Timeline February 1953

Events in February 1953 3

• 1953 North Sea Flood of 1953 Storm surge devastates coastal Europe A severe storm surge breached sea defenses along the coasts of the Netherlands, England, and Belgium, killing well over 1,800 people, most of them in the Netherlands. The disaster prompted the Dutch Delta Works, a massive flood defense engineering program. It remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern Dutch history.
• 1953 MRC report reaches Watson and Crick An internal progress report containing Franklin's unpublished DNA data is shown to rival researchers In February 1953, an MRC visiting committee report containing Franklin's detailed unpublished measurements and analysis of DNA's crystallographic structure was shown to James Watson by Max Perutz, and separately Maurice Wilkins showed Watson the Photo 51 image without Franklin's knowledge or permission. This data supplied crucial confirmation of key structural parameters that Watson and Crick used to finalize their double-helix model at Cambridge. The episode remains one of the most debated instances of uncredited data use in the history of science.
• 1953 North Sea Flood The Watersnoodramp A catastrophic North Sea storm surge floods Zeeland and South Holland, killing more than 1,800 people and prompting the Delta Works — among the largest flood-defence projects in history.