Queen Elizabeth II Coronation year photomontage

June 2, 2013 - Sunday marks the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty The Queen’s Coronation in June 1953. Events that defined the year included Marshal Tito election as first president of the Republic of Yugoslavia, the discovery of DNA, Jacqueline Bouvier’s wedding to rising U.S. senator John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to power, and Marilyn Monroe’s exposure as the centrefold nude in the launch edition of Playboy magazine.

1. Jan 14: Marshal Josip Broz Tito was elected first president of the Republic of Yugoslavia

2. Feb 18:The first 3-D colour movie, Bwana Devil, opened in New York, heralding the 3-D fad of the 1950s

3. Feb 28: James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes. They determined that it was a double-helix polymer, or spiral of two DNA strands, each containing a long chain of monomer nucleotides, wound around each other

4. Mar 5: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died after three decades in power. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in 1917, and consolidated his power after Lenin’s death. His regime of terror caused the death and suffering of tens of millions, but he also played a key role in the defeat of Nazism

5. Mar 19: The Academy Awards ceremony was televised for the first time. The Greatest Show On Earth won Best Picture, and Gary Cooper won Best Actor for High Noon

6. Apr 7: Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden was elected Secretary General of the United Nations by a near-unanimous vote, 57-1

7. Apr 17: Silent movie star Charlie Chaplin announced from his home in Switzerland that he would never return to the United States, following repeated accusations that he was a communist

8. May 19: The 100,000th Holden, Australia's most popular make of car, rolled off the assembly line after four and a half years of production in Melbourne

9. May 29: New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tensing Norgay, became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain

10. Jun 2: The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the first to be televised, took place at Westminster Abbey in London. The form of service descended directly from that of King Edgar at Bath in 973, and she was crowned in St Edward’s Chair, made in 1300 for Edward I and used at every Coronation since that time

11. Jun 19: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair at New York’s Sing Sing prison after being found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. They were the first married couple to be executed in the United States

12. Jun 24: Jacqueline Bouvier announced her engagement to rising U.S. senator John F. Kennedy. The wedding on September 12, 1953, was a major social event attended by an estimated 700 guests

13. Jul 26: Fidel Castro led a failed assault on the Moncada military barracks near Santiago de Cuba in his struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista

14. Sep 12: Nikita Khrushchev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Notable events during his tenure included the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961

15. Nov 2: The parliament of Pakistan declared the country “the Islamic Republic of Pakistan”

16. Nov 9: Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and writer, died in New York after succumbing to whisky and drugs while on a reading tour of the U.S.

17. Dec 1: Marilyn Monroe featured as the centrefold nude in the launch edition of Playboy magazine