World milestones
How history unfolded during the reign of Elizabeth II
1952
Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing conquer Everest; Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap opens; the first hydrogen bomb is tested
1953
Stalin dies; the Korean War ends; Tito takes control of Yugoslavia; Winston Churchill wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
1954
Rationing ends; Roger Bannister runs the four-minute mile; myxomatosis decimates the UK rabbit population; Mau Mau uprising
1955
Warsaw Pact signed; first commercial television
1956
Suez Crisis; Khrushchev visits Britain
1957
The EEC established; Castro leads Cuban revolution; the USSR launches Sputnik 1 and 2, the latter bearing Laika the dog; women admitted to the House of Lords as life peeresses
1958
The Munich air disaster kills eight of the ‘Busby Babes’ footballers; the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, visits Britain; the Queen inaugurates direct dialling
1959
Alaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th American states; Nixon and Khrushchev have the ‘Kitchen Debate’; the Dalai Lama flees Tibet; Ben Hur wins 11 academy awards
1960
National Service ends; Frances Chichester sails the Atlantic solo; Somalia, Ghana and Cyprus become independent republics and Nigeria gains independence; first Paralympic Games, in Rome
1961
John F. Kennedy is sworn in as the youngest US president; Yuri Garagin is the first man in space; Nureyev defects; the Berlin Wall is erected; South Africa leaves the Commonwealth; Tanganyika declares independence; the contraceptive pill goes on sale
1962
The Cuban Missile crisis; Nelson Mandela imprisoned; Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Uganda become independent; the UK winter of the ‘Big Freeze’
1963
John F. Kennedy is assassinated; Martin Luther King delivers his ‘I have a dream’ speech; John Profumo resigns from the government; Britain, the US and USSR sign a nuclear test-ban agreement; Kenya and Nigeria become Commonwealth republics and Malaysia becomes a new nation; the Great Train Robbery
1964
Malta becomes an independent republic; Nyasaland, renamed Malawi, gains independence; Tanganyika and Zanzibar become Tanzania and Kenya becomes a republic; capital punishment ends in Britain
1965
Churchill dies; Rhodesia becomes independent; Singapore secedes from the Federation of Malaysia
1966
England wins the World Cup; the Aberfan tragedy; Chairman Mao launches the cultural revolution and publishes his Little Red Book; Mrs Gandhi becomes Prime Minister of India
1967
BBC2 transmits in colo
