Britain and the World 1955

BRITAIN AND THE WORLD SINCE 1953

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	1955
Jan18	General Franco announces that Juan Carlos is the heir to the Spanish throne. He was to wait a further twenty years to regain the throne
Jan23	York to Bristol train crashes at Sutton Coalfield killing 23 and injuring 43
Feb8	Georgi Malenkov is deposed and is replaced by Nikolai Bulganin
Feb17	Britain announces its ability to make hydrogen bombs.
Apr5	Winston Churchill (80) resigns as British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden succeeds him. On May 27 he wins the General Election with an overall majority of 58
Apr15	Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Apr18	Albert Einstein dies in Princeton New Jersey aged 76 of aneurysma. He is cremated the following day and his ashes are sprinkled in an unknown location. His brain is removed prior to his cremation for further laboratory tests
May5	West Germany becomes a sovereign state and a few days later joins NATO
May14	The Warsaw Pact is formed
Jun3	Barbara Graham is executed in the gas chamber at St Quentin prison for the murder of Mabel Monohan. The crime and execution was later made into a film starring Susan Hayward "I Want To Live"
June11	70 people were killed and more than 100 injured when three cars crashed on the Le Mans racetrack in France and ploughed into the spectators' grandstand.
Jul13	Ruth Ellis is executed in Holloway prison for the murder of her lover David Blakely outside the Magdala public house in Hampstead. She is the last woman to hang in Great Britain
Jul18	The highest 24 hour rainfall total ever recorded in the UK occurred at Martinstown near Dorchester - 279mm
Jul23	Donald Campbell breaks the world water speed record at 202mph
July27	An Israeli plane is shot down over Bulgaria killing 57 people
Aug3	Samuel Beckett's now-acknowledged classic, Waiting for Godot, was performed for the first time in London at the Arts Theatre. The performance was punctuated throughout with the clatter of seats as half the audience walked out.
Aug27	The first edition of the Guiness Book of Records is published
Sept14	West German Konrad Adenauer travels to Moscow to establish diplomatic relations and to negotiate for the release of the remaining German prisoners of War
Sept16	A military coup in Argentina finally deposes Juan Peron
Sep22	Commercial TV begins in UK
Sep30	James Dean the actor dies in a car accident
Oct7	The last German prisoners of war are released from the Soviet Union
Oct23	A Referendum is held in the Saar region - the electorate vote to rejoin West Germany. Saar becomes a German Lander from 1956
Nov1	The first international solar energy conference is held in Tucson Arizona
Nov12	The date returned to in the films "Back To The Future 1 and 2"
Nov20	Ten are killed and 99 are hurt in a train crash near Didcot Oxfordshire
Nov22	The Soviet Union detonates a massive nuclear bomb in Siberia
Nov30	The first floodlit international soccer match is played at Wembly between England and Spain
Dec1	Rosa Parkes refuses to relinquish her seat to a white passenger on a bus and is arrested
Dec5	Bus boycott begins in Montgomery Alabamba after a fine is imposed on Rosa Parks for contravening local race laws
Dec7	Clement Atlee resigns as leader of the Labour Party and is replaced seven days later by Hugh Gaitskell
Dec19	The Sudanese Parliament declares independence and becomes a sovereign state on Jan1 1956

Last Updated 19/09/07 10:12

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