1957 in The United Kingdom - Events

Events

• 9 January – Resignation of Anthony Eden as Prime Minister due to ill-health.
• 10 January – Harold Macmillan succeeds Eden as Prime Minister.
• 16 January
  • Royal Ballet granted a Royal Charter.
  • Cavern Club opens in Liverpool.
• January – National Trust for Scotland agrees to accept the bequest of the islands of St Kilda.
• February – Norwich City Council becomes the first British local authority to install a computer (an Elliott 405).
• 11 February – East Midlands earthquake.
• 16 February – The "Toddlers' Truce" (an arrangement whereby there were no television broadcasts between 6 PM and 7 PM to allow parents to put their children to bed) is abolished.
• 6 March – Ghana becomes independent of the United Kingdom.
• 1 April – The BBC broadcasts a spoof documentary showing spaghetti being harvested in Switzerland, believed to be the first April Fool's Day joke on television.
• 10 April – Royal Court Theatre (London) premieres John Osborne’s The Entertainer with Laurence Olivier in the title role.
• 11 April – The British Government agrees to allow Singapore its independence.
• 15 April – Suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams is controversially found not guilty at the Old Bailey after Britain's longest murder trial. Political interference is suspected.
• 20 April – Manchester United retain the Football League First Division title with a 4-0 win over Sunderland.
• 24 April – First broadcast of BBC Television astronomy series The Sky at Night presented by Patrick Moore. This will run with the same presenter until his death in December 2012.
• 2 May – Hammer Film Productions' The Curse of Frankenstein released.
• 4 May – Aston Villa win the FA Cup for a record seventh time with a 2-1 win over Football League First Division champions Manchester United at Wembley Stadium. Peter McParland scores both of Villa's goals, with United's consolation goal coming from Tommy Taylor. The result ends Manchester United's hopes of becoming the first team this century to win the double of the league title and FA Cup.
• 14 May – End of petrol rationing following the Suez Crisis.
• 15 May – Operation Grapple: Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb, at Maiden Island in the Pacific.
• 1 June – The first Premium Bond winners selected by the computer ERNIE.
• 3 June – Actor and playwright Noël Coward returns to Britain from the West Indies amid criticism that he is living abroad to avoid having to pay tax.
• 27 June – A report by the Medical Research Council reveals that there is evidence to support a link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer.
• 20 July
  • Prime minister Harold Macmillan makes an optimistic speech to his fellow party members at Bedford, telling them that "most of our people have never had it so good".
  • Stirling Moss finishes the British Grand Prix at Aintree in first position in a Vanwall VW5, the first World Championship victory for a British car.
• 20–28 July – Transport and General Workers' Union stages national strike by provincial (non-municipal) bus crews; some violence against non-strikers is reported.
• 31 July – The Tryweryn Bill, permitting Liverpool City Council to build a reservoir which will drown the village of Capel Celyn, becomes law.
• 5 August – The cartoon character Andy Capp first appears in northern editions of the Daily Mirror.
• 31 August – The Federation of Malaya becomes independent from Britain.
• August – ZETA fusion reactor begins operation at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Oxfordshire.
• 4 September – Publication of the Wolfenden report recommending "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence".
• October – The Consumers' Association begins publishing Which? magazine.
• 1 October – Britain introduces a vaccine against Asian Flu, which has already killed thousands of people worldwide.
• 2 October – David Lean's Academy Award-winning film The Bridge on the River Kwai is released.
• 10 October – Windscale fire: The graphite core of the nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumbria, catches fire, releasing substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area.
• 11 October – Jodrell Bank Observatory becomes operational.
• 30 October – The government unveils plans which will allow women to join the House of Lords for the first time.
• 8 November – An inquiry into last month's fire at Windscale nuclear power plant blames the accident on a combination of human error, poor management and faulty instruments.
• 4 December – The Lewisham rail crash kills ninety people and injures 173.
• 10 December – Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes".
• 12 December – Wales gets its own minister of state in the Westminster government for the first time.
• 25 December – The Royal Christmas Message is broadcast on television with the Queen on camera for the first time.
• 28 December – A case of foot-and-mouth disease is found at an abattoir in Liverpool.