-
Period: to
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American politician and General who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. -
Period: to
Ray Kroc
Raymond Albert "Ray" Kroc was an American businessman and philanthropist. He joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. -
Period: to
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States under President John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. -
Period: to
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974 when he became the only U.S. president to resign the office. -
Period: to
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine. -
Period: to
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. -
Period: to
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second ... -
Period: to
Roy Benavidez
Was a member of the United States Army Special Forces and retired United States Army master sergeant who received the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions ... -
Period: to
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was an American political and social activist and anarchist who co-founded the Youth International Party. -
Period: to
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a committee (1938–75) of the U.S. House of Representatives, created to investigate disloyalty and subversive organizations. Its first chairman, Martin Dies, set the pattern for its anti-Communist investigations. -
Period: to
Containment Policy
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. -
Period: to
Rock n Roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock 'n' roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from a combination of African-American genres such as blues, boogie-woogie, jump blues, jazz, and gospel music, etc -
War Powers Act
This was an American emergency law that increased Federal power during World War II. The act was signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and put into law on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. -
G.I Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act 1944)
This was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). -
Period: to
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain formed the imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolized efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. -
Period: to
Baby Boom Generation
Post WW2 -
Period: to
Cold War
During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. -
Period: to
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical hegemony during the Cold War. -
Period: to
Berlin Airlift
At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous again, and prevent the spread of communism. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. -
Period: to
Domino Theory
The domino theory was a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. -
Period: to
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism." -
Period: to
Rustbelt to Sunbelt
With the loss of economic opportunities in the Rust Belt, it's no surprise that people started moving, and in large numbers. From the 1950s-1970s, Americans migrated in droves out of the Rust Belt. The Sun Belt, as it was called, is roughly the lower third of the country, basically the American South and Southwest. There were some good reasons to move here. For one, new technologies like air conditioning made summer's much more enjoyable, while winters in the South are obviously pretty temperat -
Period: to
1950's Culture
The United States in the 1950s experienced marked economic growth – with an increase in manufacturing and home construction amongst a post-World War II economic boom. The Cold War and its associated conflicts helped create a politically conservative climate in the country, as the quasi-confrontation intensified throughout the entire decade. Fear of communism caused public Congressional hearings in both houses of Congress while anti-communism was the prevailing sentiment in the United States thro -
Period: to
1950's Prosperity
Racial fears, affordable housing, and the desire to leave decaying cities were all factors that prompted many white Americans to flee to suburbia. And no individual promoted suburban growth more than william levitt. White flight is a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of people of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. -
Period: to
Koresan War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
Rosenberg Trial
The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union). -
Period: to
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954 (though conflict in the region stretched back to the mid-1940s), after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued against the backdrop of an intense Cold War between two global superpower -
Period: to
Beatniks
Beatnik was a media stereotype prevalent throughout the 1950s to mid-1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s. -
Interstate Highway Act
The bill created a 41,000-mile “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” that would, according to Eisenhower, eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” -
Space Race (Sputnik and Moon landings)
After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world’s two great powers–the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union–against each other. Beginning in the late 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system. -
Anti-War Movement
An anti-war movement (also antiwar) is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. -
Period: to
1960's Culture
The 1960s was a decade that began on January 1, 1960 and ended on December 31, 1969. The term "1960s" also refers to an era more often called the Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends around the globe. This "cultural decade" is more loosely defined than the actual decade, beginning around 1963 and ending around 1974. -
Period: to
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion, known in Latin America as Invasión de Playa Girón, was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961 -
Period: to
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962. -
Period: to
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
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. -
Period: to
Miranda v. Arizona
Ernesto Miranda was arrested in his house and brought to the police station where he was questioned by police officers in connection with a kidnapping and rape. After two hours of interrogation, the police obtained a written confession from Miranda. The written confession was admitted into evidence at trial despite the objection of the defense attorney and the fact that the police officers admitted that they had not advised Miranda of his right to have an attorney -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, 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, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian commands and control centers throughout South Vietnam. -
Vietnamization
Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops." -
Period: to
1970's Culture
The 1970s commonly abbreviated as the "Seventies was a decade of the Gregorian calendar. In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the 1970s as a "pivot of change" in world history focusing especially on the economic upheavals. In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and economic liberty of women, continued to grow. -
26th Amendment
Prohibits the denial of the right of US citizens, eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age. -
Period: to
1980's Culture
The decade saw great socioeconomic change due to advances in technology and the beginning of globalization. As economic liberalization increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Mexico, South Korea,Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany saw large economic growth during this decade. The AIDS epidemic became recognized in the 1980s and has since killed an estimated 39 million people.