This is an interesting question, because I didn’t read the papers when I was first born! So I have had to look up some news items. The only thing that I know is significant about my birthday is that I shared my birthday with my father’s father. It was also my grannie and grandad High’s wedding anniversary. Nothing changed much on the day that I was born. However, 1953 was quite an eventful year.
- 31 January–1 February – The North Sea flood of 1953 kills hundreds of people on the east coast of Britain.
- 13 April – Ian Fleming publishes his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale.
- 16 April – The Queen launches the Royal Yacht Britannia at John Brown & Company shipbuilders on the Clyde.
- 24 April – Prime Minister Winston Churchill receives a knighthood from the Queen.
- 25 April – Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish their description of the double helix structure of DNA in the paper Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids
- 2 June
- The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II takes place at Westminster Abbey, celebrated as a public holiday.
- The Times exclusively carries James Morris’s scoop of the conquest of Mount Everest by a British expedition on 29 May.
- 19 September – Sir Hubert Parry’s 1916 setting of William Blake’s “Jerusalem” first appears as a permanent feature of the Last Night of the Proms (televised on the only available channel, the BBC).
- 26 September – End of post-war sugar rationing. This meant that I was one of the first of a new generation of children who had terrible teeth.
- 2 November – The Samaritans telephone counselling service for the suicidal is started by Rev. Chad Varah in London.
- There were some significant new products available for the first time in 1953
- Matchbox toy vehicles are introduced by Lesney Products of London.
- Laura Ashley sells her first printed fabrics.
- J. C. Bamford of Rocester introduce the backhoe loader, now universally referred to as a JCB.
- E. Gomme introduce the popular G-Plan furniture range, which may make it more retro than Abigail realises.