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Potsdam Conference
From July 17 to August 2, 1945, the Potsdam Conference was place in Potsdam, Germany. The Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States were among the participants. -
Atomic bomb
On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. -
Long Telegram
The "Long Telegram" from Moscow by George F. Kennan helped define the US government's increasingly tough stance against the Soviets, and served as the foundation for the US "containment" strategy toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War. -
Iron Curtain Speech
Iron Curtain speech, a speech given by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, in which he emphasized the need for the United States and Britain to act as peacekeepers against the threat of Soviet communism, which had lowered an "iron curtain" between the two countries. -
Truman Doctrine
President Harry S. Truman developed the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the US would provide political, military, and economic help to any democratic nation threatened by external or internal authoritarian forces. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan, as well as the European Recovery Program that it spawned, was an ambitious attempt to spur economic growth in a dejected and practically bankrupt Europe following WWII. -
Hollywood 10
The Hollywood blacklist is a list of media workers who are disqualified for employment due to alleged communist or subversive affiliations. -
Berlin Blockade
The Soviet Union obstructed the Western Allies' train, road, and canal access to the areas of Berlin under Western control during the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany. And the United States aided them. -
Berlin Airlift
During World War II, the Soviet Union prevented access to the areas of Berlin controlled by the Western Allies through rail, road, and canal. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, often known as the North Atlantic Alliance, is a military alliance made up of 28 European and two North American countries. The organization is responsible for carrying out the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed on April 4, 1949. -
Alger Hiss case
In 1948, an American government officer named Alger Hiss was accused of spying for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. -
First Soviet bomb test
On August 29, 1949, at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, known in the West as Joe-1. -
The Korean War
The Korean War lasted from June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953, and was fought between North and South Korea. Following border conflicts and rebellions in South Korea, North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, and the war began. -
Rosenberg trial
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the first Americans to be executed for espionage conspiracy. -
Korean Armistice
The Korean Armistice Agreement is a cease-fire agreement that ended the Korean War's hostilities completely. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
Dien Bien Phu was the pivotal battle of the First Indochina War (1946–54). It was a battle for control of a small mountain outpost on the Vietnamese border near Laos between French and Viet Minh (Vietnamese Communist and Nationalist) soldiers. -
Army-McCarthy hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations from April to June 1954 to look into competing allegations made by the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy of the United States. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty created in Central and Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania (Albania withdrew in 1968). -
Hungarian Revolution
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution was a nationwide revolt against the Hungarian People's Republic's Stalinist government and USSR-imposed Hungarian domestic policies. -
U2 Incident
A US U-2 spy plane was shot down by Soviet Air Defense Forces on May 1, 1960, while conducting photographic aerial surveillance deep within Soviet territory. -
Chinese Communist Revolution
The Chinese Communist Revolution, also known as the War of Liberation in mainland China, was a battle that culminated in the formation of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed landing attempt by Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution on the southern coast of Cuba in 1961. -
Berlin Wall
From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin. On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic began construction on the wall. West Berlin was blocked off from the rest of East Germany, including East Berlin, by the Berlin Wall. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and hazardous confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union, and it was the closest the two superpowers got to nuclear war. -
Assassination of JFK
JFK, or John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination towards the conclusion of his third year in office. Then he was assassinated. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was enacted by Congress on August 7, 1964, enabling President Lyndon B. Johnson to take whatever actions he deemed necessary in retaliation and to support the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
Nixon's approach worked, and the Americans and North Vietnamese worked out the final details of the agreement in early January 1973. On January 27, all parties to the conflict, including South Vietnam, signed a final accord in Paris. Only America, it turned out, kept the cease-fire. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a concerted attack by the North Vietnamese on more than 100 South Vietnamese cities and outposts. The effort was intended to incite insurrection among South Vietnamese citizens and persuade the US to reduce its engagement in the Vietnam War. -
1968 riots at Democratic convention
Thousands of Vietnam War protesters clash with police in the streets of Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, while the Democratic Party splits over its position on Vietnam. The mainstream American train of thought on the Cold War with the Soviet Union was broken in less than 24 hours. -
Kent State
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre, occurred on May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio, 40 miles south of Cleveland, when the Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed Kent State University students and injured nine others. -
Fall of Saigon
The takeover of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong on April 30, 1975, is known as the Fall of Saigon or the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese. -
Reagan Elected
The presidential election of 1980 was the 49th quadrennial presidential election in the United States. It took place on November 4th, 1980. -
SDI Announced
As originally planned, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is a proposed US strategic defensive system against potential nuclear assaults. -
'Tear down the wall' Speech
The Berlin Wall Speech was a speech given by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin following the fall of the Berlin Wall. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall separating communist East Germany and West Germany fell on November 9, 1989, five days after half a million people assembled in East Berlin in a major protest.