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Balkans Crisis
The Balkan Wars consisted of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan Peninsula in 1912 and 1913. Four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire in the first war; one of the four, Bulgaria, suffered defeat in the second war. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Austria-Hungary, although not a combatant, became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the Balkan crisis of 1914. -
Ross Perot
Henry Ross Perot is an American business magnate and former politician. As the founder of Electronic Data Systems, he became a billionaire. He ran an independent presidential campaign in 1992 and a third party campaign in 1996, establishing the Reform Party in the latter election. Both campaigns were among the strongest presidential showings by a third party or independent candidate in U.S. history. Born in Texarkana, Texas, he became a salesman for IBM after serving in the United States Navy. -
Little Richard
An influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades, Little Richard's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his dynamic music and charismatic showmanship laid the foundation for rock and roll. His music also played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. Little Richard influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to hip hop; his music helped shape rhythm and blues for generations to come. -
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney, noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the United States, Nader was educated at Princeton and Harvard and first came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of the bestselling book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers. -
Robert Johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues singer-songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy and poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. One Faustian myth says that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads of Mississippi highways to achieve success. -
G.I. Bill
The Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans. It was designed by the American Legion, who helped push it through Congress by mobilizing its chapters; the goal was to provide immediate rewards for practically all World War II veterans. The act avoided the highly disputed postponed life insurance policy payout for World War I veterans that caused political turmoil for a decade. -
Period: to
Contemporary
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Period: to
Cold War
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Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is an American politician and environmentalist who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Gore was Bill Clinton's running mate in their successful campaign in 1992, and the pair was re-elected in 1996. Near the end of Clinton's second term, Gore was selected as the Democratic nominee for the 2000 presidential election but lost the election in a very close race after a Florida recount. After his term as vice-president ended in 2001. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning on April 3, 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-torn regions, remove trade barriers, modernise industry, improve European prosperity, and prevent the spread of Communism. The Marshall Plan required a lessening of interstate barriers, a dropping of many regulations, and encouraged an increase in productivity. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was 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 threats to Greece and Turkey. Direct American military force was usually not involved, but Congress appropriated financial aid to support the economies and militaries of Greece and Turkey. -
Fair Deal
The Fair Deal was an ambitious set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address. More generally the term characterizes the entire domestic agenda of the Truman administration, from 1945 to 1953. It offered new proposals to continue New Deal liberalism, but with the Conservative Coalition controlling Congress, only a few of its major initiatives became law and then only if they had considerable GOP support. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Blockade 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 Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche mark from West Berlin. The Western Allies organized the Berlin airlift to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin. -
2nd Red Scare
What would become known as the McCarthy era began before McCarthy's term in 1953. Following the First Red Scare, president Truman signed in 1947 an executive order to screen federal employees for association with organizations deemed "totalitarian, Fascist, Communist or subversive" or advocating "to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means." In 1949 a high level State Department official was convicted of perjury in a case of espionage. -
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. Central elements of Beat culture are rejection of standard narrative values, spiritual quest, exploration of American and Eastern religions, rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs. -
Period: to
1950's
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Bill Haley and the Comets
Bill Haley & His Comets were an American rock and roll band, founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band was also known as Bill Haley and the Comets and Bill Haley's Comets. From late 1954 to late 1956, the group placed nine singles in the Top 20, one of those a number one and three more in the Top Ten. Bandleader Bill Haley had previously been a country music performer; after recording a country and western-styled version of "Rocket 88", a rhythm and blues song. -
Korean War (The Forgotten War)
Korea was ruled by Imperial Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Imperial Japan, as a result of an agreement with the United States, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south. By 1948, as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea was split into two regions, with separate governments. -
Period: to
Civil Rights
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Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Ed. of Topeka was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision effectively overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
Polio Vaccine
Polio vaccines are vaccines used to prevent poliomyelitis. There are two types: one that uses inactivated poliovirus and is given by injection, and one that uses weakened poliovirus and is given by mouth. The World Health Organization recommends all children be fully vaccinated against polio. The two vaccines have eliminated polio from most of the world, and reduced the number of cases reported each year from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 37 in 2016. -
Emmett Till Tragedy
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African-American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after a white woman said she was offended by him in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement. Till was born and raised in Chicago and in August 1955, was visiting relatives near Money. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
Following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown, which eventually led to the integration, also called desegregation, of public schools, Southern whites began a campaign of "Massive Resistance." Violence against blacks rose; in Little Rock, Arkansas where US President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to order in federal troops to protect nine children integrating into a public school, the first time the US federal government ordered troops in the South since the Reconstruction era. -
Little Rock 9
The Little Rock Nine was 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. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, on May 17, 1954. -
Feminism
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men. Feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to earn fair wages or equal pay. -
SNCC
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the major Civil Rights Movement organizations of the 1960s. It emerged from the first wave of student sit-ins and formed at an April 1960 meeting organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University. After its involvement in the Voter Education Project, SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support its work in the South, allowing full-time organizers to have a small salary. -
OPEC
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is an intergovernmental organization of 14 nations as of Feb. 2018, founded in 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members, and headquartered since 1965 in Vienna, Austria. As of 2016, the 14 countries accounted for an estimated 44 percent of global oil production and 73 percent of the world's "proven" oil reserves, giving OPEC a major influence on global oil prices that were previously determined by American-dominated multinational oil companies. -
Period: to
1960's
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Sit-Ins
The Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Congress of Racial Equality conducted sit-ins as early as the 1940s. Ernest Calloway refers to Bernice Fisher as "Godmother of the restaurant 'sit-in' technique." In August 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library. Congress of Industrial Organizations labor delegates had a brief, spontaneous lunch counter sit-in during their 1947 Columbus, Ohio, convention. -
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States government. The stated mission of the Peace Corps includes providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand American culture, and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries. The work is generally related to social and economic development. Each program participant, a Peace Corps Volunteer, is an American citizen, typically with a college degree. -
Freedom Rides
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States, in 1961 and subsequent years, in order to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia, which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
Anti-War Movement
Substantial anti-war sentiment developed in the United States during the period roughly falling between the end of the War of 1812 and the commencement of the Civil War, or what is called the antebellum era. The movement reflected both strict pacifist and more moderate non-interventionist positions. Many prominent intellectuals of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and William Ellery Channing contributed literary works against war. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, and was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. A ten-month investigation by the Warren Commission from November 1963-September 1964 concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy. -
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was an American ex Marine and Marxist who assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. According to four federal government investigations and one municipal investigation, Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from a sniper's nest on the sixth floor of a school book depository as the President traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in the city of Dallas, Texas. Oswald was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. -
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through Executive Order 11130 on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy that had taken place on November 22, 1963. The U.S. Congress passed Senate Joint Resolution 137 authorizing the Presidential appointed Commission to report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. -
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. President Johnson first used the term "Great Society" during a speech at Ohio University, then unveiled the program in greater detail at an appearance at University of Michigan. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and rural poverty. -
Jack Ruby
Jack Leon Ruby was the Dallas, Texas nightclub owner who fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, while Oswald was in police custody after being charged with assassinating U.S. President John F. Kennedy and the murder of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit two days earlier. A Dallas jury found him guilty of murdering Oswald, and he was sentenced to death. Ruby's conviction was later appealed, and he was granted a new trial. -
Period: to
1970's
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EPA
The United States Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States which was created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA and it began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order establishing the EPA was ratified by committee hearings in the House and Senate. -
Home Game Video Systems
Although the first video games appeared in the 1950s, they were played on massive computers connected to vector displays, not analog televisions. Ralph H. Baer conceived the idea of a home video game in 1951. In the late 1960s while working for Sanders Associates he created a series of video game console designs. One of these designs, which gained the nickname of the "Brown Box", featured changeable game modes and was demonstrated to several TV manufactures. -
Space Shuttle Program
The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official name, Space Transportation System, was taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. The Space Shuttle composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters. -
Title IX
Title IX, as a federal civil rights law in the United States of America, was passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It was co-authored and introduced by Senator Birch Bayh in the U.S. Senate. It was later renamed the Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002 after Patsy Mink, its late U.S. House co-author and sponsor. The following is the original text as made, signed into law by U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972. -
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, is a landmark decision issued in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of the constitutionality of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions. The Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state's interests in regulating abortions: protecting women's health and protecting the potentiality of human life. -
Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of the few dozens of US environmental laws passed in the 1970s, and serves as the enacting legislation to carry out the provisions outlined in The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation", the ESA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. -
Earl Warren Supreme Court
Earl Warren was an American jurist and politician who served as the 30th Governor of California and later the 14th Chief Justice of the United States. He is best known for the liberal decisions of the Warren Court, which outlawed segregation in public schools and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public school-sponsored prayers, and requiring "one man–one vote" rules of apportionment of election districts. -
Space Race
The Space Race refers to the 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for dominance in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following World War II, aided by captured German missile technology and personnel from the Aggregat program. The technological superiority required for such dominance was seen as necessary for national security. -
FEC
The Commission is made up of six members, who are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. Each member serves a six-year term, and two seats are subject to appointment every two years. By law, no more than three Commissioners can be members of the same political party, and at least four votes are required for any official Commission action. The chairmanship of the Commission rotates among the members each year. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union. -
VHS
The Video Home System is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes. Developed by Victor Company of Japan in the early 1970s, it was released in Japan in late 1976 and in the United States in early 1977. From the 1950s, magnetic tape video recording became a major contributor to the television industry, via the first commercialized video tape recorders. At that time, the devices were used only in expensive professional environments such as television studios. -
Gerald Ford's Presidency
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician who served as the 38th President of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977. Prior to his accession to the presidency he served as the 40th Vice President of the United States from December 1973 to August 1974. Ford is the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office. His 895 day-long presidency is the shortest in U.S. history for any president who did not die in office. -
Elvis Presley
Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. -
The Moral Majority
The origins of the Moral Majority can be traced to 1976 when Baptist minister Jerry Falwell embarked on a series of “I Love America” rallies across the country to raise awareness of social issues important to him. These rallies were an extension of Falwell’s decision to go against the traditional Baptist principle of separating religion and politics, a change of heart Falwell says he had when he perceived what he described as the decay of the nation’s morality. -
Period: to
1980's
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Election of 1980
The United States presidential election of 1980 was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. Due to the rise of conservatism following Reagan's victory, some historians consider the election to be a realigning election that marked the start of the "Reagan Era". Carter's unpopularity and poor relations with Democratic leaders encouraged an intra-party challenge by Senator Ted Kennedy. -
Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor is a retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan to 2006. She is the first woman to serve on the Court. Prior to O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was an elected official and judge in Arizona serving as the first female Majority Leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. Upon her nomination to the Court, O'Connor was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. -
Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the U.S. from 1977 to 1981. He previously was the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975, after 2 terms in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967. Carter has remained active in public life during his post-presidency, and in 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in co-founding the Carter Center. Raised in a wealthy family of peanut farmers in the southern town of Plains in Georgia. -
Music Television (MTV)
MTV is an American cable and satellite television channel owned by Viacom Media Networks and headquartered in New York City. Launched on August 1, 1981, the channel originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys". At first, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is primarily teenagers, particularly high school and college students. MTV has toned down its music video programming significantly in recent years. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair, also referred to as Irangate, Contragate or the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped, thereby, to fund the Contras in Nicaragua while at the same time negotiating the release of several U.S. hostages. -
Reagan Presidency
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to the presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Reagan was raised in a poor family in small towns of northern Illinois. He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations. -
Soviet War in Afghanistan
Prior to the arrival of Soviet troops, Afghanistan's communist party took power after a 1978 coup, installing Nur Mohammad Taraki as president. The party initiated a series of radical modernization reforms throughout the country that were deeply unpopular, particularly among the more traditional rural population and the established traditional power structures. The government's Stalinist-like nature of vigorously suppressing opposition. -
Period: to
1990's
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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 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. Separate international economic and military alliances. -
Persian Gulf War
The Gulf War, code named Operation Desert Shield for operations leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait. The war is also known under other names, such as the Persian Gulf War, First Gulf War, Gulf War I, Kuwait War, First Iraq War or Iraq War. -
Rodney King Accident
Rodney Glen King was an African-American taxi driver who became known internationally as the victim of Los Angeles Police Department brutality, after a videotape was released of several police officers beating him during his arrest on March 3, 1991. A civilian, George Holiday, filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to local news station KTLA. The footage clearly showed King being beaten repeatedly, and the incident was covered by news media around the world. -
Election of 1992
The United States presidential election of 1992 was the 52nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1992. Democratic Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas defeated incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush, independent businessman Ross Perot of Texas, and a number of minor candidates. Bush had alienated many of the conservatives in his party by breaking his 1988 campaign pledge against raising taxes. -
George H.W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993. Prior to assuming the presidency, Bush served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously been a Congressman, Ambassador and Director of Central Intelligence. During his public sector career he was known simply as George Bush; since 2001, he's often been referred to as "George H. W. Bush", Bush 41. -
Albert Sabin
Sabin was born in Białystok, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, to Polish-Jewish parents, Jacob Saperstein and Tillie Krugman. In 1921, he emigrated with his family to America. In 1930, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and changed his name to Sabin, as well as assuming the middle name Bruce. Sabin received a medical degree from New York University in 1931. He trained in internal medicine, pathology, and surgery at Bellevue Hospital in New York City from 1931–1933. -
NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Canada. NAFTA has two supplements: the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. -
Nixon's Presidency
Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 until 1974, when he resigned from office, the only U.S. president to do so. He had previously served as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961, and prior to that as a U.S. Representative and also Senator from California. Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After completing his undergraduate studies at Whittier College. -
Orval Faubus
Faubus' name became internationally known during the Little Rock Crisis of 1957, when he used the Arkansas National Guard to stop African Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School as part of federally ordered racial desegregation. Critics have long charged that Faubus' fight in Little Rock against the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that separate schools were inherently unequal was politically motivated. -
Dr. Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Born in New York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician. In 1939, after earning his medical degree, Salk began an internship as a physician scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Two years later he was granted a fellowship at the University of Michigan. -
Warren Burger Supreme Court
Warren Earl Burger was the 15th Chief Justice of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1986. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Burger graduated from the St. Paul College of Law in 1931. He helped secure the Minnesota delegation's support for Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican National Convention. After Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, he appointed Burger to the position of Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division. -
Barry Gold Water
Barry Morris Goldwater was an American politician, businessman, and author who was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1964 election. Despite losing the election by a landslide, Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He was a vocal opponent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
Bush v. Gore
Bush v. Gore, U.S., was a decision of the United States Supreme Court that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election. The ruling was issued on December 12, 2000. On December 9, the Court had preliminary halted the Florida recount that was occurring. Eight days earlier, the Court unanimously decided the closely related case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. The Electoral College was scheduled to meet on December 18, 2000, to decide the election. -
Election of 2000
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush, and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President. Bill Clinton, the incumbent President, was vacating the position after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Bush narrowly won the November 7 election, with 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266. -
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the presidency, he was the Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideologically a New Democrat and many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas and attended Georgetown University, the University of Oxford. -
War on Terror
The War on Terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism, is an international military campaign that was launched by the U.S. government after the September 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001. The naming of the campaign uses a metaphor of war to refer to a variety of actions that do not constitute a specific war as traditionally defined. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 Sept. 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. -
9/11 Attacks
The September 11 attacks all of which departed from airports in the northeastern United States bound for California were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed. -
Patriot Act
The USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. With its ten-letter abbreviation expanded, the full title is “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001”. The abbreviation, as well as the full title, have been attributed to Chris Cylke, a former staffer on the House Judiciary Committee. From broad concern felt among Americans from the Sep. 11 attacks. -
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals could improve individual outcomes in ed. The Act required states to develop assessments in basic skills. To get federal school funding, states gave assessments to students. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the "colored section" to a white passenger. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. -
Hurricane Katrina Disaster
Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly tropical cyclone that is tied with Hurricane Harvey of 2017 as the costliest tropical cyclone on record. Katrina was also one of the costliest natural disasters and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. As Katrina made landfall, its front right quadrant, which held the strongest winds, slammed into Gulf port, Mississippi, devastating it. The storm originated over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. -
Ike Turner
Izear Luster "Ike" Turner, Jr. was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. An early pioneer of fifties rock and roll, he is most popularly known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his then-wife Tina Turner in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Turner began playing piano and guitar when he was eight, forming his group, the Kings of Rhythm, as a teenager. He employed the group as his backing band for the rest of his life. His first recording. -
DADT
DADT was the official United States policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians, instituted by the Clinton Administration on February 28, 1994, when Department of Defense Directive issued on December 21, 1993, took effect, lasting until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. -
2nd Iraq War
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. An estimated 151,000 to 600,000 or more Iraqis were killed in the first 3–4 years of conflict. The U.S. became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition. -
DOMA
The Defense of Marriage Act was a United States federal law that, prior to being ruled unconstitutional, defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states. Until Section 3 of the Act was struck down in 2013, DOMA, in conjunction with other statutes, had barred same-sex married couples from being recognized as "spouses" for purposes of federal laws.
