The Rock 'n' Roll Years

Krushchev stays at Claridges; Frogman Crabb disappears; Britain retreats from the Suez; Diana Dors' appears as a woman condemned to death in YIELD TO THE NIGHT; Brigitte Bardot appears in AND GOD CREATED WOMAN plus sevral other films; "Ernie", the machine to be used in the draws of the premium savings bond scheme, is introduced.

Chancellor Harold Macmillan becomes Conservative Prime Minister in January; Althea Gibson, an American, becomes the first black woman to win Wimbledon; the Wolfenden Report is published and Russia launches Sputnik 1 into space.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Sir Vivian Fuchs reach the South Pole; Manchester United football team's plane crashes at Munich when returning from Belgrade killing eight players; General De Gaulle comes out of retirement and is elected President of France; Elvis Presley is drafted into the US Army; Lady Docker is thrown out of Monaco.

The news includes Castro's victory over Batista in Cuba, the Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet, the signing of an agreement between the Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, the Americans sending a monkey into space and Operation Noah saving thousands of African animals from drowning.

The news includes trouble in Algeria, the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, the election of John F Kennedy as President of the United States and the appearance of stiletto-heeled shoes in fashion.

Gordon Lonsdale and four others are tried and convicted for spying; the Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin is the first man in space; South Africa becomes a republic, Anti-Castro troops invade Cuba; Rudolf Nureyev defects to the West; the Berlin Wall is constructed, dividing West and East Berlin.

Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party dies; Harold Wilson becomes Leader of the Opposition in his place; Krushchev and Kennedy sign a nuclear test ban treaty; Martin Luther King leads the Washington civil rights march in the USA; John Profumo, Secretary of State for War resigns following allegations about his association with Christine Keeler; Henry Cooper knocks Cassius Clay out; John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas; the first episode of DR WHO is screened.

John Glenn orbits the earth; the satellite TELSTAR beams the first live television pictures from America to Britain including the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, doing the Twist; Bradford comes down with smallpox; Marilyn Monroe dies; the USA and Russia reach the brink of nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis.