6 January – Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft together with junior Treasury Ministers Enoch Powell and Nigel 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 at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey which would result in more than 2,500 workers losing their jobs.[3]
21 February – Duncan Edwards dies of his injuries in a Munich 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.
2 March – A British team led by Sir Vivian Fuchs completes the first crossing of the Antarctic using Sno-Cat caterpillar tractors and dogsled teams in 99 days.[7]
24 March – Work on the M1, Britain's first full-length motorway, begins. The first stretch of the motorway, due to open next year, will run from London to the Warwickshire-Northamptonshire border. During the 1960s, the remainder of the motorway will be built to give London an unbroken motorway link with Leeds some 200 miles away.[10]
The Life Peerages Act receives Royal Assent, the Act allows the creation of life peers who can sit in the House 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 single Move 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, and Lord Parker of Waddington, the Lord Chief Justice of England, the first man to do so.
25 October – The Short SC.1 experimental VTOL aircraft makes its first free vertical flight.
10 November – Donald Campbell sets the world water speed record at 248.62mph.[7]
24 November – An exhibition of computers held at Earl'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 the Armchair Theatre play Underground on the ITV network, actor Gareth Jones has a fatal heart attack between scenes.
10 December – English biochemist Frederick Sanger wins his first Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin" (his second comes in 1980).[27]
^ abPalmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 413–414. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^"World Laments Manchester Loss". The Sunday Sun. 7 February 1958. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
^"Historic Sheerness docks to close". BBC News. 20 February 1958. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 27 January 2008.
^ abcMarr, Andrew (2007). A History of Modern Britain. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4050-0538-8.
^"Football: Dudley's jewel in the crown... Busby Babe Duncan Edwards died 50 years ago today, aged just 21. ROGER CLARKE gives his personal account of a sporting legend and the tragedy of Munich. – Free Online Library".
^"Removal of County Headquarters". The Times. 28 January 1958. p. 4.
^ abcdefghijPenguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
^Lieut.-Commander R.B. Michell, "The London Planetarium" on p. 323 Record on Cambridge Core website Accessed 13 May 2017.
^The Observatory, Vol. 78, p. 91(1958). Accessed 12 May 2017.
^"RoadsUK -- road histories -- berrygrove to crick: The birth of motorway 1". Archived from the original on 9 September 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
^"The day I called on Mrs. Wilson". Newcastle Chronicle. Newcastle upon Tyne. 31 March 1958. p. 3.
^Caroline Moorehead (1987). Troublesome People: Enemies of War : 1916–1986. Hamilton. ISBN 978-0-241-12105-4.
^ abcd"A Changing House: the Life Peerages Act 1958". Archived from the original on 15 June 2008. Retrieved 18 March 2008.
^"FA Cup Final 1958". Archived from the original on 22 September 2008. Retrieved 4 December 2010.
^"Trunk dialling heralds cheaper calls". BBC News. 21 May 1958. Archived from the original on 7 March 2008. Retrieved 27 January 2008.
^"Ian Donald's paper in The Lancet in 1958". Archived from the original on 12 January 2008. Retrieved 27 January 2008.
^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. ISBN 978-1-84383-382-6.
^Slee, Christopher (1994). The Guinness Book of Lasts. Enfield: Guinness Publishing. ISBN 0-85112-783-5.
^"The beauty they gave away". Daily Herald. London. 29 August 1958. p. 2.
^"Sold on Song Top 100". BBC. Retrieved 18 November 2007.
^"The Ian "Sammy" Samwell Story". iansamwell.com. Archived from the original on 12 December 2007. Retrieved 18 November 2007.
^""Notting Hill Riot Special", newsfilm online". Archived from the original on 18 June 2008. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
^Kennedy, Rex. Ian Allan's 50 years of railways, 1942-1992. p. 87.
^"Events in Telecommunications History – 1958". Archived from the original on 7 October 2013. Retrieved 27 January 2008.
^Leach, Nicholas (2003). Oakley Class Lifeboats: an Illustrated History of the RNLI's Oakley and Rother Lifeboats. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 978-0-7524-2784-3.
^"The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1958". Retrieved 27 January 2008.
^"Carnaby Street". retrowow.co.uk. Archived from the original on 1 March 2009. Retrieved 22 February 2009.
^"Timeline History of Reading". Welcome to Reading. VisitorUK.com. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
^McElroy, Damien (4 November 2020). "Anatomy of a Renaissance man: sculptor, musician ... pioneering surgeon". The National. Archived from the original on 8 November 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
^Allan Glen (1 May 2011). Stuart Adamson: In a Big Country. Birlinn. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-85790-026-5.