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House Un-American Activites 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. -
Truman Doctrine
President Truman's policy of providing economic and military aid to any country threatened by communism or totalitarian ideology -
Marshall Plan
A United States program of economic aid for the reconstruction of Europe -
Berlin Airlift
Airlift in 1948 that supplied food and fuel to citizens of west Berlin when the Russians closed off land access to Berlin -
NATO Formation
North Atlantic Treaty (1949) for purposes of collective security. In 1994 it launched the partnerships for peace initiative. -
Era of McCarthyism begins
1950, February 9. McCarthy delivers speech in Wheeling, West Virginia and displays a list of 205 Communists in the State Department apparently harbored by Communist sympathizers in high places. -
Korean War
On 25 June 1950, the young Cold War suddenly turned hot, bloody and expensive. -
Rosenberg Execution
June 19 marks the anniversary of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's historic execution in 1953. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization, was an alliance creating an organised – and Russian dominated - military among central and political ties. -
Sputnik 1 Launched
The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball, weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. -
Bay of pigs invade
On March 17, 1960, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower agreed to start a program to overthrow the Cuban Government. -
Vietnam War
During WORLD WAR II, the Viet Minh, a nationalist party seeking an end to French colonial rule of Vietnam, was organized. -
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 became the first human in space. -
First American in Space
On May 5, 1961, in the Freedom 7 spacecraft, he was launched by a Redstone vehicle on a ballistic trajectory suborbital flight. -
Creation of Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was erected in the dead of night and for 28 years kept East Germans from fleeing to the West. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. -
First man on the moon
In 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong became the very first to accomplish that dream, followed only minutes later by Buzz Aldrin.
