-
President Truman Orders Construction of Hydrogen Bomb
On September 23, 1949, President Truman shocked America with a horrible announcement. "We have evidence," he said, "that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR." The announcement caused panic in the country and created horrids of activities in political circles. -
McCarthyism
American liberals approached the end of World War II with high hopes that the postwar era would bring a new flowering of liberal reform. In many ways, conditions appeared ripe for liberal success. Many of the ideologies of the extreme right wing white supremacy foremost among them had been adopted by the Nazis, and were thus seriously discredited. -
Korean War Begins
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. -
Truman Signs Peace Treaty With Japan
President Truman finally signed the Peace Treaty ending WWII. Ending all War for that period of time. -
DNA Was Discovered
In 1953, using x-ray diffraction data, proposed the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Their paper, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: proposed a simple to the unknown structure of DNA. -
First Atomic Submarine launched
The first nuclear-powered submarine went to sea: the 323-foot, 3,674-ton "Nautilus." On her shakedown cruise, she steamed 1,381 miles from New London to San Juan, Puerto Rico. -
Segregation Ruled Illegal In US
Brown v. Board of Education, held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality of civil rights movement into a full revolution. -
Warsaw Pact Signed
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the regional economic organization for the communist States of Central and Eastern Europe. -
McDonalds Corporation Founded
The McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries across 35,000 outlets. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald -
Emmett Till Murdered
They murdered Emmett all because he whistled at a white lady in a store. 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 barbed wire, into the river. -
Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat on a Bus
Rosa Parks had just finished working, she was tired, so she sat in the middle seats which black were allowed to sit there. A white lady decided to want to sit there, there being more open seats, so Rosa denied getting up and she got arrested. -
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis was an event in the Middle East in 1956. It began with Egypt taking control of the Suez Canal which was followed by a military attack from Israel, France, and Great Britain. -
Vietnam War
Vietnam was the longest war in American history and the most unpopular American war of the 20th century. It resulted in nearly 60,000 American deaths and in an estimated 2 million Vietnamese deaths. -
European Economic Community Established
European Economic Community (EEC), organization established by a treaty signed in 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany it was known informally as the Common Market. The EEC was the most significant of the three treaty organizations that were consolidated to form the European Community. Read more: European Economic Community | Infoplease -
Soviet Satellite Sputnik Launches Space Age
The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth. It marked the beggining of the Space Race in USA. -
Chinese Leader Mao Zedong Launches The "Great Leap Forward"
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China from 1958-1961. The campaign was led by Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. The campaign caused the Great Chinese Famine. -
NASA Founded
October 1, 1958, the official start of NASA, was the beginning of a rich history of unique technological achievements in human space flight, space science, and space applications. Formed as a result of the Sputnik crisis of confidence, NASA inherited the earlier NACA, and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space flight. -
First Televised Presedential Debates
70 million American viewers watched the first of four televised presidential debates between candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. They were the first debates ever to be held between the presidential nominees of the two major parties during the election season. -
Peace Coprs Founded
2 a.m., Senator John F. Kennedy spoke to a crowd of 10,000 cheering students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor during a presidential campaign speech. -
Bay Of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs invasion begins when a trained group of Cuban refugees lands in Cuba and attempts to take down the communist government of Fidel Castro. He had been a concern to U.S. policymakers since he seized power in Cuba with a revolution in 1959. -
Freedom Riders Challenge Segregation On Interstate Buses
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions.The segregated public buses were unconstitutional.The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. -
Berlin Wall Built
The Berlin Wall was both the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany. The symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War. -
Marylin Monroe Found Dead
Marilyn Monroe was found dead in the bedroom of her Brentwood home by her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson. She was 36 years old at the time of her death. They say she commited suicide by overdosing. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
In October 1962, an American spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. President Kennedy did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles. -
Martin Luther King Jr. Makes His "I Have a Dream" Speech
Martin Luther King, Jr. became the leader in the Civil Rights Movement to end racial segregation and discrimination in America during the 1950s and 1960s.. His personal charisma, combined with a deeply rooted determination to establish equality among all races despite personal risk won him a world-wide following. -
JFK Assassinated
President Kennedy was murdered at the height of the Cold War, just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. While the mythology of a lost Camelot developed in the years since his death, the Kennedy era was marked by a variety of tensions and crises. -
Assasination Of John F. Kennedy
President Kennedy, accompanied by the First Lady, travelled to Texas, where he was scheduled to make a number of appearances.Not everyone, however, was convinced of the wisdom of such a journey. Some White House officials, worried that the President would receive a hostile reception from voters in what was a staunchly Republican State, advised against it. -
Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement of the United States began as a challenge to segregation, which was the legal separation of whites and blacks. Segregation began as a method to control blacks because slavery was no longer permitted or accepted in the United States. -
Civil Rights Act Passes
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Malcolm X Assasonated
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on 19 May 1925, the fourth of eight children. The family lived in Omaha in Nebraska where his father, Earl Little, was a prominent member of the local branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. -
U.S Troops Sent To Vietnam
The Vietnam War was the struggle between nationalist forces attempting to unify the country of Vietnam under a communist government and the United States attempting to prevent the spread of communism. Engaged in a war that many viewed as having no way to win, U.S. leaders lost the American public's support for the war. -
New York City Black Out
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world the New York metropolitan area. The city is referred to as New York City or the City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. -
Black Panther Party Established
Black Panthers, U.S. African-American militant party. Originally aimed at armed self-defense against the local police, the party grew to espouse violent revolution as the only means of achieving black liberation. -
Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American activist, and prominent leader of the African-American civil rights movement who became known for his advancement of civil rights by using civil disobedience. He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on Thursday April 4, 1968, at the age of 39 -
Neil Armstrong Becomes the First Man on the Moon
Neil Armstrong was a erospace engineer, naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Korean War. -
Manson Family Murders
The first murder by the family was of Gary Hinman, a Los Angeles drug dealer and musician.The first series of mass murders, called the "Tate" homicides, occurred at the home of Sharon (Tate) Polanski.Three victims were shot and/or stabbed multiple times on the grounds of the estate. These were Abigail Folger, Steven Parent and Voiytek Frykowski. Sharon Polanski and Jay Sebring were murdered inside the house. -
Watergate Scandal Begins
Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, several burglars were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate building. This was no ordinary robbery.The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught while attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents. -
HIV/Aids
HIV is a virus that attacks the immune system, the body's natural defense system. Without a strong immune system, the body has trouble fighting off disease. Both the virus and the infection it causes are called HIV. -
Assasination Attempt on The Pope
The first attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II took place in St. Peter's Square at Vatican City. The Pope was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. -
U.S Embassy In Beirut Bombed
On this day, a suicide bomber drives a truck filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives into a U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut International Airport. The explosion killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. A few minutes after that bomb went off, a second bomber drove into the basement of the nearby French paratroopers' barracks, killing 58 more people. -
Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes
At 11:38 a.m. on Tuesday, the Space Shuttle Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. As the world watched on TV, the Challenger soared into the sky and then, shockingly, exploded just 73 seconds after take-off. All seven members of the crew, including social studies teacher Sharon "Christa" McAuliffe, died in the disaster. An investigation of the accident discovered that the O-rings of the right solid rocket booster had malfunctioned. -
US Bombs Libya
The United States launches air strikes against Libya in retaliation for the Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens. The raid,involved more than 100 U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft, and was over within an hour. -
Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
The Chernobyl nuclear power station,suffered a major accident which was followed by a prolonged release to the atmosphere of large quantities of radioactive substances. The specific features of the release favoured a widespread distribution of radioactivity throughout the northern hemisphere, mainly across Europe. -
US Shoots Down On Iranian Airliner
A U.S. warship fighting gunboats in the Persian Gulf yesterday mistook an Iranian civilian jetliner for an attacking Iranian fighter plane and blew it out of the hazy sky with a heat-seeking missile, the Pentagon announced. Iran said 290 persons were aboard the European-made Airbus and that all had perished.
