1951

align="center" colspan=2 | Years:
1948 1949 1950 - 1951 - 1952 1953 1954

align="center" colspan=2 | Decades:
1920s 1930s 1940s - 1950s - 1960s 1970s 1980s

align="center" | Centuries:
19th century - 20th century - 21st century

1951 was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar.

Events

January 9 - United Nations headquarters officially opens (New York City).
January 15 - Ilse Koch, The "Witch of Buchenwald," wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany.
January 17 - Korean War: Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul.
January 20 - Avalanches in the Alps - 240 die and 45.000 are buried for a time in Switzerland, Austria and Italy
January 27 - Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats, northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada.

February 1 - United Nations General Assembly declares that China is the aggressor in the Korean War
February 12 - Marriage of Muhammad Reza Shah to Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari
February 19- Jean Lee becomes the last woman hanged in Australia. When,Lee and her two pimps are hanged for the murder and tourture of a 73 year old bookmaker.
February 24 - Nestor is born at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
February 27 - The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified.

March 1 - the city Yaizu, located in Shizuoka, Japan, is founded
March 6 - The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.
March 7 - Korean War: Operation Ripper - In Korea, United Nations troops led by General Matthew Ridgeway begin an assault against the Chinese "volunteers".
March 12 - The Dennis the Menace comic strip appears in newspapers across the U.S. for the first time.
March 14 - Korean War: For the second time, United Nations troops recapture Seoul.
March 14 - West Germany joins UNESCO
March 29 - Red Scare: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. On April 5 they are sentenced to receive the death penalty.
March 30 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.

July 5 - William Shockley invents the junction transistor.
July 10 - Korean War: At Kaesong, armistice negotiations begin.
July 14 - In Joplin, Missouri, George Washington Carver National Monument becomes the first United States National Monument in honor of an African American.
July 16 - King Leopold III of Belgium signs the act of abdication in favour of his son Baudouin.
July 17 - Baudouin takes the oath as king of Belgium, after his father abdicated the day before.
July 20 - King Abdullah I of Jordan is assassinated while attending Friday prayers in Jerusalem.

September 1 - The United States, Australia and New Zealand all sign a mutual defense pact, called the ANZUS Treaty (for "Australia, New Zealand, United States").
September 8 - Treaty of San Francisco: In San Francisco, California, 48 nations sign Sign a peace treaty with Japan in formal recognition of the end of the Pacific War.
September 10 - The United Kingdom begins an economic boycott of Iran.
September 20 - NATO accepts Greece and Turkey as members
September 26-28 - Blue sun seen over Europe; effect is due to ash coming from the Canadian forest fires four months previously

October 7 - Malayan Emergency - communist insurgents kill British commander Sir Henry Gurney
October 16 - Assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, president of Pakistan
October 18 - Yitzhak Bezner, Israeli official, meets leading Japanese industrialists as part of a mission to establish Israeli-Japanese economic ties.
October 21 - Storm in southern Italy - over 100 dead
October 26 - Winston Churchill re-elected British Prime Minister; his foreign minister is Anthony Eden
October 27 - Farouk of Egypt declares himself also as a king of Sudan - no support

November 1 - First military exercises for nuclear war, with infantry troops included, in the Nevada desert
November 11 - Juan Peron re-elected president of Argentina
November 20 - Po river floods in northern Italy
November 10 - Direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.
November 24 - The Broadway play Gigi opens starring little known actress Audrey Hepburn playing the lead character.

A fourth, and final, forest fire starts in the Tillamook Burn; but unlike earlier fires this one only burns 32,700 acres (132 km²), and within area already affected by the earlier fires.
IBM United Kingdom formed

The release of "Rocket 88", a song by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats. Some music historians consider this record to be the first rock and roll recording.

January 3 - Dragnet airs on television for the first time (NBC).
May 28 - The U. S. Supreme Court upholds the FCC's approval of the CBS color television system
June 25 ? CBS presents its first commercial color telecast with Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, and Faye Emerson.
June - RCA demonstrates its new electronic color system.
August 11 - The first baseball games televised in color, a double-header between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves
September 4 - The first coast-to-coast TV broadcast in the United States, featuring President Truman.
September 22 - The first live sporting event seen coast-to-coast in the United States, a college football game between Duke and the University of Pittsburgh, is televised on NBC.
October 3 - The first live coast-to-coast network telecast of a World Series game in the United States
October 15 - I Love Lucy debuts on CBS.
December 24 - The first televised opera written for television, Amahl and the Night Visitor, airs on NBC.
Ernie Kovacs' Time for Ernie and Ernie in Kovacsland television shows premiere. Kovacs pushes the limits of television technology with his use of camera tricks and special effects.