* 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 – 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 – David Grant, English singer ( Linx )

* 1956 – Branscombe Richmond, American actor

* 1956 – Cecilia Roth, Argentine actress

* Fulvio Melia ( born 1956 ), an Italian-American physicist

Paddy Chayefsky's Academy Award-winning Marty was the most notable examination of working class Bronx life was also explored by Chayefsky in his 1956 film The Catered Affair, and in the 1993 Robert De Niro / Chazz Palminteri film, A Bronx Tale, Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam, centered in an Italian-American Bronx community, 1994's I Like It Like That that takes place in the predominately Puerto Rican neighborhood of the South Bronx, and Doughboys, the story of two Italian-American brothers in danger of losing their bakery thanks to one brother's gambling debts.

Paincourtville was the birthplace of former Louisiana State Representative Frank Fulco, Sr., of Shreveport, who served from 1956 – 1972 and was a known as a spokesman for Italian-American causes.

* Ralph DePalma ( 1892 – 1956 ), Italian-American racecar driving champion, won 1915 Indianapolis 500, inducted into International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991

Other familiar titles are: Anzio by Edward Dmytryk, in 1968, his last Hollywood film appearance ; The North Star ( 1943 ), directed by Lewis Milestone with a script by playwright Lillian Hellman, with Erich von Stroheim ; Edge of Darkness ( 1943 ), also by Milestone, his first film role, where he played his first film German soldier role, opposite Judith Anderson ; Wilson ( 1944 ), where he played the German ambassador to Washington, D. C. during World War I, Count von Bernstorff ; The Cross of Lorraine ( 1943 ), with Gene Kelly ; The Hitler Gang, playing the Nazi official Alfred Rosenberg and Romanoff and Juliet ( 1961 ), written, directed and starring Peter Ustinov, and an Italian-American adaptation of Homer's Iliad, Helen of Troy ( 1956 ), directed by Robert Wise, with Rossanna Podesta, Jacques Sernas, and in two featured roles, Tonio Selwart playing opposite a then almost unknown Brigitte Bardot, in 1956.

Ralph De Palma ( Biccari, December 18, 1882 – South Pasadena, March 31, 1956 ) was an Italian-American racecar driving champion, most notably winner of the 1915 Indianapolis 500.

In 1956, the German-American physicist Friedwardt Winterberg proposed a test of general relativity ( for time slowing in a strong gravitational field ) using accurate atomic clocks placed in orbit inside artificial satellites.

His citation reads: " Theoretical physicist John Bardeen ( 1908 – 1991 ) shared the Nobel Prize in Physics twice -- in 1956, as co-inventor of the transistor and in 1972, for the explanation of superconductivity.

* 1872 – George Washington Pierce, American physicist ( d. 1956 )

* 1897 – Irene Joliot-Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate ( d. 1956 )

* September 12 – Irene Joliot-Curie, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry ( d. 1956 )

* Willem Hendrik Keesom, ( 1878 – 1956 ), physicist

Robert Hofstadter coined the term fermi ( unit ), symbol fm, in honor of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi ( 1901 – 1954 ), one of the founders of nuclear physics, in Hofstadter's 1956 paper published in the Reviews of Modern Physics journal, " Electron Scattering and Nuclear Structure ".

Willem Hendrik Keesom ( 21 June 1876, Texel – 24 March 1956, Leiden ) was a Dutch physicist who, in 1926, invented a method to freeze liquid helium.

* G. W. Pierce ( 1872 – 1956 ), physicist

* Sir Francis Simon ( 1893 – 1956 ), physicist

The phenomenological theory of Fermi liquids was introduced by the Soviet physicist Lev Davidovich Landau in 1956, and later developed by Alexei Abrikosov and I. M. Khalatnikov using diagrammatic perturbation theory.

Son Walther Kossel ( 1888 – 1956 ) became a prominent physicist and was professor of theoretical physics and director of the Physics Institute at the University of Tübingen.

Sergei Kopeikin ( born April 10, 1956 ) is a USSR-born theoretical physicist presently living and working in the United States, where he holds the position of Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.

In condensed matter physics, a Cooper pair or BCS pair is two electrons ( or other fermions ) that are bound together at low temperatures in a certain manner first described in 1956 by American physicist Leon Cooper.

* May 31-Clarence Chant, astronomer and physicist ( died 1956 )

In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett ( 1885 – 1956 ), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett.

Ashoke Sen, FRS (; born 1956 ) is an Indian theoretical physicist.

Nathan " Nati " Seiberg ( born September 22, 1956, Israel ) is an Israeli American theoretical physicist who works on string theory.

Dr. Reinhold Ewald ( born December 18, 1956 ) is a German physicist and ESA astronaut.

* David Lindley ( physicist ) ( born 1956 ), British theoretical physicist and author

* John Bond ( physicist ) ( born 1956 ), English forensic scientist

Heinrich Georg Barkhausen ( December 2, 1881 – February 20, 1956 ), born at Bremen, was a German physicist.