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1950 in the United Kingdom

Other years

1948 | 1949 | 1950 | 1951 | 1952

British and Irish current events

Sport and Music

1950 English cricket season

Football England | Scotland

1950 in British music

Events from the year 1950 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - George VI of the United Kingdom
• Prime Minister - Clement Attlee Labour Party

Events

• 26 January - India becomes a republic, severing all ties with the United Kingdom.^[1]
• 24 February - Clement Attlee wins the general election, giving Labour a second term in government after their election triumph in 1945.^[2]
• 1 March - Klaus Fuchs convicted of supplying nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.^[3]
• 6 March–8 March - The 1950 World Figure Skating Championships are held in London.
• 8 March - Carmaker Rover tests a revolutionary new turbine-powered concept car.^[4]
• 12 March - 80 of the 83 people on board an Avro Tudor V aircraft are killed when it crashes at Llandow in Glamorgan, making it the world's worst air disaster for the time.
• 13 May - First Grand Prix held at Silverstone.^[5]
• 26 May - Motor fuel rationing comes to an end after 11 years, marking another stage in the phasing-out of rationing that was introduced in the wake of the Second World War.^[6]
• 7 June - pilot episode of the long-running radio series The Archers broadcast. Nearly 60 years on, the series is still running.^[7]
• 11 July - first broadcast of the popular BBC children's programme Andy Pandy.^[7]
• 31 July - Sainsbury's opens the first purpose-built supermarket, at Croydon.^[8]
• 15 August - Princess Elizabeth gives birth to her and her husband Prince Phillip the Duke of Edinburgh's second child. [1]
• 27 August - the BBC makes its first television broadcast from the European continent.^[7]
• 29 August - 4,000 British troops are sent to Korea.^[9] On the same day, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh's 14-day-old daughter is named as Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. She will officially be known as Princess Anne of Edinburgh. [2]
• 8 September - 116 miners trapped underground in a landslide at Knockshinnoch Castle colliery at New Cumnock in Ayrshire, Scotland.^[10]
• 9 September - Post-War soap rationing ends.^[8] The first miners are rescued from Knockshinnoch Castle colliery. [3]
• 11 September - The rescue operation from Knockshinnoch Castle colliery is completed, with all 116 miners saved. [4]
• 26 October - The rebuilt House of Commons, following its destruction by bombing in World War II, is used for the first time.^[7]
• 10 December
  • Bertrand Russell wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".^[11]
  • Cecil Frank Powell wins the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".^[12]
• 25 December - The Stone of Scone, the traditional coronation stone of Scottish monarchs, English monarchs and more recently British monarchs, was stolen from London's Westminster Abbey by a group of four Scottish students.^[7] It later turned up in Scotland on 11 April 1951.

Undated

• The Festival Ballet, later to become the English National Ballet founded by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin^[13]

• Alan Turing's paper Computing machinery and intelligence proposes the Turing test.^[13]

Publications

• Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel A Murder is Announced.
• Graham Greene's novel The Third Man.
• Doris Lessing's novel The Grass is Singing.
• C. S. Lewis's novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, first of The Chronicles of Narnia series.
• Mervyn Peake's novel Gormenghast.
• Barbara Pym's novel Some Tame Gazelle.
• Evelyn Waugh's novel Helena.

Births

• January 1 — Chris Black, Scottish hammer thrower
• 4 February — Pamela Franklin, actress
• 13 February — Peter Gabriel, musician
• 16 February — Peter Hain, politician
• 19 February — Andy Powell, musician (Wishbone Ash)
• 22 February — Julie Walters, actress
• 27 March — Terry Yorath, footballer and football manager
• 30 March — Robbie Coltrane, actor and comedian
• 3 April — Sally Thomsett, actress
• 22 April — Peter Frampton, musician
• 1 May — Danny McGrain, footballer
• 3 May — Mary Hopkin, singer
• 11 May — Jeremy Paxman, television presented and author
• 17 May — Alan Johnson, politician
• 22 May — Bernie Taupin, songwriter
• 22 May — Mary Tamm, actress
• 1 June — Tom Robinson, singer and musician
• 13 June — Nick Brown, politician
• 14 June — Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
• June 30 — Olly Flynn, race walker
• 14 July — Bruce Oldfield, fashion designer
• 18 July — Richard Branson, entrepreneur
• 19 July — Simon Cadell, actor
• 26 July — Susan George, actress
• 30 July — Harriet Harman, politician
• 15 August — Anne, Princess Royal
• 14 September — Paul Kossoff, guitarist (Free) (died 1976)
• 21 September — Charles Clarke, politician
• October 25 — Steve Barry, race walker
• 6 December — Helen Liddell, politician

Deaths

• 21 January - George Orwell, author (born 1903)
• 9 March - Timothy Evans hanged by Albert Pierrepoint for the murder of his baby daughter and later pardoned (born 1924)
• 19 March - Walter Haworth, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1883)
• 30 March - Joe Yule, Scottish-born comedian (born 1894)
• 6 September - Olaf Stapledon, author and philosopher (born 1886)
• 21 September - Arthur Milne, physicist (born 1896)
• 2 November - George Bernard Shaw, playwright (born 1856)
• 28 November - James Corbitt hanged for murder by Albert Pierrepoint (born c. 1913)

References

See also