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Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
Ferdinand and Austrian prince who was kiiled by a Bosnian Serb nationalist. This was the spark that led to World War I. -
Japan makes Twenty-one Demands on China
The Twenty-one Demands were claims made by the Japanese government to special privileges in China during World War I. The demands called for confirmation of Japan’s railway and mining claims in Shandong province; granting of special concessions in Manchuria; Sino-Japanese control of the Han-Ye-Ping mining base in central China; access to harbours, bays, and islands along China’s coast; and Japanese control, through advisers, of Chinese financial, political, and police affairs -
Gallipolo campaign
Thousands of young men from New Zealand and Australia stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now Turkey. They faught against the Ottoman Empire to protect their home. -
Bolshevik Revolution
The Bolshevik Revlution was in Russia. It was led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It started communism in Russia and was later taken over my Stalin. -
German resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare
Unrestricted submarine warfare was first introduced in World War I in early 1915 after the German U-boat submarine had introduced itself. In 1917, however, Germany returns the policy of unristrected warfare. This allowed the lethal U-boat to again terrorize war. -
Civil war in Russia
The civil war between the Bolsheviks (Reds) and the anti-Bolsheviks (Whites) lasted in Russia until 1920. The Bolshevik military won this battle. -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers. While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year, it did provide some relief to the Bolsheviks, who were fighting the Russian Civil War, and it affirmed the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania. -
Mussolini launches fascist movement in Italy
Benito Mussolini, an Italian World War I veteran and publisher of Socialist newspapers, establishes the Fascist Party, Mussolini's new right-wing organization advocated Italian nationalism, had black shirts for uniforms, and launched a program of terrorism and intimidation against its leftist opponents. -
Paris Peace Conference
Paris Peace Conference was the meeting that inaugurated the international settlement after World War I. During this meeting, the Treaty or Versailles was signed. -
May Fourth Movement in China
The demonstrations of the May Fourth Movement marked a turning point in China’s intellectual development. At 1:30pm on Sunday, May 4, 1919, approximately 3,000 students from 13 Beijing universities assembled at the Gate of Heavenly Peace at Tiananmen Square to protest against the Versailles Peace Conference. The demonstrators distributed fliers declaring that Chinese would not accept the concession of Chinese territory to Japan. -
First meeting of the League of Nations
The League of Nations was created after World War I. It's goal was to end war and establish peace. In 1921 they helped in the creaton of the Treaty or Verailles. -
Lenin's New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy (NEP) was based around a tax called prodnalog, which was a tax on food. In 1921, Russia had faced famine. By May 1922, this fear had subsided and by 1923, agricultural production was at a healthy 75% because of the plan. -
Ataturk proclaims Republic of Turkey
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ofunded the Modern Turkish Republic. He built this state out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. -
First Soviet Five Year Plan
The First Soviet Five Year Plan was launched by Stalin in 1928. It was aradical attempt to bring the Soviet Union into the industrial age.Stalin seized assets and reorganized the economy. However, these efforts often led to less efficient production, ensuring that mass starvation swept the countryside. -
US stock market crash
On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. -
Civil disobedience movement in India
Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi begins a movement in protest of the British monopoly on salt. India's independence was finally granted in August 1947. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist less than six months later. -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
In 1931, the Japanese Kwangtung Army attacked Chinese troops in Manchuria. It was an attempt by the Japanese Empire to gain control over the whole province, in order to eventually encompass all of East Asia. -
Cardenas nationalises oil Industry in Mexico
In 1936, Mexican oil workers went on strike against low pay and better working conditions against the foreign oil companies.The arbitration board ruled that the oil companies should increase wages by one third and improve working conditions. -
Long March by Chinese Communists
The Long March saved Mao Zedong and the Communist Party from the attacks by the Guomingdang. The Long March came about when the Chinese Communists had to flee a concerted Guomingdang attacked that had been ordered by Chiang Kai-shek. -
Sandino is murdered in Nicaragua
Augusto César Sandino was born in 1895 and murdered in 1934 by National Guardsmen acting on the orders of the dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia. From 1926 until his assassination in 1934 Sandino defied the military might of the US whose Marines had occupied Nicaragua since 1909 and finally, in 1933, the last contingent left Nicaragua. -
Hitler is Ruler in Germany
In 1934, Hitler (a chancellor) became the president of Germany. Later, Hitler would lead the Nazis in WWII and kill over 8,861,800 Jews during the Holocaust. -
Invasion of China by Japan
The Sino-Japanese War was a conflict that broke out when China began full-scale resistance to the expansion of Japanese influence in its territory. Japan’s defeat in that by the Allies in 1945 ended its power in China. -
Stalin's "Great Purge" in USSR
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and executions. -
German Auschluss with Austria
The German Nazis wanted to seize the Austrian government to unite it with Nazi Germany. On March 12, Hitler established this Nazi government which remained until the end of World War II. -
Invasion of Poland by Germany
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. Poland remained under German occupation until January 1945. -
German invasion of USSR
Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 despite the German-Soviet non aggresion act signed in 1939. The codename of this attack was "Barbarossa", and it was the largest operation of the German military in World War II. -
Soviet victory at Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942-Feb. 2, 1943), was the successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. Russians consider it to be the greatest battle of their Great Patriotic War. -
D-Day Allied invasion at Normandy
This attack planned by the Allied Forces included over 5,000 Overlord was the largest air, land, and sea operation undertaken before or since June 6, 1944. there were ships, 11,000 airplanes, and over 150,000 service men. When it was over, the Allied Forces had suffered nearly 10,000 casualties; yet, due to planning and preparation, and due to the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice of the Allied Forces, Fortress Europe had been breached. -
Capture of Berlin by Soviet forces
Josef Stalin was the leader of this capture. It was one of the concluding conflicts of World War II. He wanted to push the Germans outside of this area. -
Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski
The United States launched a massive atomic weapong on Japan. It killed about 60,000 to 70,000. This was an attempt to force Japan's surrender as quickly as possible to minimize American casualties. -
Establishment of the United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization established to promote international co-operation. It was established after WWII in hopes to prevent another world war. -
Partition of India
August 14, 1947 saw the birth of the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan. India won its freedom from colonial rule at midnight the next day, ending nearly 350 years of British presence in India. When the British left, they partitioned India, creating the separate countries of India and Pakistan to accommodate religious differences between Pakistan, which has a majority Muslim population, and India, which is primarily Hindu. -
Creation of Israel
Israel was created as the Jewish homeland after World War II. David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. -
Apartheid in South America
Apartheid built upon earlier laws, but made segregation more rigid and enforced it more aggressively. After the 1948 elections, as the liberation movements intensified their efforts, the Government came down heavily on them. -
Arab- Israeli War
It was a war between the State of The conflict triggered important demographic changes in the country and the Middle East. Israel and Palestinian Arab forces. -
Division of Berlin and Germany
Also known as the Berlin crisis, the division of Berlin and Germany occured when the Allies forced Stalinto abandon the plan that could have cost the lives of thousands living in divided Berlin or started another war. The Allies decided to split Germany into four zones of occupation. The next day, Stalin cut off all links to west Berlin (the Berlin Blockade). The West decided to supply west Berlin by air. The blocade lasted 318 days. On 12 May 1949, Stalin abandoned the blockade. -
Establishment of NATO
To maintain protection against the Soviet Union, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations. The result of these extensive negotiations was the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. -
Establishment of People's Republic of China
In 1949, in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Central People's Government, proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The Chinese government successfully carried out land reforms, and 300 million farmers were granted approximately 47 million ha of land. -
Korean War
The Korean War began as a civil war between North and South Korea, but the conflict soon became international when the United Nations joined to support South Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) entered to aid North Korea. The war left Korea divided and brought the Cold War to Asia. -
French defeat at Dien Bien Phu
The French struggled to control its colonies in Indochina in the late 1940's, and nationalist uprisings against French colonial rule began. On May 7, 1954, the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French pulled out of the region -
Algerian war of liberation
This war was between France and Algerian from 1954 to 1962. It resulted in Algeria gaining its independence from France. -
Establishment of Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force. The Warsaw Pact remained intact until 1991. -
Suez crisis
On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, the joint British-French enterprise which had owned and operated the Suez Canal since its construction in 1869. The Eisenhower administration, worried by the prospect of the outbreak of hostilities between its NATO allies and an emergent, influential Middle Eastern power, attempted to broker a diplomatic settlement -
Uprising in Hungary
The Hungarian Uprising began on 23 October 1956 when the working class took on and defeated the police and installed a new government, lasting 18 days before being crushed by Soviet tanks. The great speed of events, combined with the Stalinist monopoly on the means of communication, and bourgeois misrepresentation, meant that it was all over before the working class of the world was able to respond to the call of the Hungarian workers. -
Great leap forward in China
From 1958-1960, China underwent the Great Leap Forward. It was huge economic development under the People's Republic of China government. During this time, China industrialized under the direction of Mao Zedong. -
Castro comes to power in China
Fidel Castro Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro began increasingly to denounce the United States and to seek support from the Communist-bloc nations. -
Sino-Soviet Split
The Sino-Soviet split (1960–1989) was the worsening of political and ideological relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the Cold War. Relations between China and the Soviet Union remained tense until the visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev -
Construction of Berlin Wall
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of people from East Berlin moved into West Berlin to escape communist repression. In an effort to stop the movement, the government of East Germany, on the night of August 12, 1961, began to seal off all points of entrance into West Berlin from East Berlin by stringing barbed wire and posting sentries. Then, construction of a concrete block wall began, complete with sentry towers and minefields around it. -
Creation of PLO
The Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, was created at a meeting of the Arab League-controlled Palestine National Congress in Arab Jerusalem. Egypt was the force behind PLO. It was created to control Palestinian nationalism. -
US troops in Vietnam
The first U.S. combat troops arrive in Vietnam as 3500 Marines land at China Beach to defend the American air base at Da Nang. By year's end, U.S. troop levels reached 495,000 with 30,000 American deaths to date. In 1968, over a thousand a month were killed. -
Revolution in Iran
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was supported by the United States, and its eventual replacement with an Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. -
Iran-Iraq war
The war officially began on Sept. 22, 1980, with an Iraqi land and air invasion of western Iran. In July, 1988, Iran was forced to accept a United Nations–mandated cease-fire. Estimates of the number of dead range up to 1.5 million. -
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan
More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. This event marked the beginning of the end to a long and bloody Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. -
Reunification of Germany
German reunification was the process in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany, and when Berlin, reunited into a single city. The end of the unification process is officially referred to as German unity, celebrated on 3 October -
Persian Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War, also called Gulf War, was an international conflict that was triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq’s leader, Ṣaddām Ḥussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the aim of acquiring that nation’s large oil reserves. After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition, U.S. President George W Bush declared a cease-fire on Feb 28; by that time, most Iraqi forces in Kuwait had either surrendered or fled. -
Collapse of the USSR
The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries in December of '91. Its collapse was belived by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. -
Transfer of British Hong Kong to China
Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese authorities - ending more than 150 years of British control. Britain had controlled Hong Kong island since 1842 - apart from a brief period during World War II when the Japanese took over.
