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Russian Revolution
A pair of revolutions which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led the the rise of the Soviet Union -
Soviet Bomb Test
The classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. -
Iron Curtain
The notional barrier separating the former Soviet bloc and the West . -
Potsdam Conference
The third conference between the leaders of the Big Three nations: United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain -
Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The detonation of two nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki -
Truman Doctrine
An American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. -
Molotov Plan
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. -
Hollywood 10
The Hollywood Ten are a group of Hollywood workers (actors, directors, ect.) where each member of the Hollywood Ten refused to speak in defense of themselves and were arrested for contempt of the court. -
Marshall Plan
An American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion (nearly $110 billion in 2016 US dollars) in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
Berlin Blockade
One of the first major international crises of the Cold War. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European countries based on the North Atlantic Treaty. -
Alger Hiss Case
Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. -
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. -
Rosenburg Trial
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were United States citizens who spied for the Soviet Union and were tried, convicted and executed by the United States government. -
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. -
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. -
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, formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance,[1] 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. -
Hungarian Revolution
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. -
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. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
On April 17, 1961, 1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962or 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. -
Assassination of Diem
The arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed coup d'état led by General Dương Văn Minh in November 1963. -
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
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, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from March 2, 1965 until November 2, 1968, during the Vietnam War. -
Tet Offensive
It 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., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. -
Assassination of RFK
On June 5, 1968, 42-year-old presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight PDT at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just won the California presidential primaries in the 1968 election. -
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
he 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 -
Democratic National 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
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, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. -
Kent State
Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. The tragedy was a watershed moment for a nation divided by the conflict in Southeast Asia. -
Nixon Visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China (officially the People's Republic of China or PRC) was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States 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 Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation 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 April 30, 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. -
SDI Announced
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), byname Star Wars, proposed U.S. strategic defensive system against potential nuclear attacks—as originally conceived, from the Soviet Union. The SDI was first proposed by President Ronald Reagan in a nationwide television address on March 23, 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. -
Tear down the wall
"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 -
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.
