The world when Elizabeth became queen

Queen Elizabeth is now officially the longest serving monarch in British history, clocking in at 63 years and 216 days.

Elizabeth the Second now ranks ahead of Queen Victoria in terms of who's spent more time on the throne.

She was just 25 when she came to the throne after her father, King George VI, died on February 6, 1952, when the world was a very different place. For example, Princess Elizabeth received the news while she was on a tour of the British Empire, which would fade away during the course of her reign. She was in Kenya, then a British colony. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., was a 16-year-old student at that time.  He was one of just 6 million Kenyans — today there are 41 million. The colony was about to descend into the violence of the Mau Mau rebellion.

Everywhere, the idea of Empire was in retreat, and the world was in the midst of profound changes in the world order. Israel was not quite four years old when Elizabeth became queen, and India was almost five.

The queen’s subjects were more likely to hear the news on the radio or from newspapers, rather than TV which was in its infancy. Canada did not have its own TV until September 1952.

There was no Internet, of course. Computers themselves were in their infancy as well. People sent postcards, letters and telegrams to keep in touch, although telephones were becoming common.

There were no satellites, and no space travel, although in March 1952, German rocket scientist Werner von Braun published the first in a series of articles entitled ‘Man Will Conquer Space Soon!’ in which he put forward his ideas for manned flights to Mars and the Moon.

International news was dominated by the Korean War, which was stuck in a bloody stalemate, and about to enter a third year. Thousands of the queen’s subjects were fighting there, alongside tens of thousands of Americans against the Communist North Koreans and Chinese.  One of the British conscripts deployed there was one Maurice Micklewhite, who became a lot better known after he became an actor and changed his name to Michael Caine.

The Korean War was an extension of the Cold War, which dominated the rest of the news. The arms race was in full swing. The US tested the world’s first hydrogen bomb in 1952, and designed the B-52 bomber to carry them in the same year. The US Army introduced a fancy new elite group called 'Special Forces' in June.

The communist threat was seen everywhere. McCarthyism was at its height. Even actor Charlie Chaplin got blacklisted and denied the right to return to the United States.

Harry Truman was president, but he had refused to run in the election that year, leaving the field to be dominated by the Republican candidate, Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II.

Racism was still rampant in the United States, and so was segregation. One small victory came in 1952 when Emmett Ashford became the first African-American umpire in organized baseball.

In medical news, the world’s first open-heart surgery took place at the University of Minnesota in September. And the world’s first successful sex-change operation took place in November 1952 in Denmark.

Famous births in 1952 include Stephen Seagal, Mr. T, Liam Neeson, John Goodman, Roseanne Barr, Dan Aykroyd, Patrick Swayze, Christopher Reeve, Mickey Rourke, Vladimir Putin, Jeff Goldblum and David Petraeus.