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Dwight D. Eisenhower
The 34th president of the United States from 53 to 61. Five star general in the U.S. army during WWII. -
Lyndon Johnson
The 36th president of the U.S. -
Richard Nixon
the 37th president of the U.S. -
Jonas Salk
American medical researcher and virologist who discovered and developed the first Polio vaccine. -
Gary Powers
An American pilot whose CIA U-2 was shot down while flying a recon mission over Soviet airspace. -
Roy Benavidez
Master Sergeant Raul Perez Benavidez was a former member of the United States Army Special Forces and retired United States Army master sergeant -
Abby Hoffman
active in the American civil rights movement before turning to protests of the Vietnam War and the American economic and political system. Hoffman's ethic was codified with the formal organization of the Yippies in January 1968. After he was arrested in 1973 on cocaine charges, Hoffman went underground. -
(HUAC)
An investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. It was originally created in 1938 to uncover citizens with Nazi ties within the United States. -
War Powers Act
The War Powers Act of 1941, also known as the First War Powers Act, was an American emergency law that increased Federal power during World War II. The act was signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and put into law on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. -
Iron Curtain
The notional barrier separating the former Soviet bloc and the West prior to the decline of communism that followed the political events in eastern Europe in 1989. -
Truman Doctrine
The principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection. First expressed in 1947 by US President Truman in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey. -
Cold War
During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Europe and Asia, in which the United States gave $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. -
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 allied control. -
Containment Policy
Containment was a United States policy to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War. -
McCarthyism
A Campaign against alleged communists in the US government and other institutions carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy in the period 1950–54. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not in fact belong to the Communist Party. -
Korean War
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. -
Rosenburg Trial
The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. -
Domino Theory
The domino theory, which governed much of U.S. foreign policy beginning in the early 1950s, held that a communist victory in one nation would quickly lead to a chain reaction of communist takeovers in neighboring states. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The divisive war, increasingly unpopular at home, ended with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam under Communist control two years later. -
John F. Kennedy
The 35th president of the U.S. The youngest man elected into office. Assasinated 11-22-63. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
A confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba; one of the hottest periods of the cold war. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On August 7, 1964, 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. -
Anti-War Movement
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. -
The Great Society
A domestic program in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson that instituted federally sponsored social welfare programs. -
Tet Offensive
On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year holiday called Tet), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam. -
Vietamization
A policy of the Richard Nixon administration during the Vietnam War to end U.S. involvement in the war and "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops".
