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Sun Yat-sen establishes the Republic of China
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Period: to
Yuan Shikai is President of the Republic of China
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China dissolves into civil war and chaos
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Mao participates in the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
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The CCP and the Chinese Nationalist Party unite to fight against Japanese invaders
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Chiang Kai-shek becomes the leader of the KMT
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Mao forms the red army
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Period: to
Mao leads his army on the Long March
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Period: to
Baby boom marks a dramatic increase in U.S. births
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Mao defeats Chiang and declares the People's Republic of China
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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is formed
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Period: to
Korean War is fought
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Period: to
Joseph McCarthy conducts investigations
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Twenty-second Amendment limits presidents to two terms
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Period: to
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are tried and executed as Communist spies
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Mao's Five-Year Plan is announced
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Period: to
Nikita Khrushchev leads the U.S.S.R. after Stalin's death
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Period: to
Dwight D. Eisenhower is President of the U.S.
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Jonas Salk's polio vaccine ends the polio epidemic
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Ray Kroc founds the McDonald's Corporation
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Elvis Presley stars on the Ed Sullivan show, performing his new rock 'n' roll music
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The Little Rock Nine attend a previously all-white high school
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Construction of an interstate highway system begins
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Period: to
Mao initiates the Hundred (Many) Flowers campaign, followed by his anti-Rightist campaign
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The U.S.S.R.'s Sputnik I orbits the earth
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Period: to
Mao's Great Leap Forward begins; it ends with the worst famine in world history
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Khrushchev and Mao disagree, causing Khrushchev to reduce Soviet aid to China
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Fidel Castro takes control of Cuba
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The Greensboro Four sit in at a white-only lunch counter, igniting a flame of civil rights sit-ins
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Seventy anti-apartheid protesters are massacred by the South African government
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Bay of Pig invasion fails
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The Peace Corps is establshed
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Freedom riders test the Supreme Court's decision
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Khrushchev orders the Berlin Wall to be built
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Alliance for Progress program offers aid to South American countries
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Period: to
John F. Kennedy serves as President of the U.S.
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Cuban Missile Crisis
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James Meredith becomes the first black student at the University of Mississippi
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King is arrested and writes "Letters from a Birmingham Jail"
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South Vietnam's President Diem is assassinated
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Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi begins the White Revolution in an attempt to modernize Iran
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Period: to
Lyndon B. Johnson is President of the U.S.
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President John F. Kennedy is assassinated
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Civil Rights Act of 1964 becomes law
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Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
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Period: to
Congress passes over 90 bills as a part of Johnson's Great Society initiative
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"Bloody Sunday" occurs in Selma, Alabama
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Malcolm X is assassinated
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Race riots occur in major U.S. cities, especially Watts, Los Angeles
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Voting Rights Act of 1965 becomes law
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Mao initiates the Cultural Revolution in China
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The North Vietnamese gain a political (not military) triumph through the Tet Offensive
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Martin Luther King Jr., is assassinated
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Robert Kennedy is assassinated
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Half a million people attend the Woodstock Festival
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Neil Armstrong takes first step on the moon
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Period: to
Richard Nixon is President
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The U.S. table-tennis team is invited to a table-tennis tournament in China, thus beginning the repairing of relations between U.S. and China
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Palestinians known as the Black September take nine Israelis hostage at the Olympics in Munich
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The Supreme Court rules that women have the right t abortion in Roe v. Wade
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U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ends
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Arab-Israeli War
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OPEC places the first oil embargo on the U.S.
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Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns and is replaced with Gerald Ford
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President Nixon resigns after the Watergate scandal
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Ford pardons Nixon
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Period: to
Gerald Ford is President
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South Vietnam falls to Communist North Vietnam
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Mao Zedong dies at the age of 82
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Period: to
Jimmy Carter is President
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James Warren Jones leads the Jonestown massacre, killing over 900 people at his compound in Guyana
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Camp David Accords promote peace between Israel Egypt
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Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident occurs
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Economic reform called the Four Modernizations is carried out in China
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The U.S.S.R. invades Afghanistan
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Saddam Hussein makes himself President of Iraq
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OPEC enforces another oil embargo
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Khomeini leads the Iranian Revolution and declares Iran an Islamic Republic
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Period: to
Iranian hostage crisis
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Period: to
Iran-Iraq war is fought
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Period: to
Ronald Reagan is President
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Congress investigates the Iran-Contra scandal
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The space shuttle Challenger explodes
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The Berlin Wall separating East (Communist) Berlin and West Berlin is torn down
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About 1,000 protesters are killed by Communist troops at Tiananmen Square in Beijing
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Period: to
George H.W. Bush is President
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Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait
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Operation Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War of 1991 commences in an effort to liberate Kuwait
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The U.S.S.R. officially dissolves
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Bosnia declares independence from Yugoslavia resulting in civil war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia
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Branch Davidian massacre occurs in Waco TX
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PLO leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin make a historic peace agreement (that later falls apart when Rabin is assassinated)
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Period: to
Bill Clinton is President
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The Patriot Act gives far-reaching powers to law-enforcement agencies to fight terrorism in the U.S.
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The U.S. declares war on Afghanistan
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Period: to
George W. Bush is President
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Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four passenger jets, crashing two into the Twin Towers and one into the Pentagon
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The U.S. invades Iraq
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The Supreme Court rules that prisoners at Guantanamo must be given access to U.S. courts
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Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans
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Bush orders a successful troops surge in Iraq
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Barack Obama becomes President of the United States
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Osama bin ladin is dies