-
Truman Doctrine
The message sent by Harry S Truman, known as the Truman Doctrine, asked Congress for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Turkey and Greece. -
Marshall Plan
Marshall spoke of an urgent need to help the European recovery in his address at Harvard University in June 1947. The purpose of the Marshall Plan was to aid in the economic recovery of nations after World War II and secure US geopolitical influence over Western Europe. -
Rio Pact
The Rio Treaty (1947) was an agreement binding the republics of the Western Hemisphere together in a mutual defense system -
Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia -
Brussels Pact
Brussels Treaty, (1948) agreement signed by Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, creating a collective defense alliance. It led to the formation of NATO and the Western European Union -
Berlin Blockade
Berlin blockade, an international crisis that arose from an attempt by the Soviet Union, -
NATO Ratified
The 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington D.C., the city which lends its name to the Treaty. The Treaty committed each member to share the risk, responsibilities, and benefits of collective defense -
Berlin Blockade ends
An early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two million citizens. -
Russia tested its first atomic bomb
The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, known in the West as Joe-1, at Semipalatinsk Test Site, in Kazakhstan. -
Truman approved H-bomb development
President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. -
Joe McCarthy begins Communist witch hunt and loyalty tests
During that time, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy produced a series of investigations and hearings to expose supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government. -
Korean War begins
Korean War begins. Stalin supports North Korea invades South Korea equipped with Soviet weapons -
Chinese and North Korean troops capture Seoul.
The Chinese invasion of South Korea galvanized the UN support for South Korea, while the idea of evacuation was soon abandoned by the UN Command. -
Federal Civil Defense Administration established
Was established as an independent agency by an Act of January 12, 1951. The functions of FCDA were to administer the national civil defense program and to coordinate military, industrial, and civilian mobilization. -
Truman fires MacArthur
President Truman officially relieved Douglas MacArthur of his command. Word of his firing spread quickly, and the American public found the news upsetting. -
Greece and Turkey join NATO.
Greece was formally welcomed as one of NATO's first new members since the creation of the Alliance in 1949, along with Turkey. His Majesty King Paul I, king of the Hellenes, signs the Instrument of accession for Greece in Athens on 11 February 1952. -
Matyas Rakosi become prime minister of Hungary.
Rákosi imposed totalitarian rule on Hungary — arresting, jailing and killing both real and imagined foes in various waves of Stalin-inspired political purges. -
A-bombs developed by Britain
The mud-laden cauliflower explosion. Britain developed its own atom bomb to remain a great power and avoid complete dependence on the United States, which was refusing to share atomic information. -
Nuclear Arms Race atomic test series of 11 explosions at Nevada Test Site
The Nevada Test Site (NTS), 65 miles north of Las Vegas, was one of the most significant nuclear weapons test sites in the United States. Nuclear testing, both atmospheric and underground, -
Korean War ends
This armistice signed formally ended the war in Korea. North and South Korea remain separate and occupy almost the same territory they had when the war began -
Ike's Atoms for Peace speech
In his Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations General Assembly, President Eisenhower sought to solve this terrible problem by suggesting a means to transform the atom from a scourge into a benefit for mankind. -
H-bomb Castle-Bravo test
The United States conducted its largest thermonuclear weapon test in Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands; the detonation was code-named “Castle Bravo.” Radioactive deposits in the ocean sediment at the bomb crater are widespread and high levels of contamination remain today. -
KGB established
The KGB (Russian: Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), romanized: Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, lit. 'Committee for State Security) was the main security agency for the Soviet Union -
Vietnam split at 17th parallel
In Vietnam, the accords create two “regroupment” zones separated by a Demilitarized Zone roughly along the 17th parallel, and restrict the activities of foreign military personnel in Southeast Asia. French forces must withdraw south of the DMZ and Communist forces north. -
West Germany joins NATO and begins rearmament.
West Germany wanted to join NATO because of Adenauer's desire to appease the fears of its neighbors and show a willingness to cooperate. Initial skepticism by the US was set aside after Dwight D Eisenhower endorsed the deal, and West Germany agreed to support the operation. -
Warsaw Pact formed
Formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance, the Warsaw Pact was created immediately after the accession of West Germany to the Alliance. -
Official beginning of the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. -
USSR sent tanks into Poznan, Poland, to suppress demonstrations by workers
About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of the Polish People's Army and the Internal Security Corps under the command of the Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification fired at the protesting civilians. -
USSR sent military aid to Afghanistan
By mid-1979 Moscow was searching to replace Taraki and Amin and dispatched combat troops to Bagram Air Base outside of Kabul. This move prompted the Carter administration to begin supplying non-lethal aid to Afghan mujahedeen, or Islamic insurgents. -
Rebellion put down in Communist Hungary.
A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. -
Explorer I launched
Preparations at Cape Canaveral went on in secrecy for weeks, according to NASA, but as the launch date approached the media was informed. Explorer 1 successfully flew into space on -
Vostok rocket launched 1st ICBM
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) were first deployed by the United States in 1959 and continue to be a critical weapon in the American nuclear arsenal today. ICBMs have ranges between 6,000 to 9,300 miles, making virtually any target in the world vulnerable. -
Sputnik launched into orbit
The USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. The satellite, an 85-kilogram (187-pound) metal sphere the size of a basketball, was launched on a huge rocket and orbited Earth at 29,000 kilometers per hour (18,000 miles per hour) for three months -
Laika died in space
"Decades later, several Russian sources revealed that Laika survived in orbit for four days and then died when the cabin overheated," Zak wrote. "According to other sources, severe overheating and the death of the dog occurred only five or six hours into the mission." -
NASA began Mercury project using Atlas rocket
Soviet Gherman Titov followed with a day-long orbital flight in August 1961. The US reached its orbital goal on February 20, 1962, when John Glenn made three orbits around the Earth. -
Khrushchev demands withdrawal of troops from Berlin
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech in which he demanded that the Western powers of the United States, Great Britain, and France pull their forces out of West Berlin within six months. -
Cuba taken over by Fidel Castro
Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's prime minister. The United States came to oppose Castro's government and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic embargo, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. -
The Tibetan uprising occurs.
Tibetan uprising against the presence of the People's Republic of China in Tibet. The failure of the armed rebellion ultimately resulted in a violent crackdown on Tibetan independence movements, and the flight of the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso into exile. -
Explorer 6 is launched into orbit to photograph the Earth.
The Explorer 6 satellite launched atop a Thor-Able rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its mission was to study Earth's electrical and magnetic fields in the upper atmosphere, but it also carried a device for scanning and photographing cloud cover. -
Soviet Union reveals that U.S. spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory
Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. that an American spy plane had been shot down on May 1 over Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), referring to the flight as an “aggressive act” by the United States. The wreckage of Francis Gary Powers's U-2 reconnaissance plane. -
John F Kennedy is elected as president
John F. Kennedy, 43, becomes the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States, narrowly beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon -
Cuba openly aligns itself with the Soviet Union and their policies.
With Cuba's proximity to the United States, Castro and his regime became an important Cold War ally for the Soviets. The relationship was for the most part economic, with the Soviet Union providing military, economic, and political assistance to Cuba. -
Bay of Pigs invasion see Cuban Missile Crisis Timeline
After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose -
Berlin border is closed
Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. -
Construction of Berlin Wall begins
East German soldiers laid down more than 30 miles of barbed wire barrier through the heart of Berlin. -
Rwanda and Burundi become independent from Belgium.
After hurried preparations which included the dissolution of the monarchy in the Kingdom of Rwanda in September 1961, Ruanda-Urundi became independent broken up along traditional lines as the independent Republic of Rwanda and Kingdom of Burundi. -
Jamaica is granted independence by the UK.
The Colony of Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962. In Jamaica, this date is celebrated as Independence Day, a national holiday. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Khrushchev issued a public statement that Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuba. The crisis was over but the naval quarantine continued until the Soviets agreed to remove their IL–28 bombers from Cuba and, on November 20, 1962, the United States ended its quarantine. -
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified
Representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater, or in the atmosphere. The treaty was hailed as an important first step toward the control of nuclear weapons. -
President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. -
Lyndon B Johnson becomes vice president of the United States
Vice President Johnson would assume the presidency on November 22, 1963, after President Kennedy was assassinated. The following year Johnson was elected to the presidency when he won in a landslide against Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. -
Jawaharlal Nehru dies.
Jawaharlal Nehru died in the afternoon of 27 May 1964, at the age of 74, of a heart attack. -
Gulf of Tonkin incident
Gulf of Tonkin incident, complex naval event in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam, that was presented to the U.S. Congress as two unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and that led to the Gulf of Tonkin ... -
A-bombs developed by China
The People's Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability, after a successful nuclear test on October 16, 1964. -
U.S. Marines sent to Dominican Republic to fight Communism
President Johnson ordered American troops to intervene in the Dominican Republic to maintain order and ensure that there would be no communist government established. -
Announcement of dispatching of 200,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the first American combat troops in Vietnam. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade arrived in Da Nang to protect the U.S. airbase there from Viet Cong attacks. -
Beginning of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965.
Pakistani troops masquerading as Kashmiri locals crossed the LOC with the aim of starting an insurgency among the locals against the Indian government. This infiltration strategy was codenamed Operation Gibraltar. With this, Pakistan aimed to take control of Kashmir -
B-52s Bomb North Vietnam
Only 90 of 99 planned B-52s sorties were effective and six BUFFs were shot down. Two Gs and one D were lost in the first wave and an identical number were downed in the third wave. Three were struck prior to bomb release and three afterward; four went down near Hanoi while two made it out of North Vietnam. -
France withdraws from NATO command structure.
The country would no longer host any NATO bases. The SHAPE, or Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers of Europe, which is in charge of NATO military planning, was relocated from Paris to Brussels. -
Communist China detonates a third nuclear device.
Project 596 was the first nuclear weapons test conducted by the People's Republic of China, detonated on 16 October 1964, at the Lop Nur test site.