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Soviets Create and Test Nuclear Bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb. On September 3, a U.S. spy plane flying off the coast of Siberia picked up the first evidence of radioactivity from the explosion. Later that month, President Harry S. Truman announced to the American people that the Soviets too had the bomb. Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb. -
U.S. Tests Hydrogen Bomb
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The Bay of Pigs
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Berlin Wall Goes Up
The Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete wall between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany. Also it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border. -
U.S. invades Grenada
President Ronald Reagan, orders the Marines to invade and secure their safety. There were nearly 1,000 Americans in Grenada at the time, many of them students at the island’s medical school. In little more than a week, Grenada’s government was overthrown.The situation on Grenada had been of concern to American officials since 1979, when the leftist Maurice Bishop seized power and began to develop close relations with Cuba. The Reagan administration claimed a great victory.
