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McCarthy's Wheeling Speech. Senator Joe McCarthy and chief counsel Roy Cohn interrogating suspected communists. At a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, McCarthy proclaimed that he was aware of 205 card-carrying members of the Communist Party who worked for the United States Department of State.
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dies from a massive heart attack
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A successful color television system began commercial broadcasting, first authorized by the FCC on December 17,1953 based on a system designed by RCA. In 1940, prior to RCA, CBS researchers led by Peter Goldmark invented a mechanical color television system based on the 1928 designs of John Logie Baird.
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Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.
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FIRE
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The barring of nine Black African-American students who were prevented from entering Arkansas’ Little Rock Central High School on September 4, 1957, became known historically as the “Little Rock Crisis,” with then-Governor Orval Faubus calling in the National Guard to stop the students at the door. On this date in 1957, the nine students would begin integration of Little Rock Central along with federal and nearby Army troops.
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United States U-2 spy plane was shot down over the airspace of the Soviet Union. The United States government at first denied the plane's purpose and mission, but then was but then was forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft.
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Killing of Peter Fechter. Peter Fechter (14 January 1944 – 17 August 1962) was a German bricklayer from Berlin in what became East Germany in 1945. He was 18 when he became one of the first victims of the Berlin Wall's border guards while trying to cross over to what was then West Berlin.
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August 5, 1962, Brentwood, Los Angeles, CA
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The Cuban Missile Crisis begins on October 14, 1962, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict.
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On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls. This murderous act shocked the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement.
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The 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.
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Nelson Mandela received a life sentence for committing sabotage against South Africa's apartheid government, avoiding a possible death sentence. Mandela Sentenced for Sabotage.
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The Civil Rights Act is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
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The blackout was caused by the tripping of a 230-kilovolt transmission line near Ontario, Canada, at 5:16 p.m., which caused several other heavily loaded lines also to fail.
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The Party established patrols in Black communities to monitor police activities and protect the residents from police brutality.
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Shot and killed
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Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first humans on the Moon.
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April 1, 1970 - For the first time, the 1970 census counted over 200 million people living in the United States. The 13.4% increase since the last census indicated that a 203,302,031 population now called the U.S.A. home. It had taken only fifty years to go from the first 100 million census in 1920 to the second. Once again, the geographic center of the United States population was in Illinois, five miles east southeast of Mascoutah.
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Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon announces that 50,000 additional U.S. troops will be pulled out of South Vietnam by April 15, 1970. This was the third reduction since the June Midway conference, when Nixon announced his Vietnamization program.
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January 2, 1971 - A ban on the television advertisement of cigarettes goes into affect in the United States.
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October 1, 1971 - Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida, expanding the Disney empire to the east coast of the United States.
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January 22, 1973 - The United States Supreme Court rules in Roe vs. Wade that a woman can not be prevented by a state in having an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy.
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October 10, 1973 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigns amid charges of tax evasion and is replaced by the appointment of Gerald R. Ford on October 12.
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March 7, 1974 - Legislation is signed by President Nixon creating the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area along the Cumberland River in Kentucky and Tennessee.
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On Aug. 8, 1974, Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, announced that he would resign from office, effective at noon the following day.
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January 1, 1975 - The Watergate cover up trials of Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman are completed; all are found guilty of the charges.
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a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.
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November 26, 1976 - Microsoft becomes a registered trademark, one year after its name for microcomputer software is first mentioned by Bill Gates to Paul Allen in a letter.
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September 21, 1977 - Fifteen nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign a nuclear-proliferation pact, slowing the spread of nuclear weapons around the world.
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On November 18, 1978, Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones instructed his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced fruit punch. At the Jonestown compound in Guyana, 912 Peoples Temple members (276 of whom were children) drank the punch and died. Jim Jones died the same day from a gunshot wound to the head.
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The Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor, near Middletown, Pa., partially melted down on March 28, 1979. This was the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history, although its small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public.
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January 4, 1980 - President Jimmy Carter announces the embargo on sale of grain and high technology to the Soviet Union due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
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May 18, 1980 - The Mt. St. Helens volcano, in Washington State, erupts, killing fifty-seven people and economic devastation to the area with losses near $3 billion. The blast was estimated to have the power five hundred times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
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(November 4, 1980): Former California Governor Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter in a landslide. The governor’s election ushered in “The Reagan Revolution.” By 1984, the economy completely turned around. During his tenure in office, the Soviet Union went from being a superpower bent on global domination to a third rate power. Most historians and observers credit Reagan with this achievement and the economic turnaround.
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John Lennon was an English musician who gained worldwide fame as one of the founder members of The Beatles, for his subsequent solo career, and for his political activism and pacifism. He was shot by Mark David Chapman at the entrance to the building where he lived, The Dakota, in New York City on 8 December 1980.
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On June 5, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publish a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), describing cases of a rare lung infection, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), in five young, previously healthy, gay men in Los Angeles.
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President Ronald Reagan appointed an Arizona judge, Sandra Day O'Connor, to the Supreme Court. She was confirmed two months later, becoming the first woman to serve on the nation's highest court.
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The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981.
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continuing the trend, since the beginning of the Berlin Wall coming down, that the Cold War was about to end. The ending of the Cold War was completed, in many ways, by the strong policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan toward the Soviet block. Six days later, a plan to reunite Germany was announced.
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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 Russian state.
