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The Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a communist revolution in Russia in 1917. This set up the ideological differences between democratic/capitalist America and communist Russia. -
The Potsdam Conference
Winston Churchill and President Truman met in Potsdam, Germany to negotiate terms for the end of WW2. -
The Atomic Bomb Hiroshima/Nagasaki
An American B-29 bomber dropped the worlds first deployed atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima and it killed over 80,000 people. The second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki killing 40,000 people. -
Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain was the political, military, and ideological border passed by the soviet union after WW2 to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central allies from open contact with the west and other non communist areas -
Truman Doctrine
President Harry Truman Presented the Truman Doctrine, he asked congress for 400 million in military and economic assistance for Turkey and Greece. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative passed in 1948 to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion (nearly $100 billion in 2016 US dollars) in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. -
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the United States to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lay within Russian-occupied East Germany. -
Berlin Airlift
Berlin Airlift begins. In response to the Soviet blockade of land routes into West Berlin, the United States begins a massive airlift of food, water, and medicine to the citizens of the besieged city. For nearly a year, supplies from American planes sustained the over 2 million people in West Berlin. -
Alger Hiss Case
Alger Hiss worked for the State Department and was accused of being a Soviet spy. He was convicted. -
NATO
NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international alliance that consists of 29 member states from North America and Europe. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4 1949. -
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. -
Hollywood 10
The Hollywood 10 is a 1950 American short documentary film. Each member in the Hollywood 10 made a speech denouncing McCarthyism. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea with the support of China and the Soviet Union. South Korea with the support of the United Nations, with the principal support from the United States. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. First time we used our military to fight over the spread of communism. -
Rosenberg Trial
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were Jewish American citizens who spied on behalf of the Soviet Union who were executed and sent to the electric chair. -
Army McCarthy hearings
A series of hearings held by the US Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate conflicting accusations. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The climatic confrontation of the first Indochina War between he French Union and Viet Mihn communists revolutionary.The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the decisive engagement in the first Indochina War (1946–54). After French forces occupied the Dien Bien Phu valley in late 1953, Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap amassed troops and placed heavy artillery in caves of the mountains overlooking the French camp. -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference was a conference among several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland from April 26 – July 20, 1954. It was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War. -
Warsaw Pact
Known as The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defence treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland between the Soviet Union and seven Eastern Bloc satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. -
Hungarian Revolution
A nationwide revolution against the Hungarian peoples Republic and its soviet imposed policies -
U2 Incident
Confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
On April 17, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. -
Berlin Wall
A guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989 -
Cuban Missile Crisis
A 13 day confrontation between the U.S and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic Missile development in Cuba. -
Assassination Of Diem
Following the overthrow of his government by South Vietnamese military forces the day before, President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother are captured and killed by a group of soldiers. The death of Diem caused celebration among many people in South Vietnam, but also lead to political chaos in the nation. -
Assassination of JFK
JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was riding with his wife , when he was fatally shot. -
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 series of surprise attacks by the Vietcong (rebel forces sponsored by North Vietnam) and North Vietnamese forces, on scores of cities, towns, and hamlets throughout South Vietnam. It was considered to be a turning point in the Vietnam War. As the celebration of the lunar new year, Tet is the most important holiday on the Vietnamese calendar. -
Riots of Democratic Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention. ... The convention was held during a year of violence, political turbulence, and civil unrest, particularly riots in more than 100 cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact countries – the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and Hungary – on the night of 20–21 August 1968. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world. King had led the civil rights movement using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil-rights advances for African Americans. His assassination led to an out of control anger among black Americans. -
Assassination of RFK
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
On the night of August 20, 1968, approximately 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring”–a brief period of liberalization in the communist country. Czechoslovakians protested the invasion with public demonstrations and other non-violent tactics, but they were no match for the Soviet tanks. -
Election of Nixon
The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election. It was 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
Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. The tragedy was a watershed moment for a nation divided by the conflict in Southeast Asia. -
Nixon visits China
President Richard Nixon takes a dramatic first step toward normalizing relations with the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks. Nixon’s historic visit began the slow process of the re-establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and communist 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. The decision came after Dr. Henry Kissinger, the National Security Affairs advisor to the president, returned to Washington from Paris, France with a draft peace proposal. -
Fall Of Saigon
In late April 1975, the outskirts of Saigon were reached by the North Vietnamese Army. On April 29th, the United States knew that their token presence in the city would quickly become unwelcome, and the remaining Americans were evacuated by helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft. -
SDI announced
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an anti-ballistic missile program that was designed to shoot down nuclear missiles in space. Otherwise known as “Star Wars,” SDI sought to create a space-based shield that would render nuclear missiles obsolete. -
Ragen Elected
The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. -
Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
The meeting boded well for the future, as the President Raegan and Soviet leader Gorbachev engaged in long, personal talks and seemed to develop a sincere and close relationship.The meeting came as somewhat of a surprise to some in the United States, considering Reagan’s often incendiary rhetoric concerning communism and the Soviet Union, but it was in keeping with the president’s often stated desire to bring the nuclear arms race under control. -
Tear Down This Wall Speech
In April 1987, when I was assigned to write the speech, the celebrations for the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin were already under way. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
On the evening of November 9, 1989, East Germany announced an easing of travel restrictions to the west, and thousands demanded passage through the Berlin Wall. Faced with a growing demonstration, East German border guards allowed citizens to cross. CBS News is on the scene as scores of East Germans climb on top of the once-imprisoning wall.
