-
The Russian Revolution
A revolution in Russia which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. -
The Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. -
Potsdam Conference
A conference attended by Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Harry S. Truman in which the administration of the defeat of Germany was to be decided upon. -
The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The bomb raids which effectively ended the war in the pacific by dropping the first and only two atomic bombs ever dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. -
Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. It can be seen to be the USSR's version of the Marshall Plan. -
The Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. -
Hollywood 10
10 members of the Hollywood film industry publicly denounced the tactics employed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). These prominent screenwriters and directors, who became known as the Hollywood Ten, received jail sentences and were banned from working for the major Hollywood studios. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
The Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. -
Berlin Airlift
The Western Allies organized the Berlin airlift to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city's population. Aircrews from a number of Western Allied Countries flew over 200,000 flights in one year, providing to the West Berliners up to 8,893 tons of necessities each day, such as fuel and food. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European countries based on the North Atlantic Treaty. -
Soviet Bomb Test
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. -
Alger Hiss Case
Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. -
Rosenburg Trial
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were United States citizens who spied for the Soviet Union and were tried, convicted and executed by the United States government. They were accused of transmitting nuclear weapon designs to the Soviet Union; at that time the United States was the only country with nuclear weapons. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea (with the support of China and the Soviet Union) and South Korea (with the principal support of the United States). The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference was a conference among several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland. It was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War. -
Army-McCarthy hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. -
The Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact, formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the Marxist-Leninist government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies. -
U2 Incident
The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
Assassination of Diem
The arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed coup d'état led by General Dương Văn Minh in November 1963. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder was the codename for an American bombing campaign during the Vietnam War. U.S. military aircraft attacked targets throughout North Vietnam from March 1965 to October 1968. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Assassination of RFK
On June 5, 1968, 42-year-old presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight PDT at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just won the California presidential primaries in the 1968 election. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact nations – the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland. -
Riots of Democratic Convention
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. -
Election of Nixon
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. -
Kent State
The Kent State shootings were the shootings on May 4, 1970, of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. -
Nixon Visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and China. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
Vietnam War. On January 15, 1973, President Richard Nixon of the USA ordered a ceasefire of the aerial bombings in North Vietnam. -
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975. -
Reagan Elected
The United States presidential election of 1980 was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. -
SDI Announced
SDI officially ended in 1993, when the administration of President Bill Clinton redirected the efforts towards theatre ballistic missiles and renamed the agency as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. -
Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
The Geneva Summit of 1985 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders met for the first time to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race. -
'Tear Down this Wall' Speech
"Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West.
