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Communist China Established
The Communist Party of China is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China. The CPC is the sole governing party of China, although it coexists alongside 8 other legal parties that make up the United Front. -
Cold War
A state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact). -
Truman Doctrine
President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $17 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Blockade (1 April 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. -
Creation of NATO
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). -
Soviets 1st Atomic Bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name “First Lightning.” In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. -
Korean War Begins
A war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States of America fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
Korean War Ends
The war in the air, however, was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign. Jet aircraft were used in air-to-air combat for the first time in history, and Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their Communist allies. The fighting ended on 27 July 1953, when the armistice was signed. -
Domino Theory & Aid to VIetnam
President Dwight D. Eisenhower coins one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a “domino” effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called “domino theory” dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade. -
Geneva Accords
On Indochina, the conference produced a set of documents known as the Geneva Accords. These agreements temporarily separated Vietnam into two zones, a northern zone to be governed by the Việt Minh, and a southern zone to be governed by the State of Vietnam, then headed by former emperor Bảo Đại. -
Creation of the Warsaw Act
The Warsaw Pact (formally, the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, sometimes, informally WarPac, akin in format to NATO) was a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. -
Hungarian Revolution of 1956
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or Hungarian Uprising of 1956[5] (Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom or felkelés) was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Though leaderless when it first began, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the USSR's forces drove out the Nazis at the end of World War II and occupied Eastern Europe. -
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century (1955–1972) competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability. -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. -
Creation of the Peace Corps
On September 22, 1961, Kennedy signed congressional legislation creating a permanent Peace Corps that would “promote world peace and friendship” through three goals -
Bay of Pigs
Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. On Apr. 17, 1961, an armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast of Cuba. -
Building of the Berlin Wall
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Cuban Missile Crisis
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Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Tet Offensive
Tet offensive definition. A series of major attacks by communist forces in the Vietnam War. Early in 1968, Vietnamese communist troops seized and briefly held some major cities at the time of the lunar new year, or Tet. -
My Lai
my lai massacre. my lai massacre in Culture Expand. My Lai massacre [( mee leye)] A mass killing of helpless inhabitants of a village in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, carried out in 1968 by United States troops under the command of Lieutenant William Calley. -
Moon Landing
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Detente
Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union -
SALT I
Negotiations started in Helsinki, Finland, in 1969 between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit the countries' stock of nuclear weapons. The treaties resulting from these negotiations are called SALT I -
Paris Peace Accords
The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 intended to establish peace in Vietnam and an end to the Vietnam War. It ended direct U.S. military combat, and temporarily stopped the fighting between North and South Vietnam. -
War Powers Act
law passed by the U.S. Congress on November 7, 1973, over the veto of Pres. Richard Nixon. The joint measure was called the War Powers Resolution, though the title of the Senate-approved bill, War Powers Act, became widely used. -
Vietnam War ends
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Iranian Hostage Crisis
The Iran hostage crisis, also known in Iran as Conquest of the American Spy Den (Persian: تسخیر لانه جاسوسی آمریکا Taskhire lāne jāsusi Âmrikā), was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States. -
SDI (Star Wars)
Star Wars definition. A popular name, taken from the title of a film, for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) of President Ronald Reagan. “Star Wars” involves the development by the United States of a defense in outer space against intercontinental ballistic missiles. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
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Election of Boris Yelstin
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Collapse of the USSR
The Revolutions of 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union led to the end of decades-long hostility between North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, the defining feature of the Cold War.
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent
