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Period: to
The Cold War
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Winston churchill delivers "Iron Curtain Speech"
Churchill gave his now famous "Iron Curtain" speech to a crowd of 40,000. In addition to accepting an honorary degree from the college, Churchill made one of his most famous post-war speeches. 2 -
Truman Doctrine is established
The Truman Doctrine was an international relations policy set forth by the U.S. President Harry Truman in a speech on March 12, 1947, which stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere. 4.5 -
Marshall Plan is announced
The Marshall Plan was the American program to aid Europe, in which the United States gave economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism. 3.5 -
Berlin Blockade Begins
The Berlin blckade began from June 24, 1948 - May 12, 1949 which was one of the first major international crisises of the Cold War. .5.5 -
NATO ratified
The United States and 11 other nations establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact aimed at containing possible Soviet aggression against Western Europe. NATO stood as the main U.S.-led military alliance against the Soviet Union throughout the duration of the Cold War. 6.5 -
Mao Zedong, a communist, takes control of China
The September 1949 conference in Peking was both a celebration of the communist victory in the long civil war against Nationalist Chinese forces and the unveiling of the communist regime that would henceforth rule over China. 6.5 -
Senator Joe McCarthy begins Communist witch hunt
Joe McCarthy Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft- 5. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between the Republic of Korea supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea at one time supported by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. -
Rosenburg Executions
The Rosenbergs were accused of persuading Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, to provide them with confidential U.S. military information gained from his involvement in the development of nuclear weapons.- 7 -
Warsaw Pact Formed
Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty between eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. 6.5 -
Soviet Invasion Of Hungary
Soviet invasion On October 23, 1956, a tudent rally in support of Polish efforts to win autonomy from the Soviet Union sparked mass demonstrations. The police attacked, and the demonstrators fought back, tearing down symbols of Soviet domination -
Sputnik launched into orbit
was the first artificial Earth satellite with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was visible all around the Earth and its radio pulses detectable. -
Cuban Taken Overby Fidel Castro
In 1959, Fidel Castro took control of Cuba by force and remained its dictatorial leader for nearly five decades. As the leader of the only communist country in the Western Hemisphere, Castro has been the focus of international controversy. -
Soviet Union reveals that the US spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory
On May 1, 1960, thirteen days before the scheduled opening of an East–West summit conference in Paris, a U.S. Lockheed left the US base in Badaber on a mission to overfly the Soviet Union -
US involvement in Vietnam increased
In 1961, South Vietnam signed a military and economic aid treaty with the United States leading to the arrival (of U.S. support troops and the formation (of the U.S. Military Assistance Command. -
Bay Of Pigs Invasion
The Bay Of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. A counter-revolutionary military trained and funded by the United States government's Central Intelligence Agency -
Construction of Berlin Wall Begins
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between the Soviet Union and Cuba on one side, and the United States on the other, in October 1962. It was one of the major confrontations of the Cold War, and is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to turning into a nuclear conflict. -
SALT I signed
Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time, these agreements were the most far-reaching attempts to control nuclear weapons ever. -
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted nine years from December 1979 to February 1989. Part of the Cold War, it was fought between Soviet-led Afghan forces. -
President Ronal Regan proposes strategic Defense Initiative
President Ronald Reagan's televised speech to the nation proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to protect the United States against missile attack. -
Reagan and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbbachev resolve to remove all intermediate nuclear missiles from Europe
In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF Treaty. This landmark agreement proposed to eliminate all intermediate and short-range ground-based missiles and launchers from Europe. -
Berlin Wall falls
The Berlin Wall was both the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany from 1961 to 1989 and the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War. -
End Of Soviet Union, Cold War Ends
In December of 1991, as the world watched as the Soviet Union fellnto fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.
