New Zealander Edmund Hilary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reach the top of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953.

Australia is the third-largest contributor, after the US and South Korea, to the Korean War effort.

New Zealanders also fight in Korea.

New Zealander Edmund Hilary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reach the top of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953.

After at least three failed invasions of Yunnan with heavy losses of men and equipment, the CIA-trained KMT forces fall back into Burma's prime opium lands between the Salween River and the China border-7,300 troops in the Wa States and 4,400 further south in Kengtung State.

As allied aid gradually declines, the Chinese KMT irregulars turn to opium trading to finance their operations.

Forcing local hill tribes to produce opium through a mix of coercion and market incentives, the Nationalist troops preside over a massive increase of poppy cultivation on the Shan Plateau and send opium caravans south into Thailand to supply the region's growing illicit markets.

The US and South Korea, assisted by UN troops, fight China and North Korea to a stalemate in 1953.

The US then threatens to use the atomic bomb against China.

China accuses the US of biological warfare.

An array of germ warfare weapons are allegedly used against North Korea.

Accounts claim that there were releases of feathers infected with anthrax, fleas and mosquitoes dosed with Bubonic Plague and Yellow Fever, and rodents infected with a variety of diseases.

The Eisenhower administration will later press Sedition Charges against three Americans who publish charges of these activities; none of those charged are convicted.

The US, by 1953, bears 80 percent of the cost of France’s war effort against Vietnam.

American CIA-connected mercenaries fight alongside the French forces; the CIA’s Air America, the world’s largest “private” airline, provides air support.

Pathet Lao guerillas join the Viet Minh in an invasion of northern Laos, where they establish rebel bases.

Cambodia gains its independence in 1953.

Mao’s first Five-Year Plan, beginning in 1953, collectivizes agriculture and expands industrial production.

…but Britain and Oman reoccupy the oasis in January 1953.

Ibn Sa'ud subsequently establishes a council of ministers, and Sa'ud, his eldest surviving son, becomes its president.

Ibn Sa'ud dies on November 9, 1953, and Sa'ud, who retains many ties among the desert tribes, succeeds him with the support of his brothers.

His second son, Faysal, declared heir apparent, has lived chiefly in the cities of the Hejaz, has often been abroad in his post as Saudi foreign minister.

In East Bengal, which has more than half of Pakistan's population, there is increasing dissatisfaction with the federal government in West Pakistan.

Natural gas deposits (Pakistan's largest) are discovered at Sui (on the border between Balochistan and the Punjab) in 1953.

Almost all the people of Pakistan are Muslims.

Most of them belong to the Sunnite sect, the major branch of Islam, with a significant representation among the Shi'ite branch.

There is also a very small, though influential, sect called Ahmadiyah, or Qadianis, which does not regard the prophet Muhammad as the final prophet, a basic tenet of most Muslim sects.

The majority of Pakistani Sunnites belong to the orthodox Hanafi school, one of the four schools or subsects of Sunnism.

Shi'ites are also divided into numerous subsects; among them are Isma'ilis (the followers of the Aga Khan), as well as the Twelvers (Ithna 'Asharis) and Bohras, which are prominent communities in commerce and industry.

The principal business communities among Sunnites are Gujarati Memons and Chiniotis from Punjab.

On occasion, definitions of Islamic identity result in violent controversy, as in Punjab during the early 1950s when agitation is directed against the Ahmadiyyas.

With Nazimuddin in office, militant Muslims, led by the Ahrars, a puritanical political group, call for the purification of national life.

In 1953, they demand that the Ahmadiyah sect be outlawed from the Islamic community.

After Nazimuddin temporizes, rioting and arson envelop Lahore and other Punjabi towns.

The Secretary of Defense, Colonel Iskander Mirza, presses the Cabinet into sanctioning martial law in Lahore, and order is restored.

Governor-general Ghulam Mohammad, who relishes the trappings of dominance earlier held by Jinnah, asserts his power by declaring martial law in 1953 in Punjab during disturbances involving the Ahmadiyyas.

Nazimuddin attempts to limit the power of the governor-general through amendments to the Government of India Act of 1935-still the basic law for Pakistan, as altered by the India Independence Act of 1947.

Although Nazimuddin has the support of the Constituent Assembly, Ghulam Mohammad unceremoniously dismisses him in April 1953, and Mohammad Ali Bogra, a minor political figure from East Bengal, who had previously been Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, becomes prime minister.

Ayub Khan has meanwhile become a powerful political figure within a short time of his promotion.

Perhaps more than any other Pakistani, Ayub Khan is responsible for seeking and securing military and economic assistance from the United States and for aligning Pakistan with it in international affairs.

Pakistan's foreign policy stance shifts significantly in 1953 when it accepts the United States offer of military and economic assistance in return for membership in an alliance system designed to contain international communism.

When the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower seeks a series of alliances in the "Northern Tier"--Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey--and in East Asia, Pakistan becomes a candidate for membership in each.