Events
- January – The state of emergency is lifted in Kenya: the Mau Mau Uprising is officially over.
- 1 January – East House mass shooting: 3 men are killed and 2 wounded in a mass shooting at a pub in Sheffield by a Somali national subsequently determined to be insane. [1]
- 5 January – Closure of the Swansea and Mumbles Railway which opened to passengers in 1807 and by this date is operated by double-decker electric trams. [2]
- 10 January – Harold Macmillan makes the "Wind of Change" speech for the first time, to little publicity, in Accra, Ghana.
- 28 January – The comic ballet La fille mal gardée , in a version newly choreographed by Frederick Ashton to a score adapted by John Lanchbery, is premiered by The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London, rapidly becoming a classic of the repertoire. [3] [4]
- 3 February – Harold Macmillan makes the "Wind of Change" speech to the South African Parliament in Cape Town where it attracts attention. (It was drafted by David Hunt.) At home, it leads to formation of the Conservative Monday Club. [5]
- 18–28 February – Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California but do not win any medals.
- 19 February – The Queen gives birth to her third child and second son, the first child born to a reigning British monarch since 1857.
- March
- Manchester City F.C. sign 20-year-old forward Denis Law for a national record fee of £55,000 from Huddersfield Town. [6]
- The 18th century Royal Navy dockyard at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent is closed. A total of 2,500 jobs have gradually been shed at the site since its closure was first announced by the government in February 1958. [7]
- 14 March – Jodrell Bank Observatory makes contact with the American Pioneer 5 over a record-breaking distance of 407,000 miles. [8]
- 20 March – Lonnie Donegan's single "My Old Man's a Dustman" reaches No. 1 in the UK charts. [9]
- 26 March – The Grand National is televised for the first time. The winner is Merryman II. [10]
- 28 March – Cheapside Street Whisky Bond Fire in Glasgow. 19 firemen are killed in the UK's worst peacetime fire services disaster. [11]
- 1 April – Bill Griggs of Northampton first markets the Dr. Martens 'AirWair' style 1460 boots. [12]
- 8 April – The seven-week-old son of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh is christened Andrew Albert Christian Edward; he later becomes Prince Andrew, Duke of York. [13]
- 13 April – The cancellation of the Blue Streak missile as a military project. [14]
- 16 April – The Times of London abandons use of the term "Imperial and Foreign News", replacing it with "Overseas News" and changes its house style from "to-day" to "today".
- 17 April – American rock and roll singer Eddie Cochran, 21, is killed in a car crash in Wiltshire. Gene Vincent survives the accident.
- 18 April – 60,000 protestors stage a demonstration in London against nuclear weapons. [15]
- 27 April – The first production of Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker takes place at the Arts Theatre in London. [16]
- 30 April – Yorkshire County Cricket Club opens its first season since 1883 under a professional captain, Vic Wilson, who leads the club to the County Championship. [17]
- 3 May – Burnley F.C. win the Football League First Division title with a 2–1 win over Manchester City at Maine Road. [18] Burnley's title win means that Wolverhampton Wanderers, the FA Cup finalists, have lost out on the chance of becoming the first team this century to win the double of the league title and FA Cup. [19]
- 6 May – Princess Margaret marries photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey in the first televised Royal marriage. [20]
- 7 May – Wolverhampton Wanderers are the FA Cup winners for the fourth time, beating Blackburn Rovers 3–0 at Wembley Stadium. [19]
- 18 June – Jaguar Cars completes its purchase of the Daimler Company from BSA. Daimler Cars would later become rebadged Jaguars. [21]
- 22 June – A fire in a Liverpool department store kills eleven. [22]
- 24 June – Avro 748 makes its first flight from Woodford.
- 26 June – British Somaliland gains independence from the United Kingdom. Five days later, it unites with the former Italian Somaliland to create the modern Somali Republic. [23]
- 28 June – 38 miners are killed in an explosion at Six Bells Colliery in Monmouthshire. [24]
- 30 June
- The musical Oliver! by Lionel Bart has its West End premiere.
- The English Electric Lightning enters service as the Royal Air Force's first operational supersonic fighter aircraft [21] with No. 74 Squadron at RAF Coltishall.
- July – The Shadows' instrumental "Apache" is released.
- 21 July – Francis Chichester, English navigator and yachtsman, arrives in New York aboard Gypsy Moth III, having made a record solo Atlantic crossing in 40 days, winning the first Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race.
- 27 July – In a Cabinet reshuffle, Selwyn Lloyd is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Home becomes Foreign Secretary. [25]
- 30 July – "Battle of Beaulieu": At a jazz festival at Beaulieu, Hampshire, fans of trad jazz come to blows with progressives. [26] [27]
- 7 August – The Bluebell Railway in Sussex begins regular operations as the first standard gauge steam-operated passenger heritage railway in the world. [28]
- 16 August – Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom. [29] The Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia remain as British Overseas Territories.
- 17 August – The Beatles, a five-strong male band from Liverpool, perform their first concert under this name in Hamburg, West Germany. [30]
- 22 August – First performance of satirical revue Beyond the Fringe , in Edinburgh.
- 25 August–11 September – Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the Olympics in Rome and win 2 gold, 6 silver and 12 bronze medals.
- September
- Formal conclusion of agreement for the supply from the United States of Skybolt nuclear missiles (later abandoned) to equip Vulcan bombers in exchange for permitting establishment of a U.S. Navy base on Holy Loch in Scotland for Polaris-equipped nuclear ballistic missile submarines. [14]
- First Ten Tors expedition on Dartmoor.
- 10 September – ITV broadcasts the first live Football League match to be shown on television and the last for 23 years. [2]
- 15 September – First traffic wardens deployed in London. [2]
- 30 September–4 December – Severe flooding occurs in the valley of the River Exe, surrounding areas of Devon, and elsewhere in southern England, following heavy rainfall. [31] [32]
- 1 October – Nigeria gains its independence from the United Kingdom. [33]
- 7 October – The second notable flood occurs in Horncastle, Lincolnshire. The town enters the UK Weather Records with the highest 180-min total rainfall at 178 mm. As of October 2020, this record remains.
- 8 October
- Closure of the original Sheffield Tramway, leaving Blackpool as the only place in England with electric trams. [34]
- In the final of the Rugby League World Cup, staged in the UK, Great Britain beats Australia 10–3. [9]
- 17 October – The News Chronicle ceases publication, [35] being absorbed into the Daily Mail .
- 21 October (Trafalgar Day) – The Queen launches Britain's first nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, at Barrow-in-Furness. [25]
- 25 October – Barges collide with one of the columns of the Severn Railway Bridge in heavy fog, causing two spans of the twenty-two span steel and cast iron bridge to collapse. It is never repaired.
- 27 October – The film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is released, the first of the British social-realist wave.
- 30 October – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the UK at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
- 1 November – Black plastic bin bags (manufactured by ICI) are first introduced for waste collection, in Hitchin. [21] [36]
- 2 November – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in R v Penguin Books Ltd , the Lady Chatterley's Lover case. [2]
- 10 November – Lady Chatterley's Lover sells 200,000 copies in one day following its publication since being banned since 1928. [37]
- 2 December
- The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, talks with Pope John XXIII in the Vatican, the first ever meeting between the leader of the Anglican Church and the Pope.
- The marriage of theatrical couple Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier ends. [9]
- 9 December – The first episode of the soap opera Coronation Street , made by Granada Television in Manchester, is aired on ITV. [2] It will still be running past its 10,000th episode in its 60th anniversary year. Characters introduced in the first episode include Ken Barlow (William Roache), Ena Sharples (Violet Carson), Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix) and Annie Walker (Doris Speed).
- 10 December – Sir Peter Brian Medawar and Australian Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance". [38]
- 31 December
- The last day on which the farthing, a coin first minted in England in the 13th century, is legal tender. [2]
- The last man is called up for National Service, as Conscription ends. [25] [39]
- Undated – Little Houses Improvement Scheme launched by the National Trust for Scotland to promote conservation of vernacular architecture. [40]