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The House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. -
United Nations formation
After the failure of the League of Nations, the great political leaders of the time, including Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, convened to develop The Declaration of the United Nations on January 1, 1942. -
Yalta Conference
In February, 1945, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met again. This time the conference was held in Yalta in the Crimea. With Soviet troops in most of Eastern Europe, Stalin was in a strong negotiating position. Roosevelt and Churchill tried hard to restrict post-war influence in this area but the only concession they could obtain was a promise that free elections would be held in these countries. -
Potsdam Conference
On 16 July 1945, the "Big Three" leaders met at Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin. In this, the last of the World War II heads of state conferences, President Truman, Soviet Premier Stalin and British Prime Ministers Churchill and Atlee discussed post-war arrangements in Europe, frequently without agreement. Future moves in the war against Japan were also covered. The meeting concluded early in the morning of 2 August. -
Truman Doctrine
On March 12, 1947, in an address to Congress, President Harry S. Truman declared it to be the foreign policy of the United States to assist any country whose stability was threatened by communism. His initial request was specifically for $400 million to assist both Greece and Turkey, which Congress approved. The Truman Doctrine was followed by the Marshall Plan later that year. -
Marshall Plan
Marshall Plan or European Recovery Program,project instituted at the Paris Economic Conference (July, 1947) to foster economic recovery in certain European countries after World War II. The Marshall Plan took form when U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall urged (June 5, 1947) that European countries decide on their economic needs so that material and financial aid from the United States could be integrated on a broad scale. -
Berlin Airlift
Following World War II, a delicate balance of power had surfaced between the once united Allies: Great Britain, the United States, France, and the Soviet Union. The opposing economic structures of capitalism and communism emerged triumphant at the end of the war. The two blossoming superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, sought to ensure their permanence by negotiating territorial claims throughout the globe. -
NATO formation
NATO was founded by a collection of Western nations some years after World War II. Indeed, at this very moment an amalgamation of nations under the aegis of NATO is busily bombing Belgrade back into the Stone Age. With the recent addition of Poland and The Czech Republic, NATO is beginning to make Russia more nervous than usual. But it wasn't always that way. For a fleeting few months, Russia was actually a member. And France wasn't. -
North Korean Invasion of South Korea
The North Korean invasion of South Korea in June of 1950 caught the United States and the South Koreans themselves wholly by surprise. The retreat by the allied forces (which became United Nations forces when the Soviets walked out of the UN Security Council and were thus unable to veto intervention) quickly became a rout. The South Korean capital of Seoul fell within days, and within a few weeks, the UN forces had been driven into a small salient around Pusan, at the southern tip of the KP. -
Rosenberg Execution
June 19 marks the anniversary of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's historic execution in 1953. Found guilty of relaying U.S. military secrets to the Soviets, the Rosenbergs were the first U.S. civilians to be sentenced to death for espionage. -
Armistice Signed Ending Korean War
The year 1953 marked the end of a brutal and some say senseless war that claimed the lives of more than 2.5 million Koreans and more than 36,000 American soldiers. The year 1953 also marked the beginning of the Korean War Armistice Agreement that sought to stop the Korean War and insure a complete cessation of hostilities and all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement could be achieved. -
Sputnik 1 Launched
Sputnik was the opening shot in the space race between the United States and the forme Soviet Union. the basketball-sized spacecraft was the world's first artificial satellite. It orbited the Earth sending back a beeping signal for 23 days.Sputnik created shockwaves back on Earth. It was an amazing technical achievement followed only a month later by the stunning launch of Sputnik II, which carried the first living thing - Laika the dog - into space. -
First Man in Space
April 12 was already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (left, on the way to the launch pad) became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. Newspapers like The Huntsville Times (right) trumpeted Gagarin's accomplishment. -
First American in Space
On May 5, 1961, Mercury Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. (right, headed to launch) blasted off in his Freedom 7 capsule atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket (left). His 15-minute sub-orbital flight made him the first American in space. -
Creation of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was erected in the dead of night and for 28 years kept East Germans from fleeing to the West. Its destruction, which was nearly as instantaneous as its creation, was celebrated around the world. -
First Man on the Moon
Apollo 11 blasted off on July 16, 1969. Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins were the astronauts on Apollo 11.Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. They landed on the moon in the Lunar Module. It was called the Eagle. Collins stayed in orbit around the moon. He did experiments and took pictures. -
The Warsaw Pact
IN APRIL 1985, the general secretaries of the communist and workers' parties of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland, and Romania gathered in Warsaw to sign a protocol extending the effective term of the 1955 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, which originally established the Soviet-led political-military alliance in Eastern Europe. thier action ensured that the Warsaw Pact would stay around our nation
