* Austin Osman Spare ( 1886 – 1956 ), English artist and magician

* 1956 – Sebastian Spreng, Argentinean artist and journalist

* 1956 – Dilip Vengsarkar, Indian cricketer and administrator

* 1956 – Andy García, Cuban actor

* 1956 – Herbert Grönemeyer, German singer

* 1956 – Former Vice President and Senator Alben Barkley dies during a speech in Virginia.

* 1956 – Lars von Trier, Danish director

* 1956 – After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network makes its final broadcast, a boxing match from St. Nicholas Arena in New York in the Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena series.

* 1956 – Stepfanie Kramer, American actress

* 1878 – Aino Kallas, Finnish-Estonian author ( d. 1956 )

* 1956 – Fulvio Melia, Italian-American physicist, astrophysicist, and author

* 1956 – Jim Neidhart, American wrestler

* 1956 – Isabel Pantoja, Spanish singer

* 2003 – Leslie Cheung, Hong Kong actor and singer ( b. 1956 )

* 1956 – Tom Leykis, American radio host

* 1956 – Kirk Brandon, English singer-songwriter and guitarist ( Theatre of Hate, Spear of Destiny and Dead Men Walking )

* 1956 – Balwinder Sandhu, Indian cricketer

* 1956 –, the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas.

Prominent leaders include co-founders Lucien Febvre ( 1878 – 1956 ) and Marc Bloch ( 1886 – 1944 ).

* 1867 – Emil Nolde, German painter ( d. 1956 )

* 1956 – Chris Foreman, English guitarist and songwriter ( Madness )

* 1956 – Branscombe Richmond, American actor

* 1956 – Cecilia Roth, Argentine actress

A more complete list would also include Bradbury's `` The Pedestrian '' ( 1951 ), Philip K. Dick's Solar Lottery ( 1955 ), David Karp's One ( 1953 ), Wilson Tucker's The Long Loud Silence ( 1952 ), Jack Vance's To Live Forever ( 1956 ), Gore Vidal's Messiah ( 1954 ), and Bernard Wolfe's Limbo ( 1952 ), as well as the three perhaps most outstanding dystopias, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's The Space Merchants ( 1953 ), Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano ( 1952 ), and John Wyndham's Re-Birth ( 1953 ), works which we will later examine in detail.

* 1956 – David McDowell Brown, American astronaut ( d. 2003 )

* 1891 – David Shimoni, Russian-Israeli poet and writer ( d. 1956 )

* Hubbard, David ( 1956 ) The Literary Sources of the Kebra Nagast Ph. D.

* 1956 – Chin Peng, David Marshall and Tunku Abdul Rahman meet in Baling to try and resolve the Malayan Emergency situation.

* 1956 – David Sedaris, American essayist

* 1956 – David Shimoni, Israeli poet and writer ( b. 1891 )

* David Sedaris ( born 1956 ), author of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

* 1956 – David Caruso, American actor

She married fantasy writer David Mason ( 1924-1974 ) in 1956.

* 1956 – David Rhodes, English guitarist, songwriter, and composer

* 2008 – G. David Low, American astronaut ( b. 1956 )

* David Mach ( born 1956 ), Scottish artist

* 1956 – David Stergakos, Greek-American basketball player

* 1956 – David Copperfield, American magician

* 1956 – Peter David, American author

: Hubbard, David “ The Literary Sources of the Kebra Nagast ” Ph. D. dissertation St Andrews University, Scotland, 1956

* In the 1956 film Around the World in Eighty Days, starring David Niven, Passepartout ( played by Cantinflas ) rescues a princess captured by the Thuggee and sentenced to burn to death in the funeral pyre with her deceased husband.

* August 25 – David Shimoni, Russian-born Israeli poet and writer ( d. 1956 )

The idea seems to have originated in a spoof history essay by Professor David Daube written for The Oxford Magazine in 1956, which was widely believed despite obvious improbabilities ( e. g., planning to cross River Severn by running the ram down a hill at speed, although the river is about 30 m ( 100 feet ) wide at this point ).

The suggestion that Humpty Dumpty was a " tortoise " siege engine, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary held city of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War, was put forward in 1956 by Professor David Daube in The Oxford Magazine of February 16, 1956, on the basis of a contemporary account of the attack, but without evidence that the rhyme was connected.

* Golland, David Hamilton, " Constructing Affirmative Action: Federal Contract Compliance and the Building Construction Trades, 1956 – 1973 " ( PhD dissertation City University of New York, 2008 ).

* David Copperfield ( illusionist ) ( born 1956 ), American illusionist and stage magician