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Cold War Starts
Tensions were apparent during the Potsdam Conference, where the victorious Allies negotiated the joint occupation of Germany. -
Truman Doctrine
Truman declared immediate economic and military aid to the governments of Greece and Turkey. -
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McCarthyism
Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy produced a series of investigations and hearings to expose supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government -
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Korean War
Conflict between North Korea (supplied and advised by the Soviet Union to invade the South) and South Korea (the United Nations joined with the South) in which 2.5 million people lost their lives -
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Vietnam War
A long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States, the Vietnam War severely damaged the U.S. economy. Unwilling to raise taxes to pay for the war, President Johnson unleashed a cycle of inflation. The war also weakened U.S. military morale and undermined, for a time, the U.S. commitment to internationalism -
Brown v. Board of Education
This case brought greater awareness to the racial inequalities that African Americans faced as a result of the case violent protests erupted in some places, and others responded by implementing “school-choice” programs that subsidized white students’ attendance at private, segregated academies -
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
A mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery’s segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional -
Sputnik
The Soviet Union launched the earth’s first artificial satellite, the launch of Sputnik fueled both the space race and the arms race, in addition to increasing Cold War tensions, as each country worked to prepare new methods of attacking the other -
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Cuban Missile Crisis
A major confrontation in 1962 that brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to war over the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba, it played an important part in Nikita Khrushchev’s fall from power and the Soviet Union’s determination to achieve nuclear parity with the United States. -
March on Washington
Protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress. Greatly influenced national opinion and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, guaranteeing equal voting rights, outlawing discrimination in restaurants, theatres, and other public accommodations involved in interstate commerce, and encouraging school desegregation -
JFK Assassination
U.S. President John F. Kennedy accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson undertook a two-day five-city trip to Texas. The president and the first lady boarded an open limousine to ride with Democrat Texas Gov. John B. Connally, Jr., and his wife to the president’s next stop, the Trade Mart, where the president was scheduled to deliver a speech. At 12:30 PM, President Kennedy was struck by two shots. It led to the form of the 25th amendment. -
Civil Rights Act
U.S. legislation intended to end discrimination based on race, colour, religion, or national origin, the constitutionality of the act was immediately challenged and was upheld by the Supreme Court in the test case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. (1964) -
Tet Offensive
Attacks staged by North Vietnamese forces beginning in the early hours of, during the Vietnam War, its offensive was a crushing tactical defeat for the North, but it struck a sharp psychological blow that eroded support for the war among the American public and political establishment -
MLK Assassination
He stood on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, (where he was shot) where he had come to lead a march by striking sanitation workers, in response to King’s death, more than 100 American inner cities exploded in rioting, looting, and violence. -
RFK Assassination
Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary, Congress responded by expanding Secret Service protection to include major presidential candidates -
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Moon Landing
The Apollo 11 moon landing had a significant impact on the Cold War. It was a major victory for the United States in the Space Race, and it demonstrated the superiority of American technology and engineering -
Watergate break-in
In the early morning hours of June 17, 1972, a night guard at a D.C. hotel and office complex was making his rounds when he noticed a suspiciously taped-open exit door. He quickly alerted authorities, setting off a series of events that would forever change the nation. Now adding “-gate” to the end of a word instantly signifies a scandal. -
Roe v. Wade
Legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on, ruled (7–2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. Repeated challenges to Roe v. Wade after 1973 narrowed the decision’s scope but did not overturn it -
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Iranian hostage crisis
International crisis in which militants in Iran seized 66 American citizens at the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and held 52 of them hostage for more than a year. An agreement having been made, the hostages were released on January 20, 1981, minutes after the inauguration of the new U.S. president, Ronald Reagan. It was a severe blow to the U.S. morale and prestige -
Cold War Ends
The Cold War truly began to break down during the administration of Mikhail Gorbachev, who changed the more totalitarian aspects of the Soviet government and tried to democratize its political system. The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, giving rise to 15 newly independent nations, including Russia with an anticommunist leader.