Peter A W Kelt: Cold War Timeline

1940s

1945: February 4-11 – Yalta Conference, Cold War begins

1945: August 6 – US first used atomic bomb in war

1945: August 8 – Russia enters war against Japan

1945: August 14 – Japanese surrender. End of World War II

1946: March – Winston Churchill delivers ‘Iron Curtain’ speech

1947: March – Truman declares active role in Greek Civil War

1947: June – Marshall Plan is announced

1948: February – Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia

1948: June 24 – Berlin Blockade begins

1949: July – NATO ratified

1949: May 12 – Berlin Blockade ends

1949: September – Soviets explode first atomic bomb

1950s

1950: February – Joe McCarthy begins Communist witch hunt

1950: June – Korean War begins

1953: Spanish dictator Francisco Franco strengthened relations with the Americans to improve local economies and the Rota Naval Base opened

1953: July – Korean War ends

1954: March – KGB established

1954 – CIA helps to overthrow unfriendly regimes in Iran and Guatemala

1954: July – Vietnam split at 17th parallel

1955: May – Warsaw Pact formed

1956: October - November – Revolution quashed in Communist Hungary. Egypt takes control of Suez Canal; US refused to help take it back

1957: October 4 – Sputnik launched into orbit

1958: November – Khrushchev demands withdrawal of troops from Berlin

1959: January – Fidel Castro takes Cuba

1960s

1960: May – Soviet Union reveals that US spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory

1960: November – John F. Kennedy elected President

1961: April – Bay of Pigs invasion

1961: August 13 – Berlin border closed

1961: August 17 – Construction of Berlin Wall begins

1962: US involvement in Vietnam increased

1962: October – Cuban Missile Crisis

1963: July – Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified

1963: July – Kim Philby was revealed to be a member of the spy ring known as the Cambridge Five

1963: November – President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas

1964: January – The Chief of Naval Operations deployed Submarine Squadron 16 to Rota on 28 January and embarked upon USS Proteus. USS Lafayette completed its first Fleet Ballistic Missile deterrent patrol with the Polaris missile and commenced the first refit and replenishment.

1965: April – US Marines sent to Dominican Republic to fight Communism

1965: July – Announcement of dispatching of 150,000 US troops to Vietnam

1968: August – Soviet troops crush Czechoslovakian revolt

1969: July 20 – Apollo 11 lands on the moon

1970s

1970: April – President Nixon extends Vietnam War to Cambodia

1972: June 17 – Break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC

1972: July – SALT I signed

1973: January – Ceasefire in Vietnam between North Vietnam and US

1973: September – US helps to overthrow Chile government

1973: October – Egypt and Syria attack Israel; Egypt requests Soviet aid

1974: Submarines at the Rota naval base completed conversion to the Poseidon missile when USS Francis Scott Key returned to Rota on 14 January 1974

1974: August – President Nixon resigns

1975: April 17 – North Vietnam defeats South Vietnam

1979: July – SALT II signed

1979: November – Shah of Iran overthrown; Iranian Hostage Crisis

1979: November – Anthony Blunt was publicly exposed as a Soviet spy when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher named him as the ‘Fourth Man’ at the start of her first term in office.