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Timeline
1950 - 1999
The 1950’s
1950
Jan. 31: Truman orders the Atomic Energy Commission to begin developing the hydrogen
bomb, an atomic weapon believed to be at least twice as powerful as those dropped on Japan to
end World War II.
“It is part of my responsibility as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to see to it that our
country is able to defend itself against any possible aggressor. Accordingly, I have directed the
Atomic Energy Commission to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the
so called hydrogen or superbomb. Like all other work in the field of atomic weapons, it is being
and will be carried forward on a basis consistent with the overall objectives of our program for
peace and security. This we shall continue to do until a satisfactory plan for international
control of atomic energy is achieved. We shall also continue to examine all those factors that
affect our program for peace and this country , security.”
-President Harry S. Truman on the Hydrogen Bomb, January 31, 1950
June 25: June 25 - Early morning, the North Korean People's Army under General Chai Ung
Jun, invades South Korea. The United Nations Security Council resolution calls for an end to the
North Korean aggression. The resolution got passed only because the Soviet Union had
boycotted that particular meeting.
June 27: President Truman orders air and sea services to help South Korean forces.
July 17: Julius Rosenberg was arrested for spying and giving secrets
about the atomic bomb to Russia.
August 11: Julius Rosenberg’s wife Ethel Rosenberg was arrested on the charge of aiding her
husband in spy activities.
February 9: Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, made a speech claiming to have a list
of 250 people in the State Department known to be members of the American Communist Party.
The list of names was not a secret and had been in fact published by the Secretary of State in
1946. These people had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000 federal
employees. Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and sexual
deviants. If screened, McCarthy's own drink problems and sexual preferences would have
resulted in him being put on the list.
1951
March: Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel Rosenberg, both members of the Communist Party,
were found guilty of transmitting atomic military secrets to a Soviet spy. They were both
sentence to death.
September 8: To ensure Japan’s defense and secure it as an ally of the United States, the two
countries signed a bilateral mutual security treaty that allowed the United States to maintain
military bases and forces in Japan. The peace treaty and the collateral agreements had the effect
of aligning Japan firmly with the Western bloc of nations.
The color television is introduced to the United States.
1953
January 20: General Dwight “Ike” D. Eisenhower was inaugurated the 34th president of the
United States.
June 18: After several appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court and a refusal of clemency by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Rosenbergs were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New
York. More than 30 years later, the case is still controversial.
July 28: Korean Armistice signed at Panmunjom
August 12: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics detonated its first hydrogen bomb.
Ernest Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea, a powerful novelette about an aged
Cuban fisherman, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.
1954
January 21: The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched.
March 1: Puerto Rican nationalists who entered the visitors gallery of the U.S. House of
Representatives opened fire on legislators in the chamber. Five members of Congress were
wounded in the attack.
April 22-June 17: The Army-McCarthy hearings aired on television for five weeks. Senator
Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, charged
that the Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, and Army Counsel, John G. Adams, were
hampering the committee's attempts to uncover communists in the military. McCarthy failed to
prove his charges. The hearings, given broad television and newspaper coverage, helped to end
the anti-Communist witch hunt. By the end, Senator McCarthy was publicly disgraced. The
Senate condemned McCarthy.
“At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
- Joseph Welch
May 17: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. A landmark court case in which the Supreme
Court of the United States unanimously declared that it was unconstitutional to create separate
schools for children on the basis of race. The Brown ruling ranks as one of the most important
Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century. At the time of the decision, 17 southern states and
the District of Columbia required that all public schools be racially segregated. A few northern
and western states, including Kansas, left the issue of segregation up to individual school
districts. While most schools in Kansas were integrated, those in Topeka were not.
September 8: An alliance of nations to provide defense and economic cooperation in Southeast
Asia and the South Pacific area. The founding members of SEATO were Australia, France, the
United Kingdom, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States. Like
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Southeast Asian alliance was intended to
prevent the spread of communism; but unlike the NATO pact, the SEATO agreement did not
obligate one member to assist another against a military threat.
Dr. Jonas Salk starts giving a vaccination to children against polio.
1955
May 14: Warsaw Pact. A military alliance of seven European Communist nations, enacted to
counter the rearmament of West Germany and its admission to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). The treaty was signed in Warsaw, Poland, on May 14, 1955, by Albania,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR). The alliance was dominated by the USSR, which kept strict control
over the other countries in the pact.
December 1: In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white
man. Her action led to the Montgomery bus strike, which was the first large-scale, organized
protest against segregation that used nonviolent tactics. It lasted for more than a year and
dramatized to the American public the determination of blacks in the South to end segregation. A
federal court ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated in November 1956, and the boycott
ended in triumph. Rosa Parks’s personal act of defiance opened a decisive chapter in the civil
rights movement in the United States.
December 5: (AFL-CIO), organization of trade unions in the United States. The organization
was formed by the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial
Organizations. A Joint Unity Committee was formed, and a new constitution was drafted. The
formal merger of the AFL-CIO took place at a convention held in New York City. George
Meany, who had succeeded Green as head of the AFL, was elected president of the new
organization. The AFL-CIO had 16 million members, about 30 percent of all those employed.
1956
May 21: The first aerial hydrogen bomb was tested over Namu islet, Bikini Atoll. The bomb had
the equivalence of 10 million tons of TNT
July 26: Shortly after the United States and the United Kingdom withdrew their offers to help
finance the construction of the Aswân High Dam, the Egyptian government seized the Suez
Canal in accordance with a decree of nationalization issued by President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Nasser announced that Egypt planned to use the proceeds from the operation of the canal to
finance the dam.
November 6: The French, Israelis, and British invaded Egypt to take back the Suez Canal, which
Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized. They expected American support.
Eisenhower, however, came to Nasser’s rescue, using a ban on trade, or embargo, to force the
invaders to withdraw. It came as a shock to the invaders that the United States would help an
unaligned country—one that would not take sides with either NATO or the Communists—
against its closest allies. Eisenhower, however, consistently denounced such “gunboat
diplomacy,” explaining “We cannot subscribe to one law for the weak, another law for the
strong; one law for those opposing us, another for those allied with us. There can be only one
law—or there shall be no peace.”
1957
January 5: In reaction to the Suez crisis, the United States announced a new policy, the
Eisenhower Doctrine: The United States would intervene in the Middle East if necessary to
protect the area against Communism.
September 9: The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, tried to block the enrollment of nine
black students into Little Rock High School. In response, Eisenhower, never a strong civil rights
supporter, reluctantly sent federal troops to desegregate the school.
October 4: Russians launch Sputnik I, first earth-orbiting satellite. The launch marks the
beginning of the Space Age.
1958
NASA. Founded by authority of the National Aeronautics and Space Act, NASA replaced the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) that was created by the United States
Congress in 1915. NASA absorbed all of the various aviation and military space organizations
already established, enabling a single agency to coordinate efforts effectively between all
interested parties: scientists, engineers, universities, and politicians.
July15: After a left-wing revolution in Iraq, Eisenhower airlifted a marine detachment to
Lebanon in 1958 to forestall a similar uprising there. The immediate crisis soon subsided, and
the troops were withdrawn, but the American position in the Middle East continued to
deteriorate.
1959
January 1: Cuban President Batista’s regime toppled by the rebel forces led by Fidel Castro,
who launched their successful attack in the fall of 1958. Faced with the collapse of his regime,
Batista fled with his family to the Dominican Republic. Later he went into exile on the
Portuguese island of Madeira and finally to Estoril, near Lisbon.
April 25: The St. Lawrence Seaway, a massive navigational project undertaken jointly by
Canada and the United States and completed in 1959, opened North America's industrial and
agricultural heartlands to deep-draft ocean vessels. It forged the final link in a waterway some
2,340 miles long from Duluth, Minn. (at the westernmost point of Lake Superior), to the Atlantic
by clearing a throughway in a 186-mile stretch of the St. Lawrence River between Montreal and
Lake Ontario.
January: Migration to Alaska ultimately resulted in its statehood. When Congress passed the act
that admitted Alaska into the union in 1958, and President Eisenhower issued his proclamation
and Alaska became the 49th state This prompted many Americans to send suggestions to
President Eisenhower about the redesign of the nation's flag. The actual redesigned flag had
seven rows of seven stars each.
August 21: Hawaii becomes the 50th state.
The 1960’s
1960
May 1: A United States U-2 Airforce spy aircraft flying over the Soviet Union at 60,000 feet
while conducting a "secret" reconnaissance flight was shot down over Sverdlovsk in central
USSR. The shoot down of the U-2 was on the eve of a summit meeting between President
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. As a result of the shoot down and
sensationalism in the media, it brought about the cancellation of the meeting and heightened
Cold War tensions
1961
January 3: The United States breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba. Since Fidel Castro took
over Cuba in 1959, that country has been transformed socially, economically, and politically.
Cuba's alignment with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was seen as a threat to both the
safety and democracy of the United States by many US politicians and citizens. A country less
than 90 miles off the southern coast of Florida aligned with an unfriendly country in the Nuclear
Age posed a real challenge to our Foreign Policy makers.
April 17: Cuban exiles attempted to invade Cuba. The exiles were supported and trained by the
United States government to overthrow Fidel Castro and his leftist regime. The battle took on the
name of the bay on which the invasion took place--the Bay of Pigs. The invasion was
unsuccessful, due largely because the Cuban people supported Castro's revolution and in part to
the limited role that the United States government played during the battle. The invasion attempt
further intensified the tension between the United States and Cuba.
May 5: First U.S. spaceman, Navy Cmdr. Alan B. Shepard, Jr., rocketed 116.5 miles up in 302mile trip
July 21: Virgil Grissom became second American astronaut, making 118-mile-high, 303-milelong rocket flight over Atlantic
August 13: Early in the morning, the GDR began under the leadership of Erich Honecker to
block off East Berlin and the GDR from West Berlin by means of barbed wire and antitank
obstacles. Streets were torn up, and barricades of paving stones were erected. Tanks gathered at
crucial places. The subway and local railway services between East and West Berlin were
interrupted. Inhabitants of East Berlin and the GDR were no longer allowed to enter West Berlin,
amongst them 60,000 commuters who had worked in West Berlin so far. In the following days,
construction brigades began replacing the provisional barriers by a solid wall.
1961
February 20: John H. Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 "Friendship 7" spacecraft on the first
manned orbital mission of the United States. Launched from Cape Canaveral (recently re-named
Cape Kennedy), Florida, he completed a successful three--orbit mission around the earth,
reaching a maximum altitude of approximately 16Z statute miles and an orbital velocity of
approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Glenn's "Friendship 7" Mercury spacecraft landed in an
area in the Atlantic approximately 800 miles southeast of Cape Kennedy in the vicinity of Grand
Turk Island. He landed 41 miles west and 19 miles north of the planned impact point. The time
of the flight from launch to impact was 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds.
October: The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most important conflicts of the Cold War.
The United States and the Soviet Union came close to starting the third world. The reason was
the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.
October 1: James H. Meredith, a 29-year-old African American and Air Force veteran, moved
into a University of Mississippi dormitory, planning the following day to be the first black
student to enroll at the 114-year-old school. Within a matter of days, two persons were dead,
dozens injured and a military force of 15,000 had moved into town all due to the violent reaction
white students and other Southern segregationists had to President Kennedy enforcing a court
order that Ole Miss integrate its student body. Meredith was accompanied by five marshals
wherever he went, including to his classes.
1963
April 21: Michael E. De Bakey implants artificial heart in human for first time at Houston
hospital; plastic device functions and patient lives for four days.
June 17: Abington v Schempp. This case involved a Pennsylvania law requiring that at least ten
Bible verses be read in public schools at the beginning of each day. The Schempps, a family in
Abington, sued the school district for violating the first amendment of the constitution. Religious
instruction in school was deemed to violate the 1st amendment of the constitution.
August 28: Over 250,000 participate in the March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial, the
largest protest assembly in U.S. history. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his famous "I Have a
Dream Speech."
August 30: The Washington-to-Moscow "hot line" came into being one year after the Cuban
Missile Crisis. That confrontation, over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, brought the
world to the brink of nuclear conflict. After diplomacy and cooler heads prevailed, both sides
were shaken by the realization of how close they had come to annihilation -- and at how
primitive their direct communication methods had been.
November 22: President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy were in Dallas, Texas, trying to win
support in a state that Kennedy had barely carried in 1960. On his way to a luncheon in
downtown Dallas, Kennedy and his wife sat in an open convertible at the head of a motorcade.
Lyndon Johnson was two cars behind the president, and Texas Governor John B. Connally and
his wife were sitting with the Kennedys. The large crowds were enthusiastic. As the motorcade
approached an underpass, two shots were fired in rapid succession. One bullet passed through the
president’s neck and struck Governor Connally in the back. The other bullet struck the president
in the head. Kennedy fell forward, and his car sped to Parkland Hospital. At 1:00 PM, he was
pronounced dead. Less than two hours after the shooting, aboard the presidential plane at the
Dallas airport, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States.
1964
June 11: Nelson Mandela was put on trial for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy. He was
found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. For the next 18 years he was imprisoned on
Robben Island and held under harsh conditions with other political prisoners. Despite the
maximum security of the Robben Island prison, Mandela and other leaders were able to keep in
contact with the antiapartheid movement covertly. Mandela wrote much of his autobiography
secretly in prison. The manuscript was smuggled out and was eventually completed and
published in 1994 as Long Walk to Freedom. Later, Mandela was moved to the maximumsecurity Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town. Mandela became an international symbol of
resistance to apartheid during his long years of imprisonment, and world leaders continued to
demand his release.
August 7: North Vietnamese coastal gunboats fired on the destroyer USS Maddox, which had
penetrated North Vietnam’s territorial boundaries in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson ordered more
ships to the area, and on August 4 both the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy reported that North
Vietnamese patrol boats had fired on them. Johnson then ordered the first air strikes against
North Vietnamese territory and went on television to seek approval from the U.S. public.
(Subsequent congressional investigations would conclude that the August 4 attack almost
certainly had never occurred.) The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, which effectively handed over war-making powers to Johnson until such time as
"peace and security" had returned to Vietnam.
The Warren Report. A report and conclusions of a seven-member commission that was headed
by Earl Warren, chief justice of the U.S. The commission was concerned with the circumstances
of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, and
the murder, two days later, of Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, by a nightclub
operator, Jack Ruby. The 296,000-word report is based on the testimony of 552 witnesses taken
over a period of several months following the assassination.
1965
February 1: The Selma Marches. The goal of the march was to draw national attention to the
struggle for black voting rights in the state. Police beat and tear-gassed the marchers just outside
of Selma, and televised scenes of the violence, on a day that came to be known as Bloody
Sunday, resulted in an outpouring of support to continue the march. SCLC petitioned for and
received a federal court order barring police from interfering with a renewed march to
Montgomery. Two weeks after Bloody Sunday, more than 3000 people, including a core of 300
marchers who would make the entire trip, set out toward Montgomery. They arrived in
Montgomery five days later, where King addressed a rally of more than 20,000 people in front of
the capitol building.
February 21: Malcolm X, black-nationalist leader, was shot to death at a Harlem rally in New
York City.
April 28: On April 24, 1965, a group within the army rebelled against the government with the
avowed purpose of restoring Bosch as president. Air force and navy elements opposed the
insurgents, and Santo Domingo became the battleground of a civil war. Four days later, a
contingent of U.S. Marines was landed in Santo Domingo to protect U.S. interests. The U.S.
forces took up positions in a so-called international zone, which served as a barrier between the
rebel-occupied area of the city and the sections occupied by the junta loyalists.
July 1: Medicare, a senior citizens’ government medical assistance program, begins.
August 11-16: Frustrations with high unemployment and poverty led to riots in the Watts section
of Los Angeles, a primarily black neighborhood. For six days, rioters looted, firebombed, and
sniped at police and National Guard troops. When the riots ended, 34 people were dead and
hundreds were injured.
1966
Miranda v. Arizona, landmark court case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled
that police officers must advise suspects of certain legal rights before arrest and questioning. In
Miranda the Court described a four-part warning that police officers must give to a suspect who
is arrested or otherwise detained. The warning is designed to inform suspects of their rights not
to incriminate themselves and to have the assistance of counsel.
1967
January 27: The launch crew and flight crew of the first manned Apollo mission were
conducting a simulated countdown to test the operations and compatibility of the CSM and the
launch vehicle prior to their scheduled launch the following month. The spacecraft was ready for
a simulated launch, with hatch locked, power on, and an internal atmosphere of pure oxygen.
The crew of Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White, II, and Roger B. Chaffee were in their space
suits and performing the normal sequence of prelaunch activities. At about 6:30 PM, after over
five hours of delays and problems, a spark inside the spacecraft ignited flammable material and
instantly engulfed the closed compartment in flames. By the time the hatch was pried away more
than five minutes later, the crew had died from asphyxiation.
July 23: A raid at an illegal after-hours bar in Detroit exploded in a week of violence and
looting, as National Guard and federal troops occupied the city.
October 2: President Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall as the first black man to the
Supreme Court. Two months later, Marshall was confirmed as associate justice of the Supreme
Court by the United States Senate.
1968
January 23: the USS Pueblo, a U.S. spy ship, was attacked and seized while off the North
Korean coast. The North Koreans released its crew after 11 months.
January-February: The offensive was launched on the first day of Tet, the Vietnamese festival
of the lunar new year. It took United States troops and the South Vietnamese forces, or the Army
of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), by surprise because of a holiday truce. The campaign
lasted through February before U.S. and ARVN troops recaptured the cities, inflicting severe
losses on the NLF and the North Vietnamese. The February phase of the offensive received the
most media attention but the campaign also continued between May and June, and then from
September through October.
March 31: President Johnson announces he will not seek or accept a presidential nomination.
April 4: Emphasis on economic rights took Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, Tennessee, to
support striking black garbage workers in the spring. He was assassinated in Memphis by a
sniper. News of the assassination resulted in an outpouring of shock and anger throughout the
nation and the world, prompting riots in more than 100 United States cities in the days following
King’s death. In 1969 James Earl Ray, an escaped white convict, pleaded guilty to the murder of
King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Although over the years many investigators have
suspected that Ray did not act alone, no accomplices have ever been identified.
June 5: Upon leaving a celebration in Los Angeles after his victory in the California primary
was assured, Robert Kennedy was shot by the Jerusalem-born Jordanian Sirhan Bishara Sirhan;
Kennedy died the following day, June 6, 1968. His gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery is
near that of President Kennedy.
1969
January 20: Richard M. Nixon is inaugurated the 37th president of the United States.
June 28: The watershed event for homosexual activism was the Stonewall riot, which protested
a police raid on a gay bar in New York City. It was the first public protest by homosexuals
against harassment by police. Since then, homosexual communities in the United States have
organized to work for gay rights.
July 20: Apollo 11 was the first lunar-landing mission. Launched on July 16, 1969, the crew of
Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins flew the spacecraft Columbia
(CSM) and Eagle (LM). On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin landed the Eagle at
Tranquillity Base becoming the first men to walk on the moon.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
- Neil Armstrong
August 15-17: Woodstock Festival, rock festival that took place near Woodstock, New York, on
August 15, 16, and 17, 1969, and that became a symbol of the 1960s American counterculture
and a milestone in the history of rock music. Prominent among those attending were members of
the counterculture, who were often referred to as hippies and who characteristically rejected
materialism and authority, protested against the Vietnam War, supported the civil rights
movement, dressed unconventionally, and experimented with sex and illicit drugs.
The 1970’s
1970
May 1: Nixon ordered U.S. troops into Cambodia. He argued that this was necessary to protect
the security of American units then in the process of withdrawing from Vietnam, but he also
wanted to buy security for the Saigon regime. When Nixon announced the invasion, U.S. college
campuses erupted in protest, and one-third of them shut down due to student walkouts.
May 4: Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War led to several domestic
confrontations between antiwar demonstrators and government troops. National Guard troops
stunned the nation when they shot into a crowd of protesters during a 1970 demonstration at
Ohio’s Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine.
1972
February 21-27: President Nixon traveled to Beijing, and in May 1972 he visited Moscow. He
signed trade agreements with both countries and a treaty with the USSR to limit the deployment
of antiballistic missile systems.
May 15: While campaigning for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, George Wallace
was shot while speaking in Laurel, Maryland, by an itinerant laborer, Arthur H. Bremer.
Wallace, partially paralyzed as a result of the shooting, received 385.7 votes for the nomination
at the convention in July.
June 17: The Watergate burglary was committed by five men who were caught in the offices of
the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate apartment and office complex in
Washington, D.C. Their arrest eventually uncovered a White House-sponsored plan of espionage
against political opponents and a trail of complicity that led to many of the highest officials in
the land, including former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John
Dean, White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, White House Special Assistant on Domestic
Affairs John Ehrlichman, and President Nixon himself.
June 29: In the decision of Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled
that allowing a jury unlimited discretion to choose between a death sentence and a prison
sentence for a convicted criminal constituted cruel and unusual punishment. This ruling
invalidated every state death penalty statute, because all of the states that retained capital
punishment in 1972 used a standardless system, in which the jury received no guidance in
deciding sentences. As a result, an official moratorium on executions was initiated that year and
continued until 1976.
September 5: Armed German police tried unsuccessfully to rescue nine members of the Israeli
Olympic team who were taken hostage at the Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany (now
Germany). The confrontation ended with a shootout at a nearby airport in which the hostages, a
West German police officer, and five guerrillas of the Black September Palestinian terrorist
group were killed.
1973
January 27: The Vietnam war ends.
October 10 : Spiro T. Agnew became the first American vice president to resign from office
after he was charged with extortion, tax evasion, and bribery. He pleaded no contest to tax
evasion and was fined $10,000. Agnew’s disgrace added to the weight of the problems faced by
United States President Richard Nixon.
October 20: Saturday Night Massacre the name given to a series of firings and resignations on
October 20, 1973, within the administration of President Richard M. Nixon (1969-1975). The
“massacre” resulted from Nixon's effort to prevent additional investigations into the scandal
surrounding the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in
Washington, D.C.
Roe v. Wade, court case of 1973 in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a
woman has a constitutional right to an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy. Before
the Court’s ruling, a majority of states prohibited abortion, although most allowed an exception
when pregnancy threatened the woman’s life. The Court overturned these state prohibitions in
Roe v. Wade. The Court ruled that states could restrict abortions only during the final three
months of pregnancy, a stage when medical experts considered the fetus capable of “meaningful
life” outside the womb.
1974
July 30: The House Judiciary Committee adopts three articles of impeachment charging
President Nixon with obstruction of justice, failure to uphold laws, and refusal to produce
materials subpoenaed by the committee.
August 8: President Nixon announced, without admitting guilt about Watergate, that he would
resign. He left office the next day, and Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as the 38th
president.
September 8: President Ford unexpectedly issued a pardon to Nixon for all federal crimes he
may have committed while president.
1975
May 15: Perhaps because of the humiliation in Vietnam, the Ford administration reacted quickly
and strongly when Cambodian Communists seized an American commercial vessel, the
Mayaguez, in the Gulf of Siam (Thailand) only 13 days after Ford's speech at Tulane. The 30
members of the crew were taken from the ship and held hostage. Despite the fact that U.S.
intelligence services were not certain where the crew was being held, Ford ordered the bombing
of the Cambodian mainland and an amphibious invasion of nearby Koh Tang Island. This show
of force helped free the crew of the Mayaguez, but more Americans were killed in the operation
than were rescued. Ford argued later that the rescue mission was a justifiable response to a nation
taking U.S. citizens as hostages; others argued that it was overkill, designed to improve Ford's
standing in the public opinion polls.
July 15: The primary objective of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in the mid-1970s was
to conduct a joint diplomatic mission with the Soviet Union. ASTP was designed to test the
compatibility of U.S. and Soviet spacecraft and rendezvous and docking systems as a prelude to
international space rescue, as well as future international space mission.
1977
March 24: Craig v. Boren, in which the Court ruled that gender-based discrimination must “be
substantially related” to important legislative goals. This standard, although less rigid than the
“strict scrutiny” test applied to racial discrimination, elevated gender to a protected constitutional
category. The case also led the Court to be more receptive to claims from other types of groups
that they had faced unconstitutional discrimination.
May 11: Ford signs the Federal Election Campaign Act which permits the PACs to make larger
contributions than individuals to any congressional candidate. While individuals may donate no
more than $1000 to a candidate, a PAC may donate up to $5000. Moreover, allied or related
PACs may coordinate their contributions, greatly increasing the amount of money a
congressional candidate receives from the same set of interests and individuals. As a result,
PACs have become very important in congressional races. PACs are also active in state and local
election contests. American presidential elections, by contrast, mainly depend upon public
funding.
July 4: The nation celebrates its bicentennial.
Nov. 2: Jimmy Carter is elected the 39th president of the United States.
1977
January 1: The first woman Episcopal priest is ordained.
January 21: In an attempt to appeal to those who wanted to leave the problems of the war
behind them, President Ford offered amnesty to men who had evaded the military draft, or
conscription, but the program was met with skepticism from Democrats and hostility from
conservative Republicans. Only about 20,000 of the estimated 100,000 draft evaders applied for
amnesty.
June 20: The Supreme Court rules that states are not required to spend Medicare funds on
elective abortions.
September 21: The Nuclear-Proliferation Pact was signed by 15 countries, including the US and
USSR, curbing the spread of nuclear weapons.
1978
January 19: William H. Webster, a former federal judge and prosecutor, became FBI director.
Under Webster the agency conducted complex investigations of organized crime and espionage.
Although he complied with many of the reforms that were instituted following the Senate’s
probe, Webster was criticized for authorizing the investigation of a left-wing group that raised
money in America for humanitarian aid to El Salvador. Although the FBI’s investigation of the
group was not illegal, it improperly delved into political activities that fell outside of the
jurisdiction of the FBI.
March 16: Panama Canal Treaties stipulated that Panamanians would gradually take over
operations before 1999. The commission began programs to provide Panamanian employees
with specialized training, and Panamanians formed more than 90 percent of the canal’s
workforce by 1996. The government of Panama, meanwhile, created an agency to assume
increasing responsibility during the transition. The canal commission promised a smooth
exchange of power, with no disruption in service or safety, when Panama takes control of the
canal and remaining U.S.-held lands on December 31, 1999.
June 28: The Supreme Court’s ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
declared that it was unconstitutional for the medical school of the University of California at
Davis to establish a rigid quota system by reserving a certain number of places in each class for
minorities. However, the ruling upheld the right of schools to consider a variety of factors when
evaluating applicants, including race, ethnicity, gender, and economic status.
September 17: sought to address the conflict between Jews and Arabs over the control of the
historic region of Palestine. This conflict had caused a series of wars since 1948, when Israel was
created in much of the land that was Palestine (see Arab-Israeli Conflict). In the Six-Day War of
1967, Israel enlarged its territory, capturing the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from
Jordan, and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. The Arab nations attempted to
recapture the territories in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, making considerable advances before
they were repelled by Israeli forces. In November 1977 Sadat visited Jerusalem to initiate peace
talks between Egypt and Israel. Shortly after talks had stalled, Carter invited Sadat and Begin
and their senior aides to the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, for a series of
meetings in September 1978. After 13 days of negotiations, the leaders announced the
conclusion of two accords that provided the basis for continuing peace negotiations: a
"Framework for Peace in the Middle East" and a "Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace
Treaty Between Egypt and Israel.”
1979
January 5: Ohio agrees to pay $675,000 to the families of the dead and injured at the Kent State
shooting.
March 28: An accident at the nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania showed
the potential dangers of radioactive material in nuclear reactors.
June 14: President Carter signed the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics. This agreement set precise limits on the numbers and types of
strategic arms that each nation would maintain.
November 4: Militant Iranians, who supported the ayatollah and opposed Western influences,
especially the United States, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehrân (Teheran), the capital of Iran,
taking 66 Americans hostage. Thirteen were soon released, but for the release of the other 53,
Iran demanded a U.S. apology for acts committed in support of the shah, his return to face trial
(unimportant after his death in July 1980), and return of the billions of dollars that he was said to
have hoarded abroad. Negotiations did not secure their release, nor did a U.S. commando raid the
following April.
The 1980’s
1980
January 29: Six US embassy aides escape from Iran with Canadian help.
February 2: The FBI’s undercover operation “Abscam” was designed to fight political
corruption in the United States. During the investigation--which began in 1978 and ended in
1980--FBI agents posed as representatives of a rich Arab sheik. They offered public officials
bribes ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 in return for favors. Abscam took its name from the
words Arab and scam (swindle).
April 7: The United States breaks diplomatic ties with Iran.
April 25: Eight US servicemen are killed and five are injured as helicopter and cargo plane
collide in abortive desert raid to rescue American hostages in Teheran.
November 4: Reagan won the election by a landslide, receiving 51 percent to Carter’s 41
percent. Moderate Republican John Anderson, running as an independent, received nearly 7
percent. In the Electoral College, Reagan won a ten-to-one victory.
December 4: San Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a critic of the military
government, was murdered during a religious service, several Christian Democratic leaders were
assassinated, and three U.S. Catholic nuns and another church worker were raped and killed.
Five members of the Salvadoran National Guard were later convicted of murdering the
churchwomen.
December 8: John Lennon of the Beatles was fatally shot just outside his New York apartment
building by Mark David Chapman, a drifter who had gotten his autograph just a few hours
earlier. After his death, people around the world observed ten minutes of silence to honor
Lennon and his ideals of justice and peace.
1981
March 30: an unstable drifter named John W. Hinckley shot President Reagan in the chest
during an assassination attempt.
June 22: US Supreme Court rules, 4–4, that former President Nixon and three top aides may be
required to pay damages for wiretap of home telephone of former national security aide.
July 7: President Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, who became the first woman to
serve on the Supreme Court.
August 3: The 15,000-member Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) went
on strike. The PATCO members were responsible for guiding commercial airlines through their
flights throughout the United States. The strike caused confusion, long delays, and worries about
air travel safety. Because PATCO members were federal employees, their strike was illegal, and
the federal government replied on August 5 by issuing dismissal notices to the approximately
12,000 controllers who refused to return to their jobs.
1982
June 21: Accused of attempted assassination of the President, a court found Hinckley not guilty
because of insanity and committed him to a mental hospital. Public sympathy after the
assassination attempt increased public support for Reagan, which helped him push his program
through the Congress.
June 25: Alexender Haig was appointed secretary of state in 1981 during President Reagan's
first term in office, but resigned in amid disagreements with other administration officials.
June 30: The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), proposed amendment to the Constitution of the
United States to provide for the equality of sexes under the law. The central language of the
amendment states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State on account of sex.” The ERA would have made unconstitutional
any laws that grant one sex different rights than the other. Ten years and two months after its
first passage by Congress, the ERA failed to become to part of the constitution.
1983
June 15: The US Supreme Court declares many local abortion restrictions unconstitutional.
June 18: Sally K Ride, U.S. astronaut, who in 1983 became the first woman in the American
space program to take part in an orbital mission. Her first flight into space was made aboard the
shuttle Challenger. As a mission specialist she took part in launching two communications
satellites, and in launching and retrieving a test satellite.
August 15: US admits shielding former Nazi Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, 69, the "butcher of
Lyon," wanted in France for war crimes.
1984
November 2: Reagan run for a second term and defeats democrat Walter Mondale by gaining
60% of the vote.
1985
July 1: US Supreme Court, 5–4, bars public school teachers from parochial schools.
August 9: Arthur James Walker, 50, retired naval officer, convicted by federal judge of
participating in Soviet spy ring operated by his brother, John Walker.
1986
January 28: The Challenger Disaster, accident that destroyed the United States space shuttle
Challenger 73 seconds after takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center. The crew—mission
commander Francis R. Scobee; pilot Michael J. Smith; mission specialists Ronald E. McNair,
Ellison S. Onizuka, and Judith A. Resnik; and payload specialists Gregory B. Jarvis and Christa
McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire—died in the accident.
June 11: US Supreme Court reaffirms abortion rights.
August 14: When Warren Burger retired as chief justice, President Ronald Reagan named
Rehnquist to the office. Decisions of the Rehnquist court often reflected the conservatism of the
chief justice and his support of judicial restraint.
November: Iran-Contra Affair, American political scandal of 1985 and 1986, in which highranking members in the administration of President Ronald Reagan arranged for the secret sales
of arms to Iran in direct violation of existing United States laws. Profits from the $30 million in
arms sales were channeled to the Nicaraguan right-wing “contra” guerrillas to supply arms for
use against the leftist Sandinista government. This, too, was in direct violation of U.S. policy.
The chief negotiator of these deals was Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a military aide to the
National Security Council. North reported his activities initially to National Security Adviser
Robert C. McFarlane, the council's head, and subsequently to his successor, Vice Admiral John
M. Poindexter. The sale of arms to Iran was initiated at the suggestion of the Israeli government
with the dual goal of bettering relations with Iran and of obtaining the release of American
hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian terrorists. North was instrumental in setting up a covert
network for providing support to the contras, with its own ship, airplanes, airfield, and secret
bank accounts.
Popular demand for less and simpler income taxation prompted Congress under President Ronald
Reagan to pass the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Reagan believed that lower taxes would stimulate
work, saving, and investment, a theory known as supply-side economic.
1987
October 19: Black Monday was a day on which stock market prices in the United States
declined precipitously, accelerating steep losses in stock markets around the world, including
London and Tokyo. By the end of the day the Dow-Jones Industrial Average had fallen more
than 500 points, representing a loss of more than 22.5 % in the value of its stocks. Economic
observers blamed the crash on such factors as lack of international trade leadership by the federal
government, underlying weaknesses in the U.S. economy, and computerized trading on Wall
Street, which triggered sell orders automatically.
1988
July 3: US navy ship shoots down Iranian airliner in Persian Gulf, mistaking it for jet fighter;
290 killed.
November 8: Republicans sweep 40 states in election, and Bush beats Dukakis.
1989
March 24: American oil tanker that went aground on a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, at
night. The 301-m (987-ft) tanker started to leak oil, and the leakage continued for two days,
totaling 260,000 barrels, the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The tanker's remaining 1 million
barrels of oil were removed from the hold of the damaged vessel and transferred to other tankers
operated by the Exxon Corporation.
April: Colin Powell was named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in August, the first black
officer to hold the nation's highest military post.
July: Bush released a comprehensive plan to bail out the industry, and Congress reacted rapidly,
rewriting oversight regulations and creating the Resolution Trust Corporation to take over
bankrupt savings and loan associations and sell off their assets. Ultimately the bailouts cost
taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
The 1990’s
1990
June 11: The Supreme Court held that neither the federal government nor the states could single
out the burning of the American flag for criminal penalties.
July: Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), legislation passed by the United States Congress
in 1990 to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities and to guarantee them equal
access to employment, public services, public accommodations, and telecommunications. Unlike
earlier laws that were much more limited in scope, the ADA forbids unequal treatment of people
with disabilities in a broad variety of circumstances.
August 2: The Iraqi attack began shortly after midnight. About 150,000 Iraqi troops, many of
them veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, easily overwhelmed the unprepared and inexperienced
Kuwaiti forces, which numbered about 20,000. By dawn Iraq had assumed control of Kuwait
city, the capital, and was soon in complete control of the country. Hussein’s political strategy
was less clear than his military strategy. The Iraqis initially posed as liberators, hoping to appeal
to Kuwaiti democrats who opposed the ruling Sabah monarchy. When this claim attracted neither
Kuwaiti nor international support, it was dropped. In place of the Sabahs, most of whom fled
during the invasion, Iraq installed a puppet government.
October: the serious effort against local and regional air pollution began with the Clean Air Act
of 1970, which was amended in 1977 and 1990. This law requires that the air contain no more
than specified levels of particulate matter, lead, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
oxides, volatile organic compounds, ozone, and various toxic substances. To avoid the mere
shifting of pollution from dirty areas to clean ones, stricter standards apply where the air is
comparatively clean. In national parks, for instance, the air is supposed to remain as clean as it
was when the law was passed. The act sets deadlines by which standards must be met. The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in charge of refining and enforcing these standards,
but the day-to-day work of fighting pollution falls to the state governments and to local air
pollution control districts. Some states, notably California, have imposed tougher air pollution
standards of their own.
November 29: with coalition forces massing in Saudi Arabia and Iraq showing no signs of
retreat, the UN Security Council passed a resolution to allow member states to “use all necessary
means” to force Iraq from Kuwait if Iraq remained in the country after January 15, 1991. The
Iraqis rejected the ultimatum. Soon after the vote, the United States agreed to a direct meeting
between Secretary of State James Baker and Iraq’s foreign minister. The two sides met on
January 9. Neither offered to compromise. The United States underscored the ultimatum, and the
Iraqis refused to comply with it, even threatening to attack Israel. For the United States, the
meeting was its way of showing the conflict could not be resolved through negotiation.
1991
January 15: When the UN deadline passed without an Iraqi withdrawal, a vast majority of
coalition members joined in the decision to attack Iraq. A few members, such as Morocco,
elected not to take part in the military strikes. In the early morning a coalition forces began a
massive air attack on Iraqi targets.
February 24: the coalition launched its long-anticipated land offensive. The bulk of the attack
was in southwestern Iraq, where coalition forces first moved north, then turned east toward the
Iraqi port of Al Baºrah. This maneuver surrounded Kuwait, encircling the Iraqi forces there and
in southern Iraq, and allowed coalition forces (mainly Arab) to move up the coast and take
Kuwait city. Some Iraqi units resisted, but the coalition offensive advanced more quickly than
anticipated. Thousands of Iraqi troops surrendered. Others deserted. Iraq then focused its efforts
on withdrawing its elite units and sabotaging Kuwaiti infrastructure and industry. Many oil wells
were set on fire, creating huge oil lakes, thick black smoke, and other environmental damage.
Two days after the ground war began, Iraq announced it was leaving Kuwait.
April 2: the Security Council laid out strict demands for ending the sanctions: Iraq would have
to accept liability for damages, destroy its chemical and biological weapons and ballistic
missiles, forego any nuclear weapons programs, and accept international inspection to ensure
these conditions were met. If Iraq complied with these and other resolutions, the UN would
discuss removing the sanctions. Iraq resisted, claiming that its withdrawal from Kuwait was
sufficient compliance.
December 25: Soviet President Gorbachev announced his resignation as president in a solemn
television address. The rump Soviet parliament passed its final resolution, acknowledging the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, on December 26. On December 31 all residual functions of the
first Communist state ceased: The USSR no longer existed.
1992
April: one of the worst riots in U.S. history erupted in South Central Los Angeles after four
white officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were acquitted on charges of beating a
black suspect, Rodney King; 58 people died in the rioting.
November: Clinton won the election with 43 percent of the popular vote compared with 38
percent for Bush and 19 percent for Perot. Clinton received the votes of 33 states in the electoral
college, where each state has a number of electoral votes depending on its population and usually
gives all of them to the candidate who received the most votes in that state.
December 4: President Bush pardons former Reagan Administration officials involved in IranContra Affair.
1993
January 29: Homosexuals would be allowed to serve if they did not reveal their sexual
orientation and refrained from homosexual conduct. This compromise became known as the
“don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
March 29: One of the most spectacular terrorist episodes in U.S. history was the bombing of the
World Trade Center in New York City by Islamic radicals. This incident aroused anxiety about
the threat posed by foreign residents from nations hostile to the United States. Six people died in
the blast, which caused an estimated $600 million in property and other economic damage. Trials
that followed convicted six people of carrying out the attack.
March-April: A 51-day standoff near Waco, Texas, between law enforcement officials and the
religious group the Branch Davidians results in the deaths of 80 group members and 4 federal
agents.
November 17: United States Congress approves the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), a pact that calls for the gradual removal of tariff and other trade barriers on most
goods produced and sold in North America.
November 30: Brady Law, which went into effect in 1994, initially provided a five-day waiting
period to allow local law enforcement officials to make sure the purchaser is not disqualified
from owning a handgun. The law also established licensing fees.
1994
January: An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale shook Los Angeles. The quake
caused billions of dollars in damage. Three freeway overpasses collapsed, and thousands of
people were left homeless after their homes were destroyed or declared unsafe.
May 6: Paula Jones, a former employee of the State of Arkansas, filed a civil lawsuit alleging
that she was sexually harassed by U.S. President Bill Clinton while he served as governor of
Arkansas. In 1998 a judge dismissed the suit after determining that even if Jones’s allegations
were proven, she could not demonstrate that she had been harmed by the behavior. Jones
appealed the dismissal but later agreed to a financial settlement from Clinton and dropped the
case.
1995
April 19: Oklahoma City became the site of the most deadly terrorist bombing in the history of
the United States. A massive bomb exploded in a truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building, killing 168 people, destroying much of the building, and damaging surrounding
structures. Timothy McVeigh was charged with 11 counts of conspiracy and murder by the
federal government.
October: Louis Farrakhan organized the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. At the march,
hundreds of thousands of black men vowed to renew their commitments to family, community,
and personal responsibility. Although the march renewed criticism of Farrakhan's anti-Semitic
statements and some black leaders refused to participate, it was widely regarded as a successful
display of black solidarity. It helped Farrakhan move closer to the political mainstream, and
some people also saw it as indicating the strength of Farrakhan's appeal to a significant segment
of the black population.
1996
December 5: Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to appointing women to cabinet positions by
nominating Madeleine Albright as the first woman secretary of state.
1998
January: independent counsel Kenneth Starr began investigating allegations that President Bill
Clinton had lied under oath to conceal a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica
Lewinsky.
September: Starr released a voluminous report and referred 11 possible grounds for the
president’s impeachment to the House of Representatives. Starr charged Clinton with obstruction
of justice, lying under oath (perjury), witness tampering, and abuse of power.
October 6: Matthew Shepard, gay Wyoming student, fatally beaten in hate crime; two arrested
December: The House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against Clinton of
perjury and obstruction of justice, by votes of 228 to 206 and 221 to 212.
1999
February: the Senate rejected both articles of impeachment in Both Senate votes fell
considerably short of the two-thirds majority required to convict (67 votes). The first article of
impeachment, alleging perjury, was defeated by a vote of 45 for impeachment and 55 against.
The second article, charging Clinton with obstruction of justice, failed in a 50-50 tie vote.
April 20: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold 17, storm ColumbineHigh School in
Littleton , CO, killing twelve other students and a teacher, then themselves.
July 16: John F. Kennedy Jr., wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister Lauren G. Bessette
are lost at sea when a plane he was piloting disappears near Martha's Vineyard, off Mass. Coast.