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American U-2 aircraft is shot down by the Soviet Union in Sverdlovsk and the pilot piloted by Francis Gary Powers is captured. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to admit that the CIA had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The pilot was convicted to ten years in prison. However after 2 years he was released in exchange for a captured Soviet spy in the first ever “spy-swap”.
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The Berlin Wall was built by the Soviet Union to enclose everyone living on the American, French, or British side of Berlin. In other words, the people living in Berlin were trapped in by the Soviet Union.
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A US spy plane reported sighting of a Soviet nuclear missile base in Cuba. President Kennedy set up a naval blockade and demanded the removal of the missiles. War was averted when the Russians agreed to remove the weapons.
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JFK was assassinated while on a visit to Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder but there has always been speculation that he was not a lone killer and that there may have been communist or CIA complicity. This changed the complexion of the Cold War by changing the leader of the United States. Now, Lyndon B. Johnson was the president of the United States.
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This was a supposedly unprovoked attacks on US warships by communist North Vietnamese gunboats. It was used by President Johnson as a reason to boost the US presence in Vietnam.
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Vietnam had been divided between the Communist North and Capitalist South. However, many Communists were trying to make the whole country a communist one. The US feared that this would create a domino effect spreading communism across Asia. Therefore, they sent over 150,000 troops to Vietnam in 1965.
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Luna-9 captures the first image of the moon’s surface. A huge success for the Soviet Union in the Space Race.
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This prohibits the use of the moon or the Earth’s orbit as a base for nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction. It also prohibits the use of testing military weapons on the moon or any other body in space.
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Warsaw Pact forces entered Czechoslovakia in a bid to stop the reforms known as “Prague Spring”. When he refused to halt his program of reforms, Dubcek was arrested.
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On July 20th, 1969, US Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong becomes the first man ever on the moon beating the Russians the so called space race.
