Since we're rapidly coming to the end of 2011, it's around that time to start looking back at events of the past years. This one isn't over yet, but there's a whole lot of others we can take a look at in the meantime.

So for the next 10 days I'll be running Year End Reviews from various dates in history. Hence, the Thousand Yard Stare.

Today it's 1953, by way of a slightly over-dramatic and somewhat crappy sounding, but still informative review from NBC Radio first broadcast on December 21, 1953.

Highlights of the year were the Inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower to his first term as President. The death of Stalin, the end of The Korean War, the death of Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the rise of McCarthyism, along with the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and riots in East Berlin.

A jam-packed year with historic moments and earth shattering events. Like I said, it's a little dramatic in places but that more or less goes along with the times - it's the events that are interesting and for an hour you get a thorough picture of what 1953 was all about.

Come back tomorrow for the next installment.