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Period: to
Cold War
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End of WWII
The drop of the second atomic bomb ends WWII. U.S. and the U.S.S.R. take claims on the world for democracy and comunism. -
Churchills "Iron Curtain" speech
Churchills speech on the opressive, shady cmmunists. He also makes apparent his desire to create a stronger bond between britain and the united states. -
Iran
Iran, located on the periphery of the Soviet Union, received Cold War economic and military assistance and resources from both superpowers: the US and the USSR. The country’s strong relationship with the US ended midway through the Cold War period with the success of the Iranian Revolution. At the conclusion of the Cold War conflict in 1990, the country did not even retain a diplomatic relationship with the Americans. -
The Mashal Plan
Channeled over $13 billion to finance the economic recovery of Europe between 1948 and 1951. The Marshall Plan successfully met its objective of 'restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. -
Berlin Blockade
THe Soviets blockaded the Berlin rail to cut of western supply routs, giving them control over Berlin. They then instead airlifted suppleis into berlin, so the soviets lifted the blockade and built the wall. -
NATO
In response to the communist russian threat, 12 European countries, including the U.S. The idea was to scare off a Russian invasion with Americas nuclear arsenal. -
Soviets atomic bomb program
The Soviet effort was led by Igor Kurchatov at a secret site known as Arzamas-16. Early efforts were greatly aided by spies inside the Manhattan Project. The Soviets began construction of a near copy of the Fat Man bomb, using the detailed design descriptions provided by Fuchs. This replica, named Joe-1 by the West, was detonated at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan on August 29, 1949. Its estimated yield was about 22 kilotons. -
Zedong takes control of china
At the opening of the Political Consultative Conference in Peking, Mao Zedong announces that the Chinese government will be "under the leadership of the Communist Party of China."
In September, with cannons firing salutes and ceremonial flags waving, Mao announced the victory of communism in China and vowed to establish the constitutional and governmental framework to protect the "people's revolution." -
Mcarthys witch hunt
McCarthyism, as it i called, is making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism. -
Afghanistan
After the Second World War and the independence of India, Britain declined as an imperial power and the US replaced it. The Cold War saw both the US and the Soviet Union try to gain influence in Afghanistan. By now Stalinist Russia bore no relation to the revolutionary country of 1917 that had no imperial designs on other states. -
Korean war
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. After some early back-and-forth across the 38th parallel, the fighting stalled and casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. -
Rosenburg executions
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. -
Korean war ends
After three years of a bloody and frustrating war, the United States, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea agree to an armistice, bringing the Korean War to an end. The armistice ended America's first experiment with the Cold War concept of "limited war." -
Atlas ICBM Missile
The SM-65 Atlas was the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed and deployed by the United States. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by Convair Division of General Dynamics at the Kearny Mesa assembly plant north of San Diego, California. Atlas became operational as of October 1959. The Atlas missile's warhead was over 100 times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Nagasaki in 1945. -
Vietnam
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954, after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh, and continued against the backdrop of the Cold War between two global superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. -
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA) for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, the Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national security and symbolic of technological and ideological superiority. -
Bay of Pigs
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. Launched from Guatemala, the invading force was defeated by the Cuban armed forces, under the command of Prime Minister Fidel Castro, within three days. -
Cuba and Fidel Castro
Cuban leader Fidel Castro established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother Raúl in 2008. During that time, Castro’s regime was successful in reducing illiteracy, stamping out racism and improving public health care, but was widely criticized for stifling economic and political freedoms. -
U-2 Spy Incident
An international crisis erupted in May 1960 when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers . Confronted with the evidence espionage, President Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. CIA had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The Soviets convicted Powers on espionage charges and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. However, after serving less than two years, he was released. -
Berlin Wall
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic began to build a barbed wire and concrete wall between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. -
Checkpoint Charlie Standoff
Soon after the construction of the Berlin Wall, a standoff occurred between U.S. and Soviet tanks on either side of Checkpoint Charlie. It began on 22 October as a dispute over whether East German guards were authorized to examine the travel documents of a U.S. diplomat named Allan Lightner passing through to East Berlin to see the opera. By October 27, 10 Soviet and an equal number of American tanks stood 100 metres apart on either side of the checkpoint. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. -
Kennedy Assasinated
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was fatally shot while traveling with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie, in a presidential motorcade. A ten-month investigation by the Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial. -
Gulf of Tonkin
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave broad congressional approval for expansion of the Vietnam War. During the spring of 1964, military planners had developed a detailed design for major attacks on the North, but at the time President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers feared that the public would not support an expansion of the war. By summer, however, rebel forces had established control over nearly half of South Vietnam. -
69'
69! -
Woodstock 69'
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969.
During the sometimes rainy weekend, thirty-two acts performed outdoors in front of 500,000 concert-goers. It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history. -
Detente
Détente is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party, Leonid I. Brezhnev, in Moscow, May 1972. Both countries stood to gain if trade could be increased and the danger of nuclear warfare reduced. -
End of Vietnam
U.S. military involvement in vietnam ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress. The capture of Saigon by the Vietnam People's Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. Some 58,220 U.S. service members died in the conflict. -
Iranian hostage crisis
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The students set their hostages free on January 21, 1981, 444 days after the crisis began and just hours after President Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address. Many historians believe that hostage crisis cost Jimmy Carter a second term as president. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair, was a political scandal in the United States that came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo. Some U.S. officials also hoped that the arms sales would secure the release of hostages and allow U.S. intelligence agencies to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. -
Geneva Accords
The Geneva Accords, were signed on 14 April 1988 between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the United States and the Soviet Union serving as guarantors.The agreements contained provisions for a timetable of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It officially began on 15 May 1988 and ended by 15 February 1989, thus putting an end to a nine-year-long Soviet occupation and Soviet war in Afghanistan. -
Warsaw pact ends
After 36 years in existence, the Warsaw Pact the military alliance between the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites comes to an end. The action was yet another sign that the Soviet Union was losing control over its former allies and that the Cold War was falling apart.
The Warsaw Pact was formed in 1955, primarily as a response to the decision by the United States and its western European allies to include a rearmed West Germany in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. -
Boris Yeltsin
Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. On 12 June 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of President of the SFSR. He vowed to transform Russia's socialist command economy into a free market economy and implemented economic shock therapy, price liberalization and privatization programs. -
Dissolution of the U.S.S.R.
On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time. A few days earlier, representatives from 11 Soviet republics. met in the Kazakh city and announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union. They declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States. The once-mighty Soviet Union had fallen, largely due to the great number of radical reforms that Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had implemented during his six years as leader. -
Me
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