June 26, 1954

The federal minimum wage stood at $0.75/hr that summer of 1954, and the Dow Jones sat at 404 — the U.N. formally returned administration of a war-evacuated region north of the 38th Parallel to South Korea, a sign that the peninsula was slowly transitioning back to civilian governance two years after the armistice. On television, "I Love Lucy" remained the top-rated show in the country, while at the movies, audiences were lining up to see "The Caine Mutiny," and Kitty Kallen's "Little Things Mean a Lot" was the song playing on nearly every radio. On July 31, Italian mountaineers Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni reached the summit of K2 in the Karakoram range, becoming the first people in history to stand atop the world's second-highest mountain.