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Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was actually two revolutions in Russia in 1917 which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the resignation of Emperor Nicholas II and the old system was replaced with a temporary government during the first revolution of February 1917. Then came the Soviets. In the second revolution of October, the Provisional Government was toppled and all power was given to the Soviets. -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home Prince Wilhelm and was attended by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They gathered to decide how to deal with Germany, who had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier. The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war. -
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stage of World War II, the United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The United States had dropped the bombs with the consent of the United Kingdom as outlined in the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed at least 129,000 people (most of whom were civilians) and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare. -
The Iron Curtain Rises
The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War in 1991. 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. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet expansion during the Cold War. American military force was usually not involved, but Congress appropriated free gifts of financial aid to support the economies and the militaries of Greece and Turkey. The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of American foreign policy and led to the formation of NATO. -
Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe which were aligned to the Soviet Union. The Molotov plan was symbolic of the Soviet Union's refusal to accept aid from the Marshall Plan, or allow any of their satellite states to do so, because of their belief that the Plan was an attempt to weaken Soviet interest in their satellite states. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, and the United States gave over $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous once more, and prevent the spread of communism. -
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. The Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche mark from West Berlin. -
Berlin Airlift
In response to the Berlin Blockade, the Western Allies organized the Berlin airlift to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin. Aircrews from several Western Nations flew over 200,000 flights in one year, providing to the West Berliners up to 8,893 tons of necessities each day. The Soviets did not disrupt the airlift for fear this might lead to open conflict. The airlift was a clear success and served to highlight the competing ideological and economic visions for postwar Europe. -
Alger Hiss Case
Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. -
Formation of NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European states. NATO constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. The United States, France, and the United Kingdom are permanent members, and NATO Headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium. -
First Russian Nuke Test
The РДС-1 was the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test. The United States assigned it the code-name Joe-1 in reference to Joseph Stalin. It was detonated on August 29, 1949 at 7:00 am, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR after top-secret research and development as part of the Soviet atomic bomb project. -
Hollywood 10
Ten members of the Hollywood film industry publicly denounced the tactics employed by the 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. Their defiant stands also placed them at center stage in a national debate over the controversial anti-communist crackdown that swept through the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. -
Start of the Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. The United Nations came to the aid of South Korea. China came to the aid of North Korea, and the Soviet Union also gave some assistance to the North. -
Rosenberg Trial
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were United States citizens who were executed on June 19, 1953 after being convicted of committing espionage for the Soviet Union. They were accused of transmitting nuclear weapon designs to the Soviet Union, top-secret information about radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines to the USSR. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French troops and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. It was a battle to draw out the Vietnamese and destroy them with superior firepower. The battle ended in French defeat that influenced negotiations underway at Geneva among several nations over the future of Indochina. -
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 Army accused Roy Cohn of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to G. David Schine, a former McCarthy aide and friend of Cohn's. -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference was an international meeting intended to settle issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War. Nothing was decided about Korea, but the Geneva accords that dealt with French Indochina proved to have long-lasting repercussions. The crumbling of the French Empire in Southeast Asia would create the eventual states of North and South Vietnam. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe. -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies.It was the first major threat to Soviet control since the USSR's forces drove Nazi Germany from its territory at the end of World War II. -
U-2 Incident
The U-2 incident occurred during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace. The aircraft was performing photographic aerial reconnaissance when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk. The pilot parachuted safely but was captured. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA. A counter-revolutionary military group trained and funded by the CIA fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala and Nicaragua, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, under the direct command of Castro. -
Berlin Wall Construction
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic, the Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 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 John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. -
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. Diệm and his adviser, his younger brother, were arrested after the ARVN had been successful in a bloody overnight siege on Gia Long Palace in Saigon. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder an aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the United States against the North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. that evening. He was a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience. -
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after winning the California presidential primaries in the 1968 election, and died the next day while hospitalized. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The invasion of Czechoslovakia was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland. Warsaw pact troops attacked Czechoslovakia, but Romania and Albania refused to participate. 137 Czechoslovakian civilians were killed and 500 seriously wounded during the occupation. -
Riots at 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. Over the course of 24 hours, the predominant American line of thought on the Cold War with the Soviet Union was shattered. -
Election of Nixon
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th presidential election. Richard Nixon won the presidency by a very wide margin. -
Kent State Shooting
Kent State gained international attention when an Ohio Army National Guard unit fired at students during an anti-war protest on campus, killing four and wounding nine. The main cause of the protests was the United States' invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The shootings caused an immediate closure of the campus with. Around the country, many college campuses canceled classes or closed for fear of similar violent protests. -
Nixon Visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's visit to China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's rapprochement between the United States and China. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
President Nixon ordered a ceasefire of the aerial bombings in North Vietnam. The decision came after Dr. Henry Kissinger returned to Washington from Paris, France with a draft peace proposal. -
Fall of Saigon
The Liberation or Fall of Saigon was the capture of the capital of South Vietnam by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam under the Socialist Republic. -
Election of Ronald Reagan
The United States presidential election was between President Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John B. Anderson. Reagan, aided by the Iran hostage crisis and a worsening economy at home marked by high unemployment and inflation, won the general election in a landslide and received the highest number of electoral votes ever won by a non-incumbent presidential candidate. -
SDI Announced
The Strategic Defense Initiative was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. The concept was first announced publicly by President Ronald Reagan, who was a vocal critic of the doctrine of MAD, which he described a "suicide pact", and he called upon the scientists and engineers of the United States to develop a system that would render nuclear weapons obsolete. -
1985 Geneva Summit
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!
This is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin 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 the Berlin Wall
the Wall cut off West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992.
