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Truman declares an active role in helping other countries. The goal is to stop the spread of communism. -
Marshall Plan is announced setting a precedent for helping countries combat poverty, disease, and malnutrition. It also provided markets for American goods, created reliable trading partners, and supported the development of stable democratic governments in Western Europe. -
The U.S. meet 19 Latin American countries and created a security zone around the hemisphere. The central principle contained in its articles is that an attack against one is to be considered an attack against them all -
The Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague. Although the Soviet Union's action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, it had unintended consequences for the unity of the communist bloc. -
The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States. It was designed to root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government. -
It was the founding treaty of the Western Union between 1948 and 1954 when it was amended as the Modified Brussels Treaty and served as the founding treaty of the Western European Union until its termination in 2010. -
The foreign ministers from 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington, D.C. This list included Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. -
The Soviets successfully tested their first nuclear device, called RDS-1 or “First Lightning” It was tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site. -
Mao formally proclaimed the creation of the People's Republic of China. The Communist victory had a major impact on the global balance of power. China became the largest socialist state by population, and, after the 1956 Sino-Soviet split, a third force in the Cold War. -
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. -
Joe McCarthy Created McCarthyism which is the practice of publicly accusing government employees of political disloyalty or subversive activities and using unsavory investigatory methods to prosecute them. -
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. Stalin supports North Korea who invade South Korea
equipped with Soviet weapons. -
The Federal Civil Defense Administration was organized by President Harry S. Truman. It became an official government agency via the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 on 12 January 1951. -
U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. The AMVETS support his painful decision to get rid of General Douglas MacArthur. -
President Truman makes first transcontinental television broadcast. On September 4, 1951, President Harry S. Truman's opening speech before a conference in San Francisco is broadcast across the nation, marking the first time a television program was broadcast from coast to coast. -
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. A secret cabinet committee discussed the question in October 1946, with Hugh Dalton and Stafford Cripps opposing a British bomb on grounds of cost. -
The 1952 United States presidential election was the 42nd quadrennial presidential election and was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1952. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson II, becoming the first Republican president in 20 years. -
The National Security Agency acquired its name officially on 4 November 1952. The Secretary of Defense, acting under specific instructions from the President in the National Security Council (NSC), at that time issued a directive which established the Agency. -
It was 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. -
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 Assembled. President Eisenhower sought to solve this terrible problem by suggesting a means to transform the atom from a scourge into a benefit for mankind. -
The Bravo shot was the first test of Operation Castle, a series of thermonuclear tests. The explosion was more than two and a half times greater than expected and caused far higher levels of fallout and damage than scientists had predicted. -
The KGB was created 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. -
The Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe. -
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, including over 58,000 Americans, were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. -
Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, after a bus driver ordered her to give up her bus seat to another passenger, and she refused. The other passenger was white and Parks was black. -
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. -
Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal, a valuable waterway that controlled two-thirds of the oil used by Europe. In July of that year, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal. -
Nikita S. Khrushchev ordered the Red Army to put down the Hungarian Uprising by force. Soviet troops attacked en masse and abolished the independent national government. Hungary was immediately subjected to merciless repression, and hundreds of thousands of Hungarians fled to the West. -
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. -
the Soviet Union launched the earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. The successful launch came as a shock to experts and citizens in the United States, who had hoped that the United States would accomplish this scientific advancement first. -
Sputnik 2, or Prosteyshiy Sputnik 2 was the second spacecraft launched into Earth orbit. The first to carry an animal into orbit, a Soviet space dog named Laika. Laika died on the fourth orbit due to overheating caused by an air conditioning malfunction. -
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. -
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. -
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 Cuban communist revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro took part in the Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Following on from his early life, Castro decided to fight for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's military junta by founding a paramilitary organization, "The Movement". -
After the annual introduction of various statehood bills H.R. 7999 passed in the House on May 28, 1958, passed in the Senate on June 30, 1958 and was signed into law by the President on July 7, 1958. On January 3, 1959 he signed the official proclamation admitting Alaska as the 49th state. -
The Kitchen Debate were interpreter talks between U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and President Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exhibit. In the Kitchen Debate, Khrushchev claimed that Nixon's grandchildren would live under communism and Nixon claimed that Khrushchev's grandchildren would live in freedom. -
The Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. that an American spy plane had been shot down over Sverdlovsk. This would later be known as the U-2 Incident . -
Kennedy ran in the 1960 presidential election. His campaign gained momentum after the first televised presidential debates in American history, and he was elected president, narrowly defeating Republican opponent Richard Nixon, who was the incumbent vice president. He was the first Catholic elected president. -
With Cuba's proximity to the United States, Castro and his regime became an important Cold War ally for the Soviets. The relationship was for the most part economic, with the Soviet Union providing military, economic, and political assistance to Cuba. -
It was aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro's communist government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union. -
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 Berlin Wall became the symbol of the Cold War and a tangible manifestation of the world's separation into two distinct ideological blocs. -
The 1962 Seattle World's Fair introduced technological innovations that seemed out of reach at the time, but would eventually become a part of every day life. Some of the ground breaking gadgets unveiled included a pager, a cordless phone and something called a computer. -
Direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam grew following surrender of the French and partition of North and South Vietnam in 1954. At that time, North Vietnam sought to develop a communist state, while South Vietnam aligned with the West. -
At the height of the Cold War, for two weeks in October 1962, the world teetered on the edge of thermonuclear war. Earlier that fall, the Soviet Union, under orders from Premier Nikita Khrushchev, began to secretly deploy a nuclear strike force in Cuba, just 90 miles from the United States. -
The Report to the American People on Civil Rights was a speech on civil rights, delivered on radio and television by United States President John F. Kennedy from the Oval Office on June 11, 1963, in which he proposed legislation that would later become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
A landmark achievement, the CTBT brought a firm close to an era of unrestrained nuclear testing that fuelled the Cold War nuclear arms race. More than 2,000 nuclear tests were conducted in the five decades from the first nuclear explosion above the desert sands in New Mexico. -
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas. He was riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. He was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. -
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. -
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. -
The following year, Johnson was elected to the presidency when he won in a landslide against Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, receiving 61.1% of the popular vote in the 1964 presidential election, the largest share won by any presidential candidate since the 1820 election. -
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. -
President Johnson authorized US troops to begin military offensives and started the systematic bombing of North Vietnam. By 1968, the number of US forces surpassed 500,000. This event was greatly to blame for the overwhelming number of troops sent to Vietnam. -
Watts Riots of 1965, series of violent confrontations between Los Angeles police and residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles that began August 11, 1965, and lasted for six days. -
Having served for only fourteen months as DCI. He was replaced by his deputy, Richard Helms. He was involved, during his time at the CIA, in its early activities against Ramparts magazine and its editors. -
American B-52s and fighter-bombers dropped over 20,000 tons of bombs on the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The United States lost 15 of its giant B-52s and 11 other aircraft during the attacks. North Vietnam claimed that over 1,600 civilians were killed. -
The United States loses its first B-52 of the war. The eight-engine bomber was brought down by a North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile near Vinh on the day when B-52s flew their heaviest raids of the war over North Vietnam. The Communists claimed 19 B-52s shot down to date.