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Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama
In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city's racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park's historic act of civil disobedience. -
IBM 305 RAMAC
In 1956 IBM released its revolutionary 305 RAMAC. Press were flown to Norfolk, Virginia to watch a demonstration of being tested by the U. S. Navy at its Norfolk Supply Center. Built for large corporation and the armed forces, more than 1,000 were made before production ended in 1961. -
US President Eisenhower asks Congress to send troops to the Middle East
The Eisenhower Doctrine was a policy enunciated by Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 5, 1957, within a "Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East" The phrase "international communism" made the doctrine much broader than simply responding to Soviet military action. -
Nixon Attacked in Venezuela
he visit of the Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, to South America, was a carefully-planned and highly symbolic trip. The role of the Latin American countries in the grip of the Cold War was unclear. Yet the visit to Venezuela took place on hostile terms. Earlier in the year the US government granted asylum to the unpopular dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez who had been overthrown in a revolution. -
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Hawaii statehood bill
March 18, 1959) is a statute enacted by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower which dissolved the Territory of Hawaii and established the State of Hawaii as the 50th state to be admitted into the Union. Statehood became effective on August 21, 1959. -
US President Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1960
The Civil Rights Act of 1960 (Pub. ... It extended the life of the Civil Rights Commission, previously limited to two years, to oversee registration and voting practices. The act was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served to eliminate certain loopholes left by the Civil Rights Act of 1957. -
Martin Luther King Jr. & 700 demonstrators are arrested in Albany, Georgia
The Albany Movement intended to end all forms of racial segregation in the city, but it initially focused on desegregating travel facilities. It also formed a biracial committee to discuss further desegregation and called for the release of those jailed in earlier segregation protests. -
John Glenn Orbits Earth
America decided to step up its game. Under President John F. Kennedy, the government had set itself lofty goals - including a manned Moon landing later in the decade.John Glenn, the man selected to be the first American to orbit the Earth, had been a distinguished World War II fighter pilot and in 1957 had made the first supersonic transcontinental flight across America.
On February 20, 1962, he orbited the Earth three times aboard his Friendship 7 spacecraft in just under five hours. -
USSR informs JFK it is withdrawing several thousand troops from Cuba
Other operations include industrial, and economic sabotage as well as terrorism. In February 18, 1963, Premier Khrushchev informs President Kennedy that "several thousand" Soviet troops in Cuba would be withdrawn by March 15, however one Soviet division (2,600 soldiers) remains in Cuba in case of U.S. invasion. -
President Lyndon B. Johnson declares "War on Poverty"
The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on Wednesday, January 8, 1964. Johnson stated, "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it". -
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty or in full Liberty Enlightening the World was first proposed by the French thinker Édouard René de Laboulaye as a gift from the French people to America and to commemorate the abolition of slavery. The statue depicts Liberty striding forward with a torch raised in her right hand, her left holds a tabula ansata with the date of the declaration of independence. -
LBJ signs Freedom of Information Act
The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, giving the public the right to access records from any federal agency. While FOIA is intended to increase transparency, it doesn't provide access to all government documents. -
Apollo 1 Fire
On January 27, 1967, during a launch rehearsal at Cape Kennedy in Florida, an electrical fire (the exact location of which was never fully determined) in the cabin spread rapidly and killed the three pilots. NASA established a review board, and all Apollo manned flights were suspended for 20 months. -
Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia
in early January 1968, a reformist politician by the name of Alexander Dubček became leader of the communist state of Czechoslovakia. Dubček was a reformer, who wanted to implement a policy known as 'socialism with a human face' by granting certain rights to Czechoslovak citizens including partial democratisation and deregulation of the economy, as well as looser restrictions on media, travel and speech. -
Apollo 11 Bootprint
Apollo 11 launched, carrying 1st men to land on Moon -
Richard Nixon installs secret taping system in the White House
At Nixon's request, Haldeman and his staff—including Deputy Assistant Alexander Butterfield—worked with the United States Secret Service to install a recording system. On February 16, 1971, a taping system was installed in two rooms in the White House, namely, the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. -
37th US President Richard Nixon
Incumbent President Richard Nixon is re-elected, defeating Democrat candidate George McGovern in a landslide by winning 49 states -
Richard Nixon agrees to turn over White House tape recordings to Judge John Sirica
The Nixon White House tapes are audio recordings of conversations between U.S. President. The tapes' existence came to light during the Watergate scandal of 1973 and 1974, when the. District Court Judge John Sirica to subpoena nine relevant tapes to confirm the testimony of White House Counsel John Dean. -
Terracotta Army Discovered
In 1974 local farmers digging a well near the Chinese city of Xian came across one of the greatest archaeological discoveries ever made. The discovery of a clay warrior figure soon revealed many more by state archaeologists. In fact there may be 8,000 terracotta figures in total, each individually modelled and purposely arranged in three pits to guard the tomb of the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di (246-210 B.C.) -
Founding of Microsoft
Paul Allen and Bill Gates were childhood friends from Seattle when they started Microsoft in 1975. Allen was working at Honeywell, Inc. and Gates was doing pre-law at Harvard University.
Their idea was to produce an interpreter for the microcomputer Altair 8800 using BASIC programming language. When Gates and Allen sold their interpreter to MITS who distributed it, Microsoft, then known as Micro-Soft, was born.
