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Atomic Bomb
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima -
Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. -
U.S Aid to Greece
The “bold new program” outlined by President Truman in his Inaugural Address is the projection of an American policy which has been under test in Greece for almost two years. The “benefits of our store of technical knowledge” have been extended to Greece on an unparalleled scale, as an accompaniment of military and economic aid to strengthen freedom-loving nations against the dangers of aggression and contribute to world economic recovery. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947, and further developed on July 12, 1948, when he pledged to contain threats to Greece and Turkey. -
Communist Angola
The overthrow of Portugal’s Prime Minister, Marcello Caetano, on 25 April 1974 hailed a watershed moment for the former Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Principe and Angola. The Armed Forces Movement (AFM) had overthrown the dictatorship in a mostly bloodless coup, thereby ending Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning on April 3, 1948. -
NATO Established
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is established by 12 Western nations, the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal. -
U.S Aid to Turkey
Berlin blockade lifted. On May 12, 1949, an early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two million citizens. -
USSR Gets Atomic Bomb
On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, code-named 'RDS-1', at the Semipalatinsk test site in modern-day Kazakhstan. The device had a yield of 22 kilotons. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. As a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea had been split into two sovereign states. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. -
Hungarian Rebellion
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, or Hungarian Uprising of 1956, was a nationwide revolt against the Communist regime of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957, orbiting for three weeks before its batteries died, then silently for two more months before falling back into the atmosphere. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. -
China Explodes Atomic Bomb
The People’s Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability, after a successful nuclear test on this day in 1964. China is the fifth member of this exclusive club, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. -
Coup in Chilie
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed moment in both the history of Chile and the Cold War. Following an extended period of social unrest and political tension between the opposition-controlled Congress of Chile and the socialist President Salvador Allende, as well as economic warfare ordered by US President Richard Nixon Allende was overthrown by the armed forces and national police. -
El Salvador Ward
The Salvadoran Civil War was a conflict between the military-led government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, a coalition or "umbrella organization" of left-wing groups. -
Evil Empire Speech
The phrase "evil empire" was first applied to the Soviet Union in 1983 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who took an aggressive, hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities, in calling for a rollback strategy that would, in his words, "write the final pages of the history of the Soviet Union". -
Star wars (S.D.I)
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars, was a program first initiated on March 23, 1983 under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders.
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