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Dwight D. Eisenhower
He was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas. He was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe; On the morning of March 28, 1969, at the age of 78, Eisenhower died in Washington, D.C. of congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Army Hospital. -
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Mao Zedong
He was born on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan, Qing Dynasty. He was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he governed as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. His Marxist-Leninist theories, military strategies and political policies are collectively known as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought. He died on September 9, 1976, at age 82, due to drugs. -
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Lyndon B. Johnson
He was born on August 27, 1908, in Stonewall, Texas. He was the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, a position he assumed after his service as the 27th Vice President from 1961 to 1963. After he left the office, in January 1969, he returned to his Texas ranch, where he died of a heart attack on January 22, 1973. -
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Richard Nixon
He was born on January 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California. He is the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only U.S. president to resign the office, he had previously served as a U.S. representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. He died at 9:08 p.m. on April 22, 1994, with his daughters at his bedside. He was 81 years old due to stroke, unable to speak, unable to move his right arm or leg. -
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Jonas Salk
He was born on October 28, 1914, in New York, New York. He was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine. Born in New York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical reasearch instead of becoming a practicing physician. He died from a heart failure at the age of 80 on June 23, 1995, in La Jolla, California. -
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John F. Kennedy
He was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline Massachusetts. He was an American politican who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas at 12:30PM Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963. He was shot once in the throat and once in the head. He was taken to Parkland Hospital for emergency medical treatment, but pronounced dead at 1:00 pm. -
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Gary Powers
He was born on August 17, 1929, in Jenkins, Kentucky. He was was an American pilot whose, Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down, while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident. He died on August 1, 1977, in Los Angeles County, California, causing helicopter crash at aged 47. -
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Roy Benavidez
He was born on August 5, 1935, in Cuero, Texas. He is a fromer member of the United States Army Special Forces (Studies and Observations Group) and retired United States Army master sergeant who received the Medal of Honor (1981) for his valorous actions in combat near Lôc Ninh, South Vietnam on May 2, 1968. He died on November 29, 1998, at the age of 63 at Brooke Army Medical Center, having suffered respiratory failure and complications of diabetes. -
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Abby Hoffman
He was born on November 30, 1936, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He's a political and social activist who co-found the Youth International Party ("Yippies"). When he's 52, at the time of his death on April 12, 1989, which was caused by swallowing 150 phenobarbital tablets and liquor. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1980. -
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
It was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. -
Wars Powers Act
Its an American emergency law that increased Federal power during World War II. The act was signed by the 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. The act was similar to the Departmetal Reorganization Act of 1917 as it was signed shortly before the U.S. engaged in a large war and increased the powers of the president's U.S. Executive Branch. -
Iron Curtain
It's the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contract with the West and other noncommunist areas. The term Iron Curtain had been in occasional and varied use as a metaphor since the 19th century, but it came to prominence only after it was used by the former British prime minister, Winston Churchill in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, U.S., on March 5, 1946. -
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"McCarthyism"
Joseph McCarthy takes office as a Republican senator from Wisconisn. In a primary election, McCarthy had defeated Sen. Robert La Follette Jr., son of one of the icons of American liberalism. Branding himself as "Tail Gunner Joe," McCarthy had run a vicious, negative campaign against his opponent with accusations that La Follette was a war profiteer. He died on May 2, 1957 due to hepatitis. -
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Cold War
Conflicts of national interest caused the World War II alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union to be replaced by a Cold War that lasted 45 years. Initially, a dispute over the future of Europe, it grew to include confrontations around the world. -
Truman Doctine
With thr Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. forgien policy, away from its usual stnce of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly invoving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts. -
Containment Policy
The United States policy to prevent the spread of communism aboard. A component of thr Cold War, this policy was a reponse to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam. It represented a middle-ground position between appeasement and rollback. -
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Berlin Airlift
The "Berlin Airlift" or known as a "Berlin Blockable" takes place from April 1, 1948 to May 12, 1949, it 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 allied control. -
Marshall Plan
On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assisstance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe. -
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Domino Theory
The domino theory, which governed much of U.S. foreign policy beginning in the early 1950s, held that a communist victory in one nation would quickly lead to a chain reaction of communist takeovers in neighboring states. In Southeast Asia, the United States government used the domino theory to justify its support of a non-communist regime in South Vietnam against the communist government of North Vietnam, and ultimately its increasing involvement in the long-running Vietnam War (1954-75). -
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Korean War
The Korean War was a between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States of America fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. The war arose from the division of Korea at the end of World War II and from the global tensions of the Cold War that developed immediately afterwards. -
Rosenberg Trail
On July 15, 1950, Julius Rosenberg, an electrical engineer and employee for the U.S. Army Signal Corps, was arrested for allegedly passing atomic secrets to Russia. One month later, on August 11, Julius' wife Ethel, was also arrested, charged with assisting her husband with his illicit activities. -
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War (1946-54) and was fought between North Vietnam - supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies - and the government of South Vietnam - supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. -
Anti-War Movement
Along with the Civil Rights campaigns of the 1960s, one of the most divisive forces in twentieth-century U.S. history. The antiwar movement actually consisted of a number of independent interests, often only vaguely allied and contesting each other on many issues, united only in opposition to the Vietnam War. -
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Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis takes place from October 14-28, 1962 between United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in Cuba. It played out on television worldwide and was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resoultion, authorizing President Lyndon B. Johnson to take any measures that he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in aoutheast Asia. -
Great Society
On January 4, 1965, in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson outlined the goals of "the Great Society", a set of domestic programs designed to advance civil rights and aid those in poverty. -
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Tet Offensive 1968
On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year holiday called Tet), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam. General Vo Nguyen Giap, leader of the Communist People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), planned the offensive in an attempt both to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its support of the Saigon regime. -
Vietnamization
Upon taking office in 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon (1913-94) introduced a new strategy called Vietnamization that was aimed at ending American involvement in the Vietnam War (1954-75) by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. The increasingly unpopular war had created deep divisions in American society. Nixon believed his Vietnamization strategy, which involved building up South Vietnam’s military strength in order to facilitate a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops.
