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Start of Cold War
In 1945 the end of World War 2 and the Postdam Conference were the a start to the Cold War -
Iron Curtain Speech
In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” -
Hollywood Ten hearings
Hollywood Ten, in U.S. history, 10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947. -
The Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. -
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. -
Alger Hiss Case
The case against Hiss began in 1948, when Whittaker Chambers, an admitted ex-communist and an editor with Time magazine, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and charged that Hiss was a communist in the 1930s and 1940s -
The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan generated a resurgence of European industrialization and brought extensive investment into the region. It was also a stimulant to the U.S. economy by establishing markets for American goods. -
The Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. -
The Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. 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. -
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. -
Soviet atomic bomb testing
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. -
China becoming a communist country
The Chinese Revolution of 1949. On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People's Republic of China (PRC). -
Korean 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, with assistance from the Soviet Union, came to the aid of North Korea. -
Rosenberg Case
Rosenberg Case Overview. Julius Rosenberg was arrested in July 1950, a few weeks after the Korean War began. He was executed, along with his wife, Ethel, on June 19, 1953, a few weeks before it ended. The legal charge of which the Rosenbergs were convicted was vague. -
The Battle of Dien Bien
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. March 13, 1954 – May 7, 1954 -
Army-McCarthy hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954 -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference (April 26 – July 20, 1954) was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle outstanding issues in the Korean peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina. -
The Warsaw Pact
Image result for warsaw pact
The Warsaw Pact is the name commonly given to the treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, which was signed in Poland in 1955 and was officially called 'The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance' -
Invasion of Hungary
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. -
The Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic, starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin -
Assassination of Diem
The brutal murder of the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his powerful brother and adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, on November 2, 1963, was a major turning point in the war in Vietnam. -
Assassination of JFK
Most importantly, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was shot twice, and an hour after his death Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
On August 7, 1964, 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. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the US 2nd Air Division (later Seventh Air Force), US Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968, during the Vietnam War. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive 1968, was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese against the forces of the South Vietnames, the United States, and their allies. -
Assassination of MLK
James Earl Ray was born in Alton, Illinois, on March 10, 1928. A confirmed racist and small-time criminal, Ray began plotting the assassination of revered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in early 1968. He shot and killed King in Memphis on April 4, 1968, confessing to the crime the following March.Jul 13, 2016 -
Assassination of RFK
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy, commonly known by his initials RFK, was an American politician from Massachusetts. He served as the United States junior senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
On August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague. Although the Soviet Union’s action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, it had unintended consequences for the unity of the communist bloc -
Riots at Democratic National Convention in Chicago
On this day in 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. -
Election of Richard Nixon
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, won the election over the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. -
The Kent State shhoting
The Kent State shooting (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre), occurred at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, in the United States and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. -
Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and China. It marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC, which at that time considered the U.S. one of its foes, and the visit ended 25 years of separation between the two sides. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
On January 15, 1973, President Richard Nixon of the USA ordered a ceasefire of the aerial bombings in North Vietnam. The decision came after Dr. Henry Kissinger, the National Security Affairs advisor to the president, returned to Washington from Paris, France with a draft peace proposal. Combat missions continued in South Vietnam. By January 27, 1973, all warring parties in the Vietnam War signed a ceasefire as a prelude to the Paris Peace Accord. -
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, depending on context, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. -
Election of Ronad Reagan
The United States presidential election of 1980 was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. The contest was between incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter and his Republican opponent, former California Governor Ronald Reagan. -
Announcment of SDI
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). The system, which was to combine ground-based units and orbital deployment platforms, was first publicly announced by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983. -
Tear down this wall speech
"Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders.
