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Battle of the Coral Sea
It was the first time since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that the enemy’s seemingly relentless advance into the Pacific was checked. It was also the first major U.S. Navy fleet action against Japan and the first naval engagement in history in which the participating ships never sighted or fired directly at each other. -
Revenue Act
It increased individual income tax rates, increased corporate tax rates and reduced the personal exemption amount from $1,500 to $1,200. The exemption amount for each dependent was reduced from $400 to $350. -
D-Day
more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. -
End of World War II
Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima and Okinawa and fears of a land invasion of Japan-led Truman to authorize the use of a devastating weapon–the atomic bomb–on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On August 15, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. -
First United Nations Meeting
The first meeting of the United Nations general assembly occurs after its founding on October 24, 1945, by fifty-one nations, including the Security Council nations of China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.A. -
The Marshall Plan
It was an American initiative passed in 1948 to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
NATO
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was formed as a mutual defense pact between the U.S., Canada, England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. -
Germany Splits in Half
After Berlin was divided into communist and capitalist zones, the entire western and eastern parts of the country split. The west was called the Federal Republic of Germany, and the east was renamed the German Democratic Republic. -
Korean War
The war was fought in the early 1950s between the United Nations, supported by the United States, and the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The war began in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. -
Dwight Eisenhower elected President
Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson, ending a string of Democratic Party wins that stretched back to 1932.
