London; writer/actor/director/producer Charlie Chaplin arrives in Britain by ocean liner; in transit, his re-entry permit to the United States is revoked by J. Edgar Hoover. 19 October A small militant Welsh republican group, Y Gweriniaethwyr, make an unsuccessful attempt to blow up a water pipeline leading from the Claerwen dam in mid Wales to Birmingham. The Claerwen reservoir is officially opened on 23 October. John Bamford, aged 15, rescues victims of a house fire, and becomes the youngest person to be awarded the George Cross. November – Royal College of General Practitioners established. 14 November – The magazine New Musical Express (launched on 7 March) publishes the first UK Singles Chart. 25 November – Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap starts its run at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London. It will still be running in London as of 2022, having transferred next door to St Martin's Theatre in 1974. 29 November – First GPO pillar box of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II to be erected in Scotland, on the Inch housing estate in Edinburgh, is attacked in protest at its bearing the Royal Cipher of Elizabeth II, considered historically incorrect in Scotland. 4–9 December – Great Smog blankets London, causing transport chaos and, it is believed, around 4,000 deaths. 10 December – Archer Martin and Richard Synge win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their invention of partition chromatography". 12 December – BBC children's television series Flower Pot Men debuts. 25 December – The Queen makes her first Christmas speech to the Commonwealth. 30 December – An RAF Avro Lancaster bomber crashes in Luqa, Malta, after an engine failure, killing three crew members and a civilian on the ground. December – Utility Furniture Scheme ends. Undated – Geoffrey Dummer proposes the integrated circuit. Publications H. E. Bates' novel Love for Lydia. John Bingham's novel My Name is Michael Sibley. Henry Cecil's novel No Bail for the Judge. Agatha Christie's novels Mrs McGinty's Dead (Hercule Poirot) and They Do It with Mirrors (Miss Marple). Dorothy Edwards' children's stories My Naughty Little Sister. Richard Gordon's comic novel Doctor in the House. David Jones' epic poem The Anathemata: fragments of an attempted writing. C. S. Lewis' novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Mary Norton's children's novel The Borrowers. Evelyn Waugh's novel Men at Arms, first of the Sword of Honour trilogy. Births 9 January – Hugh Bayley, English politician 10 January