1953

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• On 5 March, Josef Stalin dies in the Soviet Union.

• On 8 April, Jomo Kenyatta and five others are convicted of leading the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.

• In Morocco, there are riots against French troops (end 1955).

• On 26 July, Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Batista government in Cuba. He is imprisoned and then goes to Mexico, under an amnesty in 1955.

• On 27 July, the Korean armistice signed. However, a peace treaty is never promulgated and so, technically, the Korean War never ends.

• In Iran on 13 August, Shah Reza Pahlavi – backed by Britain and the United States – replaces Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadeq, who on 21 December is sentenced to three years' solitary confinement.

• On 12 October, the Soviet Union tests a hydrogen bomb.

• On 29 May, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Tenzing Norgay are the first to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.

• In Britain, Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double helix structure of DNA, which explains how genetic information is carried and reproduced by living organisms.

• The Robe, based on the Lloyd C Douglas novel, is the first film to be created in Cinemascope.

• CBS begins the first colour television broadcasts in the United States.

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