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The Iron Curtain Speech
In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” -
The 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. -
Marshall Plan
An Act to promote world peace and the general welfare, national interest, and foreign policy of the United States through economic, financial, and other measures necessary to the maintenance of conditions abroad in which free institutions may survive and consistent with the maintenance of the strength and stability of the United States. -
The Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. -
The Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical spread during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 :547-9 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. -
Alger Hiss case
Accusation of espionage. On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist Party member, appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to denounce Alger Hiss. A senior editor at Time magazine, Chambers had written a scathingly satirical editorial critical of the Yalta agreements. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party. -
Soviet Atomic Bomb Test of 1949
First Soviet nuclear test. 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. -
Rosenburg trial
The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union). -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. -
Army-McCarthy hearings
The hearings were held for the purpose of investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Army accused chief committee counsel Roy Cohn of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to G. David Schine, a former McCarthy aide and a friend of Cohn's. -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference (April 26 – July 20, 1954) was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle outstanding issues in the Korean peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina. -
The Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 per the Paris Pacts of 1954, but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the U.S. 2nd Air Division (later Seventh Air Force), U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968. -
The Invasion of Hungary
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. -
U2 Incident
The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. -
he Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning America. -
Assassination of Diem
The brutal murder of the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his powerful brother and adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, on November 2, 1963, was a major turning point in the war in Vietnam. -
Assassination of JFK
Most importantly, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was shot twice, and an hour after his death Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
On August 4, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced that two days earlier, U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. Johnson dispatched U.S. planes against the attackers and asked Congress to pass a resolution to support his actions. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces -
Assassination of MLK
James Earl Ray was born in Alton, Illinois, on March 10, 1928. A confirmed racist and small-time criminal, Ray began plotting the assassination of revered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in early 1968. He shot and killed King in Memphis on April 4, 1968, confessing to the crime the following March. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by four Warsaw Pact nations – the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland – on the night of 20–21 August 1968. -
The Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by four Warsaw Pact nations – the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland – on the night of 20–21 August 1968. Approximately 250,000 Warsaw pact troops attacked Czechoslovakia that night, with Romania and Albania refusing to participate. 108 Czechoslovakian civilians were killed and around 500 wounded in the invasion. -
Riots of Democratic convention
Jump to The Chicago police riot - Tom Hayden, one of the leaders of Students for a Democratic Society, encouraged protesters to move out of the park to riot. -
Election of Nixon
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, won the election over the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. -
Kent State
During an altercation on May 4, twenty-eight guardsmen opened fire on a crowd, killing four students and wounding nine. ... The Kent State shootings were the subject of the 1970 song "Ohio" by the group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. ... Another, similar incident took place ten days later ... -
Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and china. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973 to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The treaty included the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam ... Once the ceasefire is in effect, U.S. troops (along with other non-Vietnamese ... -
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, depending on context, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. -
Reagan elected
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), a former actor and California governor, served as the 40th U.S. president from 1981 to 1989. Raised in small-town Illinois, he became a Hollywood actor in his 20s and later served as the Republican governor of California from 1967 to 1975. -
SDI announced
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to .... Reagan announced, "I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world -
Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
The Geneva Summit of 1985 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on November 19 and 20, 1985, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders met for the first time to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic -
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
The 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. -
Assassination of RFK
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy, commonly known by his initials RFK, was an American politician from Massachusetts. He served as the United States junior senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. -
‘Tear down this wall’ speech
President Reagan giving a speech at the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Federal Republic of ... Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. ... Yet I do not come here to lament. ... General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for ... Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
