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Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech
Former British Prime Minister Churchill condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe. He declares that "Stettin the the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent". Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech is one of the most famous orations for the cold war period, and Winston Churchill's speech is considered on of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the cold war. -
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 (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value as of June 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World -
Cold War Starts
The Cold War was the geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle between two world superpowers, the USA and the USSR, that started in 1947 at the end of the Second World War and lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991. -
NASA created
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. -
Berlin Blockade
During the multinational occupation of post World War ll Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the western allies railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Berlin Blockade was a big deal because it was one of the first major international crisis of the cold war -
China falls to Communism
The “fall” of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the United States to suspend diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades. The Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921 in Shanghai, originally existed as a study group working within the confines of the First United Front with the Nationalist Party. -
Berlin Airlift stops
After 15 months and 250,000 flights, the Berlin Aircraft came to an end. The airlift was one of the greatest logistical feats in the modern day history and was one of the crucial events of the early Cold War -
East and West Germany formed
The Federal Republic was declared "fully sovereign" on 5 May 1955. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republic, with East Berlin as its capital, was established in the Soviet Zone. -
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.” -
Eisenhower elected president
The United States presidential election of 1952 was the 42nd quadrennial presidential election, was on November 4, 1952. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president. -
Stalin dies
On March 5, 1953, at age 73 Joseph Stalin had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died at 9:50 pm. Stalin's death led to a temporary thaw in the Cold War tensions. -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference was a conference that was held in Geneva, Switzerland. The purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle outstanding issues in the Korean Peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina. -
Warsaw Pact formed
The Warsaw Treaty Organization, 1955. The Warsaw Treaty Organization (also known as the Warsaw Pact) was a political and military alliance established on May 14, 1955 between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries. -
McCarthy dies
Senator Joseph McCarthy comes down with an illness xacerbated by alcoholism and passes away at age 48. McCarthy had been a key figure in the anticommunist hysteria popularly known as the “Red Scare” that engulfed the United States in the years following World War II. -
Krushehev visits US
On Sept. 25, 1959 Khrushchev capped a visit to the U.S. On this day in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev capped a 12-day visit to the United States, the first by a Soviet leader, by meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower at Camp David. -
U-2 incident
The U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. -
Kennedy Elected
Kennedy asked Lyndon B. Johnson, a senator from Texas, to run with him as vice president. In the general election on November 8, 1960, Kennedy defeated the Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon in a very close race. At the age of 43, Kennedy was the youngest man elected president and the first Catholic. -
Soviet Union sends first person into space
Russian Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. -
Bay of pigs
In 1961, an unsuccessful invasion of the Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S government. An armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos also known as "The Bay of Pigs" on the south coast of Cuba. The Bay of Pigs was an utter failure and an embarrassment on the United States. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to the nuclear conflict.
