46 Fun Facts About 1952

Which computer called the Republican landslide on CBS's election night so early that its forecast was held back?

UNIVAC put Eisenhower's odds at 100 to 1 on early returns, but viewers were given a close race instead and were told only late that night that the machine had been right.

Whose 'Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart' spent nine weeks at number one in America, a first for any British act?

Vera Lynn recorded the German tune with a chorus of serving soldiers and airmen, who shared the billing on the label.

Which motel chain, begun on Summer Avenue in Memphis, took its name from a Bing Crosby film as its architect's joke?

Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson built it after a miserable family road trip to Washington, and the joke name that architect Eddie Bluestein gave the plans simply stuck.

Which toy, sold at first as a box of loose parts, was the first ever advertised on television?

Mr. Potato Head's parts were meant to be pushed into a real potato; Hasbro only added a plastic body in 1964, after complaints about rotting vegetables.

Which first lady, named 'Spiritual Leader of the Nation' on her 33rd birthday in May, died of cancer in July?

Eva Perón's embalmed body was put on display, then spirited away after the 1955 coup and hidden for 16 years, buried in Milan under a false name.

Which magazine printed The Old Man and the Sea complete in one issue that sold 5.3 million copies in two days?

Life's Labor Day issue of 1 September carried the whole novella; it won Hemingway his first Pulitzer the next spring and was the only work the Nobel committee named in 1954.

Which runner won the 5,000 m, 10,000 m and the marathon at Helsinki, never having run a marathon before?

Emil Zátopek's wife Dana won the javelin within an hour of his 5,000 m victory, and he later claimed at her press conference that his win had 'inspired' her.

Which film star, sailing to London for the premiere of Limelight, was told his US re-entry permit had been revoked?

Charlie Chaplin chose not to contest the ban and settled above Lake Geneva; he set foot in America again only in 1972, to collect an honorary Oscar, and Limelight's score won its own a year later.

Which codebreaker, convicted of gross indecency in March, accepted oestrogen injections as the alternative to prison?

Alan Turing had reported a burglary at his Wilmslow home and admitted the relationship to the police himself; the conviction cost him his security clearance and his consultancy for GCHQ.

Under which King's College scientist did Raymond Gosling take Photo 51, the X-ray image of DNA that Wilkins later showed Watson?

Rosalind Franklin had set the image aside to concentrate on DNA's 'A' form, and it reached Watson without her knowledge as she was preparing to leave King's.

Which occupied country regained its sovereignty on 28 April under a peace treaty the Soviet Union refused to sign?

Japan's treaty, signed at San Francisco the previous September, also ended its empire; Czechoslovakia and Poland joined the Soviet Union in refusing to sign it.

In which city did police fire on students marching for their language on 21 February, a date UNESCO marks worldwide?

Dhaka's students were defying a ban on gatherings to demand Bengali as a state language of Pakistan; UNESCO declared 21 February International Mother Language Day in 1999.

Which king abdicated on 26 July, three days after the Free Officers' coup, in favour of his six-month-old son?

Farouk of Egypt sailed into exile on the royal yacht Mahrousa, the same vessel that had carried his deposed grandfather Ismail to Italy in 1879; the baby was proclaimed Fuad II.

Which Illinois governor, pictured with a hole in his shoe sole while campaigning, won just nine states in November?

Adlai Stevenson answered Republican jibes with 'Better a hole in the shoe than a hole in the head'; Flint Journal photographer William Gallagher won the 1953 Pulitzer for the picture.

Which first Black Oscar winner, who died in October, was refused burial in the Hollywood Cemetery she had chosen?

Hattie McDaniel, the Mammy of Gone with the Wind, was buried at Rosedale instead; the Hollywood cemetery offered a reburial in 1999 and, when her family declined, built her a cenotaph by its lake.

Which widescreen process, using three projectors and a curved screen, opened on Broadway with a roller-coaster ride?

Cinerama, Fred Waller's invention, had languished in the laboratory for years before broadcaster Lowell Thomas backed This Is Cinerama, which opened at the Broadway Theatre on 30 September.

Which challenger, floored in round one by Jersey Joe Walcott, took the heavyweight title with a 13th-round knockout?

Rocky Marciano had never been knocked down before, and after twelve rounds he trailed on the scorecards and needed a knockout to keep his unbeaten record.

Whose 'Here in My Heart' topped the first UK singles chart, a Top 12 the NME compiled by telephoning about 20 shops?

Al Martino stayed at number one for nine weeks, but mobsters soon took over his management contract and he left America for Britain, where he spent several years.

Which glove puppet, bought by Harry Corbett in Blackpool in 1948, made his BBC television debut on Talent Night?

Sooty's handler resigned as an engineer when his employer refused him Saturdays off for television work, and the bear got his own series in 1955.

Which two terracotta puppets, who spoke 'Oddle-Poddle' and lived either side of Little Weed, first aired in December?

Bill and Ben were the Flower Pot Men of Watch with Mother; Peter Hawkins voiced both and invented their gibberish, translating scripts that were written in plain English.

Which wartime document did Britons no longer have to carry from 21 February?

Identity cards went after a 1950 test case in which Harry Willcock refused to produce his for a policeman; the National Registration number lived on inside the NHS.

Which staple came off the ration on 5 October, while sugar and sweets stayed rationed into 1953?

Tea was freed while sweets stayed controlled: they had come off the ration in 1949, but the rush on sweetshops was so great that rationing returned within months and lasted until 1953.

Which London transport ran for the last time in the early hours of 6 July, cheered into New Cross depot by crowds?

London's electric trams gave way to diesel buses whose exhaust helped thicken that December's Great Smog; not one tram ran in the capital again until Croydon Tramlink opened in 2000.

At which station did a Perth express run into a standing local train, and a third train into the wreckage, killing 112?

Harrow and Wealdstone remains Britain's worst peacetime rail crash; the driver had passed a caution and two danger signals in fog, and the disaster forced through the Automatic Warning System.

Which 1956 Act answered the December fog that seeped into London's cinemas and killed at least 4,000 people?

The Clean Air Act created 'smoke control areas' where only smokeless fuel could be burned; later research put the true death toll at around 12,000, three times the official count.

Which club retained the FA Cup by beating an injury-hit Arsenal 1–0, the goal coming from Chilean-born George Robledo?

Newcastle United's winning goal was drawn by a schoolboy John Lennon, who put the picture on the sleeve of his 1974 album Walls and Bridges; Arsenal finished with only seven fit players.

Which writer, born in Cambridge on 11 March, joked he had been 'DNA' there nine months before the double helix paper?

Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide began as a 1978 radio comedy before selling 14 million books by the time of his death in 2001; he also wrote for Doctor Who and was its script editor for a season.

Whose diary was published in America with an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt and became a bestseller?

Anne Frank's diary reached Doubleday only because junior editor Judith Jones pulled it out of the rejection pile; the book had already appeared in German and French in 1950.

Which John Cage piece, premiered by pianist David Tudor at Woodstock, New York, instructs the performer not to play?

4′33″ runs three movements of silence in which the ambient noise is the music; Cage had visited an anechoic chamber expecting to hear nothing and instead heard two sounds, one high and one low.

Which opener became England's first professional Test captain of the century, starting against India at Headingley?

Len Hutton doubted that cricket's establishment would accept a professional, yet declined to turn amateur as Wally Hammond had done in 1938; he regained the Ashes the following summer.

Which body, rather than the BBC, unveiled Britain's first TV detector van on 1 February?

The Post Office then issued the television licence, £2 since 1946 for a single black-and-white BBC channel, and its engineers wrote up their first three detector designs in their own journal.

Where did Britain explode its first atomic bomb, inside the hull of the frigate HMS Plym?

The Monte Bello Islands test, Operation Hurricane, made Britain the third nuclear power; all that remained of Plym was a 'gluey black substance' washed up on Trimouille Island.

Which 19-year-old was hanged for a policeman's murder on a Croydon roof, though 16-year-old Christopher Craig fired?

Derek Bentley's 'Let him have it, Chris' was read by the jury as an order to shoot rather than to surrender the gun; he was pardoned in 1993 and his conviction quashed in 1998.

On which loch did land-speed record holder John Cobb die when his jet boat Crusader broke up at over 200 mph?

Loch Ness was picked for its long straight water; Cobb, who had set three land-speed records at Bonneville, was 52, and Crusader's wreck was found 200 metres down in 2002.

Which Titanic officer, the most senior to survive, who took his yacht Sundowner to Dunkirk, died during the Great Smog?

Charles Lightoller survived the sinking by balancing all night on a collapsible lifeboat, and at Dunkirk he brought home 127 servicemen on a yacht licensed to carry 21.

Which new wave frontman, born in Dumbarton on the Clyde on 14 May, adopted an American accent to fit in at school?

David Byrne's family left for Hamilton, Ontario, when he was two and later settled in Maryland, where his school choir rejected him as 'off-key and too withdrawn'; he co-founded Talking Heads in 1975.

Which Metropolitan Police horse carried Elizabeth II at her first Trooping the Colour as monarch on 5 June?

Winston was a chestnut gelding who had carried George VI in 1947 at the first Trooping since 1939; though named after Churchill, every police horse bought in 1944 was given a 'W' name.

In which country were pillar boxes bearing the new 'EIIR' cypher vandalised, since it had never had an Elizabeth I?

Scotland's first EIIR box, on Edinburgh's Inch estate, was tarred, painted, hammered and finally blown up within three months; Scottish boxes since 1953 carry only the Crown of Scotland.

Which weapon did America first test at full scale on 1 November, erasing the island of Elugelab?

The hydrogen bomb, codenamed Ivy Mike, left a crater 1.9 km across where Elugelab had been; the Atomic Energy Commission's chairman told the president-elect simply that the island 'is missing'.

Which device did Geoffrey Dummer, a British radar engineer, first describe in public at a Washington symposium on 7 May?

The integrated circuit Dummer imagined, electronics 'in a solid block with no connecting wires', got no further in Britain than a 1957 model; he credited Robert Noyce and Jean Hoerni as the real inventors.

At which air show did test pilot John Derry's DH.110 break up in flight, killing him, his observer and 29 spectators?

Farnborough's display carried on once the runway was cleared, with Neville Duke taking a Hawker Hunter supersonic that same day; Derry is reckoned the first Briton through the sound barrier.

Which 'Sleigh Ride' composer had Billboard's number one song of the year with his orchestral instrumental 'Blue Tango'?

Leroy Anderson, an Army reserve officer recalled to active duty for the Korean War, wrote Blue Tango in 1951; his own Decca recording reached number one and earned him a gold disc.

Which 17-year-old, nicknamed 'Little Mo' after a battleship, beat Louise Brough for her first Wimbledon singles title?

Maureen Connolly had defied her coach's order to withdraw with a shoulder injury, a row that ended their partnership; she won the first women's Grand Slam in 1953, before a riding accident ended her career at 19.

Which federal agency employed Horace Ashenfelter when he outsprinted a Soviet record-holder to win the Helsinki steeplechase?

The FBI agent's win came with the Cold War on, and American papers made much of a G-man chasing down a Russian; he also broke Kazantsev's unofficial world record.

For what did NHS patients first pay one shilling on 1 June, a charge Aneurin Bevan had held off as health minister?

A prescription had been free since the NHS began in 1948; Harold Wilson's government later abolished the charge, only to bring it back in 1968.

To which city did BOAC fly the world's first fare-paying jet airliner service, a de Havilland Comet, on 2 May?

Johannesburg was the end of BOAC's first jet route, but within two years the Comet 1 fleet was grounded after two of the jets broke up over the Mediterranean in 1954.