6 January – Chancellor of the ExchequerPeter Thorneycroft together with junior Treasury MinistersEnoch Powell andNigel Birch resign over Cabinet opposition to spending cuts, an event dismissed to the Press the following day by the Prime Minister as "little local difficulties".[1]
20 February – The government announces plans to close the 300-year-old naval dockyards atSheerness on theIsle of Sheppey which would result in more than 2,500 workers losing their jobs.[3]
21 February – Duncan Edwards dies of his injuries in aMunich hospital fifteen days after the Munich air crash. Edwards, twenty-one years old and rated by many as the finest player in England, is the eighth Manchester United player to die.
24 March – Work on theM1, Britain's first full-length motorway, begins. The first stretch of the motorway, due to open next year, will run fromLondon to theWarwickshire-Northamptonshire border. During the 1960s, the remainder of the motorway will be built to give London an unbroken motorway link withLeeds some 200 miles away.[10]
TheLife Peerages Act receivesRoyal Assent, the Act allows the creation oflife peers who can sit in theHouse of Lords. As life peerages could be bestowed on women, this Act allows them to sit in the House of Lords for the first time.[13]
Cliff Richard's debut singleMove It is released, reaching #2 in the chart. It is credited with being one of the first authentic rock and roll songs produced outside the United States.[20][21]
21 October – The first life peers, including the first female peers, enter the House of Lords.[13] The Baronesses Swanborough (Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading) and Wootton (Barbara Wootton) are the first women to take their seats as life peers, andLord Parker of Waddington, the Lord Chief Justice of England, the first man to do so.
25 October – TheShort SC.1 experimentalVTOL aircraft makes its first free vertical flight.
24 November – An exhibition of computers held atEarl's Court, London, the first of its kind in the world.[1]
25 November – The Austin FX4 London taxi goes on sale, it will remain in production until 1997.
30 November – During the live broadcast of theArmchair Theatre playUnderground on the ITV network, actorGareth Jones has a fatal heart attack between scenes.
10 December – English biochemistFrederick Sanger wins his firstNobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin" (his second comes in 1980).[28]
^Britten, Benjamin (2008). Reed, Philip; Cooke, Mervyn; Mitchell, Donald (eds.).Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, Volume IV, 1952–1957. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. pp. 555, 562.ISBN978-1-84383-382-6.
^Slee, Christopher (1994).The Guinness Book of Lasts. Enfield: Guinness Publishing.ISBN0-85112-783-5.
^"The beauty they gave away".Daily Herald. London. 29 August 1958. p. 2.
^Kennedy, Rex.Ian Allan's 50 years of railways, 1942-1992. p. 87.
^Kerr, Alan (2009).A federation in these seas: An account of the acquisition by Australia of its external territories, with selected documents. Barton, ACT: Attorney General's Dept (Australia). p. 329.ISBN1921241721.
^"1958".CBRD. Archived fromthe original on 20 September 2010. Retrieved30 July 2010.
^Leach, Nicholas (2003).Oakley Class Lifeboats: an Illustrated History of the RNLI's Oakley and Rother Lifeboats. Stroud: Tempus.ISBN978-0-7524-2784-3.
