Greensboro Sit-ins
https://youtu.be/tjeVqNcN5yI In February 1960 four black North Carolina A&T students staged the first of the historic 1960s sit-ins at a dime store lunch counter where they had been refused service. Source: History.com
Nixon-Khruschev Kitchen Debate
https://youtu.be/XRgOz2x9c08 During a visit to the Soviet Union in July 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon got into a "kitchen debate" with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a US exhibition. Source: Wikipedia
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...
Martin Luther King Jr. Stabbed
https://youtu.be/bhm5tE5e4FY In September 1958 Martin Luther King Jr. was autographing copies of his memoir Stride Toward Freedom (about the Montgomery bus strike) in a Harlem department store when a 42-year-old African American woman plunged a seven-inch penknife...
Independence Day
https://youtu.be/XRLRKNXVuTY Independence Day (Fourth of July) is a federal holiday commemorating the Declaration of Independence of the United States, which was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. Congress declared that the thirteen American...
Execution of Hungarian Communist Leader
Imre Nagy served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy. a committed communist, became leader of the Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet-backed government....
Venezuelan Protesters Attack Nixon Cavalcade
In April-May1958, on a goodwill trip to Latin America, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in angry debates with student groups in Peru and Uruguay. Then, in Caracas, Venezuela, a large crowd pelted his car, smashing the windows. Nixon escaped from the crowd and...
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
https://youtu.be/pxTWb38NERg In December 1955 an African-American woman named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusal to surrender her seat to a white person on a Montgomery Alabama public bus. The subsequent Montgomery bus boycott lasted from December 1955 to...
Five Shot In U.S. Congress
In March 1954 four Puerto Rican nationalists wanting independence from US rule, shot 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols from the balcony of the House of Representatives chamber in the United States Capitol. The nationalists unfurled...
Arab Republic of Egypt
In July 1952 the Egyptian Free Officers Movement, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein with General Muhammad Naguib as titular head, seized control of King Farouk’s government buildings, radio stations, and police stations in Cairo. The rule of Egypt passed to...
Riots in East Germany
In June 1953 a strike by construction workers in East Berlin against Soviet-inspired work standards, evolved into a series of demonstrations against declining living standards and unpopular Sovietization policies across the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)....
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Executed
https://youtu.be/iP56uHh-p5g In 1951 the American citizens Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. In June 1953 the Rosenbergs were both executed in the Sing Sing correctional...
Rosenbergs sentenced to death for espionage
https://youtu.be/5iUyF3YttgA Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage and brought to trial on March 6, 1951; On March 29 they were found guilty, and on April 5,1951 the couple was sentenced to death. https://youtu.be/7lfJC5bx3Us...
Truman Assassination Attempt
https://youtu.be/upbvXCgHwJo In November 1950 two Puerto Rican pro-independence nationalists attempted to assassinate U.S. President Harry Truman. Both men were stopped before gaining entry to the house. One assassin and one police officer were killed by...
CIA Mind Control
https://youtu.be/NUW-frxo2X4 In 1950 the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence authorized Project BLUEBIRD to discover methods of: conditioning personnel to prevent unauthorized extraction of informationcontrol of an individual by the application of special...
Nuclear Espionage
https://youtu.be/mxmsBePZwHY In January 1950, the German-born physicist Klaus Fuchs, working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, was arrested for passing key documents to the Soviets throughout WWII. Fuchs identified his courier as the...
Klaus Fuchs Atomic Spy
https://youtu.be/mqQ5_Na8DIc The German theoretical physicist Klaus Fuchs helped develop the first effective atomic bomb at Los Alamos during the WWII Manhattan Project. German born, Fuchs fled Nazi Germany and became a British citizen in August 1942. As a long-time...
Alger Hiss
https://youtu.be/HvBpuPMNuaA In 1948 Whittaker Chambers, ex-communist and editor with Time magazine, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Alger Hiss was a communist who had passed him top secret documents during his work in the...
Cardinal Mindszenty
https://youtu.be/IH7rFQWP0Lk In February 1949 Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty was convicted of treason by the Hungarian Communist People’s Court. The Cardinal had been an outspoken critic of the persecution of Jews by the Hungarian fascist government during WWII....
UN Mediator Assassinated
In September 1948 members of the Lehi militant organization (AKA the Stern gang) assassinated the Swedish UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in Palestine -- presumably for proposing an Arab administration for Jerusalem. The Lehi (Hebrew for "Fighters for the...
Jeju Uprising
Jeju Island is a 40km x 90km island province of South Korea 120 km south of the Korean Peninsula The Jeju uprising, which began on April 3, 1948, resulted in extreme suppression by the South Korean Army, police and right-wing paramilitary groups. The...
Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 –1948) led Indians in a nonviolent independence movement from British colonization. Known worldwide by his honorific Sanskrit title Mahātmā (high-souled, venerable) he was also...
Hollywood Black List
In October 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee (created in 1938) re-convened in Washington D.C. for public hearings on alleged communist infiltration within the American motion picture industry. 50 top Hollywood executives decided to suspend those who...
Central Intelligence Agency
OSS Shortly after the end of WWII, the U.S. wartime intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, was dissolved by presidential order. However, despite opposition from competing forces including...
A-Bomb Morality
Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd The concept of a nuclear chain reaction reportedly came to the physicist Leó Szilárd as an epiphany while waiting to cross a London street in 1933. “...It suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an element which is split by...