1985

History Timeline

By: Lauren Tharrington

History Timeline

Soviet Union explodes its 1st atomic bomb

1949

At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name “First Lightning.” In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. They also placed animals in cages nearby so that they could test the effects of nuclear radiation on human-like mammals.

Watts Riots in LA

1965

Medicare and Medicaid created

1965

Sen. Robert Kennedy assassinated

1968

Clinton balances the budget

1998

Creation of NATO

1949

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965

Martin Luther King Jr assassinated

1968

SALT

1972

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Camp David Accords

1978

were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two framework agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States President Jimmy Carter. Called for a formal peace treaty to be signed between Israel and Egypt, within three months.

Gorbachev leader of USSR

1985

Tet Offensive begins

1968

Nixon visits China

1972

Richard Nixon meets with Mao Zedong in Beijing, February 21, 1972. U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and China. He was the first president to visit China as well

Clinton Impeached

1998

Brown vs. Board of Education

1951

Some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year holiday called Tet), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam. It was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War,

A landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

Malcolm X assassinated

1965

Tiananmen Square protest

1989

Iron Curtain Speech

1946

Warren Commission formed

1963

Whitewater Scandal

1978

Were student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing which took place in the first half of 1989 and received broad support from city residents, exposing deep splits within China's political leadership. It later became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the June 4 Massacre as troops with assault rifles and tanks killed unarmed civilians trying to block the military's advance towards Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, which students and other demonstrators had occupied for seven weeks.

Clinton appears on Arsenio Hall

1992

Stars Wars (SDI) proposed

1983

Watergate Scandal

1972

Prague Spring

1968

Iran Contra Scandal

1985

Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955

Suez Crisis

1956

Vietnam War Ends

1975

Kennedy Assassination

1963

Rosenberg Case

1951

Also named the Tripartite Aggression and the Kadesh Operation, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France.

Berlin Wall Constructed

1961

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. In 1964, a year after the president's death, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, better known as the Warren Commission, concluded that Kennedy was killed by a single gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone and not part of a conspiracy.

the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The purpose was to keep East and West people of Germany separated

was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. and President Richard Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. It ended with Nixon being impeached from office.

A seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It started when Rosa Parks refused to give her seat up to a white man

Advancing quickly, North Vietnamese troops finally captured Saigon on April 30, 1975. South Vietnam surrendered the same day. After thirty years of conflict, Ho Chi Minh's vision of a united, communist Vietnam had been realized. It ended in a cease fire and the Paris Peace Accords were signed

Election of 1948

Truman Wins

Alabama Civil Rights March

1965

American Puts a Man in Space

1961

Birmingham Church Bombing

1963

Patriot Act

2001

Castro comes to power in Cuba

1959

Bay of Pigs

1961

March on Washington

1963

Federal Highway Act

1956

Soviet Union puts a Man in Space

1961

Khrushchev to power

1953

Berlin Airlift

1948

Nixon resigns

1974

Gideon vs. Wainwright

1963

A military operation in the late 1940s that brought food and other needed goods into West Berlin by air after the government of East Germany, which at that time surrounded West Berlin, had cut off its supply routes.

1960

1950

2000

1990

1970

1980

1965

1955

1975

1995

1945

1985

Taft-Harley Act

1947

Guatamala Incident

1954

James Meredith attends University of Mississippi

1962

Geneva Accords

1954

Stagflation takes over

1973

NAFTA

1993

Cuban Missile Crisis

1962

Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court

1967

Civil Rights Act of 1964

End of Chinese Civil War

1950

GWB sends troops to Iraq

2003

U-2 Incident

1960

Little Rock Nine

1957

Occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace.

A group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas.

Election of 1952 (Eisenhower wins)

Contract with America

1994

Election Bush v. Gore

2000

Kent State protest

1970

Kennedy Elected

1960

Operation Desert Storm

1990

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

1964

Start of Korean War

1950

Sputnik launched & Space Race begins

1957

Economic Opportunity Act

1964

Iranian Hostage Crisis

1979

Alger Hiss Case

1950

Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.

Martin Luther King Jr. awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1964

Eisenhower Doctrine

1957

awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in America. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award.

McCarthyism Begins

1950

Soviets invade Afghanistan

1979