-
Big 3 at Yalta
Took place during World War Two. At Yalta, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions regarding the future progress of the war. The Allied leaders also discussed the future of Germany, Eastern Europe and the United Nations. They agreed not only to include France in the postwar governing of Germany, but also that Germany should assume some responsibility for reparations following the war. -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference, 1945. The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. -
Truman Doctrine
This was the concept that the United States should give countries that were threatened by Soviet force support and aid. This was first declared in 1947 by President Truman during his speech to Congress who were seeking aid for Turkey and Greece. The doctrine was seen by communists as an open declaration for the Cold War. This was the first act of Containment the US enacted which was a big deal during the Cold War to stop the spread of communism. -
Marshall Plan
An American initiative to aid Western Europe by giving over 12 billion dollars for economic support to help rebuild after World War II. -
NATO Founded
NATO is a military alliance of European and North American democracies founded after World War II to strengthen international ties between member states and to serve as a counter-balance to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. -
Korean War Starts
The Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of South Korea. China, with assistance from the Soviet Union, came to the aid of North Korea. -
Rosenberg Trial
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who spied for the Soviet Union and were tried, convicted, and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. The left-wing community believed that the Rosenberg's were prosecuted because of their membership in the Communist Party. Their case became the cause celebre of leftists throughout the nation. They were executed on June 19, 1953. -
Eisenhower Elected as President
The United States presidential election of 1952 was the 42nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 1952. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was the landslide winner, ending a string of Democratic wins that stretched back to 1932. -
Stalin dies
At age 73, Joseph Stalin died from a cerebral hemorrhage. -
Khrushchev becomes Soviet Premier
He became a close associate of Joseph Stalin, the authoritarian leader of the Soviet Union since 1924. In 1953, Stalin died, and Khrushchev grappled with Stalin's chosen successor, Georgy Malenkov, for the position of first secretary of the Communist Party. -
Geneva Conference
Was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle outstanding issues in the Korean peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina. The Geneva Agreements of 1954 arranged a settlement which brought about an end to the First Indochina War. A ceasefire was signed and France agreed to withdraw its troops from the region. -
Suez Canal Crisis
Suez Canal crisis definition. A major international incident that arose in 1956 from the decision by Gamal A. Nasser of Egypt to nationalize the Suez Canal, which long had been controlled by Great Britain. -
Sputnik Launch
History changed in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. The Sputnik launch changed everything. As a technical achievement, Sputnik caught the world's attention and the American public off-guard.Immediately after the Sputnik I launch in October, the U.S. Defense Department responded to the political furor by approving funding for another U.S. satellite project.On January 31, 1958, when the United States launched Explorer I. -
Explorer 1 Launch
Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it was sent into space on January 31, 1958.The primary science instrument on Explorer 1 was a cosmic ray detector designed to measure the radiation environment in Earth orbit. It was launched right after the Soviets launched the Sputnik. The Soviets and US went into a race of creating better and more modern technology, -
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and its allies against the authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista.Causes of the Cuban Revolution, which lasted from 1953 through 1959, included president Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship, brutal suppression and poverty. These factors led to a revolution led by Fidel Castro to overthrow Batista and his government. It had many positive and negative impacts on Cuba. -
U-2 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. -
Soviet Union sends first person into space
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space, at age 27. The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. To Soviet propagandists, the Soviet conquest of space was evidence of the supremacy of communism over capitalism. -
Bay of Pigs
Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. On Apr. 17, 1961, an armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast of Cuba. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
A confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba one of the “hottest” periods of the cold war. Leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. -
Kennedy's assassination
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. By the fall of 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his political advisers were preparing for the next presidential campaign.
