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Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution began in 1917 during WW1 because many people wanted change. The Russian Empire fell when the Tsar Abdicated his power. A provisional government was set up but did not last long as the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin over threw the provisional government. They fought a civil war against counter-revolutionaries and reconstituted as the communist party taking control of the Russian government creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR. -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference meeting of the 3 allied power's leaders, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Harry S. Truman, to discuss post war Germany, boundaries, and the defeat of Japan. Though they were allies, tensions grew between them as Churchill and Truman wanted to spread political freedom and democracy to war-ravaged Europe while Stalin wanted to spread communism. July 17- August 2 1945 -
The Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
To finish WWII in the pacific and make Japan end the war, The U.S. dropped two atomic bombs. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th 1945. The second was dropped August 9th of the same year. The bomb was dropped to end the war but also as a show of power to the Soviet Union. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the name given to the line that divided democratic Western Europe from Communist Eastern Europe. It was a line the Soviets used to keep their satellite countries away from open contact from non-soviet states. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was a foreign policy created to stop the spread of Soviet and communist expansion by Harry S. Truman. It was proposed to congress on the 12th of March in 1947 and further developed on The 12th of July 1948 to stop Soviet influence in Turkey and Greece. -
The Molotav Plan
The Molotav Plan was a plan by the Soviet Union to provide economic aid to Eastern European countries who aligned themselves with Communism. The countries that joined would not be able to leave. It was the Soviets refusal to accept the Marshal Plan. -
Hollywood 10
The Hollywood 10 were a group of 10 Hollywood directors accused of being apart of communist propaganda and banned from directing any more films. More actors were interviewed and claimed to be Anti-McCarythist. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall plan was an American initiative to provide aid to Western Europe to prevent the spread of communism. The U.S. used over $13,000,000,000 to provide aid during the end of WWII. -
Berlin Blockade
During the Occupation of post-war Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Allies out of East Berlin. The Allies began flying over and dropping packages of supplies to the people cut off from them all by the Soviets. -
Berlin Airlift
As the Soviet Union had cut off supplies and electricity to east Berlin many democratic nations began to airdrop supplies to the stranded people daily. Up to 8,893 tons of necessities each day, such as fuel and food -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against and retaliate against further aggression from the Soviet Union.. -
Soviet Bomb Test
The atomic bomb was tested by the Soviet Union in 1949. It came as a shock to the Americans as they did not expect the Soviets to have a bomb ready so fast. -
Alger Hiss Case
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. Hiss was accused of Communist spying. -
Korean War
North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. The United Nations, with the United States as the main force, came to the aid of South Korea. China came to the help of North Korea, and the Soviet Union also gave some assistance to the North. -
Rosenburg Trial
The rosenbergs were accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians awaiting the espionage persecution (treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union). They were charged guilty and executed. -
Army-McCarthy hearings
The Army-McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings (shocker huh) that investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
Battle of Dien Bien Phu was consisted of a struggle between French and Viet Minh (Vietnamese Communist and nationalist) forces for control of a small mountain outpost on the Vietnamese border near Laos. -
Geneva Conference
The leaders of several nations including the U.S. and Soviet Union came to meet in Geneva to talk about resolving issues in Asia -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a response to NATO by creating a treaty with the Soviet Union and seven satellites -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution 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. Though leaderless when it first began, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the USSR's forces drove Nazi Germany from its territory at the end of World War II. -
U2 Incident
A U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. The aircraft, flown by Central Intelligence Agency was performing photographic aerial reconnaissance when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
On April 17, 1961, 1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs o the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The exiles attempted to stop Castro but failed. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete wall to keep East Berlin citizens from fleeing. It split Germany till 1989 keeping west Berlin free while East Berlin is under Communist rule. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear missiles on Cuba. Many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. -
Assassination of Diem
The Ngô brothers soon agreed to surrender and were promised safe exile; after being arrested, they were instead executed in the back of an armored personnel carrier by ARVN officers on the journey back to military headquarters at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base. While no formal inquiry was conducted, the responsibility for the deaths of the Ngô brothers is commonly placed on Minh's bodyguard, Captain Nguyễn Văn Nhung. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas while riding in a presidential motorcade. Kennedy was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. A ten-month investigation by the Warren Commission from November 1963 to September 1964 concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson automatically became President upon Kennedy's death. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
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, during the Vietnam War. -
Riots of Democratic convention
Other events preceding the 1968 Democratic convention contributed to the tense national mood. On April 4, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated and riots broke out throughout the country. This included Chicago, where Mayor Daley reportedly gave a "shoot to kill" instruction to police. -
Tet Offensive
A coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. Though U.S. forces managed to hold off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy casualties, North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, American withdrawal from the region. -
Assassination of MLK
One of the most influential civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. that evening. He was a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience. -
Assassination of RFK
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after winning the California presidential primaries in the 1968 election, and died the next day while hospitalized -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact nations – the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany 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. -
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. -
Kent State
Were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard during a mass protest against the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Twenty-nine guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. -
Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's visit to China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's rapprochement between the United States and China. The seven-day official visit to three Chinese cities was the first time a U.S. president had visited the ; Nixon's arrival in Beijing ended 25 years of no communication, nor diplomatic ties, between the two countries and was the key step in normalizing relations between the U.S. and China. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
Vietnam War. On January 15, 1973, President Richard Nixon of the USA ordered a ceasefire of the aerial bombings in North Vietnam. The decision came after Dr. Henry Kissinger, the National Security Affairs advisor to the president, returned to Washington from Paris, France with a draft peace proposal. -
Fall of Saigon
The Liberation or (depending on the context) the Fall of Saigon 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 (also known as the Việt Cộng) on 30 April 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam under the Socialist Republic. -
Reagan elected
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989 and helped end the soviet union. -
SDI announced
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). The concept was first announced publicly by President Ronald Reagan on 23 March 1983. -
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. It was the first time a Soviet leader had wanted to meet with a president -
‘Tear down this wall’ speech
"Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961. -
Fall of 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.
