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House Un-American Activities Committee formed
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was formed May 26, 1938. Although HUAC investigated disloyalty among fascists as well as communists, it concentrated almost exclusively on the latter. In the 1940s under Chairman Martin Dies, HUAC focused on labor unions and New Deal agencies, pioneering many of the techniques later used by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy -
United Nations formation
On 1st January 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, supported by the representatives of 26 countries, published the Declaration by United Nations, a document that pledged their governments to continue fighting together against Nazi Germany and Japan during the Second World War. -
Yalta Conference
In early 1945, with World War II in Europe drawing to a close, Franklin Roosevelt (United States), Winston Churchill (Great Britain), and Joseph Stalin (USSR) agreed to meet to discuss war strategy and issues that would affect the postwar world. -
Potsdam Conference
On 16 July 1945, the "Big Three" leaders met at Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin. In this, the last of the World War II heads of state conferences, President Truman, Soviet Premier Stalin and British Prime Ministers Churchill and Atlee discussed post-war arrangements in Europe, frequently without agreement. Future moves in the war against Japan were also covered. The meeting concluded early in the morning of 2 August. -
Marshall Plan
n January 1947, U. S. President Harry Truman appointed George Marshall, the architect of victory during WWII, to be Secretary of State. Writing in his diary on January 8, 1947, Truman said, “Marshall is the greatest man of World War II. He managed to get along with Roosevelt, the Congress, Churchill, the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he made a grand record in China. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine (listen) was a policy set forth by U.S. President Harry S Truman on March 12, 1947 stating that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet sphere.[ -
NATO formation
NATO was created by the North Atlantic Treaty, also called the Washington Treaty, which was signed on April 5th 1949. There were twelve signatories, including the United States, Canada and Britain (full list below). -
Warsaw Pact formation
N APRIL 1985, the general secretaries of the communist and workers' parties of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland, and Romania gathered in Warsaw to sign a protocol extending the effective term of the 1955 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, which originally established the Soviet-led political-military alliance in Eastern Europe. -
Berlin Airlift
In June 1948, the Soviet Union attempted to control all of Berlin by cutting surface traffic to and from the city of West Berlin. Starving out the population and cutting off their business was their method of gaining control. -
North Korean Invasion of South Korea
he Korean War (25 June 1950 - armistice signed 27 July 1953[28]) was a military conflict between the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China (PRC), with military material aid from the Soviet Union. The war was a result of the physical division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. -
Armistice Signed Ending Korean War
After 2 years and 17 days of secret, difficult negotiations—during a war that lasted 37 months—an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, finally halting the fighting in the Korean War. A bloody, destructive proxy war in the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Korean War caused millions of casualties yet the border remained unchanged: the armistice left the two Koreas divided at the 38th parallel, just as they had been when the war began. -
Sputnik 1 Launched
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S. -
First man in space
April 12 was already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (left, on the way to the launch pad) became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. Newspapers like The Huntsville Times (right) trumpeted Gagarin's accomplishment. -
First American in Space
On May 5, 1961, Mercury Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. (right, headed to launch) blasted off in his Freedom 7 capsule atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket (left). His 15-minute sub-orbital flight made him the first American in space. -
First Man on the Moon
It was 1961. John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States. He wanted to land humans on the moon. The United States had just started trying to put people in space. Was NASA ready to go to the moon? The president and NASA knew they could do it. They were ready to put people on the moon. Apollo 11's mission was to land two men on the moon. They also had to come back to Earth safely.
