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N.K. forces backed by the Soviet Union and communist China invade South Korea. The U.S. intervenes to prevent communism from spreading across the world unchecked. Yay America.
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Frank X. McNamara introduced the first modern credit card, the Diner's Club card, in 1950. This revolutionized the way Americans got themselves in debt.
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President Truman signed a peace treaty with the Japanese and officially brought an end to World War Two.
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The communist with the biggest mustache also has the biggest funeral Russia has ever seen.
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DNA is discovered by Francis Crick and James Watson. People are no longer can say, "The baby isn't mine." without getting a DNA test.
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The Reds take a running leap in the space race by sending the first man, a cosmonaut by the name of Yuri Gagarin, into space. Yuri is known for saying, "When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!"
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JFK makes it a goal for the United States, before the decade was out, to put a man on the moon.
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Just six months after Yuri Gagarin's quote about preserving mankind, the world's largest nuclear test was performed by the Soviet Union. Tsar Bomba was a fifty megaton nuclear weapon developed as a way to show the Americans how cool communism was.
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President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Texas. Conspiracy abounds.
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Keeping JFK's promise, the United States landed the first man on the moon. Many a conspiracy theory is born.
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A peaceful protest takes a turn for the worse when the National Guard opens fire with live rounds into the crowd.
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The conspiracy theorists were actually right for once. Nixon's staffers ransack the DNC at the Watergate Hotel.
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President Nixon becomes the first US president to resign. You can't fire him if he quits.
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After years of intense fighting with many American casualties, (and significantly more NVA/Viet Cong casualties) North Vietnam gets their socialist utopia (read: country wide rice and sadness farm) with the foundation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
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A near nuclear meltdown nearly occurs at Three Mile Island. Nearly.
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Known quarter burglar Pac-Man hits arcades everywhere.
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The personal computer is released by IBM. They have no GUI (General User Interface) so all commands must be entered in HTML code.
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Sally Ride breaks the gender barrier for high qualification jobs in the US by becoming the first female astronaut.
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Mir (Peace or Earth) is run by joint US and USSR scientists. A large step to peace.
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Premier Gorbachev calls for perestroika (reformation in English) of the Communist Party in the USSR.
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The Hubble Telescope, the primary source of all of those pretty, pretty space pictures, is launched by the USA.
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The Soviet Union, the US's partner in almost destroying the world in nuclear fire for around forty years, collapses. Former Soviet states turn democratic and capitalist. Yay America.
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LA erupts in a series of riots. The city burns over the acuittal of four officers involved with excessive force charges.
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Scientists manage to sucessfully clone a sheep. Religious people the world over are appauled.
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Two students at Columbine High School perform US's first school shooting. Twelve students and one teacher are killed.
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Terrorists fly hijacked commercial jets into the WTC in New York, New York.
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The Iraq War begins.
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Many are killed in Katrina as the levies break in the Big Easy.
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President Obama wins the presidential election against Sen. John McCain. President Obama becomes the first black president in US.
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Madoff had embezelled a lot of money. He payed.