* 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 – David Grant, English singer ( Linx )

* 1956 – Branscombe Richmond, American actor

* 1956 – Cecilia Roth, Argentine actress

* 1956 – 1971 Richard van der Riet Woolley

* 1956 – Richard Eden, American actor

* 1956 – Marky Ramone, American drummer and songwriter ( Ramones, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and Misfits )

* 1956 – Richard Madeley, English television presenter and columnist

Until Daniel Schacter published Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory in 2000, Semon's work had little influence, though it was quoted extensively in Erwin Schrödinger's prescient 1956 Tarner Lecture " Mind and Matter ".

In 1955, at age 18, she married Richard Carleton Meeker whom Mary described as " the boy next door ," and within six weeks she was pregnant with her only child, Richard, Jr. ( born July 3, 1956 ).

* 1956 – Richard Kind, American actor

* 1956 – Richard Bean, English playwright

* Richard Butler ( singer ) ( born 1956 ), lead singer of The Psychedelic Furs and former lead singer of Love Spit Love

* Richard the Third by Paul Murray Kendall ( W. W. Norton, 1956 ) ( ISBN 0-393-00785-5 )

The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d ( 1956 ) starring Peter Sellers was the first attempt to translate Goons humour to TV ; it was followed by A Show Called Fred and Son of Fred, both made during 1956 and directed by Richard Lester, who went on to work with The Beatles.

" Semantic Nets " were first invented for computers by Richard H. Richens of the Cambridge Language Research Unit in 1956 as an " interlingua " for machine translation of natural languages.

* Girls of Summer ( 1956 ) ( incidental music by Sondheim ; play by N. Richard Nash )

In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick ( 1956 ), Ishmael ( Richard Basehart ) narrates the story and sometimes comments on the action in voice-over, as does Joe Gillis ( William Holden ) in Sunset Boulevard ( 1950 ) and Eric Erickson ( William Holden ) in The Counterfeit Traitor ( 1962 ); adult Pip ( John Mills ) in Great Expectations ( 1946 ) and Michael York in a television remake ( 1974 ).

*, Whitcomb, Richard T, NACA Report 1273, 1956.

* February 18 – Richard S. Edwards, American admiral ( d. 1956 )

* 1956: The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter

His other TV appearances included Down You Go, What's My Line ?, Camera One, Ken's Column, Trader Horne ( a weekly advertising magazine for the Tyne Tees region ), Let's Imagine, Call My Bluff ( as team captain ), and various specials with Richard Murdoch such as Free and Easy ( 1953 ) and Show for the Telly ( 1956 ).

* Show for the Telly ( with Richard Murdoch ) ( BBC, 1956 )

The band's popularity in the United States began to wane in 1956 – 57 as sexier, wilder acts such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard began to dominate the record charts ( although Haley's cover version of Little Richard's " Rip It Up "-which was released in direct competition-actually outsold the original ).

One of the earlier films that encompasses all these features was the 1956 adventure film The Last Wagon in which Richard Widmark played a white man raised by Comanches and persecuted by whites, with Felicia Farr and Susan Kohner playing young women forced into leadership roles.

His roles include Brutus in Julius Caesar ( 1953 ), Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel and The Desert Rats, the amoral valet turned spy in Joseph Mankiewicz's 5 Fingers, the declining actor in the first remake of A Star Is Born ( 1954 ), Captain Nemo in 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea ( also 1954 ), a small town school teacher driven insane by the effects of cortisone in Bigger Than Life ( 1956 ), a suave master spy in North by Northwest ( 1959 ), a determined explorer in Journey to the Center of the Earth ( also 1959 ), Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita ( 1962 ), a river pirate who betrays Peter O ' Toole's character in Lord Jim ( 1965 ), the evil Doctor Polidori in Frankenstein: The True Story ( 1973 ), the vampire's servant, Richard Straker, in Salem's Lot, and surreal Royal Navy Captain Hughes in Yellowbeard ( 1983 ).