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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American politician and Army general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. -
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Ray Kroc
Raymond Albert Kroc was an American businessman. He joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. -
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Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson often referred to as LBJ, was an American politician who served as 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. -
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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office -
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Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines -
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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 -
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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 -
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House Un-American Activities Committee
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. -
G.I. Bill
the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, was signed into law. During the war, politicians wanted to avoid the postwar confusion about veterans' benefits that became a political football in the 1920s and 1930s. -
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Baby Boom Generation
Baby boomers are the demographic group born during the post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. This includes people who are between 53 and 71 years old in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. -
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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 -
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Conatanment 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. -
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Cold War
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
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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. -
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Rock n' Roll
a type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based on a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums. -
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1950s Prosperity
The Decade of Prosperity. The economy overall grew by 37% during the 1950s. ... Inflation, which had wreaked havoc on the economy immediately after World War II, was minimal, in part because of Eisenhower's persistent efforts to balance the federal budget. -
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beatniks
a young person in the 1950s and early 1960s belonging to a subculture associated with the beat generation. -
McCarthyism
McCarthy's Wheeling Speech. Senator Joe McCarthy and chief counsel Roy Cohn interrogating suspected communists. At a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy proclaimed that he was aware of 205 card-carrying members of the Communist Party who worked for the United States Department of State. -
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Korean War
The Korean War (1950-1953) began when the North Korean Communist army crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded non-Communist South Korea. As Kim Il-sung's North Korean army, armed with Soviet tanks, quickly overran South Korea, the United States came to South Korea's aid. -
Levittown
Levittown, formerly Island Trees, is a hamlet and census-designated place in the Town of Hempstead in Long Island, in Nassau County, New York. Levittown is halfway between the villages of Hempstead and Farmingdale. -
Rosenberg Trial
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: “Conspiracy to Commit Espionage.” -
Domino Theory
Though he never used the precise term "domino theory", U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower described the theory during an April 7, 1954, news conference, when referring to communism in Indochina: Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. -
Interstate Highway Act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. With an original authorization of US$25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System -
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Space Race
the competition between nations regarding achievements in the field of space exploration. -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. -
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Bay of Pigs
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. -
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Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile -
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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
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. -
Vietnam War
It was a direct result of the First Indochina War between France, which claimed Vietnam as a colony, and the communist forces then known as Viet Minh. In 1973 a “third” Vietnam war began—a continuation, actually—between North and South Vietnam but without significant U.S. involvement. -
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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. -
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Tet Offensive 1968
The Tet Offensive 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 People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies -
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Moon Landing
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. -
Rust Belt to Sunbelt
The Rust Belt is a term for the region of the United States from the Great Lakes to the upper Midwest States, referring to economic decline, population loss, and urban decay due to the shrinking of its once-powerful industrial sector, also known as deindustrialization. -
Vietnamization
Nixon speeds up 'Vietnamization' of war, April 20, 1970. On this day in 1970, President Richard M. Nixon pledged to withdraw 150,000 more U.S. troops from South Vietnam in the next 12 month -
26th Amendment
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age -
Wars Powers Act
The War Powers Resolution also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973 or the War Powers Act is a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.
