History Project

  • JosephMcCarthy- McCarthyism

    JosephMcCarthy- McCarthyism
    was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substa
  • U.S. President Truman Orders Construction of Hydrogen Bomb

    U.S. President Truman Orders Construction of Hydrogen Bomb
    On January 18th a long article about the new weapon appeared in the New York Times. On January 29th Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he thought the US should proceed with the hydrogen bomb, to help to keep peace in the world like the atomic bomb before it. Senator McMahon issued a statement next day that the matter of the hydrogen bomb was 'under continuous investigation and consideration'. On January 31st Truman announced that, in accordance with hi
  • Cold War

    Cold War
    Growing out of post-World War II tensions between the two nations, the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted for much of the second half of the 20th century resulted in mutual suspicions, heightened tensions and a series of international incidents that brought the world’s superpowers to the brink of disaster.
  • First Modern Credit Card Introduced

    First Modern Credit Card Introduced
    The Discover Card is a credit card, issued primarily in the United States. It was announced by Sears in 1985 and was introduced nationwide the following year. Discover was part of Dean Witter, and then Morgan Stanley, until 2007, when Discover Financial Services became an independent company. Novus, a major processing center, was once partners with the company. The Novus logo was retired, replaced by the Discover Network logo.
    Most cards with the Discover brand are issued by Discover Bank. Disc
  • First Organ Transplant

    First Organ Transplant
    Ruth Tucker, 49, suffered from polycystic kidneys and was in need of a new kidney. One of her kidneys was non-functioning and the other only functioned at 10 percent. Tucker’s mother and sister had also died from the same disease. The doctors, hospital leadership and patient bravely decided to attempt something that hadn’t been done before—an organ transplant. History was made at Little Company of Mary Hospital on June 17, 1950, when doctors performed the first successful organ transplant in the
  • The First Peanuts Cartoon Strip

    The First Peanuts Cartoon Strip
    When Schulz sold his first strip to the United Feature Syndicate in 1950, it was the Syndicate that changed the name from Li'l Folks to Peanuts - a name that Schulz himself never liked.
    The very first strip was four panels long and showed Charlie Brown walking by two other young children, Shermy and Patty. (Snoopy was the also an early character in the strip, but he did not appear in the very first one.)
  • Civil Rights Movement

    Civil Rights Movement
    The African-American Civil Rights Movement encompasses social movements in the United States whose goal was to end racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans and enforce constitutional voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the South. The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations betwe
  • 1952 - The Great Smog

    1952 - The Great Smog
    The Great Smog of 1952: From December 5 to December 9, 1952, a thick fog settled on London. This fog mixed with trapped black smoke to create a deadly layer of smog. Although there was no great panic at the time, the smog proved deadly. In the five days it hovered over London, the smog killed 4,000 people. In the following weeks, another 8,000 people died from exposure to the Great Smog of 1952.
  • DNA Discovered

    DNA Discovered
    Many people believe that American biologist James Watson and English physicist Francis Crick discovered DNA in the 1950s. In reality, this is not the case. Rather, DNA was first identified in the late 1860s by Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher. Then, in the decades following Miescher's discovery, other scientists--notably, Phoebus Levene and Erwin Chargaff--carried out a series of research efforts that revealed additional details about the DNA molecule, including its primary chemical components a
  • THE 'lITTLE rOCK NINE'

    THE 'lITTLE rOCK NINE'
    Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower.
    The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. The dec
  • Brown V. Board Of Education

    Brown V. Board Of Education
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    Brown v. Board of EducationAuthorHistory.com Staff
    Website NameHistory.com
    Year Published2009
    TitleBrown v. Board of Education
    URLhttp://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka
    Access DateMay 19, 2014
    PublisherA+E Networks
    Introduction
    On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Court’s unanimous decision overt
  • Polio Vaccine Created

    Polio Vaccine Created
    Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis (or polio). The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Dr Thomas Francis Junior on April 12, 1955,[1] it consists of an injected dose of inactivated (dead) poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin using attenuated poliovirus. Human trials of Sabin's vaccine began in 1957, and it was licensed in 1962.[2] There is no long term carrier state for poliovirus in immu
  • vietnam war

    vietnam war
    The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The divisive war, increasingly unpopular at home, ended with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam under Communist control two years later. More than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans, were killed in the conflict.
  • Suez Crisis

    Suez Crisis
    The attack followed the President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser's decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal, after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the building of the Aswan Dam, which was in response to Egypt's new ties with the Soviet Union and recognizing the People's Republic of China during the height of tensions between China and Taiwan.[16] The aims of the attack were primarily to regain Western control of the canal and to remove Nasser from p
  • Hungarian Revolution of 1956

    Hungarian Revolution of 1956
    The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or Hungarian Uprising of 1956[5] (Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom or felkelés) was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. It was the first major threat to Soviet control since the USSR's forces drove out the Nazis at the end of World War II and occupied Eastern Europe. Despite the failure of the uprising, it was highly influential, and
  • Ifni War

    Ifni War
    The Ifni War, sometimes called the Forgotten War in Spain (la Guerra Olvidada), was a series of armed incursions into Spanish West Africa by Moroccan insurgents that began in October 1957 and culminated with the abortive siege of Sidi Ifni. The war, which may be seen as part of the general movement of decolonization that swept Africa throughout the later half of the 20th century, was conducted primarily by elements of the Moroccan Army of Liberation which, no longer tied down in conflicts with
  • The Space Race

    The Space Race
    After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world’s two great powers–the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union–against each other. Beginning in the late 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system.
  • George Wallace, Governor of =aLABAMA

    George Wallace, Governor of =aLABAMA
    1958, Wallace ran in the Democratic primary for governor. In those days, the Democratic Party was virtually the only party in Alabama, and the party primary was the real contest. This was a political crossroads for Wallace. State Representative George C. Hawkins of Gadsden ran, but Wallace's main opponent was state attorney general John Malcolm Patterson, who ran with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization Wallace had spoken against. Wallace was endorsed by the NAACP. Wallace lost th
  • Emmett Till's Murder

    Emmett Till's Murder
    While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants--the white woman's husband and her brother--made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with
  • The Birth Control Pill Is Approved by the FDA

    The Birth Control Pill Is Approved by the FDA
    Development of "the pill," as it became popularly known, was initially commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick. Sanger, who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916, hoped to encourage the development of a more practical and effective alternative to contraceptives that were in use at the time.
    In the early 1950s, Gregory Pincus, a biochemist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and John Rock, a gy
  • Malcolm X

    Malcolm X
    In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for larceny and breaking and entering. While in prison he became a member of the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952 quickly rose to become one of its leaders. For a dozen years he was the public face of the controversial group; in keeping with the Nation's teachings he espoused black supremacy, advocated the separation of black and white Americans and scoffed at the civil rights movement's emphasis on integration. By March 1964 Malcolm X had grow
  • The Falling Of the Berlin Wall

    The Falling Of the Berlin Wall
    The Berlin Wall was both the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany from 1961 to 1989 and the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War.The Berlin Wall was erected in the dead of night and for 28 years kept East Germans from fleeing to the West. Its destruction, which was nearly as instantaneous as its creation, was celebrated around the world.
  • Technological Advances of the time period

    Technological Advances of the time period
    The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques, and is similar in many ways to the history of humanity. Background knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors have become possible through technologies which assist humans to travel to places we could not otherwise go, and probe the nature of the universe in more detail than our natural senses allow. Technological artifacts are products of an economy, a force for
  • Hippie culture

    Hippie culture
    The 1960’s hippie counter culture movement involved a variety of social concerns and beliefs. The hippies’ primary tenet was that life was about being happy, not about what others thought you should be. Their “if it feels good, do it” attitudes included little forethought nor concern for the consequences of their actions. Hippies were dissatisfied with what their parents had built for them, a rather strange belief given that their parents had built the greatest booming economy the world had ever
  • Assassination Of John F. Kennedy

    Assassination Of John F. Kennedy
    Crowds of excited people lined the streets and waved to the Kennedys. The car turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza around 12:30 p.m. As it was passing the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly reverberated in the plaza. Bullets struck the president's neck and head and he slumped over toward Mrs. Kennedy. The governor was also hit in the chest.The car sped off to Parkland Memorial Hospital just a few minutes away. But little could be done for the President. A Catholic priest was su
  • Protest War

    Protest War
    Protests against the Vietnam War did not start when America declared her open involvement in the war in 1964. America rallied to the call of the commander-in-chief and after the Gulf of Tonkin incident it became very apparent that few would raise protests against the decision to militarily support South Vietnam. America had been through nearly twenty years of the Cold War and they were told by the government that what was happening in South Vietnam would happen elsewhere (the Domino Theory) unle
  • Richard Nixon

    Richard Nixon
    Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974, when he became the only president to resign the office. Nixon had previously served as a Republican U.S. Representative and Senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. He graduated from Whittier College in 1934 and Duke University School of Law in 1937, returning to Californi
  • WoodStock

    WoodStock
    The Woodstock Festival was a three-day concert (which rolled into a fourth day) that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll - plus a lot of mud. The Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 has become an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture.
  • First Sudanese War

    First Sudanese War
    The First Sudanese Civil War (also known as the Anyanya Rebellion or Anyanya I, after the name of the rebels) was a conflict from 1955 to 1972 between the northern part of Sudan and the southern Sudan region that demanded representation and more regional autonomy. Half a million people died over the 17 years of war, which may be divided into three stages: initial guerrilla war, Anyanya, and South Sudan Liberation Movement.
  • Lyndon B. Johnson

    Lyndon B. Johnson
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (/ˈlɪndən ˈbeɪnz ˈdʒɒnsən/; August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969), a position he assumed after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States (1961–1963). He is one of only four people[1] who served in all four elected federal offices of the United States: Representative, Senator, Vice President, and President.[2] Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, served as a United States Representa
  • Watergate Scandal

    Watergate Scandal
    he Watergate scandal was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the US Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.[1] The term Watergate has come
  • Jimmy Carter/ Iran Hostage Crisis

    The beginnings of this crisis preceded Jimmy Carter’s term by almost thirty years. For that long, the United States had provided political support and, more recently, massive military assistance to the government of the shah of Iran. Iran was important because it provided oil to the industrial West and separated the Soviet Union from the Persian Gulf and the oil states. The United States had an enormous stake in keeping it stable and independent. By 1979, however, when Carter had been in office
  • Disco Music Culture

    Disco Music Culture
    ome people claims the Disco scene started already in the early 70's. Like in '71-'73. But I guess that really depends on what you think is DISCO?! The Discotheque scene really started back then, with clubs starting playing music on records to the audience. In these clubs, the Disc-Jockey [the DJ] was formed as this guy putting the records on the turntables and often talking to the crowd in a radio show kind of way.
    Other people say the Disco days started in the mid 70's and that's also my opinio
  • HIV/AIDS

    HIV/AIDS
    The world first became aware of AIDS in the early 1980s. Growing numbers of gay men in New York and California were developing rare types of pneumonia and cancer, and a wasting disease was spreading in Uganda. Doctors reported AIDS symptoms under different names, including “gay-related immune deficiency” and “slim,” but by 1985, they reported them all over the world.
    From the first days of the AIDS epidemic, the history of HIV has been one of stigma and activism as well as science. The earliest
  • Ronald Reagan Reaganomics

          Ronald Reagan Reaganomics
    eaganomics" was the most serious attempt to change the course of U.S. economic policy of any administration since the New Deal. "Only by reducing the growth of government," said Ronald Reagan, "can we increase the growth of the economy." Reagan's 1981 Program for Economic Recovery had four major policy objectives: (1) reduce the growth of government spending, (2) reduce the marginal tax rates on income from both labor and capital, (3) reduce regulation, and (4) reduce inflation by controlling th
  • John Lennon's Murder

    John Lennon's Murder
    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.
  • Assassination Of Ronald Reagan

    Assassination Of Ronald Reagan
    On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were the White House news secretary James Brady, who was left paralyzed by the shooting, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer.
  • Reverend Sun Myung Moon Marries 2,075 Couples at Madison Square Garden

    Reverend Sun Myung Moon Marries 2,075 Couples at Madison Square Garden
    the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean evangelist, businessman and self-proclaimed messiah who built a religious movement notable for its mass weddings, fresh-faced proselytizers and links to vast commercial interests, died on Monday in Gapyeong, South Korea. He was 92.
  • U.S. Embassy in Beirut Bombed

    U.S. Embassy in Beirut Bombed
    The April 18, 1983 United States embassy bombing was a suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 63 people, mostly embassy and CIA staff members, several soldiers and one Marine. 17 of the dead were Americans. It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and is thought of as marking the beginning of anti-U.S. attacks by Islamist groups. The attack came in the wake of the intervention of a Multinational Force, made up of Western countries, including the U.S., i
  • Famine in Ethiopia

    Famine in Ethiopia
    A widespread famine affected the inhabitants of today's Eritrea and Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985.[1] The worst famine to hit the country in a century,[2] in northern Ethiopia it led to more than 400,000 deaths,[3] but more than half this mortality can be attributed to human rights abuses that caused the famine to come earlier, strike harder, and extend further than would otherwise have been the case.[3] Other areas of Ethiopia experienced famine for similar reasons, resulting in tens of thousands
  • Fall of communism

    Fall of communism
    The Revolutions of 1989 were part of a revolutionary wave that resulted in the fall of communism in the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The period is sometimes called the Autumn of Nations,[citation needed] a play on the term "Spring of Nations", used to describe the Revolutions of 1848.
    The events began in Poland in 1989,[1][2] and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. One feature common to most of these developments was the extensive use of
  • Break Up Of Soviet

    Break Up Of Soviet
    he Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991 by declaration no. 142-H of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union,[1] acknowledging the independence of the twelve republics of the Soviet Union, and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On the previous day, 25 December 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, declaring his office extinct, and handed over the Soviet nuclear missile launching c
  • Martin Luther King Jr

    Martin Luther King Jr
    He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, and organized nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, that attracted national attention following television news coverage of the brutal police response. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Hav
  • Guatemalan Civil War

    Guatemalan Civil War
    The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960 to 1996. It was mostly fought between the government of Guatemala and various leftist rebel groups supported chiefly by ethnic Mayan indigenous people and Ladino peasants, who together make up the rural poor. The government forces of Guatemala have been condemned for committing genocide against the Mayan population of Guatemala during the civil war and for widespread human rights violations against civilians.