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sputnik
The Soviet Union inaugurates the “Space Age” with its launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite
Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic
Sputnik transmitted radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators. Those in the United States with access to such equipment tuned in and listened in awe as the beeping Soviet spacecraft passed over America several times a day. -
u2 spyplane incident
An American U-2 spy plane is shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month. -
berlin wall - set up and demolition
the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” 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 -
berlin blockade and airlift
international crisis that arose from an attempt by the Soviet Union, in 1948–49, to force the Western Allied powers to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin
began a blockade of all rail, road, and water communications between Berlin and the West.
