On this day

December 5, 1958

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from December 5, 1958

Notable Births

Dynamite Kid

1958Dynamite Kid, English wrestler (died 2018)[†]

Thomas Wilton Billington, best known by the ring name the Dynamite Kid, was a British professional wrestler.

Historical Events

1958Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.[†]

Subscriber trunk dialling (STD), also known as subscriber toll dialing, is a telephone numbering plan feature and telecommunications technology in the United Kingdom and various Commonwealth countries for the dialling of trunk calls by telephone subscribers without the assistance of switchboard operators.

Preston Bypass

1958The Preston By-pass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time. (It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.)[†]

The Preston Bypass was the United Kingdom's first motorway, opened in 1958. It was designed and engineered by Lancashire County Council surveyor James Drake as part of a larger initiative to create a north-south motorway network that would later form part of the M6 motorway. The original 8+1⁄4-mile (13.3 km) motorway ran around the east side of Preston between Bamber Bridge and Broughton and crossed over the River Ribble at Samlesbury at the M6 junction 31.

Historical Context for December 5, 1958

In 1958, the world population was approximately 2,911,249,671 people[†]