1958 in the United Kingdom

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1958 English cricket season
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1958 in British music

Events from the year 1958 in the United Kingdom.

1 Incumbents
2 Events
- 2.1 Unknown dates
3 Births
4 Deaths
5 References

[edit] Incumbents

Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
Prime Minister - Harold Macmillan, Conservative Party

[edit] Events

February 6 - The Manchester United team plane flying back from a European Cup tie in Belgrade crashes on take-off after refuelling at Munich Airport in West Germany. 21 people are killed, seven of them United players. 10 other players are injured, two of them seriously. Manager Matt Busby is reported to be in a serious condition with multiple injuries. ^[1]
February 20 - The government announces plans to close the 300-year-old docklands at the Isle of Sheppey, which would result in more than 2,500 workers losing their jobs. [1]
February 21 - Duncan Edwards, 21, becomes the eighth Manchester United player to die as a result of the Munich Air Disaster.
February 25 - Bertrand Russell launches the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
March 2 - A British team led by Sir Vivian Fuchs completes the first crossing of the Antarctic in Snow-cat caterpillar tractors and dogsled teams in 99 days. ^[1]
21 March - Opening of the London Planetarium, the first planetarium in Britain. ^[1]
April 4-April 7 - The first protest march for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from Hyde Park, London to Aldermarston, Berkshire. Demonstrators demand ban of nuclear weapons
29 April - The musical My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, opens in London's Drury Lane theatre.
May 21 - United Kingdom Postmaster General Ernest Marples announces that from December, Subscriber Trunk Dialling will be introduced in the Bristol area. ^[2]
7 June - Ian Donald publishes an article in The Lancet which describes the diagnostic use of ultrasound.^[3]
9 June - The Queen officially re-opens Gatwick Airport, which has been expanded at a cost of more than £7million.
July 10 - First parking meters installed in Britain
July 17 - British paratroopers arrive in Jordan; king Hussein has asked help against pressure from Iraq
18–26 July - 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games held in Cardiff.
July 24 - The first life peerage is created in Britain
July 26 - The Queen gives her son Charles the title of Prince of Wales.
August 30–September 1 - Riots between blacks and whites in Notting Hill, London
October 4 - BOAC uses new Comet jets to become the first airline to fly jet passenger services across the Atlantic.
December 5 - Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the UK by the Queen when she dials a call from Bristol to Edinburgh and speaks to the Lord Provost. ^[4]
December 5 - The Preston bypass, the United Kingdom's first motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. A new motorway linking London with Central England is set to be opened next year, and the government has plans for more motorways to be completed during the 1960s.

[edit] Unknown dates

The First Cod War between UK and Iceland.
BBC Radiophonic Workshop created.
English biochemist Frederick Sanger wins his first Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin" (his second comes in 1980). ^[5]
German-born British mathematician Klaus Roth wins the Fields Medal for his work on the Thue-Siegel-Roth theorem.