From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1952 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1950 | 1951 | 1952 | 1953 | 1954

Sport and Music

British and Irish current events

1952 English cricket season

Football England | Scotland

1952 in British music

Events from the year 1952 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - King George VI of the United Kingdom (until 6 February), Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
• Prime Minister - Winston Churchill Conservative Party

Events

The 3 Queens in mourning- Queen Elizabeth II, her grandmother Queen Mary and mother Queen Elizabeth at the funeral of King George VI.

The UK's first nuclear bomb

• 5 January - Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in the United States for an official visit and talks with President Harry S. Truman.^[1]
• 30 January - British troops remain in Korea, where they have spent the last 18 months, after a breakdown of talks that were aimed at ending the Korean War. [1]
• 1 February - The first TV Detector van is commissioned in Britain, as the beginning of a clampdown on the estimated 150,000 British households which have unlicenced televisions.^[2]
• 6 February - King George VI dies at Sandringham House aged 56. It is revealed that he had been suffering from lung cancer. He is succeeded by his 25-year-old daughter, The Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, who ascends to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II.^[3] The new Queen was on a Royal visit to Kenya at the time of her father's death.
• 8 February - Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at St James's Palace.^[3]
• 14 February–25 February - Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo and win one gold medal.
• 15 February - The funeral of King George VI takes place. His body had been lying in state since 11 February. [2]
• 21 February - Compulsory identity cards, issued during World War II, abandoned.^[3]
• 2 May - The De Havilland Comet becomes the world's first jet airliner, with a maiden flight from London to Johannesburg.
• 19 July–3 August - Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and win 1 gold, 2 silver and 8 bronze medals.
• 16 August - 34 people killed in a flood in Lynmouth, Devon. Many other people are injured and numerous buildings are damaged.^[4]
• 6 September - 1952 Farnborough Airshow DH.110 crash: 31 people killed in an air crash at the Farnborough Airshow.^[5]
• 19 September - British film star Charlie Chaplin and his family are refused immigration to the United States of America until they have been investigated by the Immigration Services. [3]
• 3 October
  • The government announces an end to tea rationing after 13 years.^[6]
  • Operation Hurricane- the UK explodes its first atomic bomb in the Monte Bello Islands, Australia.^[7]
• 5 October - Post-War tea rationing ends.^[8]
• 8 October - A rail crash in North London claims the lives of 108 people.^[9]
• 14 November - NME music magazine publishes the first UK Singles Chart.^[3]
• 25 November - Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap starts its run at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London, where it is still showing.^[10]
• 4 December - Great Smog of 1952: fog speads across London.^[11]
• 9 December - The Great Smog in London finishes after five days of chaos which are believed to have caused around 4,000 deaths.
• 10 December - Archer John Porter Martin and Richard Laurence Millington Synge win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their invention of partition chromatography".^[12]
• 25 December - The Queen makes her first Christmas speech to the Commonwealth.^[13]

Undated

• Geoffrey Dummer proposes the integrated circuit.^[14]

Publications

• Agatha Christie's novels Mrs McGinty's Dead (Hercule Poirot) and They Do It with Mirrors (Miss Marple)
• C. S. Lewis' novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
• Mary Norton's children's novel The Borrowers.
• Evelyn Waugh's novel Men at Arms, first of the Sword of Honour trilogy.

Births

• 10 January - George Turpin, English boxer
• 1 February - Andrew Smith, politician
• 25 February - Joey Dunlop, Northern Irish motorcycle racer (died 2000)
• 11 March - Douglas Adams, author (died 2001)
• 22 March - Des Browne, politician
• 28 March - Tony Brise, racing driver (died 1975)
• 11 April - Peter Windsor, sports reporter
• 3 May - Allan Wells, Scottish athlete
• 7 June - Liam Neeson, Northern Irish actor
• 17 June - Estelle Morris, politician
• 21 August - Joe Strummer, musician (The Clash) (died 2002)
• 30 September - Jack Wild, actor (died 2006)
• 3 December - Mel Smith, comic actor and director
• 20 December - Jenny Agutter, actress

Deaths

• 6 February - King George VI (born 1895)
• 4 March - Charles Scott Sherrington, physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1857)
• 15 March - Nevil Sidgwick, chemist (born 1873)
• 21 April - Sir Stafford Cripps, Chancellor of the Exchequer (born 1889)
• 6 September - Gertrude Lawrence, actress (born 1898)
• 29 September - John Cobb, racecar and motorboat driver (born 1899)
• 30 September - Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor, businessman and politician (born 1879)
• 23 October - Windham Wyndham-Quin, 5th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl, politician (born 1857)
• 28 October - William Morris Hughes, Welsh-descended Prime Minister of Australia (born 1862)
• 15 December - Sir William Goscombe John, sculptor (born 1860)

References

See also