-
In June the marshall plan was announced to the public. The Marshall Plan provided markets for American goods, created reliable trading partners, and supported the development of stable democratic governments in Western Europe. -
-
The Truman Doctrine is an American foreign policy that pledges American "support for democracies against authoritarian threats." The doctrine originated with the primary goal of containing Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. -
The treaty became effective on December 3, 1948, when two-thirds of the member states had ratified it. The treaty provided for mutual assistance if an act of aggression threatened the peace of the Western Hemisphere. -
On February 25, 1948, Czechoslovakia, until then the last democracy in Eastern Europe, became a Communist country, triggering more than 40 long years of totalitarian rule. In effect, the Czechoslovak Communists did not take control -
After the war, tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union grew, as did suspicion of workers in every government department. Several advisors, including Attorney General Tom Clark, urged Truman to form a loyalty program to safeguard against communist infiltration in the government. -
an early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two million citizens. -
On 4 April 1949, the foreign ministers from 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty (also known as the Washington Treaty) at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington, D.C.: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States -
Not only did the blockade turn out to be totally ineffective, it ended up backfiring on the Soviets in other ways. It provoked genuine fears of war in the West. And instead of preventing the establishment of an independent West Germany, it accelerated the Allies plans to set up the state. -
The Soviets successfully tested their first nuclear device, called RDS-1 or “First Lightning” (codenamed “Joe-1” by the United States), at Semipalatinsk on August 29, 1949. -
March 21, 1947, requiring that all federal civil service employees be screened for loyalty, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed in a speech that “the State Department is infested with communists.” He presented a list of 205 names of State Department employees who were said to be members of the Communist Party. -
On February 24, 1950 the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested the president to approve all-out development of hydrogen bombs and the means for their production and delivery. After seeking advice from the Special Committee of the NSC, Truman approved the request on March 10. -
the Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when the Northern Korean People's Army invaded South Korea in a coordinated general attack at several strategic points along the 38th parallel, the line dividing communist North Korea from the non-communist Republic. -
The new law, according to President Truman, “affords the basic framework for preparations to min- imize the effects of an attack on our civilian population, and to deal with the immediate emergency conditions which such an attack would create.” The basic reason for the new, law was summed up in the report of the House. -
On January 27, 1951, nuclear testing at the NTS officially began with the detonation of Shot Able, a 1-kiloton bomb, as part of Operation Ranger. Between 1951 and 1992, the U.S. government conducted a total of 1,021 nuclear tests here. Out of these tests 100 were atmospheric, and 921 were underground. -
Britain's first atomic bomb was detonated on 3 October 1952. The mud-laden cauliflower explosion. Britain developed its own atom bomb to remain a great power and avoid complete dependence on the United States, which was refusing to share atomic information. -
Polio broke out during the 50's. Polio Epidemic Kills 3300. 3300 die of polio in U.S 57,000 children are paralyzed prior to the widespread use of Polio vaccine. -
The 1952 Cuban coup d'état took place in Cuba on March 10, 1952, when the Cuban Constitutional Army, led by Fulgencio Batista, intervened in the election that was scheduled to be held on 1 June 1952, staging a coup d'état and establishing a de facto military dictatorship in the country.The coup has been referred to as the Batistazo in Cuban political jargon -
Ninety-six years ago today, a milestone was reached, yet its two endpoints have been forgotten over time. Ninety-six years ago, Alexander Graham Bell placed the first transcontinental phone call, ringing up Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco from New York. -
The Nevada Test Site (NTS), 65 miles north of Las Vegas, was one of the most significant nuclear weapons test sites in the United States. Nuclear testing, both atmospheric and underground, occurred here between 1951 and 1992. -
On July 27, 1953, seven months after President Eisenhower's inauguration as the 34th President of the United States, an armistice was signed, ending organized combat operations and leaving the Korean Peninsula divided much as it had been since the close of World War II at the 38th parallel. -
In his Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations General Assembly on December 8, 1953, President Eisenhower sought to solve this terrible problem by suggesting a means to transform the atom from a scourge into a benefit for mankind. -
Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Castle.ravo is the sixth largest nuclear explosion in history, exceeded by the Soviet tests of Tsar Bomba at approximately 50 Mt. -
The KGB was created in 1954 to serve as the “sword and shield of the Communist Party.” The new security service, which played a major role in the purge of Beria's supporters, was designed to be carefully controlled by senior Communist Party officials. -
In Vietnam, the accords create two “regroupment” zones separated by a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) roughly along the 17th parallel, and restrict the activities of foreign military personnel in Southeast Asia. French forces must withdraw south of the DMZ and Communist forces north. -
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defence treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania (Albania withdrew in 1968). -
China and the Soviet Union provided massive military and economic aid to North Vietnam, which enabled North Vietnam to fight first the French and then the Americans. Chinese aid to North Vietnam between 1950 and 1970 is estimated at $20 billion. -
Ngo Dinh Diem, prime minister under Bao Dai since July 1954, is elected president of South Vietnam. He displaces Bao Dai and wins with 98 percent of the vote. Observers, and later historians, note that the election is rigged, though many concede that Diem would likely have won regardless. -
About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of the Polish People's Army and the Internal Security Corps under the command of the Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification fired at the protesting civilians. -
On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, the joint British-French enterprise which had owned and operated the Suez Canal since its construction in 1869. -
At the end of December 1979, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. sending in some 30,000 troops and toppling the short-lived presidency of People's leader Hafizullah Amin. -
In 1961 a modified R-7 launched the first manned spacecraft, Vostok, which carried cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Refined versions of the R-7 are still in use today. A workhorse of the Soviet space program, the R-7 rocket has launched many missions. -
On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. The satellite, an 85-kilogram (187-pound) metal sphere the size of a basketball, was launched on a huge rocket and orbited Earth at 29,000 kilometers per hour (18,000 miles per hour) for three months -
A stray mongrel from the streets of Moscow, she flew aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, launched into low orbit on 3 November 1957. As the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, Laika's survival was never expected. She died of overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit. -
The first Atlas rocket launched with a Mercury capsule exploded. The first Mercury-Redstone launch only went about four inches off the ground. From these flights, NASA learned how to fix the rockets and make them safer. Three other "astronauts" also helped make sure Mercury was safer -
Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year. The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, beginning the Cold War Space Race between the two nations -
On November 10, 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech in which he demanded that the Western powers of the United States, Great Britain and France pull their forces out of West Berlin within six months. -
The rebels finally ousted Batista on 1 January 1959, replacing his government. 26 July 1953 is celebrated in Cuba as Día de la Revolución (from Spanish: "Day of the Revolution"). The 26th of July Movement later reformed along Marxist–Leninist lines, becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965. This established the Cuban government in 1959 -
On January 8, 1959, a triumphant Fidel Castro enters Havana, having deposed the American-backed regime of General Fulgencio Batista. Castro's arrival in the Cuban capital marked a definitive victory for his 26th of July Movement and the beginning of Castro's decades-long rule over the island nation. -
Nixon took Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev on a tour of the exhibit. There were multiple displays and consumer goods provided by more than 450 American companies. The centerpiece of the exhibit was a geodesic dome that housed scientific and technical experiments in a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) facility. -
France detonated its first thermonuclear weapon, Canopus (2.6 Mt), at the new facility at Fangataufa, a desert atoll in French Polynesia. All other French atomic-bomb tests, including Canopus, were carried out in French Polynesia from 1966 to 1996. -
It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee. Kennedy won the election -
After the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military aid and was an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. -
After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose, in July 1962 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Cuban premier Fidel Castro to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter -
In August 1961, East German premier Walter Ulbricht, after consultation with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, decided to close the border separating East and West Berlin. Ulbricht's chief motivation was to halt the 'brain drain': the growing emigration of educated and skilled workers from East Germany to the West. -
The decision was taken to build a Wall. Work began in the early hours of 17 August 1961. The Berlin Wall became the symbol of the Cold War and a tangible manifestation of the world's separation into two distinct ideological blocs -
In response to these factors, Soviet First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, agreed with the Cuban Prime Minister, Fidel Castro, to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba to deter a future invasion. -
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. -
After rejecting a surgical air strike against the missile sites, ExComm decided on a naval quarantine and a demand that the bases be dismantled and missiles removed. On the night of October 22, Kennedy went on national television to announce his decision -
The Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow on August 5, 1963; ratified by the United States Senate on September 24, 1963; and entered into force on October 10, 1963. The treaty prohibited nuclear weapons tests "or any other nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. -
At the end of September, the president traveled west, speaking in nine different states in less than a week. The trip was meant to put a spotlight on natural resources and conservation efforts. But JFK also used it to sound out themes—such as education, national security, and world peace—for his run in 1964.Shortly after noon on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas -
The first inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson as the 36th president of the United States was held on Friday, November 22, 1963, aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field, following the assassination of President John F. -
Operation Rolling Thunder was a gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the United States 2nd Air Division, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968, during the Vietnam War -
It was tantamount to a declaration of war, but it was based on a lie. After decades of public skepticism and government secrecy, the truth finally came out: In the early 2000s, nearly 200 documents were declassified and released by the National Security Agency (NSA). They showed that there was no attack on August 4 -
China made remarkable progress in the 1960s in developing nuclear weapons. The first Chinese nuclear test was conducted at Lop Nur on October 16, 1964. It was a tower shot involving a fission device with a yield of 25 kilotons. Uranium 235 was used as the nuclear fuel. -
In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. -
Bosch was toppled by a military coup just seven months into his term, and the Dominican Republic plunged into political turmoil. On April 28, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered troops into the Dominican Republic through “Operation Power Pack” to protect American lives and property in the Dominican Republic. -
On 29 April 1965 Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced in parliament that Australia would send a battalion of combat troops to Vietnam. The decision was motivated by a desire to strengthen strategic relations with the United States and to halt the spread of communism in South-East Asia. -
French president Charles de Gaulle urges the United States to get out of Vietnam. In a speech before 100,000 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, President Charles de Gaulle of France denounces U.S. policy in Vietnam and urges the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia. -
On March 7,1966 French President Charles de Gaulle announced France's withdrawal from NATO's integrated military command, resulting in the relocation of NATO headquarters from Paris to Brussels.. France, under the leadership of President Charles de Gaulle, had been a founding member of NATO. -
here was a great fear that such bombing or an invasion of North Vietnam would escalate the conflict from being a merely a proxy war to a major escalation in hostilities between the superpowers of the US and both China and the Soviet Union. In fact it was feared that China would actually cross the border to fi.