At the age of 10, Walter Kovacs gets into a fight with two bullies while picking up groceries, partially blinding a young boy named Richie. Following the incident, Kovacs is placed at the Charlton Home in New Jersey.[2][3]
Laurel Juspeczyk hears Laurence Schexnayder and Sally Jupiter fighting. As her parents argue, she picks up a now snow globe in the living room and stares at it. Larry yells at Laurie, startling her into dropping the globe, which shatters.[8]
The House Un-American Activities Committee subsequently demands that all masked vigilantes reveal their identities to a congressman. Because of his involvement with the government, Eddie Blake was the only vigilante not forced to testify.[10]
February[]
While performing covert duties in Pen Jomn, Eddie Blake sustains a fragmentation wound when mortar fragments shred his left deltoid. Hank Stevens tends to Blake's injuries.[5]
Byron Lewis testifies before the HUAC. His left-wing associations cause him to endure lengthy, and ruthless investigations compared to those of the other Minutemen members.[10]
Newsworld quotes the Comedian as describing Byron Lewis as "a flake" and "a nerdy little kid trying to hang out with big brother and his friends." Blake adds, however, that he doubts Lewis is "a goddamned Red".[5]
A badly decomposed corpse with a bullet in the back of the head washes up off the coast of Boston, tentatively the body is identified as Rolf Müller.[10]
Following his parents death, Adrian Veidt gives away his inheritance to charity and begins his journey to northern Turkey and follows the path of Alexander the Great.[13][14]
1957[]
While attending a charity function for retired police officers, Hollis Mason meets the officer who arrested fifteen-year-old Ursula Zandt in 1932 after she hit him for whistling at her.[5]
1958[]
Moloch begins developing a plan to elect a U.S. president connected to organized crime.[12]
Jon Osterman and Janey Slater travel to New Jersey – Jon to visit university friends and Janey to visit her mother. At Palisades Amusement Park, a photographer takes their picture. A fat man breaks Janey's watch and Jon promises to fix it. At his hotel, they make love for the first time.[15]
August[]
Scientists at the Gila Flats Test Base conduct fourteen experiments to remove the intrinsic fields from concrete blocks. All fourteen tests end with the concrete's disintegration.[5]
Jon Osterman accidentally leaves his lab coat, with Janey Slater's watch in one pocket, inside the intrinsic field chamber. While having lunch with her, he realizes he has forgotten the watch and returns to retrieve it.[15]
While Jon Osterman is still in the chamber, the door automatically locks as the generators warm up for an experiment to remove intrinsic fields from a fifteenth concrete block. Jon yells to be let out, but Milton Glass tells him there is no way to override the time-lock, and Janey Slater runs away in tears, unable to watch her lover die. As the particle cannons fire, Osterman's body is painfully reduced to its component atoms, and he screams in terror.[15]
Mr. Osterman receives a telegram from the military informing him of his son's passing.[15]
23rd[]
Ozymandias investigates Hooded Justice's disappearance. He runs into the Comedian and they engage in a brief fight. They despise each other thereafter.[13]
Jon Osterman's nervous system appears for a moment in the men's bathroom at Gila Flats while two employees are washing their hands and discuss Fidel Castro and Elvis Presley.[15]
10th[]
Cooks at the Gila Flats facility are shocked when a image of Jon Osterman's circulatory system suddenly appears in the kitchen.[15]
14th[]
Jon Osterman's partially muscled skeleton appears for thirty seconds outside the perimeter fence at Gila Flats.[15]
22nd[]
In a whistling sound, sparkling cutlery and an ultraviolet light Jon Osterman rematerializes in the Gila Flats cafeteria, having transformed into the being that will later be known as Doctor Manhattan. Those present get sunburns.[15]
25th[]
Jon Osterman and Janey Slater spend Christmas together. She gives him a golden ring and expresses her fears about what is becoming. He tells her that he will always want her, knowing that it is not true.[15]
