Unit 3 Conformity and Counterculture By ila1034 1912 Sun Yat-sen establishes the Republic of China Period: 1912 to 1916 Yuan Shikai is President of the Republic of China 1917 China dissolves into civil war and chaos 1921 Mao participates in the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party 1923 The CCP and the Chinese Nationalist Party unite to fight against Japanese invaders 1925 Chiang Kai-shek becomes the leader of the KMT 1927 Mao forms the red army Period: 1934 to 1935 Mao leads his army on the Long March Period: 1947 to 1961 Baby boom marks a dramatic increase in U.S. births 1949 Mao defeats Chiang and declares the People's Republic of China 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is formed Period: 1950 to 1953 Korean War is fought Period: 1950 to 1953 Joseph McCarthy conducts investigations 1951 Twenty-second Amendment limits presidents to two terms Period: 1951 to 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are tried and executed as Communist spies 1953 Mao's Five-Year Plan is announced Period: 1953 to 1964 Nikita Khrushchev leads the U.S.S.R. after Stalin's death Period: 1953 to 1961 Dwight D. Eisenhower is President of the U.S. 1955 Jonas Salk's polio vaccine ends the polio epidemic 1955 Ray Kroc founds the McDonald's Corporation 1956 Elvis Presley stars on the Ed Sullivan show, performing his new rock 'n' roll music 1956 The Little Rock Nine attend a previously all-white high school 1956 Construction of an interstate highway system begins Period: 1956 to 1957 Mao initiates the Hundred (Many) Flowers campaign, followed by his anti-Rightist campaign 1957 The U.S.S.R.'s Sputnik I orbits the earth Period: 1957 to 1961 Mao's Great Leap Forward begins; it ends with the worst famine in world history 1958 Khrushchev and Mao disagree, causing Khrushchev to reduce Soviet aid to China 1959 Fidel Castro takes control of Cuba 1960 The Greensboro Four sit in at a white-only lunch counter, igniting a flame of civil rights sit-ins 1960 Seventy anti-apartheid protesters are massacred by the South African government 1961 Bay of Pig invasion fails 1961 The Peace Corps is establshed 1961 Freedom riders test the Supreme Court's decision 1961 Khrushchev orders the Berlin Wall to be built 1961 Alliance for Progress program offers aid to South American countries Period: 1961 to 1963 John F. Kennedy serves as President of the U.S. 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 James Meredith becomes the first black student at the University of Mississippi 1963 King is arrested and writes "Letters from a Birmingham Jail" 1963 South Vietnam's President Diem is assassinated 1963 Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi begins the White Revolution in an attempt to modernize Iran Period: 1963 to 1969 Lyndon B. Johnson is President of the U.S. Nov 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy is assassinated 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 becomes law 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution Period: 1964 to 1965 Congress passes over 90 bills as a part of Johnson's Great Society initiative 1965 "Bloody Sunday" occurs in Selma, Alabama 1965 Malcolm X is assassinated 1965 Race riots occur in major U.S. cities, especially Watts, Los Angeles 1965 Voting Rights Act of 1965 becomes law 1966 Mao initiates the Cultural Revolution in China 1968 The North Vietnamese gain a political (not military) triumph through the Tet Offensive 1968 Martin Luther King Jr., is assassinated 1968 Robert Kennedy is assassinated 1969 Half a million people attend the Woodstock Festival 1969 Neil Armstrong takes first step on the moon Period: 1969 to 1974 Richard Nixon is President 1971 The U.S. table-tennis team is invited to a table-tennis tournament in China, thus beginning the repairing of relations between U.S. and China 1972 Palestinians known as the Black September take nine Israelis hostage at the Olympics in Munich 1973 The Supreme Court rules that women have the right t abortion in Roe v. Wade 1973 U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ends 1973 Arab-Israeli War 1973 OPEC places the first oil embargo on the U.S. 1973 Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns and is replaced with Gerald Ford 1974 President Nixon resigns after the Watergate scandal 1974 Ford pardons Nixon Period: 1974 to 1977 Gerald Ford is President 1975 South Vietnam falls to Communist North Vietnam 1976 Mao Zedong dies at the age of 82 Period: 1977 to 1981 Jimmy Carter is President 1978 James Warren Jones leads the Jonestown massacre, killing over 900 people at his compound in Guyana 1978 Camp David Accords promote peace between Israel Egypt 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident occurs 1979 Economic reform called the Four Modernizations is carried out in China 1979 The U.S.S.R. invades Afghanistan 1979 Saddam Hussein makes himself President of Iraq 1979 OPEC enforces another oil embargo 1979 Khomeini leads the Iranian Revolution and declares Iran an Islamic Republic Period: 1979 to 1981 Iranian hostage crisis Period: 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq war is fought Period: 1981 to 1989 Ronald Reagan is President 1986 Congress investigates the Iran-Contra scandal 1986 The space shuttle Challenger explodes 1989 The Berlin Wall separating East (Communist) Berlin and West Berlin is torn down 1989 About 1,000 protesters are killed by Communist troops at Tiananmen Square in Beijing Period: 1989 to 1993 George H.W. Bush is President 1990 Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait 1991 Operation Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War of 1991 commences in an effort to liberate Kuwait 1991 The U.S.S.R. officially dissolves 1992 Bosnia declares independence from Yugoslavia resulting in civil war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia 1993 Branch Davidian massacre occurs in Waco TX 1993 PLO leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin make a historic peace agreement (that later falls apart when Rabin is assassinated) Period: 1993 to 2001 Bill Clinton is President 2001 The Patriot Act gives far-reaching powers to law-enforcement agencies to fight terrorism in the U.S. 2001 The U.S. declares war on Afghanistan Period: 2001 to 2009 George W. Bush is President Sep 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four passenger jets, crashing two into the Twin Towers and one into the Pentagon 2003 The U.S. invades Iraq 2004 The Supreme Court rules that prisoners at Guantanamo must be given access to U.S. courts 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans 2007 Bush orders a successful troops surge in Iraq 2009 Barack Obama becomes President of the United States May 2, 2011 Osama bin ladin is dies