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2nd Red Scare
The Second Red Scare was a period from 1950 to 1956 in the United States, characterized by heightened political repression against communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. The cause of the second red scare was the growing number of soviet occupation in Europe and also the communist revolution in China. It was all started by Joseph McCarthy, he later on had a movement called McCarthyism. -
G.I. Bill
The G. I. Bill of Rights or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 provided for college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans as well as one-year of unemployment compensation. It also provided loans for returning veterans to buy homes and start businesses. Its importance is that veterans attended college, received home mortgages, and they compensated. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was a U.S. plan initiated by the Secretary of State G. Marshall and implemented from 1948-1951, to aid in the economic recovery of Europe after World War II by offering certain European countries substantial funds. It offered all European nations, including the Soviet Union, generous funding to rebuild their economies as long as the money was spent on goods made in the United States. Those who supported it hoped to promote democracy in Europe and oppose the spread of communism. -
Period: to
Cold War
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Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain threats to Greece and Turkey. The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of American foreign policy, and led, in 1949, to the formation of NATO, a military alliance that is still in effect. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Wall separated East and West Berlin; built in 1961 to keep citizens from escaping to the West. The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During World War II the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. Therefore the Berlin Airlift happened. The Berlin Airlift was when food and fuel were supplied to the citizens of West Berlin. -
Fair Deal
The Fair Deal was an economic extension of the New Deal proposed by Harry Truman that called for higher minimum wage, housing and full employment. It led only to the Housing Act of 1949 and the Social Security Act of 1950 due to opposition in congress. The main achievements of the fair deal were that it centralized the FSA, Housing Act of 1949 established urban renewal and renovations, and it expanded social security in the 1950s. -
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they wrote about. Central elements of "Beat" culture include a rejection of mainstream American values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality. (the 1950's) -
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was famous in the 1950s. He used black rhythm and blues with white bluegrass and country styles. Therefore, he created a new musical idiom known forever after as rockabilly. He had bought a contract from Sun Records by RCA for an unheard of $35,000. Sun records was an independent record company founded by Sam Philips. Sun records is where Elvis first recorded. He was known as "The King of Rock and Roll". Elvis was the most influential rock and roll musician. -
Little Richard
Little Richard was a visually flamboyant singer and pianist. He had a frentic performance style. He shouted vocals & used vocables and falsettos. He also had a wild side of rock, he had internal conflicts. In 1957 Little Richard quit show business, but in 1962 he did a comeback tour in England. Little Richard's producer was Robert Bumps Blackwell at Specialty Records. -
Bill Haley and The Comets
Bill Haley & The Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band, was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of white America and the rest of the world. From the end of 1954 until the end of 1956 the group would place nine singles into the Top 20, one of those a number one and three more in the Top Ten. -
Ike Turner
R&B legend Ike Turner was born on November 5, 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and grew up playing the blues. In 1956, he met a teenager and singer named Anna Mae Bullock. He married her and helped create her stage persona, Tina Turner. The two became the Ike & Tina Turner Revue and created several R&B hits. The duo's cover of "Proud Mary" earned them their first and only Grammy Award together in 1971. Turner died of a cocaine overdose on December 12, 2007, in San Marcos, California. -
TV Shows
1950s television had strict gender roles. Men put on business suits every morning and went to work, then came home and had to be a perfect father figure and husband. In the fifties boys were socialized strictly as boys. Through these television shows, boys were shown how "real men" were supposed to act.TV shows in the 50s promoted violence and the devaluation of women. Boys were raised to devalue "women's work". The 1950s were, quite simply, the Golden Age of Television. -
Earl Warren Supreme Court
Earl Warren was Chief Justice during the 1950's and 1960's who used a loose interpretation to expand rights for both African-Americans and those accused of crimes. He believed that the Supreme Court should be the center for the civil rights change. Warren is significant because he led the Supreme Court with an activist direction in the Brown case, which pushed further the boundaries of civil rights in the United States. -
Period: to
1950s
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Korean War
After WWII, Korea had been partitioned along the 38th parallel into a northern zone governed by the Soviet Union, and a southern zone controlled by the U.S. In 1950, after the Russians had withdrawn, leaving a communist government in the North, the North invaded the South. The U.N. raised an international army led by the U.S. to stop the North. It was the first use of U.N. military forces to enforce international peace. At war's end, the peninsula remained divided into two nations -
Polio Vaccine
The Polio Vaccine made a major breakthrough in the 1950s because polio was such a big problem. The person who invented the polio vaccine was Jonas Salk. Jonas Salk was an American doctor who invented the polio vaccine in 1953. Polio crippled and killed millions worldwide, and the successful vaccine virtually eliminated that. -
Period: to
Civil Rights
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Brown V. Board of Education
On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Court’s unanimous decision overturned provisions of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had allowed for “separate but equal” public facilities, including public schools in the United States. Declaring that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” -
Emmett Till Tragedy
Emmett Till was an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman when he went into the store to buy some candy he whistled at Carolyn Bryant. His death was part of the civil rights movement. It made people realize how bad racism was during this time. -
Vietnam War
America got involved in the Vietnam War because America believed in the Domino Theory and wanted to stop the spread of communism. The United States treated Vietnam as a "war of attrition" because the United States believed that if they continued to wear down the Vietnamese troops, they would eventually give up. The Vietnamese did not give up, even after losing an estimated 2 million people.The American Presidents that were involved in this were Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. -
Montgomery Buss Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating, took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the U.S. On December 1, 1955, four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. -
Space Race
The space race is significant due to it's role in the Cold War, a period of tension between the USA and USSR. The Space Race was considered an important part of the Cold War it showed the world which country had the best science, technology, and economic system. In 1961 President Kennedy went to congress and announced that he wanted to be the first to put a man on the Moon and that they would do so within a decade. He felt this was important for the country and the western world. -
Little Rock 9
In a key event of the American Civil Rights Movement, nine black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, testing a landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. On the first day of school, there was a mob of white people trying to harass the students and not letting them in because they didn't want black people in the same schools as white people. -
New Frontier
The New Frontier was the campaign program advocated by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election. He promised to revitalize the stagnant economy and enact reform legislation in education, health care, and civil rights. It was Kennedy's plan, it supported civil rights, pushed for a space program, wanted to cut taxes, and increase the spending on defense and military. -
Counter Culture
Counter Culture was young white middle class Americans in the 60s who rejected conventional customs and mainstream culture and built their own subculture which deliberately and consciously opposed to certain central beliefs or attitudes of the dominant culture. They turned their back on America because they believed in a society based on peace and love. They loved rock and roll, colorful clothes, and the use of drugs. They also lived in large groups. -
Hippies
Hippies believed in anti-materialism, and free use of drugs. They had a casual attitude toward sex and anti-conformity, (1960s) they practiced free love and took drugs. They flocked to San Francisco because of low rent/interracial, they lived in communal "crash pads", smoked marijuana and took LSD. They started a sexual revolution and, a new counter culture. They also protested the Vietnam War. -
Feminism
The cause of feminism was that women wanted more out of life than being a housewife. It originally focused on dismantling workplace inequality. Some successful services founded by feminism outcome: Rape crisis centers, women's shelters, health clinics, integration into cities and universities and religious funding. Today's gains are: Equal access to education, increased participation in politics and the workplace, access to abortion and birth control, resources to aid in domestic violence, etc. -
LSD
LSD stand for a synthetic crystalline compound, lysergic acid diethylamide. It looks like "blotter" paper (formed into small squares, can be colored), liquid LSD is clear (taken through a small container like a flask), or found in thin squares of gelatin. LSD is taken orally. Gelatin and liquid can be put in the eyes. It made a huge breakthrough in the 60s with hippies. -
Malcolm X
He renamed himself X to signify the loss of his African heritage; converted to Nation of Islam in jail in the 50s, became Black Muslims' most dynamic street orator and recruiter; his beliefs were the basis of a lot of the Black Power movement built on separationist and nationalist impulses to achieve true independence and equality black power spokesman who was Muslim as well. He was assassinated in 1965 after writing an autobiography. -
Period: to
1960s
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TV Politics: Nixon vs. Kennedy
Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were the very first people to ever participate in a televised presidential debate. The people that were listening to the debate on the radio believed that Nixon had won. But, people who watched the debate on television believed that Kennedy had won. The televised debate had an estimate of 70 million viewers. Politics in television made a huge impact and really changed how people saw certain things. -
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps was created in 1961, to help impoverished countries in Africa and Asia, to promote world peace & friendship, for young volunteers help countries help themselves through teaching and technical aid. 71% of the American population approved, however some called it "Kennedy's Kiddy Korps" and Yankee Imperalism, supports saw it as a helping hand and US reaching out. The Democrats and Republicans both deemed it good & agreed to finance for the next half century. -
Freedom Rides
The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. They intended to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional. It was a form of protest from the black community. It also showed the brutal things white people would do to the black community to everyone by the media. -
Watergate
June 17, 1972, several burglars were arrested inside the office of the DNC located in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. The prowlers were connected to President Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught while attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents. While people were not sure whether Nixon knew about the Watergate espionage operation before it happened, he took steps to cover it up afterward, raising “hush money” for the burglars. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Some of the causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis were that America was annoyed that Fidel Castro took control of American poverty and business, the Bay of Pigs incident, Castro announced that he was Communist, and that Cuba was supplied with missiles from the USSR. The Bay of Pigs incident was when the United States tried to overthrow Castro. Therefore, Kennedy created a naval blockade on Cuba to stop Russia from supplying the sites with missiles. -
Cesar Chavez
Farm worker, labor leader, and civil-rights activist who helped form the National Farm Workers Association, later the United Farm Workers. He helped to improve conditions for migrant farm workers and unionize them. Fought for worker's rights and created an organization called the United Farm Workers of Americans to request pay and safe working conditions. -
March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, 200,000 Americans gathered in D.C., for a political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized by a number of civil rights and religious groups, the event was designed to shed light on the political and social challenges African Americans continued to face across the country. The march, which became a key moment in the growing struggle for civil rights in the United States, culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. -
Birmingham Bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, September 15, 1963, when four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the front steps of the church. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy was the 35th president from 1961 until he was assassinated in 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was the man that assassinated John F. Kennedy. JFK was beginning his campaign trail to be elected again for a second term in Texas. Nobody knows the real answer as to why Oswald assassinated JFK except for Oswald who was slightly mentally unstable. There were many conspiracies about who contributed to the assassination but the evidence all confirmed it was Oswald. -
Great Society
Package of domestic programs put forth to Congress on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two primary goals: eliminate poverty and root out racial injustice. Scope was similar to New Deal under FDR, but reforms differed in what exactly was affected and extent of the success. Later expanded upon by Presidents Nixon and Ford. Its historical significance is the spending affected education, medical care, urban problems and transportation. -
Freedom Summer
A voter registration drive in Mississippi spearheaded by the collaboration of civil rights groups, the campaign drew the activism of thousands of black and white civil rights workers, many of whom were students from the north, and was marred by the abduction and murder of three such workers at the hands of white racists. This murder also played a huge role in civil rights because it went to the media. Therefore, people saw how brutal things were going even for people who just supported blacks. -
Daisy Girl Ad
A controversial political advertisement aired on television during the 1964 United States presidential election by incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign. Though only aired once by the campaign, it is considered a factor in Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater and an important turning point in political and advertising history. This is considered the most controversial political ad in history. The remarkable thing about the ad is that it was understood as an attack on Goldwater. -
Nixon's Presidency
Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States (1969-1974) after previously serving as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator from California. After successfully ending American fighting in Vietnam and improving international relations with the U.S.S.R. and China, he became the only President to ever resign the office, as a result of the Watergate scandal. -
Warren Burger Supreme Court
Warren Earl Burger was the 15th Chief Justice of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1986. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Burger graduated from the St. Paul College of Law in 1931. He helped secure the Minnesota delegation's support for Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican National Convention. After Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, he appointed Burger to the position of Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division. -
Period: to
1970s
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OPEC
OPEC's stated mission is "to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its member countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets, in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers, and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry." Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was founded in 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members. -
Roe V. Wade
Roe v. Wade, is a landmark decision issued in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of the constitutionality of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions. The Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state's interests in regulating abortions: protecting women's health and protecting the potentiality of human life. -
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage's policy study Mandate for Leadership. Heritage has since continued to have a significant influence in U.S. public policy making, and is considered to be one of the most influential conservative research organizations in the United States. -
Gerald Ford Presidency
Gerald Ford had been the first Vice President chosen under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment and, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, was succeeding the first President ever to resign. Ford was confronted with almost insuperable tasks. There were the challenges of mastering inflation, reviving a depressed economy, solving chronic energy shortages, and trying to ensure world peace. -
VHS
The Video Home System is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes. Developed by Victor Company of Japan in the early 1970s, it was released in Japan in late 1976 and in the United States in early 1977. From the 1950s, magnetic tape video recording became a major contributor to the television industry, via the first commercialized video tape recorders. At that time, the devices were used only in expensive professional environments such as television studios. -
Beginnings of Personal Computers
The 1981 launch of the IBM Personal Computer coined both the term Personal Computer and PC. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use,as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of the microprocessor, individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. -
Jimmy Carter Presidency
Jimmy Carter Jr is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the Governor of Georgia prior to his election as president. Carter has remained active in public life during his post-presidency, and in 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Carter Center. -
Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy and poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. One Faustian myth says that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads of Mississippi highways to achieve success. -
Moral Majority
The Moral Majority was a prominent American political organization associated with the Christian right and Republican Party. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell and associates, and dissolved in the late 1980s. It played a key role in the mobilization of conservative Christians as a political force and particularly in Republican presidential victories throughout the 1980s. -
Soviet War in Afghanistan
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan because they wanted to expand their influence (spread Communism) and to protect their interests in Afghanistan (natural resources—oil,coal,iron ore). Afghanistan used guerilla warfare against the Soviets. This war left the Soviet Union in horrible economic conditions. Also, the Soviets were know looked at as a military superpower that had invaded a poor and almost defense-less country and had killed a large number of innocent people. -
Period: to
1980s
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Election of 1980
The United States presidential election of 1980 was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. Due to the rise of conservatism following Reagan's victory, some historians consider the election to be a realigning election that marked the start of the "Reagan Era". Carter's unpopularity and poor relations with Democratic leaders encouraged an intra-party challenge by Senator Ted Kennedy. -
Sandra Day O'Conno
Sandra Day O'Connor is a retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan to 2006. She is the first woman to serve on the Court. Prior to O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was an elected official and judge in Arizona serving as the first female Majority Leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. Upon her nomination to the Court, O'Connor was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. -
Reagan Presidency
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to the presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Reagan was raised in a poor family in small towns of northern Illinois. He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations. -
Space Shuttle Program
The program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system composed of an orbiter launched with two solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank carried up to eight astronauts and 50,000 lb of payload into Earth orbit. -
MTV
MTV is an American cable and satellite television channel owned by Viacom Media Networks and headquartered in New York City. Launched on August 1, 1981, the channel originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys". At first, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is primarily teenagers, particularly high school and college students. MTV has toned down its music video programming significantly in recent years. -
AIDS Crisis
The United States presidential election of 1980 was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. Due to the rise of conservatism following Reagan's victory, some historians consider the election to be a realigning election that marked the start of the "Reagan Era". Carter's unpopularity and poor relations with Democratic leaders encouraged an intra-party challenge by Senator Ted Kennedy. -
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in an attempt to end the Cold War. The doctrine was the centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991. -
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah is an American media proprietor, talk show host, and producer. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media" she has been ranked the richest African-American and is currently North America's first and only multi-billionaire black person. Her first show aired in 1986. -
Challenger Explosion
Shuttle Challenger (OV-99) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted of five NASA astronauts and two payload specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39. The O-ring was not designed to fly under unusually cold conditions as in this launch. Its failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair, also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped, thereby, to fund the Contras in Nicaragua while at the same time negotiating the release of several U.S. hostages. -
Period: to
Contemporary
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The Fall of the Berlin Wall
As soon as democratic elections were announced in Hungary there was a mass movement of East German citizens through Hungary to West Germany. As a result, the East German government was forced to announce much greater freedom of travel for East German citizens. As part of this decision, the East German government announced that East Germans would be allowed to cross the border with West Berlin. This caused it to fall. The fall of the wall symbolized that the Cold War had ended. -
Period: to
1990s
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Persian Gulf War/ First Iraq War
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began -
Rodney King Incident
Rodney Glen King was an African-American taxi driver who became known internationally as the victim of Los Angeles Police Department brutality, after a videotape was released of several police officers beating him during his arrest on March 3, 1991. A civilian, George Holiday, filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to local news station KTLA. The footage clearly showed King being beaten repeatedly, and the incident was covered by news media around the world. -
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is an American politician and environmentalist who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Gore was Bill Clinton's running mate in their successful campaign in 1992, and the pair was re-elected in 1996. Near the end of Clinton's second term, Gore was selected as the Democratic nominee for the 2000 presidential election but lost the election in a very close race after a Florida recount. After his term as vice-president ended in 2001. -
Election of 1992
The United States presidential election of 1992 was the 52nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1992. Democratic Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas defeated incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush, independent businessman Ross Perot of Texas, and a number of minor candidates. Bush had alienated many of the conservatives in his party by breaking his 1988 campaign pledge against raising taxes. -
Bill Clinton Presidency
During his presidency, Clinton advocated for a wide variety of legislation and programs, most were enacted into law or implemented by the executive branch. His policies, particularly the NAFTA and welfare reform, have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance. His policy of conservatism helped to reduce deficits on budgetary matters.Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. -
World Trade Center Attack 1993
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, when a truck bomb detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 pounds urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to send the North Tower crashing into the South Tower, bringing both towers down and killing tens of thousands of people.It failed to do so but killed six people and injured over a thousand -
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Canada. NAFTA has two supplements: the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. -
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
DADT was the official United States policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, instituted by the Clinton Administration on February 28, 1994, when Department of Defense Directive issued on December 21, 1993, took effect, lasting until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. -
Lewinsky Affair
The Lewinsky scandal was an American political sex scandal that involved 49-year-old President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The sexual relationship took place between 1995 and 1996 and came to light in 1998. Further investigation led to charges of perjury and led to the impeachment of Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial. -
Election of 2000
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush, and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President. Bill Clinton, the incumbent President, was vacating the position after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Bush narrowly won the November 7 election, with 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266. -
SCOTUS Case: Bush v Gore
On December 9, the Court had preliminarily halted the Florida recount that was occurring. Eight days earlier, the Court unanimously decided the closely related case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. The Electoral College was scheduled to meet on December 18, to decide the election. The Court ruled that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties and ruled that no alternative method could be established within the time -
George W. Bush Presidency
George W. Bush was America’s 43rd president. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Bush worked in the Texas oil industry before becoming governor. In 2000, he won the presidency after defeating Democratic challenger Al Gore. Bush’s time in office was shaped by the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America. In response to the attacks, he declared a global “war on terrorism,” established the Department of Homeland Security and authorized U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. -
Hurricane Katrina Disaster
Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly tropical cyclone that is tied with Hurricane Harvey of 2017 as the costliest tropical cyclone on record. Katrina was also one of the costliest natural disasters and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. As Katrina made landfall, its front right quadrant, which held the strongest winds, slammed into Gulf port, Mississippi, devastating it. The storm originated over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. -
War on Terror
The War on Terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism, is an international military campaign that was launched by the U.S. government after the September 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001. The naming of the campaign uses a metaphor of war to refer to a variety of actions that do not constitute a specific war as traditionally defined. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 Sept. 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. -
9/11 Attacks
On September 11, 19 militants associated with Al-Qaeda hijacked 4 planes and carried out suicide attacks against places in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a third plane hit the Pentagon outside D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The attacks resulted in extensive death and destruction, triggering major U.S. initiatives to combat and defining the presidency of George W. Bush. 3,000 were killed. -
PATRIOT ACT
The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. With its ten-letter abbreviation expanded, the full title is “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001”. The abbreviation, as well as the full title, have been attributed to Chris Cylke, a former staffer on the House Judiciary Committee. From broad concern felt among Americans from the Sep. 11 attacks. -
Election of 2008
Democrat Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain. Nine states changed allegiance from the 2004 election. The selected electors from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia voted for President and Vice President of the United States on December 15, 2008. Those votes were tallied before a joint session of Congress on January 8, 2009. Obama received 365 electoral votes, and McCain 173. -
Obama Presidency
Obama's first-term addressed the global financial crisis and included a major stimulus package, a partial extension of the Bush tax cuts, legislation to reform health care, a major financial regulation reform bill, and the end of a major US military presence in Iraq. In his second term, Obama attempted to combat climate change, signing a major international climate agreement and an executive order to limit carbon emissions. Obama also presided over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
