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G.I. Bill (Servicemen's Act 1944)
A law passed in 1944 that provided educational and other benefits for people who had served in the armed forces in WW2. Benefits are still available to persons honorably discharged from the armed forces. -
Rust Belt vs Sun Belt
The Rust Belt area is a region that consists of areas in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States. The Sun Belt consists of the warm climate states that make up the Southern third of the Continental United States. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the WW2 in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. -
Baby Boom generation
Baby Boomers are people born during the demographic post-World War 2 baby boom approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. -
Containment Policy
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. -
Levittown
Levittown was the born of what we today call suburbia. Abraham Levitt and his 2 sons first broke ground in 1947. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical hegemony during the Cold War. -
Cold War
The Cold War was a state if political and military tension after WW2 between powers in the Western Bloc and powers in the Eastern Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but 1947-91 is common. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the of World War 2. -
Berlin Airlift
At the end of the Second World War, U.S. British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on April 4, 1949 -
1950's Prosperity
With the poverty of the Great Depression and sacrifice of World War II, the 1930s and 1940s were wrought with hardship. -
Domino Theory
The domino theory was a prominent theory from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. -
Beatniks
Beatnik was a media stereotype prevalent throughout the 1950s to mid-1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s. -
Rock n' Roll
A type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based on a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
Rosenberg Trail
The trail of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. -
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. He was a five star general in the U.S. Army during WW2 and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. -
Ray Kroc
Raymond Albert "Ray" Kroc was an American businessman and philanthropist. He joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam. -
Interstate Highway Act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. -
McCarthyism
McCarthyism was the modern day Salem Day Witch Trials. McCarthy claimed that communists infiltrated several government agencies, but he didn't have any evidence. -
Sputnik
Sputnik was the world's first artificial satellite, the Soviet probe that became the first manmade object to reach space. Marked the start of the U.S. and USSR space race. -
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, for supremacy in spaceflight capability. -
Anti-War Movement
A social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. -
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States. Who was assassinated in November of 1963. -
Bay of Pigs
The Bay of Pigs Invasion, was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, was a 13-day confrontation between the U.S. and the USSR concerning Soviet ballistic missiles deployment in Cuba. -
Betty Friedan
An american writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States. Her book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B Johnson, was the 36th President from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President under JFK. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
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. -
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Lyndon B. Johnson. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. -
Tet Offensive 1968
A series of major attacks by communist forces in the Vietnamese War. Early in 1968, Vietnamese communist troops seized and briefly held some major cities at the time of the Tet. -
Vietnamization
Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops." -
Moon Landing
The US landed Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969 -
House Un-American Activities Committee (Huac)
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was a committee from 1938--75 of the U.S. House of Representatives, created to investigate disloyalty and subversive organizations. -
26th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. -
War Powers Act
The War Powers Act of 1941, was an American emergency law that increased Federal power during World War II. The act was signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and put into law on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. -
Richard Nixon
Nixon was the 37th president of the United States of America from 1969 to 1974. he ended Americas involvement in the Vietnam war in 1973.
