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Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917 which took down the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the resignition of Emperor Nicholas II and the old regime was replaced by a provisional government during the first revolution. The revolution ended on November 7, 1917. -
Hollywood 10
10 members of the Hollywood film industry publicly denounced the tactics employed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an investigative committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, during its probe of alleged communist influence in the American motion picture business. These prominent screenwriters and directors, who became known as the Hollywood Ten, received jail sentences and were banned from working for the major Hollywood studios. -
Potsdam Conference
The meeting at Potsdam was the third conference between the leaders of the Big Three nations. The Soviet Union was represented by Joseph Stalin, Britain by Winston Churchill, and the United States by President Harry S. Truman. Ended on August 2, 1945 -
Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stage of World War II, the United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. -
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. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion (nearly $140 billion in current dollar value as of September 2017) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. Ended in 1952 -
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. Ended on May 12, 1949. -
Berlin Airlift
During the Berlin Blockade, The Allies would supply their sectors of Berlin from the air. Allied cargo planes would use open air corridors over the Soviet occupation zone to deliver food, fuel and other goods to the people who lived in the western part of the city. -
Alger Hiss Case
Alger Hiss former U.S. State Department official who was convicted in January 1950 of perjury concerning his dealings with Whittaker Chambers, who accused him of membership in a communist espionage ring. -
NATO
he North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European states based on the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. -
Soviet Bomb Test
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. -
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. Ended on July 27, 1953. -
Rosenburg Case
In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953. -
Army-McCarthy Hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. These hearings dominated national television from April to June 1954. -
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. It temporarily divided Vietnam at the 17th Parallel. The battle ended on May 7, 1954 -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference was a conference among several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland from April 26 – July 20, 1954. It was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defence treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland among the Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslavakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, and the Soviet Union. The pact dissolved on July 1, 1991. -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies. The uprising lasted until November 10, 1956 and resulted in the revolution being crushed and the Soviets having victory. -
U2 Incident
The USSR shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, President Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the CIA had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. Ended on April 19, 1961. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided East and West Berlin in effort to stem the tide of refugees attempting to leave East Beriln. The wall was demolished on November 9, 1989 -
Cuban Missile Crisis
THe Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. Ended on October 28, 1962. -
Assassination of Diem
The arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed invasion led by General Dương Văn Minh. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a resolution passed by Congress, 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, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during th Vietnam War. Ended on November 2, 1968. -
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 of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King Jr., American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. that evening. -
Assassinaion of RFK
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, shortly after winning the California presidential primaries in the 1968 election, and died the next day while hospitalized. -
Invasion of Czechoslavakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact nations: the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland. -
Riots of Democratic Convention
On August 28, 1968 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. -
Election of Nixon
Two years after losing to Kennedy, Nixon ran for governor of California and lost in a bitter campaign against Edmund G. Brown. Most political observers believed that Nixon’s political career was over but by February 1968 he had sufficiently recovered his political standing in the Republican Party to announce his candidacy for president. On November 5, 1968 Nixon won the election. -
Kent State
The Kent State shootings 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. 21 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
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. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
On January 15, 1973, President Nixon 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 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 on 30 April 1975. -
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. He was elected on November 4, 1980 -
SDI Announced
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. By the early 1990s, with the Cold War ending and nuclear arsenals being rapidly reduced, political support for SDI collapsed. SDI officially ended in 1993. -
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 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. -
"Tear down this wall" Speech
This speech by President Ronald Reagan to the people of West Berlin contains one of the most memorable lines spoken during his presidency. The Berlin Wall, referred to by the President, was built by Communists in August 1961 to keep Germans from escaping Communist-dominated East Berlin into Democratic West Berlin. -
Fall of the Berlin 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.
