieve – Kamala Markandaya
• Never Victorious, Never Defeated – Taylor Caldwell
• No Time for Sergeants – Mac Hyman
• Not as a Stranger – Morton Thompson
• The Royal Box – Frances Parkinson Keyes
• Sayonara – James A. Michener
• Sweet Thursday – John Steinbeck
• Under Milk Wood (Poetry) – Dylan Thomas
• Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
• The View from Pompey's Head – Hamilton Basso