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Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States under President John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. -
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974 when he became the only U.S. president to resign the office. -
Gerald Ford
More about Gerald Ford. The only President in the history of the United States not elected by American voters was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14, 1913. -
George Bush (Senior)
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States, and the 43rd Vice President of the United States. -
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician and author who served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Carter Center -
China's Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought from 1927 to 1950. Because of a difference in thinking between the Communist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), there was a fight for legitimacy as the government of China. -
Francis Gary Powers
Francis Gary Powers – often referred to as simply Gary Powers – was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident -
When did Gorbachev come to power
Mikhail Gorbachev, in full Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (born March 2, 1931, Privolye, Stavropol kray, Russia, U.S.S.R.), Soviet official, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991 and president of the Soviet Union in 1990–91. -
When did WW2 end?
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. -
United Nations Formed?
The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights. -
Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech?
Iron Curtain speech. Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College, used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe: The Iron Curtain as described by Churchill at Westminster College. -
Truman Doctrine
Addressing a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey and established a doctrine, aptly characterized the Truman Doctrine, that would guide U.S. diplomacy for the next forty years. -
Marshall Plan
On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe. -
Berlin Airleft
The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
USSR's First Atomic Bomb Test
Greatly aided by its successful Soviet Alsos and the atomic spy ring, the Soviet Union conducted its first weapon test of an implosion-type nuclear device, RDS-1, codename First Lightning, on 29 August 1949, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR. -
H-Bomb
H-Bomb Development Summary. On September 23, 1949, President Harry S. Truman shocked the world when he announced that the Soviet Union had conducted a successful test of an atomic weapon the month before. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In 1952 Eisenhower retired from active service and returned to Abilene to announce his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination. On November 4, 1952, after winning the election by a landslide, Eisenhower was elected the United States' 34th president. -
Stalin's Death
Born on December 18, 1879, in Gori, Georgia, Joseph Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party, becoming a Soviet dictator upon Vladimir Lenin's death. -
End of the Korean War
This armistice signed on July 27, 1953, formally ended the war in Korea. North and South Korea remain separate and occupy almost the same territory they had when the war began. The Korean War, which began on June 25, 1950, when the North Koreans invaded South Korea, officially ended on July 27, 1953. -
SEATO
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact, signed in September 1954 in Manila, Philippines. -
Warsaw Pact
West Germany formally joined NATO on May 5, 1955, and the Warsaw Pact was signed less than two weeks later, on May 14. Joining the USSR in the alliance were Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland and Romania. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. -
Eisenhower Doctrine
Eisenhower Doctrine, (Jan. 5, 1957), in the Cold War period after World War II, U.S. foreign-policy pronouncement by President Dwight D. Eisenhower promising military or economic aid to any Middle Eastern country needing help in resisting communist aggression -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. -
When did Fidel Castro Take Over Cuba
Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-) established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother Raúl in 2008. -
Mutually Assured Destruction/MAD Plan
Mutual assured destruction, or MAD, is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender (see pre-emptive nuclear strike and second strike). -
Bay of Pigs
On April 17, 1961, 1400 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
During the early years of the Cold War, West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight, on 13 August 1961. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning Soviet ballistic missiles deployment in Cuba -
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States (1961-1963), the youngest man elected to the office. On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, becoming also the youngest President to die. -
When was JFK shot and killed?
He denied killing either one and, as he was being transferred to county jail two days later, he was shot and killed by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. President John F. Kennedy moments before he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas. -
NASA's First Moon Landing
Lunar Landing Mission. Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. The first steps by humans on another planetary body were taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969. The astronauts also returned to Earth the first samples from another planetary body. -
SALT- First Strategic Plan Limitations Treaty
During the late 1960s, the United States learned that the Soviet Union had embarked upon a massive Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) buildup designed to reach parity with the United States. In January 1967, President Lyndon Johnson announced that the Soviet Union had begun to construct a limited Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense system around Moscow. The development of an ABM system could allow one side to launch a first strike and then prevent the other from retaliating by shooting d -
Soviets Invade Afghanistan
In December 1979, in the midst of the Cold War, the Soviet 40th Army invaded Afghanistan in order to prop up the communist government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) against a growing insurgency. At the time, the United States had been making headway in the Middle East at Moscow’s expense, successfully courting Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others. The Soviet Union feared the loss of its communist proxy in Afghanistan. - See more at: http://www.understandingw -
U.S. Boycott of the Summer Olympics
Background. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 spurred President Jimmy Carter to issue an ultimatum on 20 January 1980: if Soviet troops did not withdraw from Afghanistan within one month the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympics in summer 1980. -
Miracle on Ice
The "Miracle on Ice" is the name in American popular culture for a medal-round men's ice hockey game during the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, on Friday, February 22. -
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan, originally an American actor and politician, became the 40th President of the United States serving from 1981 to 1989. His term saw a restoration of prosperity at home, with the goal of achieving "peace through strength" abroad. -
STAR WARS- Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars, was a program first initiated on March 23, 1983 under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union. With the tension of the Cold War looming overhead, the Strategic Defense Initiative was the United States’ response to possible nuclear attacks from afar. Although the program see -
When did Soviets Leave Afghanistan
More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. -
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square incident: Tiananmen Square, central Beijing [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]series of protests and demonstrations in China in the spring of 1989 that culminated on the night of June 3–4 with a government crackdown on the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Although the demonstrations and their subsequent repression occurred in cities throughout the country, the events in Beijing—and especially -
Berlin Wall Falls
The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War. -
Collapse of the Soviet Union
On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time. A few days earlier, representatives from 11 Soviet republics (Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) met in the Kazakh city of Alma-Ata and announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union. Instead, they declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States. Because the three Baltic -
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin, in full Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (born February 1, 1931, Sverdlovsk [now Yekaterinburg], Russia, U.S.S.R.—died April 23, 2007, Moscow, Russia), Russian politician, who became president of Russia in 1990.
