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Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference was a major conference where United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet Unions Premier Joseph Stalin, and Great Britains Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to plan the final defeat. -
Berlin Declaration
For centuries Europe has been an idea, holding out hope of peace and understanding. At hope has been pulfilled. European unification has made peace and prosperity possible. -
Potsdam Conference
The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II -
North Vietnam
North Vietnam was a government founded in 1945, laying claim to all of Vietnam yet comprising most of North Vietnam from September 1945 to December 1946, controlling pockets to teritory throughout the country until 1945. -
Iron Curtain Speech
Nine months after Sir Winston Churchill failed to be reelected as Britain's Prime Minister, Churchill traveled by train with President Harry Truman to make a speech. On March 5, 1946, at the request of Westminster College in the small Missouri town of Fulton. -
Greek Civil War
The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946–49 between the Greek government army—backed by Great Britain and the United States. -
First Indochina War
During the era of conquest in East Asia, France focused on the fortune withheld in Indochina. The French had been in the area for centuries, yet policies changed when other Western European nations began to colonize and claim their own pieces of Asia. -
Containment Policy
It was for allies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. -
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the United States to travel to their sectors of Berlin -
Berlin Airlift
After World War II, the Allies partitioned the defeated Germany into a Soviet-occupied zone, an American-occupied zone, a British-occupied zone and a French-occupied zone. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan generated a resurgence of European industrialization and brought extensive investment into the region. It was also a stimulant to the U.S. economy by establishing markets for American goods. -
NATO
NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
First Soviet Union tests A-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 -
Korean War- American Involvement
While the end of World War II brought peace and prosperity to most Americans, it also created a heightened state of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States. -
Second Red Scare
As World War II was ending, a fear-driven movement known as the Second Red Scare began to spread across the United States. -
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. -
Eisenhower Presidency
Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms (1953-1961) to ease the tensions of the Cold War. -
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, serving as premier from 1958 to 1964. Though he largely pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, he instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by placing nuclear weapons 90 miles from Florida. -
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. -
Suez Crisis
On October 29, 1956, Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating the Suez Crisis. -
Sputnik
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite -
Cuban Revolution
The revolution began in 1952, when former army Sergeant Fulgencio Batista seized power during a hotly contested election. Batista had been president from 1940-1944 and ran for president in 1952. -
Kennedy Presidency
John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States (1961-1963), the youngest man elected to the office. On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, becoming also the youngest President to die. -
U2 Incident
An international diplomatic crisis erupted in May 1960 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers -
Bay of Pigs
Many Cubans welcomed Fidel Castro’s 1959 overthrow of the dictatorial President Fulgencio Batista, yet the new order on the island just about 100 miles from the United States made American officials nervous. Batista had been a corrupt and repressive dictator, but he was considered to be pro-American and was an ally to U.S. companies. -
Vietnman War- American involment
In 1961, South Vietnam signed a military and economic aid treaty withthe U.S. leading to the arrival of U.S. support troops and the formation of the U.S. Millitary Assistance Command. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989, constructed by the German democratic Republic. -
JFK Assaination
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave broad congressional approval for expansion of the Vietnam War. During the spring of 1964, military planners had developed a detailed design for major attacks on the North. -
SALT 1
A series of treaties was issued under the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty to curtail the build up of nuclear weapons. SALT 1, as it is commenly known, was the first of the Strategic Arms Limitation talks between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. -
Tet offensive
The Tet offense 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 Vietname against the forces of South Vietnam. -
Nixon Presdiency
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974 when he bacame the only U.S. president to resign the office. -
Apollo 11
Test link the primary objective of Apollo 11 was to complete a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961: performed a crewed lunar landing and return to earth. -
Detente
The easing of hostility or strained relations, especially between countries. -
SALT II
The primary goal of SALT II was to replace the Interim Agreement with a long-term comprehensive Treaty providing broad limits on strategic offensive weapons systems. -
Iran Hostage Crisis
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The immediate cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow Iran’s deposed Shah. -
Reagan Presidency
Ronald Reagan, originally an American actor and politician, became the 40th President of the United States serving from 1981 to 1989. His term saw a restoration of prosperity at home, with the goal of achieving "peace through strength" abroad. -
Tiananmen Square Massacre
In May 1989, nearly a million Chinese, mostly young students, crowded into central Beijing to protest for greater democracy and call for the resignations of Chinese Communist Party leaders deemed too repressive. For nearly three weeks, the protesters kept up daily vigils, and marched and chanted. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall had begun with the building of the Wall in 1961. However it took about three decades until the Wall was torn down. -
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The Soviet state was born in 1917. That year, the revolutionary Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar and established a socialist state in the territory that had once belonged to the Russian empire.
