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Atomic Bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or from a combination of fission and fusion reactions. -
Buffer States of the USSR
Poland and other states between Germany and the Soviet Union have sometimes been described as buffer states, with reference both to when they were non-communist states before World War II, and to when they were communist states after World War II. #Brinkmanship -
U.S. aid to greece
The extension of military and economic aid to Greece in 1947 plunged the United States into deep involvement in Greek affairs before American public opinion had any understanding of the difficulties that would be encountered under a policy of supporting free nations against aggression in distant parts of the world. -
U.S. aid to Turkey
Publicly suggested by Marshall in June 1947, and put into action about a year later, the Plan was essentially an extension of the Greece–Turkey aid strategy to the rest of Europe. The U.S. administration considered the stability of the existing governments in Western Europe vital to its own interests. -
Truman Doctrine
Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. -
Molotov plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. -
Berlin airlift
The Berlin Airlift was a military operation by the United States, Great Britain and other western European nations to take food, fuel and other vital provisions into West Berlin. The Berlin airlift began after the Communist government of East Germany, which surrounded West Berlin, under the orders of Soviet Prime Minister Joseph Stalin, launched a blockade cutting off the land and canal supply routes to the western part of the city. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan, the European Recovery Program, channeled over $13 billion to finance the economic recovery of Europe between 1948 and 1951. The Marshall Plan successfully sparked economic recovery, meeting its objective of restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. -
NATO established
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is established by 12 Western nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denamark, and etc. The military alliance, which provided for a collective self-defense against Soviet aggression, greatly increased American influence in Europe. -
USSR gets atomic bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name “First Lightning.” In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. -
Communist win China
During China's war with Japan, Chiang Kai-shek had moved his forces deep into the interior, leaving a political vacuum in the east to be filled by the Communists. And Communist forces confronted the enemy, the Japanese, beginning with the "Hundred Regiments Campaign" in North China in 1940, led by Peng Dehuai. # containment theory -
Korean war
The world had hoped that the United Nations would insure peace. Five years after World War 2, Korea would shatter that illusion. Soviet leaders looked for regions where communism would find fertile conditions. Wherever they "liberated" a country or became its "trustee". #Mutually Assured Destruction -
Coup in Iran
Following the coup in 1953, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power. According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots on 19 August. Other CIA-paid men were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks, and took over the streets of the city. -
Coup in Gautemala
During China's war with Japan, Chiang Kai-shek had moved his forces deep into the interior, leaving a political vacuum in the east to be filled by the Communists. And Communist forces confronted the enemy, the Japanese, beginning with the "Hundred Regiments Campaign" in North China in 1940, led by Peng Dehuai. -
communist Angola
The People's Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República Popular de Angola) covers the period of Angolan history as a self-declared socialist state established in 1975 after it was granted independence from Portugal, akin to the situation in Mozambique. The newly founded nation enjoyed friendly relations with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the People's Republic of Mozambique. -
Warsaw Pact formed
The Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defence treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. -
Beginning of troops in Vietnam
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. -
Hungary (rebellion
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the communist government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. -
Suez Canal Crisis
The Suez Crisis or the Second Arab–Israeli War also named the Tripartite Aggression and Operation Kadesh or Sinai War, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. -
Cuba (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 (October 16-28 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. -
China explodes atomic bomb
When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Soviet Union agreed to aid China technologically in the development of nuclear industry. However, in June 1959, the USSR refused to provide relevant information as it had previously promised. Moreover, the Soviet Union recalled all technicians and advisers from China. -
Coup in Chile
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event 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 U.S. President Richard Nixon, Allende was overthrown by the armed forces and national police. -
End of Troops in Vietnam
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. -
Iran Islamic Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was supported by the United States, and eventual replacement of 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy with an Islamic Republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, supported by a wide range of people including various Islamist and leftist organizations and student movements. -
Sandinistas rise in Guatemala
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a democratic socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistance against the United States occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s -
US- Iran embassy hostages
The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic standoff between Iran and the United States. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, after a group of Iranian students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. It stands as the longest hostage crisis in recorded history. -
Soviets invade Afganaistan
The Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. The event began brutal, decade, long attempt by Moscow to subdue the Afghan civil war and maintain a friendly and socialist government on its border. -
War in El Salvador
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 several left-wing groups. A coup on October 15, 1979, led to the killings of anti-coup protesters by the government as well as anti-disorder protesters by the guerrillas, and is widely seen as the tipping point toward civil war. -
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". The characterization demeaned the Soviet Union and angered Soviet leaders. -
Star Wars (S.D.I.)
Strategic Defense Initiative, was a program first initiated on March 23, 1983 under President Ronald Reagan. The purpose of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specially the Soviet Union. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair, also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was built to stop East Germans from defecting to the West. West Germans were able to visit East Germany by way of permit. There were 136 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall during its existence. It is believed that approximately 5,000 people made the escape from East Germany to the West successfully by crossing the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall made the Soviets and East Germans look bad. -
Fall of the USSR
The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. The United States rejoiced as its formidable enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the Cold War which had hovered over these two superpowers since the end of World War 2.
