-
Book burning in Nazi Germany
The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Association of Nazi Germany to ceremonially burn books in Germany and Austria by classical liberal, anarchist, socialist, pacifist, communist, Jewish, and other authors whose writings were viewed as subversive or whose ideologies undermined the National Socialist administration. -
Development of the atomic bomb
The Manhattan District of the Corps of Engineers organizes the Manhattan Project, the development of an atomic bomb at a laboratory in Los Alamos, NM. -
Rise of suburbia/Levittown, PA
Levittown is a census-designated place (CDP) and planned community in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States, within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. I is sometimes recognized as the largest suburb of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. It was planned and built by Levitt & Sons. The brothers Bill Levitt and architect Alfred Levitt designed its typical houses. -
Peace Treaty ending WWII
The victorious wartime Allied powers (principally the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France) negotiated the details of treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. -
The Cold War
A sustained state of political and military tension between powers in the Western Bloc, dominated by the United States with NATO among its allies, and powers in the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union along with the Warsaw Pact. This began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. -
Blacklisting in the entertainment industry
The mid-20th-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or associations, real or suspected. -
The Hiss Affair
On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist Party member appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to denounce Alger Hiss. A senior editor at Time magazine, Chambers had written a scathingly satirical editorial critical of the Yalta agreements, Chambers asserted that he had known Hiss as a member of "an underground organization of the United States Communist Party" in the 1930s. -
Loyalty Oath Controversy at University of California
In 1949, during the Cold War, the Board of Regents of the University of California imposed a requirement that all University employees sign an oath affirming not only loyalty to the state constitution, but a denial of membership or belief in organizations (including Communist organizations) advocating overthrow of the United States government. -
Korean War
A war between the Republic of Korea (South Korea), supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), at one time supported by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. It was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. -
Comic book bans in the 1950s
Many people forget the hysteria that surrounded the comic book industry in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Comic books were once considered the root cause of juvenile delinquency because of their glorification of sex, violence, and drugs. Binghamton, New York held public mass burnings of comic books where residents went house to house to collect and burn all comic books found. -
Development of color television
Color television is part of the history of television, the technology of television and practices associated with television's transmission of moving images in color video. -
The McCarthy Hearings
McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954. The hearings were held for the purpose of investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
A landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation.
