6 February — Elizabeth II ascended the throne, the reigning queen and head of state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and head of 15 Commonwealth realms.
27 March — for skipping classes, student Boris Yeltsin was expelled from the Ural Polytechnic Institute.
8 September — the first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea was published.
5 December — the Great Smog of 1952 began in London, claiming thousands of English lives.
31 December — a protocol on the gratuitous transfer by the Soviet government to the government of the PRC of all rights to the joint management of the CER (Chinese Eastern Railway), together with all property belonging to it.