United States Events

The RDS-1 (Russian: РДС-1), was the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test. It is also known as Joe-1, in reference to Joseph Stalin. It was test-exploded on 29 August 1949, at Semipala...

On October 30, 1950, Albizu-Campos and other nationalists led a 3-day revolt against the United States in various cities and towns of Puerto Rico. The most notable occurred in Jayuya and ...

Ralph Johnson Bunche (August 7, 1903 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine...

AMENDMENT XXII Passed by Congress March 21, 1947. Ratified February 27, 1951. Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person wh...

The Republican Party successfully promoted the candidacy of the popular General of the Army in the 1952 election over the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson. The oath of office was ad...

The 1953 Iranian coup d’état deposed the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) overthrew t...

General of the Army George Catlett Marshall (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary...

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (French: Bataille de Diên Biên Phu; Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Điện Biên Phủ) was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's...

Profiles in Courage is a 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning book attributed to John F. Kennedy, describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States Senators from throughout the Senat...

U.S. scientist Charles Keeling sets up stations to measure carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere at the South Pole and at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The measurements have shown a steady...

January 20 occurred on a Sunday, so the President took the oath in the East Room at the White House that morning. The next day he repeated the oath of office on the East Portico of th...

The Soviet Union went on to launch a series of additional Sputnik satellites. Sputnik 2, for example, carried a dog into space, named Laika. Sputnik 2 weighed 1120 pounds. It was launched...

The 1958 Lebanon crisis was a Lebanese political crisis caused by political and religious tensions in the country. It included a U.S. military intervention, leading to the easing of tensi...

The Hawaii Constitution was framed by a Constitutional Convention under Act 334, Session Laws of Hawaii 1949. It was adopted by the people at the election held on November 7, 1950, and wa...

On May 1, 1960, thirteen days before the scheduled opening of an East–West summit conference in Paris, a U.S. Lockheed U-2A spy plane, 56-6693, Item 360, left the US base in Badaber on a ...

In 1961, U.S. advisors in South Vietnam, along with the Diem regime, began the implementation of a plan attempted to isolate rural peasants from contact with and influence by the National...

On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy distinguished his inaugural ceremony with a poetry reading by fellow New Englander Robert Frost. Blinded by the sun's glare on the snow-covered Capito...

There was no indication of trouble on board the plane until it approached the Brussels airport. The pilot had to circle the airport while waiting for a small plane to clear the runway. Th...

On March 1, 1961, Kennedy signed an Executive Order 10924 that officially started the Peace Corps. Concerned with the growing tide of revolutionary sentiment in the Third World, Kennedy s...

The Twenty-third Amendment (Amendment XXIII) to the United States Constitution permits the District of Columbia to choose Electors for President and Vice President. The amendment was prop...

At about 06.00 Cuba local time on 15 April 1961, eight Douglas B-26B Invader bombers in three groups, simultaneously attacked three Cuban airfields, at San Antonio de Los Baños and at Ciu...

President Kennedy was also eager for the United States to lead the way in exploring space. The Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in its space program and President Kennedy was d...

The Cuban Project (also known as Operation Mongoose or the Special Group or the Special Group Augmented) was a program of CIA covert operations developed during the early years of US Pres...

Operation Ortsac was the project name of a possible invasion of Cuba planned by the United States military in 1962. The codename was derived from former Cuban President Fidel Castro by sp...

Operation Chopper occurred on January 12, 1962 and was the first time US forces participated in major combat in the Vietnam War. In December of 1961, the USNS docked in Saigon with 82 ...

The United States Embargo against Cuba (described in Cuba as el bloqueo, Spanish for "the blockade") is a commercial, economic, and financial embargo partially imposed on Cuba in October ...

When the U.S. government learned of Powers' disappearance over the Soviet Union, it issued a cover statement claiming a "weather plane" had crashed after its pilot had "difficulties with ...

The first consignment of SS-3 MRBMs (medium range ballistic missiles) arrived on the night of September 8, followed by a second on September 16. The Soviets were building nine sites — six...

The first consignment of SS-3 MRBMs (medium range ballistic missiles) arrived on the night of September 8, followed by a second on September 16. The Soviets were building nine sites — six...

U-2 flights identify the first of three Soviet SS-5 missile sites. The SS-5s have ranges of up to 2,200 nautical miles. The military estimates that as many as 32 medium range missiles cou...

On October 18th the President ordered a build up of arms along the southern border of the United States, just in case war breaks out. No one suspected anything because training exercises ...

On the night of October 23, the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed Strategic Air Command to go to DEFCON 2, for the only confirmed time in history. The message, and the response, were delib...

Only an hour [after Kennedy's address to the nation], at 11:24 a.m. a cable drafted by George Ball to the U.S. Ambassador in Turkey and the U.S. Ambassador to NATO notified them that they...

At 1:45 a.m. on October 25, Kennedy responded to Khrushchev's telegram, stating that the U.S. was forced into action after receiving repeated assurances that no offensive missiles were be...

"I would like to briefly express my own personal opinion. If [an invasion of Cuba] takes place and the imperialists invade Cuba with the aim of occupying it, the dangers of their aggres..." —Fidel Castro

At 1:00 p.m., John A. Scali of ABC News had lunch with Aleksandr Fomin at Fomin's request. Fomin noted that "war seems about to break out" and asked Scali to use his contacts to talk to h...

While the meeting progressed, at 11:03 a.m. a new message began to arrive from Khrushchev. The message stated, in part, "You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you becaus...

After much deliberation between the Soviet Union and Kennedy's cabinet, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles set in Turkey on the border of the Soviet Union in exchange for Khru...

In company with SKYLARK (ASR-20), THRESHER put to sea on 10 April 1963 for deep-diving exercises. In addition to her 16 officers and 96 enlisted men, the submarine carried 17 civilian tec...

The Hue Vesak shootings refer to the deaths of nine unarmed Buddhist civilians on May 8, 1963 in the city of Huế in South Vietnam, at the hands of the army and security forces of the gove...

The US President John F Kennedy has received a rapturous welcome on an emotional visit to his ancestral homeland in County Wexford, Ireland. On the second day of his four-day trip to ...

The Xa Loi Pagoda raids were a series of synchronized attacks on various Buddhist pagodas in the major cities of South Vietnam shortly after midnight on August 21, 1963. The raids were ex...

DEPTEL 243, also known as Telegram 243, the August 24 cable or most commonly Cable 243, was a high profile message sent on August 24, 1963 by the United States Department of State to Henr...

The Treaty banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water, often abbreviated as the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), or Nucl...

Kennedy increased the number of U.S. military in Vietnam from 800 to 16,300. It remains a point of some controversy among historians whether or not Vietnam would have escalated to the poi...

[Marvin Makinen] completed the fourth year of his undergraduate education at the Free University of Berlin as an exchange student from the University of Pennsylvania. Traveling in the Sov...

The arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, then president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed coup d'état led by General Duong Van Minh in November 196...

On November 25, 1963, John F. Kennedy's body was buried in a small plot, (20 ft. by 30 ft.), in Arlington National Cemetery. Over a period of 3 years, (1964–1966), an estimated 16 million...

The Kennedy was originally constructed along the route of Avondale Avenue, an existing diagonal street, and the northwest railroad corridor, in the late 1950s and completed on November 5,...

During the Second World War, Pauling worked on military research and development. However, when the war ended he became particularly concerned about the further development and possible u...