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House Un-American Activities Committee formed
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. Reorganized from its previous incarnations as the Fish Committee and the McCormack-Dickstein Committee and with a new chairman, the cantankerous Martin Dies of Texas, HUAC's strident attacks on the Roosevelt administration prior to the outbreak of the war did -
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. The Declaration was an accord between all nations fighting against the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union), promising not to form any other entangling alliances and that once the war was won, a formal peacekeeping organization, to be called the United Nations, would be -
Yalta conference
wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively—for the purpose of discussing Europe's postwar reorganization. Mainly, it was intended to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. -
Potsdam Conference
Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The three nations were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill[2] and later Clement Attlee,[3] and President Harry S. Truman. Stalin, Churchill, and Truman — as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill, awaiting the outcome of the 1945 general election, and then replaced Churchill as Prime Minister after the Labour Party's victory over the Conservat -
Truman Doctrine
is the common name for the Cold War strategy of containment versus the Soviet Union and the expansion of communism. This doctrine was first promulgated by President Harry Truman in an address to the U.S. Congress -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the primary program, 1948–51, of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger economic foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and repelling the threat of internal communism after World War II -
Berlin Airlift
to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin. The over 4,000 tons per day required by Berlin during the airlift totaled, for example, over ten times the volume that the encircled German 6th Army required six years earlier at the Battle of Stalingrad -
Era of McCarthyism begins
As World War II ended, Americans' fear of Germans and Japanese was transferred onto the communist Soviet Union. Though the Soviets had been their allies during the war, Americans began to see them as a threat. The Soviets had a nuclear bomb and were aggressively expanding their influence into Europe and Africa. China was soon taken over by communists. -
North Korean Invasion of South Korea
Korean War conflict that began in June 1950 between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), in which an estimated 3,000,000 persons lost their lives. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal participant, joined the war on the side of the South Koreans, and the People's Republic of China eventually came to North Korea's aid. After exceptional vicissitudes, the war was ended inconclusively in July 1953; it established a p -
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
An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the Latin arma, meaning weapons and statium, meaning a stopping. -
Sputnik 1 Launched
Sputnik 1 (Russian: "Спутник-1" Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputnʲɪk], "Satellite-1", ПС-1 (PS-1, i.e. "Простейший Спутник-1", or Elementary Satellite-1)) was the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited -
Creation of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a concrete barrier built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) that completely enclosed the city of West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The Wall included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses -
First Man in Space
Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (now in Smolensk Oblast, Russia), on 9 March 1934. The adjacent town of Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin in 1968 in his honour. His parents, Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina, worked on a collective farm.[1] While manual labourers are described in official reports as "peasants", this may be an oversimplification if applied to his parents — his mother was reportedly a voracious reader, and his father a skilled carpente -
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. -
First Man on the Moon
The Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, the third lunar mission of NASA's Apollo Program was crewed by Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon, while Collins orbited in the Command Module.[2] -
Warsaw Pact formation
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. Their action ensured that the Warsaw Pact, as it is commonly known, will
