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| Franklin D. Roosevelt | 32nd American president. FDR, as he was often called, led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II (including the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and greatly expanding the powers of the federal government through a series of programs and reforms known as the New Deal. On March 12, 1933, just eight days after first taking office, Roosevelt initiated his first of more than 30 fireside chats. |
| Pearl Harbor | Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, that was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941.The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. |
| Adolph Hitler | Leader of Fascist Germany during WWII and was responsible for ordering the execution of Jews. |
| Benito Mussolini | Leader of Fascist Italy during WWII and was part of the Axis of Powers |
| Josef Stalin | Leader of Communist Russia during WWII and the first part of the Cold War, member of the Allied Powers. |
| appeasement | Instituted in the hope of avoiding war, name given to Britain's policy in the 1930s of allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. |
| Allied Powers (Allies) | Powers of World War II were England (Great Britain, the United Kingdom), the United States of America, the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R., Russia), and France. |
| Axis Powers | (Germany, Italy, and Japan) in World War II. |
| Dwight D Eisenhower | During World War II, he was a five-star general in the United States Army and served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. His Presidency/administration provided major aid to help the French fight off Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War. |
| Douglas MacArthur | Was an American general who commanded the Southwest Pacific in World War II (1939-1945), oversaw the successful Allied occupation of postwar Japan and led United Nations forces in the Korean War (1950-1953). |
| Harry Truman | He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vice president for just 82 days before Roosevelt died and he became the 33rd president. In his first months in office he dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, ending World War II. |
| Nagasaki | On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. |
| Hiroshima | On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on this city. |
| D-Day | On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. |
| Japanese Internment Camps | Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country |
| fireside chats | FDR used the informal radio addresses to explain his policies to the American public. |
| Rosie the Riveter | Norman Rockwell painting on the cover of the May 29, 1943, Saturday Evening Post showed a woman, wearing overalls and with a rivet gun. |
| United Nations | In 1944, delegations from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China—four of the main Allied powers in World War II—met in Washington, DC to negotiate the parameters of the postwar world and to discuss the establishment of the international organization that would become known as... |
| NATO | A formal alliance between the territories of North American and Europe. From its inception, its main purpose was to defend each other from the possibility of communist Soviet Union taking control of their nation. |
| 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 2018 US dollars) in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. |
| Joseph McCarthy | Senate voted to censure this Senator who had led the fight in Congress to root out suspected Communists from the country. |
| Rosenbergs | Were American citizens who spied on behalf of the Soviet Union. |
| Sputnik | History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched the world's first artificial satellite. |
| Truman Doctrine | American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. |
| iron curtain | Political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas. |
| conatinment | United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. |
| John F Kennedy | President most famous for being assassinated early in his presidency. He is also famous for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. |
| Space Race | During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union engaged a competition to see who had the best technology in space. This included such events as who could put the first manned spacecraft into orbit and who would be the first to walk on the Moon. |
| Neil Armstrong | American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first person to walk on the Moon. |
| Cuban Missle Crisis | Direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. |
| Bay of Pigs Invasion | On April 17, 1961, 1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion |
| Fidel Castro | Cuban communist revolutionary and politician who governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008. |
| Mao Tse Tung | Served as chairman of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1959. |
| Berlin Wall | Perfect symbol of the "Iron Curtain" that separated the democratic western countries and the communist countries of Eastern Europe throughout the Cold War. |
| 38th Parallel | At the end of WWII, the Japanese colony of Korea was to be freed and united as a single nation. The dividing line between the American and Soviet zones was the 38th parallel, which roughly divided the country in two. |
| Conformity | During the 1950s, a sense of uniformity pervaded American society. Young and old alike followed group norms rather than striking out on their own. |
| Brown V. Board of Education | State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. |
| Rosa Parks | helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States by refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. |
| Montgomery Bus Boycott | Was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. |
| Little Rock Integration | Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students enter all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. |
| Martin Luther King Jr. | Was a well-known civil rights activist who had a great deal of influence on American society in the 1950s and 1960s. His strong belief in nonviolent protest helped set the tone of the movement. |
| Sit-ins | Non-violent act of protest by African American youth sitting at a lunch counter. |
| Malcolm X | Served as the public face of the controversial group for a dozen years, where he advocated for black supremacy, the separation of black and white Americans, and rejected the notion of the civil rights movement for its emphasis on racial integration. |
| Ku Klux Klan | Resurfaced again in the years preceding the First World War; and again during the height of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960's. |
| Black Panthers | Was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community. |
| Black Power | Was a political and social movement whose advocates believed in racial pride, self-sufficiency, and equality for all people of Black and African descent. |
| Civil Rights Act | Landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. |
| Ho Chi Minh | Vietnamese Communist leader and the principal force behind the Vietnamese struggle against French. |
| Viet Cong | Communist-led army and guerrilla force in South Vietnam that fought its government and was supported by North Vietnam. |
| 17th Parallel | In July 1954, the Geneva Agreements were signed. As part of the agreement, 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. |
| Escalation | An increase in the intensity or geographical scope of a war or diplomatic confrontation. For example, during the Korean War. |
| Domino Theory | Held that if one country fell under communist influence or control, its neighboring countries would soon follow. |
| Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | The United States Congress overwhelming approves this resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson nearly unlimited powers to oppose “communist aggression” in Southeast Asia. |
| 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. |
| Lyndon B Johnson | Became the 36th president in 1963, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is remembered for his "Great Society" social service programs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and expanding U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. |
| Counterculture | Subculture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream cultural mores. |
| Veitnamization | Was a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. |
| Richard Nixon | He served as the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974, when he became the only president to resign (quit). |
| Kent State | Shootings on May 4, 1970, of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard. |
| Watergate | White House political scandal that came to light during the 1972 presidential campaign, growing out of a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters |
| OPEC Oil Embargo | Move against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. |
| Jimmy Carter | One-term presidency is remembered for the events that overwhelmed it—inflation, energy crisis, war in Afghanistan, and hostages in Iran. |
| Iran Hostage Crisis | The first time the United States was forced to deal with Islamic extremists. was an event that changed political and diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran for decades to come. |
| Olympic boycotts | was one part of a number of actions initiated by the United States to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. |
| Fall of Berlin Wall | On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. |
| Ronald Reagan | American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975. |
| Breakup of USSR | Perestroika and Collapse. These early reforms failed to revive the increasingly-stagnant Soviet economy, with productivity growth falling below zero by the early 1980s. This ongoing poor economic performance led to a more radical set of reforms under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. |
| Desert Storm | Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990. ... Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as... |
| Clinton's impeachemnet | Was impeached by the House, but acquitted by vote of the Senate. The House approved two articles of impeachment against the President. |
| Oklahoma City Bombing | Was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1995. |
| 9/11 | 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. |
