Well, I wasn't an adult, but I do remember:
TV:
* DuMont network
* Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, early Steve Allen
* Lots of ads for rerigerators on prime-time shows
* Daytime shows: "Bride and Groom"; "Queen for a Day"; Bess Myerson; Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon in "Who Do You Trust?"
* "Beat the Clock"
* "Omnibus" on Sundays, hosted by Alistair Cooke; "Wide, Wide World" hosted by Dave Garroway
* "Victory At Sea"
* Growing up and moving on from the "Mickey Mouse Club" to "American Bandstand" in 1958
Movies:
* Drive-ins
* 1953 version of "War of the Worlds" that scared me to death!
* "Rock Around the Clock"
Clothes:
* My gray felt poodle skirt
* First day of school: patent-leather shoes and plaid dresses
* Men wore hats, not baseball caps
* Women dressed up in cocktail dresses, hats with little veils, gloves, and fur (I'm waiting for a Dior revival...)
Food:
* "Supermarkets" then had less variety than a lot of corner convenience stores do now (although you could buy pkgs of frozen horsemeat!)
* 6 candy bars for only 25 cents (and the bars were bigger, too)
* When glass milk bottles delivered to your door had the little cup on top where all the cream collected
* Soda fountains in the drugstores
Boston:
* Before: urban renewal, the Prudential Center, Rt. 128 and the Mass. Turnpike.
* When the wind was right, you could smell the chocolate at the Baker's Chocolate factory.
* As a little kid, going anywhere on the MTA and feeling safe
* Norumbega Park, Pleasure Island, and Nantasket Beach
* Christmas at the downtown Jordan Marsh store, and their blueberry muffins anytime
* Schools: (and yes, I'm talking 1950's not 1850's) bolted down wooden desks; learning to sew on a non-electric pedal-powered Singer; learning to write in ink using dip pens in inkwells; learning U.S. geaography from a 1930's book that exclaimed about the opening of the Lincoln Highway; no cafeteria - everyone brought lunch from home, got a carton of milk at school, and ate at their desks
Science and medicine:
* Polio epidemics in the summers; first large-scale polio vaccinations with Salk vaccine
* Pre-Sputnik
* Coca-Cola syrup when you were sick
I went to high school (Brooklyn, NY) from 1982-86. Our desks were bolted down, and had little round holes for where the inkwell was supposed to be put in earlier years when schoolkids were still using inkwells. Us students guessed that the desks dated from the 1920s. Or possibly even earlier than that.