The Medical Research Council in Britain produces a report, by Austin Hill and Richard Doll, linking smoking and lung cancer

Erwin Müller completes his development of the field ion microscope, the first instrument capable of observing atoms

Six European nations agree to joint coal and steel production through the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)

The British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean escape to the Soviet Union just ahead of their detection and arrest

The Festival of Britain, on the south bank of the Thames in London, celebrates the end of wartime austerity

British author John Wyndham creates a dark fantasy in his novel The Day of the Triffids

In Christ of St John of the Cross Salvador Dali paints an image of the crucified Christ seeming to fly on his cross

A Question of Upbringing begins Antony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time'

The Rake's Progress, with music by Igor Stravinsky and libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, has its premiere in Venice

Labour loses the general election and Winston Churchill returns to Downing Street as prime minister

Henri Matisse completes the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, with every detail designed by himself

George VI dies and is succeeded by his elder daughter as Elizabeth II

Hans Werner Henze's first full-length opera, Boulevard Solitude, has its premiere in Hanover

French economist Jean Monnet becomes the first president of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)

X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, working at King's College in London, photographs DNA

In his first book of Structures, for two pianos, Pierre Boulez provides a classic of serial music

British scholar Michael Ventris deciphers Linear B, the script of Mycenae, proving it to be an early form of Greek

Evelyn Waugh publishes Men at Arms, the first novel in the Sword of Honour trilogy based on his wartime experiences

Le Corbusier's completes his most massive modernist development, the Unité d'Habitation at Marseilles

Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot ('En attendant Godot') is first performed in French in Paris

British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan creates his first ballet, Somnambulism, to music by Stan Kenton

Joseph Stalin dies, four days after suffering a stroke

English author L.P. Hartley sets his novel The Go-Between in the summer of 1900

James Bond, agent 007, has a licence to kill in Ian Fleming's first novel, Casino Royale

Imre Nagy becomes prime minister of Hungary, but is driven out of office two years later by hard-line Communists because of his relative liberalism