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The Truman Doctrine is established
With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
The Marshall Plan is introduced
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. -
Berlin Airlift
During the entire airlift, the U.S. and U.K. delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, and supplies to West Berlin via more than 278,000 airdrops. American aircrews made more than 189,000 flights, totaling nearly 600,000 flying hours and exceeding 92 million miles. -
Formation of NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
Start of the Korean War
After five years of simmering tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Korean War began when the Northern Korean People's Army invaded South Korea in a coordinated general attack at several strategic points along the 38th parallel, the line dividing communist North Korea from the non-communist Republic of Korea in the south. -
End of the Korean War
An armistice was signed agreeing that Korea would remain a divided country. The armistice was signed by officials from the United States, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea. This agreed to bring the fighting of the Korean War to an end. -
Formation of the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania (Albania withdrew in 1968). -
The Eisenhower Doctrine is established
Eisenhower in a "Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East." Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a Middle Eastern country could request American economic assistance or aid from U.S. military forces if it was threatened by armed aggression. -
Sputnik launched into orbit
History changed when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm. or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. -
U-2 Incident
The U-2 incident was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union in 1960 and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France.