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Disco Music/Culture
Discotheque is a European word. It means a club were their is no live music, "Disk-only" joints. In occupied France, Bebop, jitterbug and many more dance and music generes were banned by the Nazis. Members of the resistance met in underground clubs called, "discotheque". They listened to American swing music. -
Development Of H-Bomb
U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. -
McCarthyism
A vociferous campaign against alleged communists in the US government and other institutions carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy in the period 1950–54. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not in fact belong to the Communist Party. -
Korean War
Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. -
22nd Amendment
Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution is ratified. Limited the president to two terms. -
Technological Advances
Television was not invented in the 1950's, but it became very popular early in the decade. Everything that happened after that was affected by television. Space races, speeches, now almost every major event could be internationally viewed,. -
The "Little Rock Nine"
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. -
Brown v.Board of Education
The Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race. Made equal opportunity in education the law of the land. -
Civil Rights Movement
The national effort made by black people and their supporters in the 1950s and 1960s to eliminate segregation and gain equal rights. -
Emmett Till's Murder
Emmett Louis Till was an African-American teenager who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. His assailants–the white woman’s husband and her brother–made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. -
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 divisive war, increasingly unpopular at home, ended with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam under Communist control two years later. More than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans, were killed in the conflict. -
Suez Crisis
Was a diplomatic and military confrontation between Egypt on one side, and Britain, France and Israel on the other, with the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations playing major roles in forcing Britain, France and Israel to withdraw. -
Space Race
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. -
Jimi Hendrix
After law enforcement authorities had twice caught Hendrix riding in stolen cars, he was given a choice between spending time in prison or serving in the US military: he chose the latter and enlisted in the Army. -
The Falling Of The Berlin Wall
The Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the -
Cesar Chavez
Co Founded the National Farm Workers Association . Also was a civil rights leader. -
Assination Of John F. Kennedy
"Kennedy assassination" redirects here. For the assassination of John's brother Robert, see Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. -
Muhammad Ali
Became the youngest boxer to take the title from a reigning heavyweight champion. Was stripped of title becuase refusal to join the army. -
War Protests
The movement against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began small–among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses–but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), attracted a widening base of support over the next three years, peaking in early 1968 after the successful Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese troops pro -
Malcom X
Black militant, radical minister, and
spokesman for the Nation of Islam until
1964. Having eschewed his family name
"Little," he preached of doctrine of no
compromise with white society. He was
assasinated in New York City in 1965 -
Hippie Culture
In the mid 1960s, a never before seen counter-culture blossomed throughout the United States, inciting both the Flower Power movement as well as the general revulsion of more straight-laced, Ward Cleaver-esque Americans. No longer wanting to keep up with the Joneses or confine themselves to white picket-fenced corrals of repressive and Puritanical sexual norms, these fresh-faced masses would soon come to be known as Hippies. -
Martin Luther King Jr
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. Through his activism, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
Assination of Robert F. Kennedy
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He died a day later. -
Woodstock 1969
Conceived as “Three Days of Peace and Music,” Woodstock was a product of a partnership between John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang. Their idea was to make enough money from the event to build a recording studio near the arty New York town of Woodstock. When they couldn’t find an appropriate venue in the town itself, the promoters decided to hold the festival on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York–some 50 miles from Woodstock–owned by Max Yasgur. -
Kent State Incident
President Richard M. Nixon appeared on national television to announce the invasion of Cambodia by the United States and the need to draft 150,000 more soldiers for an expansion of the Vietnam War effort. This provoked massive protests on campuses throughout the country. At Kent State University in Ohio, protesters launched a demonstration that included setting fire to the ROTC building, prompting the governor of Ohio to dispatch 900 National Guardsmen to the campus -
26th Amendment
The Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified. Lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 -
George Wallace, Govenor Of Alabama
George Wallace was a four-time governor of Alabama and three-time presidential hopeful. He is best remembered for his 1960s segregationist politics. Wallace is remembered for his strong support of racial segregation in the '60s. -
Richard Nixon/ Watergate Scandal
Several burglars were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), located in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught while attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents. While historians are not sure whether Nixon knew about the Watergate espionage operation before it happened, he took steps to cover it up afterwards, raising -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-73) became the 36th president of the United States following the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963). Upon taking office, Johnson, a Texan who had served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, launched an ambitious slate of progressive reforms aimed at alleviating poverty and creating what he called a “Great Society” for all Americans. Many of the programs he introduced–including Medicare and Head Start–made a lasti -
Jimmy Carter / Iran Hostage
A group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The immediate cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow Iran’s deposed Shah, a pro-Western autocrat who had been expelled from his country some months before, to come to the United States for cancer treatment. -
Ronald Reagan/ Reaganiomics
Economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associated with supply-side economics, referred to as trickle-down economics by political opponents -
John Lennon's Murder
Mark David Chapman is an American prison inmate who pleaded guilty to murdering John Lennon on December 8, 1980. Chapman shot Lennon outside The Dakota apartment building in New York City. -
Assassination Atempt Of Ronald Ragen
President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr. The president had just finished addressing a labor meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel and was walking with his entourage to his limousine when Hinckley, standing among a group of reporters, fired six shots at the president, hitting Reagan and three of his attendants. -
HIV/AIDS
In 1983, scientists discovered the virus that causes AIDS. The virus was at first named HTLV-III/LAV (human T-cell lymphotropic virus-type III/lymphadenopathy-associated virus) by an international scientific committee. This name was later changed to HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). -
Persian Gulf War
Iraqi troops invade Kuwait, leading to the Persian Gulf War. After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition in the air and on the ground, U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire
