My year 1958

Subtle, but important. This is how one could briefly characterize the year 1958. No extraordinary revolutionary event affected our country, but those who remember it speak of it as the first year when at least a slight whiff of freedom began to be felt in society. Those who were born in this year stepped into a world that was slowly but surely improving. It lasted until their tenth birthday. So what was the year in which Czechoslovakia celebrated great success at Expo 58 in Brussels?
The world has recovered from the worst of the war and people are beginning to live again. Even in Czechoslovakia, the worst excesses of the early 1950s are reverberating. Home trustees, queues outside shops and building slogans everywhere you look may still be commonplace, but the culture is already breathing a huge swell that will unfold in the next few years. People are beginning to crave luxury - fashion and cosmetics are no longer taboo and Prague women can even have their underwear tailored. The sale of photographs of scantily clad Gina Lollobrigida or Marilyn Monroe may be reported in time by a conscious reader of Večerní Prahy, but otherwise vigilance and alertness are relaxed.
So let's think back to the year when Mao launches the Great Leap Forward policy in China, Fidel's comrades-in-arms kidnap the F1 world champion and the hula-hoop goes on sale in the US. In Czechoslovakia, television starts broadcasting every day, Pavilion Z grows at the Brno Exhibition Centre, and housewives can finally make their lives easier with an egg white separator. And finally, for those who were born in 1958, here are some memories of the time when they were a beautiful eighteen years old. So let's recall together the "christies", "flies" and "funerals"....