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Potsdam Conference
The Target Committee appointed by President Harry Truman to decide which Japanese cities would receive the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombings did not place Nagasaki among their top two choices. Instead, they identified Kokura as the second target after Hiroshima -
Atomic bomb
detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. -
Long Telegram
during 1946 and the subsequent 1947 article The Sources of Soviet Conduct argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. -
Iron Curtain speech
speech delivered by former British prime minister Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, in which he stressed the necessity for the United States and Britain to act as the guardians of peace and stability against the menace of Soviet communism, which had lowered an “iron curtain” -
Truman Doctrine
would provide political and military and economic help to all democratic nation under threat from internal forces -
Marshall Plan
U.S program help to the western Europe following the war -
Hollywood 10 (HUAC)
a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives investigated allegations of communist activity in the U.S. during the early years of the Cold War -
Berlin Airlift
It was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. when Soviet forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to controlled by berlin -
NATO
NATO focused on collective defense and the protection of its members from potential threats from the Soviet Union -
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. -
First Soviet Bomb test
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Chinese communist revolution
known in mainland China as the War of Liberation, was the conflict, led by the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao Zedong, that resulted in the proclamation of the People's Republic of China -
Korean war
The main reason for the war spread of communism during the Cold War, American containment, and Japanese occupation of Korea during World War II. -
Rosenberg trial
They were a couple an American couple who were executed in 1953 as spies for the Soviet Union. Some have argued that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of McCarthy-era hysteria against communists or of anti-Semitism (they were Jewish). -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
signaled the end of French colonial influence in Indochina and cleared the way for the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at the conference of Geneva. -
Army-McCarthy hearings (McCarthyism)
hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations -
Warsaw Pact
Cold War mutual defense treaty signed by the Eastern European nations of the Soviet Union and seven communist Soviet satellite nations -
Hungarian Revolution
was a countrywide revolution against the Stalinist government of the Hungarian People's Republic and the Hungarian domestic policies imposed by the USSR -
U2 Incident
a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
was a failed landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution -
Cuban Missile Crisis
brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to war over the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba -
Assassination of JFK
was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination near the end of his third year in office -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Tet Offensive
was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War -
1968 riots at Democratic convention
with the police riot in full swing on Michigan Avenue in front of the Democratic party's convention headquarters, the Conrad Hilton hotel, television networks broadcast live as the anti-war protesters began the now-iconic chant "The whole world is watching". -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions -
Fall of Saigon
The US was forced to abandon its embassy in the city and evacuate more than 7,000 US citizens and South Vietnamese by helicopter. The takeover forced the South Vietnamese to surrender and end the war. -
Reagan elected
Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory. -
SDI announced
televised address to the nation, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to embark upon groundbreaking research into a national defense system that could make nuclear weapons obsolete -
‘Tear down this wall’ speech
Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had separated West and East Berlin since 1961. The name is derived from a key line in the middle of the speech: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" -
Berlin Wall
during the Cold War to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin, which was controlled by the major Western Allies. It divided the city of Berlin into two physically and ideologically contrasting zones. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
political changes in Eastern Europe and civil unrest in Germany put pressure on the East German government to loosen some of its regulations on travel to West Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the first step towards German reunification. -
Alger Hiss case
former U.S. State Department official who was convicted in January 1950 of perjury concerning his dealings with Whittaker Chambers, who accused him of membership in a communist espionage ring.