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Syngman Rhee
First president of South Korea -
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Chou En-Lai
Chinese statesman, served as the first premier of the peoples republic of China and aided the Communist party to rise in power -
Children of Thalidomide
Children that were born with birth defects due to the mother taking a drug called thalidomide -
Little Rock Nine
9 black students entering Little Rock Central High School to desegregate it -
Sputnik
Russia successfully launched the first artificial satellite in to outer space -
Bridge on the River Kwai
A film with a notable landmark in WWII used to supply Japanese forces -
Castro
Communist leader of Cuba
1959-2008 -
Payola
Revealed by a 1959 federal investigation, the “payola” scandal saw radio deejays taking bribes to promote certain songs and records. -
Ben-Hur
One of Hollywood`s best biblical epics and set a record for most academy award wins -
Space monkey
Rhesus Monkey and a squirrel monkey were blasted into space and survived the journey back home -
U-2 Spy planes
Billy Joel wasn’t talking about the band. In 1960 an American U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev calling the flight an “aggressive act” by the U.S. When the U.S. claimed that the flight hadn’t been authorized—even though its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, admitted to working for the CIA—the incident caused the collapse of a Parisian summit conference between the U.S., the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France. -
Psycho
It included on screen violence that was uncommon at the time -
Belgians in Congo
In 1960 the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained independence from Belgium, the country which, under Leopold II, was responsible for widespread atrocities there beginning in the 1880s. -
Hemmingway
With novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929), Ernest Hemingway became a major voice of the Lost Generation, a group of American writers disillusioned with life after World War I. He committed suicide in 1961. -
Bay of pigs
The CIA had planned an invasion of Cuba since 1960, shortly after Fidel Castro came to power and transformed Cuba into a communist state. They executed the plan in 1961, when three U.S. airplanes piloted by Cubans bombed Cuban air bases and, two days later, landed at several sites. But the small force of the Bay of Pigs invasion which contained nothing close to the strength of Castro’s troops. The CIA-directed agents were captured, and the invasion failed. -
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Berlin
From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall separated West Berlin, a democratic state allied with the West, from East Berlin, a communist state aligned with the Soviet Union. -
Eichman
In 1962 German Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was executed by the State of Israel for his extensive role in the Holocaust, which included organizing the transport of Jewish residents of Nazi-occupied states to death camps. -
Birth Control
Griswold v. State of Connecticut (1965) saw the U.S. Supreme Court rule in favor of married persons’ constitutional right to use birth control, striking down laws that made it a crime to use or recommend contraception in many U.S. states. -
Malcom X
The revolutionary civil rights leader Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 while delivering a lecture in Harlem, New York. -
Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh, who was president of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1969, waged the longest—and most costly—battle against the colonial system of all 20th-century revolutionaries. His death in 1969 damaged chances for an early settlement of tensions between Vietnam and the United States. -
Crack epidemic
a significant increase in the use of crack cocaine, an affordable, highly addictive, and smokable form of cocaine. As Reagan intensified the U.S. government’s “War on Drugs,” defendants in federal crack cocaine cases were penalized more harshly than defendants in cases involving other drugs. “Mandatory minimum” prison sentences for drug offenses meant that possession of 5g of crack gave an automatic 5 year sentence while it took possession of 500g of coke to give the same sentence. -
AIDs
the CDC published a report describing disease affecting five gay men in LA. in the next year, they discovered to affect not only gay men but also drug users and women with male partners, became known as acquired AIDS. Though the epidemic first spread during the Reagan administration, homophobic characterization of AIDS as a “gay plague” meant that Reagan himself kept quiet about it for years. He refused to say the word “AIDS” in public until 1985, when the epidemic had already killed thousands. -
Heavy metal Suicide
The heavy metal subgenre known as death metal, populated by artists such as Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest, garnered criticism for lyrics encouraging self-harm when three young fans attempted or committed suicide from 1984 to 1985. -
China under Marshall Law
Following weeks of student-led protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China demanding democratic reforms, martial law was declared in Beijing. When Chinese troops attempted to reach the square, they were initially thwarted by thousands of Beijing citizens blocking their way to protect the protesters. The military eventually broke through, however, and hundreds were killed and thousands wounded.