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Rock and Roller Cola war
In 1886, John Stith Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, developed the original recipe for Coca-Cola. By 1888, control of the recipe was acquired by Asa Griggs Candler, who in 1896, founded The Coca-Cola Company. Two years later, in 1898, Caleb Bradham renamed his "Brad’s Drink" to "Pepsi-Cola," and formed the Pepsi-Cola Company in 1902, prompting the beginning of the cola wars. -
Communist Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was the coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). -
North Korea and South Korea
The division of Korea began on August 15, 1945 when the official announcement of the surrender of Japan was released, thus ending the Pacific Theater of World War II. During the war, the Allied leaders had already been considering the question of Korea's future following Japan's eventual surrender in the war. -
Red China
On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The announcement ended the costly full-scale civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), which broke out immediately following World War II and had been preceded by on and off conflict between the two sides since the 1920’s. -
Rock Around the Clock
"Rock Around the Clock" is a rock and roll song in the 12-bar blues format written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers (the latter being under the pseudonym "Jimmy De Knight") in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1954 for American Decca. It was a number one single for two months[6] and did well on the United Kingdom charts; the recording also reentered the UK Singles Chart in the 1960s and 1970s. -
England's got a new queen
On 6 February 1952, King George VI died following a prolonged illness and Princess Elizabeth immediately acceded to the throne, becoming Queen Elizabeth II and taking on all of the responsibilities which came with her new title. -
Santayana goodbye
George Santayana was a philosopher and author who was born in Madrid in 1863. At the age of 50, Santayana left the U.S. for good and lived in various places in Europe. Santayana’s spectrum of knowledge was very broad. He was both a published novelist and philosopher. He also coined the famous phrase “ those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (citation needed) Santayana died in Rome in the year 1952. -
Thalidomide scandal
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the use of thalidomide in 46 countries by women who were pregnant or who subsequently became pregnant resulted in the "biggest anthropogenic medical disaster ever," with more than 10,000 children born with a range of severe deformities, such as phocomelia, as well as thousands of miscarriages. -
Dien Bien Phu Falls
The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. It was fought between the French Union's colonial Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The United States was officially not a party to the war, but it was secretly involved by providing financial and material aid to the French Union, which included CIA contracted American personnel participating in the battle. -
Brooklyn's got a winning team
On October 4, 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series at last, beating the New York Yankees 2-0. They’d lost the championship seven times already, and they’d lost five times just to the Yanks—in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. But in 1955, thanks to nine brilliant innings in the seventh game from 23-year-old lefty pitcher Johnny Podres, they finally managed to beat the Bombers for the first (and last) time. -
Trouble in the Suez
The Suez Crisis[a] or the Second Arab–Israeli War, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression[b] in the Arab world and as the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. -
Little Rock Nine
The "Little Rock Nine," as the nine teens came to be known, were to be the first African American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School. Three years earlier, following the Supreme Court ruling, the Little Rock school board pledged to voluntarily desegregate its schools. This idea was explosive for the community and, like much of the South, it was fraught with anger and bitterness. -
Sputnik
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. -
Belgians in the Congo
The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. In January 1959, riots broke out in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) after a rally was held calling for the independence of the Congo. The Congo became an independent republic on June 30, 1960. -
Birth Control
By late 1959, over half a million American women are taking Enovid, presumably for the "off-label" contraceptive purposes. -
Television
Television replaced radio as the dominant broadcast medium by the 1950s and took over home entertainment. Approximately 8,000 U.S. households had television sets in 1946; 45.7 million had them by 1960. -
Heavy metal
Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock, heavy metal bands developed a thick, monumental sound characterized by distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats and loudness. -
Mafia
The 1960s Sicilian Mafia trials took place at the end of that decade in response to a rise in organized crime violence around the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were three major trials, each featuring multiple defendants, that saw hundreds of alleged Mafiosi on trial for dozens of crimes. -
Payola
The Payola scandal reaches a new level of public prominence and legal gravity on February 11, 1960, when President Eisenhower called it an issue of public morality and the FCC proposed a new law making involvement in Payola a criminal act. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
The first mishap occurred on April 15, 1961, when eight bombers left Nicaragua to bomb Cuban airfields.
The CIA had used obsolete World War II B-26 bombers, and painted them to look like Cuban air force planes. President Kennedy cancelled a second air strike.On April 17, the Cuban-exile invasion force, known as Brigade 2506, landed at beaches along the Bay of Pigs and immediately came under heavy fire. -
Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 epic biographical adventure drama film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence and his 1926 book Seven Pillars of Wisdom (also known as Revolt in the Desert. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company Horizon Pictures and distributed by Columbia Pictures. -
British Beatlemania
Beatlemania was the fanaticism surrounding the English rock band the Beatles from 1963 to 1966. The group's popularity grew in the United Kingdom in late 1963, propelled by the singles "Please Please Me", "From Me to You" and "She Loves You". By October, the British press adopted the term "Beatlemania" to describe the scenes of adulation that attended the band's concert performances. -
Vaccine
In 1963, the measles vaccine was developed, and by the late 1960s, vaccines were also available to protect against mumps (1967) and rubella (1969). These three vaccines were combined into the MMR vaccine by Dr.Aug 21, 2023 -
Liston beats Patterson
On July 22, 1963, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sonny Liston retained the heavyweight championship of the world by scoring a second consecutive first-round knockout of Floyd Patterson. The official time was 2:10. -
John Kennedy blown away
On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. -
Watergate
The Watergate scandal was a significant political controversy in the United States during the presidency of Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974, ultimately resulting in Nixon's resignation. It originated from attempts by the Nixon administration to conceal its involvement in the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C. -
Russians in Afghanistan
The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Soviet-controlled Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) from 1979 to 1989. The war was a major conflict of the Cold War as it saw extensive fighting between the DRA, the Soviet Union and allied paramilitary groups against the Afghan mujahideen and their allied foreign figures. -
Ayatollah's in Iran
On February 1, 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran in triumph after 15 years of exile. The shah and his family had fled the country two weeks before, and jubilant Iranian revolutionaries were eager to establish a fundamentalist Islamic government under Khomeini’s leadership. -
Terror on the airline
On June 14, 1985, TWA Flight 847 was hijacked by Mohammed Ali Hamadei and a second terrorist brandishing grenades and pistols during a routine flight from Athens to Rome. -
China's under martial law
The student movement in Beijing in the spring of 1989 was triggered by the death of former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang on April 15. Well before martial law was declared on May 19, the government called army troops into the city to help the police maintain order.