-
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. -
Containment Policy
Containment is a geopolitical strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy. It is best known as a Cold War foreign policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism. -
G.I. Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act 1944)
Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, this act, also known as the GI Bill, provided veterans of the Second World War funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. -
Baby Boom Generation
The term "Baby Boom" is used to identify a massive increase in births following World War II. Baby boomers are those people born worldwide between 1946 and 1964, the time frame most commonly used to define them. The first baby boomers reached the standard retirement age of 65 in 2011. -
Cold War
A state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare, in particular. -
Domino Theory
The domino theory was a Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, each falling like a perfectly aligned row of dominos. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain threats to Greece and Turkey. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
Berlin Airlift
After World War II, the Allies partitioned the defeated Germany into a Soviet-occupied zone, an American-occupied zone, a British-occupied zone and a French-occupied zone. Berlin, the German capital city, was located deep in the Soviet zone, but it was also divided into four sections. -
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. -
Rosenberg Trail
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. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European countries based on the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. -
1950's Prosperity
The economy overall grew by 37% during the 1950s. Inflation, which had wreaked havoc on the economy immediately after World War II, was minimal, in part because of Eisenhower's persistent efforts to balance the federal budget. -
Levittown
Levittown, formerly Island Trees, is a hamlet and census-designated place in the Town of Hempstead in Nassau County, New York on Long Island. It is located half way between the villages of Hempstead and Farmingdale. -
Rock n Roll
Rock n Roll became a popular music genre in the fifties with the introduction of Elvis Presley. -
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. -
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American army general and statesman who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. -
Rust Belt vs Sun Belt
The post-war period, from the 1950s through the 1980s, was characterized by the migration of hundreds of thousands of Americans from the Northern and Midwestern Rust Belt to the Southern Sun Belt. -
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. -
Ray Kroc
In 1954, Kroc visited a restaurant owned by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California, that reportedly had the need for several of his multi-mixers. He was impressed by the simple efficiency of the operation, which rapidly catered to its customers by focusing on a simple menu of burgers, french fries and shakes. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. -
Interstate Highway Act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. It took several years of wrangling, but a new Federal-Aid Highway Act passed in June 1956. The law authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile network of interstate highways that would span the nation. It also allocated $26 billion to pay for them. -
Space Race
The Space Race refers to the competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, for dominance in spaceflight capability. -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. -
Bay of Pigs
On January 1, 1959, a young Cuban nationalist named Fidel Castro drove his guerilla army into Havana and overthrew General Fulgencio Batista , the nation’s American-backed president. For the next two years, officials at the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency attempted to push Castro from power. -
Moon Landing
A Moon landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on 13 September 1959. -
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. -
John F. Kennedy
John Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. President John Kennedy notified Americans about the presence of the missiles made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States; he was sworn into office following the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Upon taking office, Johnson launched an ambitious slate of progressive reforms aimed at creating a “Great Society” for all Americans. Many of the programs he championed a profound and lasting impact in health, education and civil rights. -
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. -
Betty Friedan
She was an American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men." -
Tet Offensive 1968
The 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. -
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 until 1974, when he resigned from office, the only U.S. president to do so. -
Vietnamization
Vietnamization of the war was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops." -
26th Amendment
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. -
War Powers Act
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.
