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United Nations formed
The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights. -
Hollywood 10
Hollywood Ten, in U.S. history, 10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947, refused to answer questions regarding their possible communist affiliations. -
Trumane doctorine
The Truman Doctrine was a United States foreign policy established by President Harry S. Truman in 1947. It was intended to prevent the spread of Communism in the aftermath of World War II by providing U.S. support to countries thought to be targets of influence by the Soviet Union. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was a U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive in the aftermath of World War II. -
Nato formed
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and rebellions in South Korea. -
Space race/Spuntnik
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War adversaries, the Soviet Union and the United States, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II. -
Bay of Pigs
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution. -
Berlin Wall goes up
The wall was erected on the night of Aug. 12, 1961, to isolate the postwar allied western sectors of the former German capital from Soviet occupied East Berlin. The barbed wire that formed the initial barrier was swiftly covered with bricks and mortar. -
U.S. enters Vietnam war
The USA was afraid that communism would spread to South Vietnam and then the rest of Asia. It decided to send money, supplies and military advisers to help the South Vietnamese Government. -
Soviets invade Afghanistan
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24 1979 under the pretext of upholding the Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty. The treaty was signed in 1978 and the two countries agreed to provide economic and military assistance. -
Berlin Wall goes down
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders