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Eisenhower coins one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a “domino” effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called “domino theory” dominated the U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade. -
The French agreed to withdraw their troops from northern Vietnam. Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, pending elections within two years to choose a president and reunite the country. -
On 1 November 1963, Ngô Đình Diệm, the president of South Vietnam, was arrested and assassinated in a successful coup d'état led by General Dương Văn Minh. The coup was the culmination of nine years of autocratic and nepotistic family rule in the country. -
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” by the communist government of North Vietnam. -
President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he has ordered an increase in U.S. military forces in Vietnam, from the present 75,000 to 125,000. -
The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. -
The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children, and older men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. -
The Tet Offensive consisted of simultaneous attacks by some 85,000 troops under the direction of the North Vietnamese government. The attacks were carried out against five major South Vietnamese cities, dozens of military installations, and scores of towns and villages throughout South Vietnam. -
Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops". -
He announced his decision to launch American forces into Cambodia with the special objective of capturing COSVN, "the headquarters of the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam." Nixon's speech on national television on 30 April 1970 was called "vintage Nixon" by Kissinger. -
On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close. -
The Hard Hat Riot occurred on May 8, 1970, in New York City. It started around noon when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970. -
Operation Linebacker II was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the U.S. Seventh Air Force and U.S. Navy Task Force 77 against targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the final period of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Some historians have argued that the bombings forced the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. Others have suggested that the attacks had little impact, beyond the additional death and destruction they caused. -
The act is a congressional resolution designed to limit the U.S. president's ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad.” -
The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, 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.