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The 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. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international -
First Video Recorder
In the early days, film was the only medium available for recording television programs. Charles Ginsburg led the team that developed a new machine that could run the tape at a much slower rate because the recording heads rotated at high speed. This allowed the high-frequency responsethat was needed. -
passenger jets
in the 1950's, passenger jets entered the service. American airlines ordered the pioneering Comet, but Canadian, British and European airlines could not ignore the better operating economics of the Boeing 707. Boeing became the most successful of the early manufacturers. -
civil rights movement
The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation.
The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional.This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson and served as a catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement during the decad -
hiv/aids
is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which originated in non-human primates in Sub-Saharan Africa and was transferred to humans during the late 19th or early 20th century.Two types of HIV exist: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more virulent, is more easily transmitted and is the cause of the vast majority of HIV infections globally. -
Emmett Till’s murder
14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants--the white woman's husband and her brother--made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. -
Joseph McCarthy- McCarthyism
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the prospect of communist subversion at home and abroad seemed frighteningly real to many people in the United States.He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate. -
The “Little Rock Nine”
When nine courageous black students dared to challenge racial segregation in public schools by enrolling at the all-white Central High School, the “Little Rock Nine” became an integral part of the fight for equal opportunity in America. -
Disco Music/Culture
Discos had been quietly serving its core audience for years. They originated as settings where one could dance to recorded music. The deejay deploying two turntables, a mike, and a PA system was a fixture in black communities. Whites deployed a similar arrangement for dances featuring oldies in church basements and community centers. Discotheques such as the Peppermint Lounge helped popularize the twist and countless spin-off dances in the early 1960s. For a short time, even wealthy jet-setters -
Hippie Culture (Music, Clothing, Beliefs)
The 1960’s hippie counter culture movement involved a variety of social concerns and beliefs. The hippies’ primary tenet was that life was about being happy, not about what others thought you should be.Hippies were often vegetarian and believed in eco friendly environmental practices. They championed free love and sexual liberation, particularly for women. They also promoted the use of psychedelic drugs which they believed expanded their consciousness.listened to folk music and psychedelic roc -
space race
American astronaut Alan Shepard probably could have reached space before April 12, 1961, when Gagarin launched into orbit . Similarly, the United States likely could have put a satellite into Earth orbit before the Soviets, whose October 1957 launch of Sputnik 1 shocked America and set the space race in motion. -
Martin Luther King Jr
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. -
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
President John F. Kennedy and his political advisers were preparing for the next presidential campaign. -
Malcolm X
African-American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X articulated concepts of race pride and black nationalism in the 1950s and '60s. -
War Protests
The movement against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began small–among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses–but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest.Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), attracted a widening base of support over the next three years, peaking in early 1968 after the successful Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese troops -
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California, during the campaign season for the United States Presidential election, 1968. After winning the California and South Dakota primary elections for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, Kennedy was shot as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel and died in the Good Samaritan Hospital twen -
Woodstock, 1969
t was a real city, with life and death and babies — two were born during the gathering — and all the urban problems of water supply, food, sanitation and health. Drugs, too, certainly, because so many of its inhabitants belong to the drug culture. Counting on only 50,000 customers a day, the organizer had set up a fragile, unauthoritarian system to deal with them. Overrun, strained to its limits, the system somehow, amazingly, didn’t break. For three days nearly half a million people lived elbow -
Richard Nixon/ Watergate Scandal
It was here that the Watergate Burglars broke into the Democratic Party’s National Committee offices on June 17, 1972. If it had not been for the alert actions of Frank Wills, a security guard, the scandal may never have erupted. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson was elected vice president of the U.S. in 1960 and became the 36th president in 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. -
vietnam war
The Vietnam War was the prolonged struggle between nationalist forces attempting to unify the country of Vietnam under a communist government and the United States (with the aid of the South Vietnamese) attempting to prevent the spread of communism. -
Jimmy Carter/ Iran Hostage Crisis
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The immediate cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow Iran’s deposed Shah, a pro-Western autocrat who had been expelled from his country some months before, to come to the United States for cancer treatment. -
• John Lennon’s Murder
was shot and killed outside of his New York City apartment on the night of Dec. 8, 1980. -
Assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan
on March 30, 1981, tragedy almost befell the American government when John Hinckley, a deranged drifter trying to impress actress Jodie Foster, on whom he had developed an obsession after seeing her in Taxi Driver, fired six shots from a .22-caliber revolver at President Ronald Reagan as the president left a speech he had given to the National Conference of Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO at the Washington Hilton. -
Ronald Reagan/ Reaganomics
A popular term used to refer to the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. President (1981–1989), which called for widespread tax cuts, decreased social spending, increased military spending, and the deregulation of domestic markets. -
the Falling of the Berlin Wall/Fall of Communism/ Breakup of Soviet Union
On November 9, 1989, thousands of jubilant Germans brought down the most visible symbol of division at the heart of Europe—the Berlin Wall. For two generations, the Wall was the physical representation of the Iron Curtain, and East German border guards had standing shoot-to-kill orders against those who tried to escape. But just as the Wall had come to represent the division of Europe, its fall came to represent the end of the Cold War. -
Cold War
The global superpower stand-off that brought the world to the brink of destruction.
