-
Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes 34th U.S. President
-
The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
-
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
-
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the civil rights movement.
-
U.S. Technical Sergeant Richard Bernard Fitzgibbon Jr., USAF was the first American to lose his life in the conflict that would later be known as the Vietnam War. He was murdered by another American airman and died of his wounds later on June 8, 1956.
-
The Little Rock Nine was 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
-
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957, orbiting for three weeks before its batteries died, then silently for two more months before falling back into the atmosphere.
-
Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States, and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year. The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 and 2, beginning the Cold War Space Race between the two nations.
-
the first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States, Shippingport Atomic Power Station, was opened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of his Atoms for Peace program.
-
The sit-in movement employed the tactic of nonviolent direct action and was a pivotal event during the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans would sit and wait at the lunch counters in a very polite, non-violent manner. If the police arrested them for not leaving, a new group of African Americans would take their place.
-
United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was hit by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk.
-
The 1960 United States presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon
-
John F. Kennedy becomes 35th U.S. President
-
Freedom Riders end racial segregation in Southern U.S. public transit, 1961. Goals: To desegregate interstate transportation, including highways, bus stops, and train terminals.
-
The Albany Movement was a civil rights campaign to desegregate the city from 1961 to 1962. It was led primarily by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee but also gained support from other groups including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.
-
The Birmingham campaign, or Birmingham movement, was a movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama.
-
March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress
-
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.
-
A bomb blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, kills four African-American girls during church services. At least 14 others are injured in the explosion, including Sarah Collins, the 12-year-old sister of victim Addie Mae Collins, who loses an eye.
-
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while traveling through Dallas, Texas.
-
Lyndon B. Johnson becomes 36th U.S. President after JFK assassination
-
Chicago Freedom Movement, was formed to protest segregated housing, educational deficiencies, and employment and health disparities based on racism. The movement included multiple rallies, marches and boycotts to address the variety of issues facing black Chicago residents.
-
a demonstration of America's near-total air supremacy during the Vietnam War. It was started in an effort to demoralize the North Vietnamese people and to undermine the capacity of the government in North Vietnam to govern. Operation Rolling Thunder failed on both accounts.
-
On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma.
-
The Interstate Highway System was launched when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Its purpose was to provide high-speed, high-capacity system of highways without stoplights and with exits spaced, whenever possible, at least a mile apart.
-
The Poor People's Campaign, or Poor People's March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States.
-
General Westmoreland requests 206,000 more troops.
-
Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
-
The 1968 United States presidential election between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.
-
Richard Nixon becomes 37th U.S. President
-
The House and the Senate vote to withdraw all U.S. troops in Vietnam by year's end.
-
The 26th Amendment is ratified, lowering the national voting age from 21 to 18.
-
The name "Watergate" comes from the hotel in Washington, D.C. where the first crime took place and is often associated with political scandals. He was stealing information and abusing his presidential power to try to stay in office.
-
The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War.
-
the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong on 30 April 1975
