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1958

year

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ5253
Source-derived summary

1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1958th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 958th year of the 2nd millennium, the 58th year of the 20th century, and the 9th year of the 1950s decade.

Events

January

January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being.

January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed.

January 4

Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third overland journey to the South Pole, the first to use powered vehicles.

Sputnik 1 (launched on October 4, 1957) falls towards Earth from its orbit and burns up.

January 13 – Battle of Edchera: The Moroccan Army of Liberation ambushes a Spanish patrol.

January 27 – A Soviet-American executive agreement on cultural, educational and scientific exchanges, also known as the "Lacy–Zarubin Agreement", is signed in Washington, D.C.

February

February 1 – Egypt and Syria unite to form the United Arab Republic.

February 2 – The Falcons aerobatic team of the Pakistan Air Force led by Wg Cdr Mitty Masud set a world record performing a 16 aircraft diamond loop in F-86 Sabres. 30,000 people are in attendance including President Iskandar Ali Mirza, General Ayub Khan, Air Marshal Asghar Khan, Air Commodore Nur Khan, C-in-C Turkish Air Force Hamdullah Suphi Göker, Chief of the Iraqi Air Force Abdul Kadhim Abaddi, Chief of the Imperial Iranian Air Force and Chief Guest King Zahir Shah in whose honor the performance has been organized.

February 5 – 1958 Tybee Island mid-air collision: A U.S. B-47 bomber jettisons a hydrogen bomb into Wassaw Sound off Tybee Island, Georgia; it is never recovered.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1958” as year. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around year.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 1957—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with year providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1958”, the useful work is to connect “year” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5253. The Library of Congress control number is sh2009009365. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958 and 1957.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1958”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1958 primary sources, 1958 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1958”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 1958” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.