-
GI Bill
The term GI Bill refers to any Department of Veterans Affairs education benefit earned by members of Active Duty, Selected Reserve and National Guard Armed Forces and their families. The benefit is designed to help servicemembers and eligible veterans cover the costs associated with getting an education or training. -
38th Parallel established as border
The 38th parallel north formed the border between North and South Korea prior to the Korean War. It is 38 degrees north of the Earth's equator. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the name for the 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. A term symbolizing the 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
The Cold War
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were the world's strongest nations. They were called superpowers. They had different ideas about economics and government. They fought a war of ideas called the Cold War. -
Truman Doctrine
The principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection. First expressed in 1947 by US President Truman in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey, the doctrine was seen by the communists as an open declaration of the Cold War. -
Marshall Plan
A program by which the United States gave economic aid to European countries to help them rebuild after the devastation of World War II. It was proposed by the United States secretary of state, General George C. Marshall. -
Period: to
Berlin Airlift
The U.S. and the U.K. airlift supplies to Berlin after the soviets cut off access with blockades. The airlift ended when blockades were lifted and access was granted by other powers. -
Fair Deal
A "Fair Deal" is what President Harry Truman called his plan. He announced it in a speech on January 5, 1949. His Fair Deal recommended that all Americans have health insurance, that the minimum wage (the lowest amount of money per hour that someone can be paid) be increased, and that, by law, all Americans be guaranteed equal rights. -
Television
The television was invented in 1927 but became more affordable to people in the 1950s. It helped people connect to politics more and keep up with current events. Televisions were not only in homes but also in businesses and very popular events were held on TV for everyone to watch royal wedding. -
Period: to
Rock 'n' Roll
A new genre of music alluding to open sexual behavior. Included a singer (usually male) and rhythm instruments. Started in the late 40's, it was originally invented by black people as a mix of blues, jazz, gospel, boogie-woogie and country. Began in the South, not only with lack people but with white instrumentation. -
Period: to
News
News stations became popular along with TV's to keep people informed on their politicians and things happening in the world. Modern stations such as NBC, CBS, and Fox became popular. -
Period: to
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation is a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. -
North Korea invades South Korea
On June 25, 1950 the North Korean army attacked South Korea, crossing the 38th Parallel. This prompted the U.S. to aid South Korea. -
Period: to
Korean War (The Forgotten War)
The Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of South Korea. China came to the aid of North Korea, and the Soviet Union gave some assistance. -
Bill Haley and His Comets
Bill Haley & His Comets were an American rock and roll band, founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981 -
Just in time inventory
Just in time (JIT) inventory is a management system in which materials or products are produced or acquired only as demand requires. Used by Sam Walton to give discounted prices on items. -
Period: to
Earl Warren Supreme Court
He is best known for the liberal decisions of the so-called Warren Court, which outlawed segregation in public schools and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public school-sponsored prayers, and requiring "one man–one vote" rules of apportionment of election districts. -
Polio Vaccine
There are two types of vaccine that protect against polio: inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) and oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). IPV is given as an injection in the leg or arm, depending on the patient's age. -
Jonas Salk
Vaccine against poliomyelitis named for Dr. Jonas Salk who developed and introduced it in 1955. It was the first type of polio vaccine to become available. It was made by cultivating three strains of the virus separately in monkey tissue. -
Elvis Presley
In 1954, Elvis began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor. By 1956, he was an international sensation. He was drafted by the Army and later died in 1977 of a heart attack. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. -
Emmett Till Tragedy
While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. Two men beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to a cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. -
Period: to
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956). Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, enacted September 9, 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation passed by Congress in the United States since the 1866 and 1875 Acts. -
Little Rock 9
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. -
Sputnik 1
The Russians launch the first artificial satellite into space. It orbits the earth and pretty much just beeps. It gave America a big scare though and the US stepped up their technological capabilities with more funding and education. -
Period: to
Space Race
The Russians and the US enter a race into space as to not allow the other country to have an advantage in nuclear capabilities. Te Russians got out first and sent the first person but the US got the first person on the moon. This later emphasized math and science in classrooms and overall improved the education in schools. -
LSD
LSD had been around since 1938 but became very popular in the 1960s with the counterculuture. It was invented by Albert Hoffman for pharmaceutical purposes. -
Period: to
Counter Culture
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed first in the United Kingdom and the United States and then spread throughout much of the Western world. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the American Civil Rights Movement continued to grow, and became revolutionary with the expansion of the US government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam. -
Period: to
Feminism
The feminist movement of the 1960s and '70s originally focused on dismantling workplace inequality, such as denial of access to better jobs and salary inequity, via anti-discrimination laws. -
Period: to
Sit-Ins
Sit-ins weren’t a new civil rights technique. But they in 1960 they helped energize the civil rights movement. Although a passive technique in nature, sit-ins caused real change to occur. The impact sit-ins had on the civil rights movement proved to be invaluable to changing policies and norms in the 1960s. -
New Frontier
The term New Frontier was used by liberal Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the Democratic slogan to inspire America to support him. -
OPEC
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a permanent, intergovernmental Organization, created at the Baghdad Conference on September 10–14, 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. -
Period: to
Freedom Rides
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years in order to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States government. The stated mission of the Peace Corps includes providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand American culture, and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries. -
Birmingham March
The Birmingham march, led by MLK, was an movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas while riding in a motorcade in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald while he was riding with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, in a presidential motorcade. -
Ascendency of Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon B Johnson became President after Jfk was assassinated.He launched several anti nuke campaigns including the daisy girl ad. Used the Johnson treatment to get his way, and was very crude. -
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly assassinated JFK two days prior to his own death. He was shot while being escorted by police. He had been in the military and was also a communist. -
The 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. President Johnson first used the term "Great Society" during a speech at Ohio University, then unveiled the program in greater detail at an appearance at University of Michigan. -
Southern Bloc
The Solid South or Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of white Democrats in the southern states. -
Selma Marches
In early 1965, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference made Selma, Alabama, the focus of its efforts to register black voters in the South. That March, protesters attempting to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were met with violent resistance by state and local authorities. As the world watched, the protesters finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery. -
Silent Majority
The silent majority is an unspecified large group of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly. The term was popularized by U.S. President Richard Nixon in a November 3, 1969, speech in which he said, "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support." -
Environmental Protection Agency
The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment. This was created during Nixon,s Presidency as an agency of the federal government. -
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for all citizens regardless of gender; it seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. -
Watergate
Nixon paid people to break into democratic offices and implant recording devices so he could spy on his opponents. This lead to Nixon resigning later on. -
Title IX
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." -
The Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative self funded interest group that works to preserve conservative ideal. They have been working to advance the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. -
Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) was signed on December 28, 1973, and provides for the conservation of species that are endangered or threatened throughout all or a significant portion of their range, and the conservation of the ecosystems on which they depend. -
VHS
VHS is a widely-adopted videocassette recording technology that was developed by Japan Victor Company and put on the market in 1976. It uses magnetic tape 1/2 inch in width -
Panama Canal
The Canal was under joint ownership by Panama and the US in 1979 because of the Torrijos-Carter Treaty of 1977. -
Period: to
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 students set their hostages free on January 21, 1981, 444 days after the crisis began and just hours after President Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address. This was done out of spite to president Carter. -
BET
A television station founded by Robert Johnson celebrating black culture. Is still around today. -
Election of 1980
United States presidential election of 1980, American presidential election held on Nov. 4, 1980, in which Republican Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic Pres. Jimmy Carter. -
AIDS crisis
The epidemic of the immunodeficiency disease AIDS, which began in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1930s as a mutation of the chimpanzee disease SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus), which was named Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) found its way to the shores of the United States as early as 1960, but was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in young gay men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. -
Reagonomics
The Congress was not as sure as Reagan, but they did approve a 25% cut during Reagan's first term. The results of this plan were mixed. Initially, the Federal Reserve Board believed the tax cut would re-ignite inflation and raise interest rates. This sparked a deep recession in 1981 and 1982. -
Sandra Day O'Connor
First female supreme court justice. Appointed by Reagan in 1981 after he pledged to place a woman on the SCOTUS. -
MTV
MTV was an entertainment channel that played popular music videos on TV. -
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars, was a program first initiated on March 23, 1983 under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair, also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. -
Oprah Winfrey
First female black billionaire in America. First black woman to have her own television show -
Challenger Explosion
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASASpace Shuttle orbiterChallenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists. -
Rodney King Incident
Rodney Glen King was a taxi driver who became internationally known after being beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers following a high-speed car chase on March 3, 1991. -
Election 1994
The United States presidential election of 1992 was the 52nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1992. There were three major candidates: Incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush, Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and independent Texas businessman Ross Perot. -
Health Care Reform
The Clinton health care plan, known officially as the Health Security Act and unofficially nicknamed "Hillarycare" by its detractors, was a 1993 healthcare reform package proposed by the administration of President Bill Clinton and closely associated with the chair of the task force devising the plan, First Lady of the United States Clinton. -
World Trade Center Attack - 1993
A car bomb exploded in the bottom parking lot of the world trade center. Is also the reason the WTC was attacked again in 2001. -
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. -
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
The discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on gay and lesbian service members is officially in the dustbin of history. For 17 years, the law prohibited qualified gay and lesbian Americans from serving in the armed forces and sent a message that discrimination was acceptable. -
Lewinsky Scandal
The Lewinsky scandal was an American political sex scandal that involved 49-year-old President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The sexual relationship took place between 1995 and 1996 and came to light in 1998. Clinton ended a televised speech with the statement that he did not have sexual relations with Lewinsky. -
PRWOR act
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 is a United States federal law considered to be a major welfare reform. President Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we have come to know it". -
DOMA
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was a United States federal law that, prior to being ruled unconstitutional, defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, and allowed states to refuse to marriage licenses to gay couples. -
Election of 2000
The race between Al Gore (D) and George W. Bush (R) where Gore won the majority but Bush won the electoral college. A supreme court case was fought for the election because of the counting of ballots in Florida. -
9/11 attack
Al-Qaeda attacked both towers of the world trade center with planes and the pentagon by sliding a plane into it. About 3000 people died and it led to the war on terror. -
War on Terror
After the 9/11 attacks George W. Bush declared war on terror around the world. Asked Afghanistan to give up terrorists but they refused and we sent troops in. -
PATRIOT act
The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. Its title is a ten-letter backronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001". It received severe criticism for invasion of privacy. -
The No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act authorizes several federal education programs that are administered by the states. The law is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Under the 2002 law, states are required to test students in reading and math in grades 3–8 and once in high school. -
2nd Iraq War
Iraq War. n. A protracted military conflict in Iraq that began in 2003 with an attack by a coalition of forces led by the United States and that resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. US combat troops were withdrawn in 2010. Finally, all the rules of English Grammar in one place. -
Hurricane Katrina
A natural disaster in 2005 that hit New Orleans during George W. Bush's Presidency. -
Election of 2008
Came down to Barrack Obama (D) and John McCain (R). Obama won both the electoral college and the popular vote. Hillary Clinton (D) also ran in the election and to get a diverse a appeal John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP nominee but that worked against him. -
Period: to
Barrack Obama
The 44th and first black president of the US. Beat John McCain to the presidency and served 2 terms. Got the US out of the Great Recessions and bailed out the auto industry making GM owned by the Us government. -
ACA Obamacare
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – also known as the Affordable Care Act or ACA, and generally referred to as Obamacare – is the landmark health reform legislation passed by the 111th Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010.
