Eisenhower’s “Military-Industrial Complex” Speech
As President of the United States for two terms, Eisenhower had slowed the push for increased defense spending despite pressure to build more military equipment during the Cold War arms race. Nonetheless, the American military services and the defense industry had...
Airliners Collide Midair Over New York
In December 1960 a United Airlines Douglas DC-8 bound for Idlewild Airport (now JFK) in New York City collided in midair with a TWA Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation descending toward LaGuardia Airport. 128 aboard the two aircraft and six people on the ground were...
U2 Spy Plane Incident
https://youtu.be/4dFx7hSGyHI In May 1960 a Soviet missile shot down an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory near Sverdlovsk. In February 1962,...
Gerboise Bleue – French Nuclear Test
https://youtu.be/V_vt3c34z3U?t=4 In February 1960, during the Algerian War (1954-62) France detonated an atomic bomb in the middle of the Algerian Sahara desert. Gerboise is the French word for a desert rodent found in the Sahara. The color Bleue came from the first...
Japan – USA Miltary Alliance
https://youtu.be/WTy5MOPY_tM?t=8 In January 1960 the US and Japan signed a treaty of mutual cooperation and security that formalized a US-Japanese military alliance. Left-wing protests roiled the government of Nobosuke Kishi as he pushed through the revised security...
Ho Chi Minh Trail
In May 1959 the Peoples’ Army of Vietnam’s Military Transportation Group 559 was established in North Vietnam. The group ultimately created and maintained the Ho Chi Minh Trail to facilitate the infiltratiion of troops and supplies from North Vietnam in support...
Uprising in Tibet
https://youtu.be/cxSDhng2PQg Encyclopedia Britannica In March 1959 a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which had been under the effective control of the People's Republic of China since 1951. The uprising occurred amid general Tibetan...
Fidel Castro’s Forces Triumphant
Fidel and Raul Castro formed an underground movement in the early 1950s to overthrow the brutal and corrupt regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, under whose rule Cuba had become a haven for organized crime. After an unsuccessful rising against Batista in 1953 the...
USS Nautilus Submarine Travels Beneath North Pole
https://youtu.be/vjK126hN4qc USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine and the first submarine to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole in August 1958. The nuclear submarine...
US Marines Sent To Lebanon
https://youtu.be/0qFbBgDFzBM In July 1958 President Eisenhower ordered 5,000 US Marines to Lebanon, at the request of that country’s president, to face a perceived threat by Muslim rebels and help end a short-lived civil war. Eisenhower justified his decision to send...
Cuban Rebels Capture US Sailors & Marines
In June 1958, Cuban rebel forces captured 29 Sailors and Marines as they returned to Guantamano from leave in Cuba. The hostages were detained in the hills for 22 days, then released . Source: Naval Technology
Nuclear Waste in Marshall Islands
The Runit Dome (aka Cactus Dome) is a 377 foot X 18 inch dome of radioactive debris, entombed in concrete, that stems from nuclear tests conducted in the Enewetak Atoll of the Marshall Islands by the United States between 1946...
Memorial To Americans St, Paul’s London
Source: Wikipedia
Fidel Castro Behind Rebel Lines in Cuba
Believing support for the revolution was waning, Cuba's president Fulgencio Batista called for a major military offensive against Fidel Castro's rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains in the summer of 1958. But the rebels turned back the offensive, forcing the army to...
The Bridge on the River Kwai
https://youtu.be/RlC7XBayj0s At the 30th Academy Awards in 1958, The Bridge on the River Kwai won seven awards, including best picture of 1957. Its director, David Lean, and star Alec Guinness also received Oscars. The Bridge on the River Kwai was based on...
Elvis Joins the US Army
Elvis Aron Presley entered the United States Army at Memphis, Tennessee in March 1958. During his active military career Presley served as a member of two different armor battalions. At the 2d Medium Tank Battalion, 37th Armor in Fort Hood, Texas he completed basic...
USSR Declares Atomic Testing Halt
https://youtu.be/QrNN5ZhsC1I In March 1958 the Soviet Union declared it was halting tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs. It called on the other nuclear powers, the United States and Britain, to do the same. Moscow warned that it would resume testing if their example...
Unarmed Nuclear Bomb Dropped on South Carolina
https://youtu.be/u1s46O9FK-E In March 1958 a B-47 pilot accidentally grabbed the bomb bay door lever and released an unarmed nuclear bomb at 15,000 feet over the suburbs of Florence, South Carolina. The bomb's high explosives exploded on impact, wrecking a house and...
Eisenhower Warns of Communist Threat
Text of January 1958 address: The threat to our safety, and to the hope of a peaceful world, can be simply stated. It is communist imperialism. This threat is not something imagined by critics of the Soviets. Soviet spokesmen, from the beginning, have publicly and...
John Glenn Sets Airspeed Record
In July 1957 Marine Corps Major John Glenn flew a Vought F8U Crusader, from Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in California to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York in three hours, 23 minutes, setting a transcontinental speed record: 725.55 mph.
Distant Early Warning Line
The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was the northernmost of three radar lines in Canada and Alaska. Designed to provide enough warning time of a nuclear attack to enable launching an effective counterattack, the DEW line was placed far north of the joint...
Eisenhower Doctrine
https://youtu.be/1N1_JGG4XX8 In January 1957 President Eisenhower declared that US forces could be deployed to protect the territorial integrity and political independence of nations from overt armed aggression by any nation controlled by international communism....
Suez Canal Crisis
In June 1956 the 74-year British occupation of the Suez Canal ended. In July 1956 the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. In October 1956 Israeli brigades invaded Egypt and advanced toward the canal, routing Egyptian forces....
US Hydrogen Bomb Dropped Over Bikini Atoll
In May 1956 the United States conducted the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb. Dropped from a B-52 bomber over the island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons...
Selective Service Act extended
https://youtu.be/wGQzbDyty2A The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 was passed by Congress in September 1940, establishing the first peacetime conscription in United States history The Selective Service Act of 1948 created the basis...