1951

1845–1958	Germany [earth sciences]	German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt lays the basis of modern geography with the publication of Kosmos/Cosmos, in which he arranges geographic knowledge in a systematic fashion.
1950–1959	USA [everyday life]	The number of people in the USA who live in the suburbs increases by 44% in the 1950s.
1950–1980	UK [television]	Watch With Mother, a series for young children featuring favourite characters such as Andy Pandy, the Flowerpot Men, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, and the Woodentops, is shown on British television.
1951	USA [railways]	For the first time air passenger-miles (10,679,281,000) exceeds total passenger-miles in railway cars (10,224,714,000) in the USA.
1951	UK [opera]	The opera Billy Budd by the English composer Benjamin Britten is first performed, at Covent Garden in London, England. It is based on a novella by the US writer Herman Melville.
1951	Italy [opera]	The opera The Rake's Progress by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky is first performed, in Venice, Italy. Inspired by engravings by the English artist William Hogarth, the text is by the English-born US writer W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden.
1951	England [painting]	The German-born English artist Lucian Freud paints Interior Near Paddington.
1951	USA [philosophy]	US philosopher Nelson Goodman publishes The Structure of Appearance.
1951	USA [political theory]	German-born US philosopher Hannah Arendt publishes The Origins of Totalitarianism.
1951	France, Ireland [fiction]	The Irish writer Samuel Beckett publishes his novels Malone meurt/Malone Dies and Molloy in French (the English versions appear in 1956 and in 1955 respectively).
1951	USA [fiction]	The Russian-born US writer Isaac Asimov publishes Foundation, the first novel in his science fiction Foundation Trilogy.
1951	England [fiction]	The English writer Arthur C Clarke publishes his short story ‘The Sentinel’, which is filmed in 1968 as 2001: A Space Odyssey.
1951	USA [fiction]	The US writer Carson McCullers publishes her novella The Ballad of the Sad Café.
1951	England [fiction]	The English writer Nicholas Monsarrat publishes his novel The Cruel Sea.
1951	England [fiction]	The English writer Anthony Powell publishes A Question of Upbringing, the first of 12 volumes in the sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. The final volume appears in 1975.
1951	USA [fiction]	The US writer J D Salinger publishes his novel The Catcher in the Rye.
1951	USA [fiction]	The US writer William Faulkner publishes his novel Requiem for a Nun.
1951	France [art]	The French photographer Robert Doisneau takes Down and Out in Paris.
1951	USA [chemistry]	US chemists Linus Pauling and Robert Corey establish the helical or spiral structure of proteins.
1951	USA [computing]	The US computer scientist Grace Hopper develops the first compiler. It translates programmers' codes into the binary machine codes used by computers.
1951	UK [energy]	Two plutonium-production reactors, the first full-scale nuclear reactors in the UK, go into operation at Windscale (known as Sellafield from 1973) in Cumbria, England.
1 January 1951	North Korea, South Korea, China [Korean War (1950–53)]	In the Korean War, North Korean and Chinese forces break United Nations (UN) lines on the 38th parallel and, on 4 January, take Seoul, capital of South Korea.
1 January 1951	UK [cinema and film]	The British Board of Film Censors introduces the ‘X’ classification, to identify films unsuitable for those under 16.
7 March - 31 March 1951	North Korea, South Korea, China [Korean War (1950–53)]	In the Korean War, United Nations (UN) forces move northwards to the 38th Parallel, recapturing the South Korean capital of Seoul 14 March: the UN commander General Douglas MacArthur advocates extending the war into China, using atomic bombs.
29 April 1951	UK, Austria [births and deaths]	Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born British philosopher, one of the most influential in the 20th century, dies in Cambridge, England (62).
May 1951	UK [radio]	The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) begins radio broadcasts of the comedy show Crazy People, starring Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Peter Sellers. In June 1952, it is renamed The Goon Show, which is broadcast until January 1960.
June 1951	USA [computing]	US engineers John Mauchly and John Eckert build UNIVAC 1 (Universal Automated Computer), the first commercially available electronic digital computer, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Built for the US Bureau of the Census by the Remington Rand corporation, it uses vacuum tubes, is the first to handle both numeric and alphabetic information easily, has a memory of 1.5 kilobytes, and is the first to store data on magnetic tape.
13 July 1951	Austria, USA [births and deaths]	Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer who developed a new ‘atonal’ method of musical composition, dies in Los Angeles, California (76).
1 September 1951	USA, Australia, New Zealand [treaties]	The USA, Australia, and New Zealand sign the Pacific Security Agreement (also known as the ANZUS Pact), in San Francisco, California, providing for mutual assistance if any signatory power is attacked.
20 September 1951	USA [space exploration]	The US Air Force makes the first successful recovery of animals from a rocket flight when a monkey and 11 mice are recovered from a flight to an altitude of 72,000 m/236,000 ft.
15 October 1951 - 24 June 1957	USA [television]	I Love Lucy, US television's first smash hit situation comedy, is shown, starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley.
27 October 1951	UK [administration]	The veteran British Conservative Party leader Winston Churchill forms a government, with Anthony Eden as foreign secretary and R A ‘Rab’ Butler as chancellor of the Exchequer.
12 December 1951	USA [energy]	The first power station in the USA to produce electricity from atomic energy begins operating at Arco, Idaho. Built by the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and known as experimental breeder reactor No. 1 (EBR-I), it is built to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear power. It generates 300 kW.
16 December 1951	USA [food and drink]	A study finds that on an average weekend 1.2 million bagels are consumed in New York City.
24 December 1951	Libya [United Nations]	Libya (an Italian colony from 1911–42, and under British military administration since then) becomes an independent federation under King Idris I, previously emir of Cyrenaica, a region of eastern Libya. This follows a resolution of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of 21 November 1949 that Libya should become independent, and makes Libya the first independent state to be created by the UN.