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G.I. Bill
Officially known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the G.I. Bill was created to help veterans of World War II. It established hospitals, made low-interest mortgages available and granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools. The education and training provisions existed until 1956. The Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966 extended these benefits to all veterans of the armed forces, including those who had served during peacetime. -
38th Parallel established as border
38th parallel,popular name given to latitude 38° N that in East Asia roughly demarcates North Korea and South Korea.The line was chosen by U.S. military planners at the Potsdam Conference (July 1945) near the end of World War II as an army boundary, north of which the U.S.S.R. was to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces in Korea and south of which the Americans were to accept the Japanese surrender. The areas north and south Korea are fortified, and both sides have large number of troops. -
Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombing
On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90% of the city and 80K people died instantly. Others died later due to radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing 40k people. Japan's emperor Hirohito announced Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastation power of a new and cruel bomb. -
Period: to
Cold War
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2nd Red Scare
As the Cold War intensified,hysteria over the threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare.It led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.S. government and society. Federal employees were to prove loyalty to the government. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy investigated allegations of subversive elements in the government and the Hollywood film industry. The climate of fear and repression linked to the Red Scare finally began to ease by the late 1950s. -
Berlin Airlift
By the end of WWII, the Allied partitioned the defeated Germany into a soviet- occupied zone. The German capital city, Berlin, was located deep in the Soviet zone, but was also divided into 4 sections. On June 1948, the Russians closed all highways, railroads, and canals from western Germany to Western Berlin. They believed that this would make it impossible for others to get any food or supplies. Instead of retreating from West Berlin, the US & its allied decided to supply their sectors by air. -
Fair Deal
Truman announced his plans for his Fair Deal including national health insurance, public housing, civil rights legislation and federal aid to education.He advocated an increase in the minimum wage, federal assistance to farmers and an extension of Social Security.However, the nation’s politics shifted rightward in the years following World War II and inflation, economic conversion from wartime to peacetime industries and growing anti-communist sentiment provided major obstacles to Truman’s plan. -
Period: to
1950s
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Dr. Jonas Salk
Doctor Jonas Salk was born October 28, 1914, in New York City. In 1942 at the University of Michigan School of Public Health he became part of a group that was working to develop a vaccine against the flu. In 1947 he became head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. At Pittsburgh he began research on polio. On April 12, 1955, the vaccine was released for use in the United States. He established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 1963. Jonas Salk later died in 1995. -
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. Central elements of Beat culture are rejection of standard narrative values, spiritual quest, exploration of American and Eastern religions, rejection of materialism, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. -
Korean War (The Forgotten War)
The Korean War began when soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel. This invasion was the first ever military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on S Korea's behalf. As far as concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end.In all, some 5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the war. The Korean peninsula is still divided today. -
Polio Vaccines
On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announced on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio. In 1952, an grown epidemic year for polio, there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 people died from the disease. For promising eventually to eradicate the disease, Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time. -
Brown v. Board of Education
In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal.The Brown v.Board of Education was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.Brown v.Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact,equal at all. -
Period: to
Civil Rights
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TV Shows
The 1950's are considered to be the golden age of television. As news and other broadcasts transitioned from radio to new medium during the '50s, many were watching TV. However, as TV programming expanded, by the end of the decade most American families had their very own television set in their living room. Sitcoms and comedies were among the best with shows like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and I Married Joan. This exciting decade certainly paved the way for the future of network television. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott happened 4 months after Emmett Till's death. It started when a white man asked an African American women, Rosa Parks, for her seat in a bus. However, Parks refused to give up her seat. This was the commence of the successful boycott of riding buses. Many bus companies were ready to go out of business and close out. It lasted for over a year until the SCOTUS ruled segregation on buses to be unconstitutional. Now black riders could sit anywhere but still faced violence. -
Emmett Till Tragedy
On a visit to his family in Money, Mississippi, Emmett Till, 14 year old, was brutally killed by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milan after accepting a challenge and asking out a married white women named Carolyn Bryant. The two men made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of a river and ordered him to take off his clothes. Then, they beated 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. -
Little Richard
Born Richard Wayne Penniman on December 5,1932, in Macon, Georgia,Little Richard helped define the early rock ‘n’ roll era of the 1950s with his driving, flamboyant sound. With his croons, wails and screams,he turned songs like “Tutti-Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally” into huge hits and influenced such bands as the Beatles.In 1957 he abruptly and publicly quit performing rock and committed himself to the ministry and recording gospel songs. He recorded his debut religious album, God Is Real,in 1959. -
Rock 'n' Roll
Rock and roll, also called rock ’n’ roll or rock & roll, style of popular music that originated in the United States in the mid-1950s, attracting mostly the teenager society. This type of music spawned new dance crazes, including the twist. Teenagers found the syncopated back beat rhythm especially suited to reviving Big Band-era jitterbug dancing. From the mid-1960s on, as "rock and roll" was re-branded as "rock," later dance genres followed, leading to funk, disco, house, techno, and hip hop. -
Elvis Presley
Born on January 8,1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi,Elvis Presley came from very humble beginnings and grew up to become one of the biggest names in rock 'n' roll. By the mid-1950s, he appeared on the radio, television and the silver screen.On August 16,1977, at age 42, he died of heart failure, which was related to his drug addiction. Presley was buried on the Graceland property, near the gravesites of his mother and father. Today, Presley continues to be one of the world's most popular music icons. -
Little Rock 9
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education. On September 4, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the black students’ entry into the high school. Later that month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
In 1957,President Eisenhower sent Congress a proposal for civil rights legislation.The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1957,the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.The new act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. It also established a federal Civil Rights Commission with authority to investigate discriminatory conditions and recommend corrective. -
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Act)
The National Aeronautics and Space Act is the United States federal statute that created NASA. It followed close on the heels of the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik. Prior to enactment, the responsibility for space exploration was deemed primarily a military venture, in line with the Soviet model that had launched the first orbital satellite. In large measure, the Act was prompted by the lack of response by a U.S. military infrastructure that seemed incapable of keeping up the space race. -
Politics (Nixon, Kennedy)
In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debates in American history.The Kennedy-Nixon debates not only had a major impact on the election’s outcome, but ushered in a new era in which crafting a public image and taking advantage of media exposure became essential ingredients of a successful political campaign. They also heralded the central role television has continued to play in the democratic process.Kennedy won Electoral College victor later. -
Period: to
1960s
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New Frontier
The term New Frontier was used by liberal Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election.The phrase developed into a label for his administration's domestic and foreign programs. Since Kennedy was the youngest elected president, he had many plans that he wanted to accomplish throughout his presidency. Some of his plan included the raise of minimum wage, cutting business taxes by 90% and the landing of a man on the moon. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day political and military standoff in 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President JFK notified Americans about the presence of the missiles. However, further disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president was assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22 1963 in an open-top convertible.First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy accompanied her husband, next to the Texas Governor, John Connally. As their vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository Building, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor, fatally wounding Kennedy and seriously injuring Connally. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at 46 in the Dallas’ Parkland Hospital. -
Ascendancy of Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson was elected vice president of the United States in 1960 and was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States in 1963 after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It came to be known as the Warren Commission after its chairman, Earl Warren. He initiated the "Great Society" social service programs, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, and bore the brunt of national opposition of American involvement in the Vietnam War. -
Lee Harvey Oswald
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Lee Harvey Oswald eventually joined the U.S. Marines and later defected to the Soviet Union for a period of time. He returned to America with a family, and eventually acquired firearms. Oswald assassinated President JFK on November 22, 1963, in Dallas. Oswald was spotted leaving the scene of the shooting and was later confronted some distance away by police officer J.D. Tippit. While being taken to county jail, on November 24, 1963, Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. -
Warren Commission
A week after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, established a commission to investigate Kennedy’s death. After a nearly yearlong investigation, the commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone and that there was no conspiracy, either domestic or international. Subsequent investigations have both supported and called into question the Warren Commission’s report despite its seemingly firm conclusions. -
Barry Goldwater
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, on January 2,1909, Barry Goldwater ran his family’s department store before embarking on a political career. He served in the senate for 30 years,gaining recognition for his fiscal conservatism.He lost the campaign for the presidency to Lyndon B. Johnson in unprecedented landslide.He continued to make public appearances until the late 1990s, demanding a return to fiscal rather than social conservatism as the basis of a national platform but died May 19,1998 at his home. -
Anti-War Movement
Along with the Civil Rights, one of the most divisive forces of the 20th century was the antiwar movement. It consisted of a number of independent interests, often vaguely allied and contesting each other on many issues, united only in opposition to the Vietnam War. Attracting members from colleges, middle class suburbs, and more, it gained a national prominence in 1965 and remained powerful throughout the duration of the conflict.The movement exposed a deep schism within 1960s American society. -
Daisy Girl Ad
"Daisy", sometimes known as the "Daisy Girl Ad" or "Peace, Little Girl", was a controversial political advertisement aired on television during the 1964 United States presidential election by incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign.The ad played fears of the Cold War's mentality. It was a response to Barry Goldwater's comments over NATO which said that commanders would have the authority to use nuclear weapons. Because of this ad, Goldwater lost the election in a landslide to Johnson. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi, part of a larger effort by civil rights groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to expand black voting in the South.The Ku Klux Klan,police and state and local authorities carried out a series of violent attacks against the activists, including arson, beatings, false arrest and the murder of at least three people. -
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was a minister, human rights activist and prominent black nationalists leader who served as a spokesman for the Islamic Nation during 50s & 60s.Because of his effort,the nation of Islam grew from 400 members in 1952 to 40,000 in 1960.Malcolm X exhorted blacks to cast off the shackles of racism "by any means necessary." The fiery civil rights leader broke with the group shortly before his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he had been preparing to deliver a speech -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people were killed in the Vietnam War. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year. -
Great Society
The Great Society was an aspiring series of policy initiatives, legislation and programs spearheaded by President Lyndon B. Johnson with the main goals of ending poverty, reducing crime, abolishing inequality and improving the environment. In May 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson laid out his agenda for a “Great Society” during a speech at the University of Michigan. With his eye on re-election that year, Johnson set in motion his Great Society, the largest social reform plan in modern history. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965. The act aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It prohibited literacy tests, poll taxes, and other discriminatory laws. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. -
Hippies
Hippies, also known as hippy, were part of the 20th century Counterculture. They believed in peace and that every moment should be lived without inhibition. The movement began in college campuses in the United States and spread though other countries, including Canada and Britain. Although the movement arose in part as opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, hippies were often not directly engaged in politics, as opposed to their activist counterparts known as "Yippies." -
Watergate
The Watergate scandal began June 17,1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee. The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents.He took aggressive steps to cover up the crime afterwards, but resigned in 1974. This scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency. -
Death of MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis,Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.Founder of the SCLC, King had led the civil rights movement, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil-rights advances.His death led to an outpouring of anger among blacks,as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of civil rights era -
Stonewall Riot
In June 28,1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn,a gay club located in Greenwich Village.The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street and in neighbor streets & Christopher Park.The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. -
Apollo 11
On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About 6.5 hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon and placed the American flag as representation. As he set took his first step, Armstrong famously said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The mission occurred eight years after President John Kennedy announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon at the end 1960s. -
Nixon's Presidency
Richard Nixon was the 37th U.S. president.In 1960,Nixon lost his bid for the presidency in a close race with Democrat John F. Kennedy. He ran for the White House again in 1968 and won by gaining voters upset about Civil Rights.As president, Nixon’s achievements included forging diplomatic ties with China and the Soviet Union, and withdrawing U.S. troops from an unpopular war in Vietnam.However, Nixon’s involvement in Watergate tarnished his legacy and deepened American cynicism about government. -
Period: to
1970s
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Equal Rights Amendment
First proposed by the National Woman’s political party in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was to provide for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. More than four decades later, the revival of feminism in the late 1960s spurred its introduction into Congress. The amendment later won the requisite two-thirds vote from the U.S. House of Representatives in October 1971. In March 1972, it was approved by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states. -
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, established a woman’s legal right to an abortion. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the fourteen amendment. Today, abortion has increasingly grown to the fierce in recent years -
Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act further expressed concern that many of our nation's native plants and animals were in danger of becoming extinct.The purpose was to protect and recover imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend.It is administered by the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service and the Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service.The Service has responsibility for terrestrial and freshwater organisms,while the responsibilities of NMFS are mainly marine wildlife. -
The New Right
Not everyone was happy with the social changes brought forth in America in the 1960s and 1970s. When Roe vs. Wade guaranteed the right to an abortion, a fervent pro-life movement dedicated to protecting the "unborn child" took root.The New Right was a combination of Christian religious leaders, conservative business bigwigs who claimed that environmental and labor regulations were undermining the competitiveness of American firms in the global market, and fringe political groups. -
Camp David Accords
Camp David Accords, agreements between Israel and Egypt signed on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between those two countries. Signed by U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter, the agreements became known as the Camp David Accords because the negotiations took place at the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. The Egyptian President,Sadat, and Israel's Prime Minister,Begin were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978 for their contributions to the agreements. -
The Moral Majority
The Moral Majority was a prominent American political organization associated with the Christian right and Republican Party. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell and associates, and dissolved in the late 1980s.It played a key role in the mobilization of conservative Christians as a political force and particularly in Republican presidential victories throughout the 1980s. Although it disbanded in 1989, this helped establish the religious right as a force in American politics. -
Three-Mile Island
Three Mile Island is the site of a nuclear power plant in south central Pennsylvania. In March 1979, a series of mechanical and human errors at the plant caused the worst commercial nuclear accident and leaked nuclear radiation in a nearby town, resulting in a partial meltdown that released dangerous radioactive gasses into the atmosphere. Three Mile Island stoked public fears about nuclear power, but since then,no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States since the accident. -
Iran Hostage Crisis
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The immediate cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow Iran’s deposed Shah to come to the United States for cancer treatment.The students set their hostages free on Jan. 21, 1981, 444 days after the crisis began and just hours after President Ronald Reagan delivered his inaugural address. Many believe that this is what gave Carter a second term. -
Robert Johnson
Robert L. Johnson was born on April 8, 1946, in Hickory, Mississippi. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 1979 with his wife, Sheila.The couple, who had two children and cofounded BET, divorced a year after selling the network to Viacom. He became the first African-American billionaire after selling the network to Viacom in 2001. Johnson has since started a new business, the RLJ Companies, and has invested in an NBA team, a film company, and political causes and campaigns. -
Period: to
1980s
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Election of 1980
The presidential election of 1980 was a political conflict between Republican Ronald Reagan and Democratic Jimmy Carter. Reagan won the election in a landslide. Carter, after defeating Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination, attacked Reagan as a dangerous right-wing radical. For his part, Reagan repeatedly ridiculed Carter, and won a decisive victory. Republicans had finally won control after 28 years. This election marked the beginning of what is popularly called the "Reagan Revolution." -
Music Television (MTV)
Originally launched in 1981, Music Television, MTV, was a channel that aired music videos as guided television personalities known as "video jockeys."At first, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is primarily teenagers. Over the years, it has toned down music video programming and now consists of mainly reality, comedy, and drama programming. MTV's influence on its audience, including issues involving censorship and social activism, has also been a subject of debate. -
Jimmy Carter
Born on October 1,1924, in Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States and served as the nation's chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. Carter's perceived mishandling of these issues led to defeat in his bid for reelection. He later turned to diplomacy and advocacy,for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002.On March 16, 2018,Carter became the second longest-lived president in history after George H.W. Bush at 93 years. -
Space Shuttle Program
The space shuttle was a rocket that could carry up to seven astronauts at a time. It was like a moving van that took satellites to space so they could orbit Earth. It also worked like a science lab. Astronauts did experiments there. Doing experiments in space is different than doing them on Earth.Each time a space shuttle launched, it was called a mission. The space shuttle launched for 135 missions, for one or two weeks each. The first mission was in 1981 and the last mission was in 2011. -
Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor was born in El Paso, Texas on March 26, 1930. In 1981 Ronald Reagan nominated her to the U.S. Supreme Court. She received Senate approval, and made history as the first woman justice to serve on the nation's highest court. O'Connor was a key vote in many important cases. She retired in 2006 after serving for 24 years, to spend more time with her husband John Jay O'Connor III, who suffered from Alzheimer's.The couple married in 1952 and had three sons.Her husband died in 2009. -
Video Head System (VHS)
VHS, or Video Home System, was based on an open standard developed by JVC in 1976. The format allowed longer playtime and faster rewinding and fast-forwarding. JVC showed a two-hour tape that was so compact, Popular Science called it "smaller, in fact, than some audio cassette decks."The system was called Vidstar. The VCR would cost $1,280. That's about $4,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Blank tapes were priced at $20. The last standalone JVC VHS VCR was produced Oct. 28, 2008. -
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine, enunciated in the 1985 State of the Union address, declares, quite simply American support for anticommunist revolution "on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua." It constitutes our third reformulation since Vietnam of the policy of containment.First came the Nixon doctrine, which relied on regional proxies and sank with the shah.Then came the Carter doctrine, which promised the unilateral projection of American power and disappeared with the Rapid Deployment Force. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran-Contra Affair was a secret U.S. government arms deal that dealt with communism. During this time,Nicaragua had fallen to communism and the Sandinistas had overthrown them. The Iran-Contra secretly fought the Sandinistas to free some American hostages held in Lebanon but also fund armed conflict in Central America.The controversial deal making, and the ensuing political scandal, threatened to bring down the presidency of Ronald Reagan. However, Oliver North took the blame for the affair. -
Challenger Explosion
The NASA space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28,1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff, bringing a devastating end to the spacecraft’s 10th mission.The disaster claimed the lives of all seven astronauts aboard.It was later determined that two rubber O-rings, which had been to separate the sections of the rocket booster,had failed due to cold temperatures on the morning of the launch.The tragedy received extensive media coverage and prompted NASA to temporarily suspend all shuttle missions. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall stood until November 9,1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased.That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. More than 2 million crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself,while cranes pulled down section after section.To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War. -
Persian Gulf War/ 1st Iraq War
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early Aug. 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers called on the US and other Western nations to intervene.After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition in the air and on the ground,U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire on February 28. By that time, most Iraqi forces had either surrendered or fled.This led to a second Gulf War–known as the Iraq War–that began in 2003. -
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Black Entertainment Television (BET), American cable television network and multimedia group providing news, entertainment, and other programming developed primarily for African American viewers. BET also operates a channel geared toward African American women, Centric; features contemporary and 20th-century popular music, produces documentaries and movies for distribution on the BET channel, and sponsors the BET Awards. The headquarters are in Washington, D.C. and is owned by Robert L Johnson. -
Internet
Unlike technologies such as the light bulb or the telephone,the Internet has no single “inventor.” Instead,it has evolved over time. The Internet got its start in the United States as a government weapon in the Cold War in military bases in the 1960s. During the 1980s, supercomputers allowed communication through internet to be allowed on college campuses. It becomes used by tens of millions of homes by 1990s. In 1994,the internet had over 6 million users and by 2001, it had 130 million users. -
Period: to
1990s
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Rodney King Incident
Rodney King is best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on 3/3/1991. The officers repeatedly strike King with their batons while other officers stood by watching, without taking any action to stop the beating. Four officers were later tried in a state court for the beating. A later federal trial for civil rights violations ended with two of the officers found guilty and sent to prison and the other two officers acquitted. -
Election of 1992
The United States presidential election of 1992 had three major candidates, Incumbent Republican George H. W.Bush, Democrat Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and independent Texas businessman Ross Perot.Because the economy was not in it's best place, many people were upset at Bush which caused him to begin to loose many supporters. Perot had more votes than Bush, but still not as much as Clinton,with a 43% win of votes.Clinton won a plurality in the popular vote,and a wide Electoral College margin -
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton, better known as Bill Clinton, was the 42nd president, serving from 1993-2001. In 1978, he became the youngest governor elected as the governor of Arkansas. Elected president in 1992 and 1996, Clinton enacted legislation including the Family and Medical Leave Act and oversaw two terms of economic prosperity. He was however impeached in 1998 by the House of Representatives following the revelation of his affair with Monica Lewinsky but was acquainted by senate in 1999. -
World Trade Center Attack- 1993
On February 26, 1993,terrorists drove a rental van into a parking garage under the World Trade Center’s twin towers and lit the fuses on a homemade bomb stuffed inside. Six people died and more than 1,000 were injured in the massive explosion.At the time, it was one of the worst terrorist attacks ever to occur on US soil.But it would eventually be overshadowed by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,when Al Qaeda operatives crashed hijacked airplanes into the towers and brought them down. -
Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy
The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy regarded the service of homosexuals in the military.The term was coined after Pres.Bill Clinton in 1993 signed a law directing that military personnel. When it went into effect on October 1993, the policy lifted a ban on homosexual service that had been instituted during WWII, though in effect it continued a statutory ban. In Dec. 2010, the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to repeal the policy. The policy officially ended on September 20, 2011. -
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton was born October 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. She served as first lady from 1993-2001 and then as senator from 2001-2009. In 2007, she announced her plans to run from presidency. However, in the 2008 primaries, she conceded the nomination to Barack Obama. After winning the election, Obama appointed Hillary as secretary of state. In 2016, she became the first woman in U.S. history to become presidential nominee of a major political party but lost the election against Donald Trump. -
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Gail Winfrey, better known as Oprah Winfrey, was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January 29, 1954. In 1976, she moved to Baltimore, where she hosted a hit tv chat show, People Are Talking. Afterward, she was recruited by a Chicago TV station to host her own morning show. She later became the host of her own, wildly popular program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011. That same year, Winfrey launched her own TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). -
Bush v. Gore (SCOTUS case)
In the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore won the Democratic presidential nomination after facing down an early challenge from former Senator Bill Bradley. Al Gore chose Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate, the first Orthodox Jew ever to be named on the ticket for a major national party. Gore won the popular vote, but conceded defeat to Republican George W. Bush after five weeks of complex legal argument over the voting procedure in the presidential election. -
Period: to
Contemporary
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Election of 2000
In one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, George W. Bush was finally declared the winner of the 2001 presidential election.Gore became the third Presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election after the Supreme Court ruled to halt Florida’s manual recount.The ruling in effect gave Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush giving him 271 to Gore’s 266. George W. Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001, to become the 43rd President of the United States. -
George W. Bush
Born in July 6,1946, in New Haven,Connecticut, George W. Bush was the 43rd president of the United States. He narrowly won the Electoral College vote in 2000, in one of the closest and most controversial elections in American history.Bush led the United States' response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and initiated the Iraq War. Before his presidency,Bush was a businessman and served as governor of Texas.CNN released a poll showing that 61% of Americans held a favorable view of the 43rd president. -
9/11 Attacks
On Sep. 11, 2001, activists associated with the Islamic al-Qaeda group seized four planes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the four planes were flown straight into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, while the third hit the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Over 3,000 were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism. -
Hurricane Katrina Disaster
Early in the morning on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States. When the storm made landfall, it had a Category 3–it brought sustained winds of 100–140 mph– rating and stretched some 400 miles across. The storm itself did a great deal of damage, but its aftermath was catastrophic. Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were displaced from their homes, and experts estimate that Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damage. -
The Great Recession
The Great Recession was a global economic downturn that devastated world financial markets as well as the banking and real estate industries. The crisis led to increases in home mortgage foreclosures worldwide and caused millions of people to lose their life savings, their jobs and their homes. It’s generally considered to be the longest period of economic decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Recession was most pronounced in the United States and in Western Europe. -
Election of 2008
In this historic election,Barack Obama became the first African-American to become president. With Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's win, Biden became the first-ever Roman Catholic vice president.Had the McCain/Palin ticket won, John McCain would have been the oldest president in history, and Sarah Palin would have been the first woman vice president. The Popular Vote was 69,297,997 to Obama and 59,597,520 to McCain. The Electoral College vote was 365 to Obama and 173 to McCain, needing 270 to win. -
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961.In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, winning election to the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat.On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected president of the United States over Senator John McCain. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office.He was eventually elected to a second term over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. -
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was a stimulus package enacted by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February 2009. Developed in response to the Great Recession, the ARRA's primary objective was to save existing jobs and create new ones as soon as possible. Other objectives were to provide temporary relief programs for those most affected by the recession and invest in infrastructure, education, health, and renewable energy. -
First Hispanic SCOTUS judge- Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954, in the Bronx of New York City. She desired to be a judge when she was first inspired by the TV show Perry Mason. She graduated from Yale Law School and became a U.S. District Court Judge in 1992 and was elevated to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998. On May 26, 2009, Obama announced his nomination of Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice. The nomination was confirmed August 2009, making Sotomayor the first Latina Supreme Court Justice.
