Cold War Historical Timeline
Some people could probably name the start and end dates of the Cold War, but so many events occurred it is unlikely that anyone but a specialist would really be able to list every single happening during this time period.
In order to make this information as user friendly as possible, we will go decade by decade, highlighting the most important events of the Cold War.
1940s
February 4-11, 1945: The Yalta Conference and the start of the Cold War
May 8, 1945: Germany surrenders to the Allied forces
March 1946: The "Iron Curtain" speech is delivered by Winston Churchill
June 1947: The Marshall Plan is announced.
September 1949: The USSR sets off its first atomic bomb.
1950s
June 19, 1953: The Rosenberg spy executions occur.
July 1954: Vietnam was split into two after the French were defeated.
May 1955: The Warsaw Pact was created.
May 1956: The 3AD was deployed to West Germany, after spending time at Fort Knox.
July 1, 1957: The 3AD started to reorganize under a new system known as the Combat Arms Regimental System.
October 4, 1957: The USSR launches Sputni into the orbit of Earth.
October 1957: The 3AD first receives types of nuclear weapons.
1959: The 3AD begins a conversion from M-1 to M-14 rifles.
1960s
May 1, 1960: A United States U2 spy plane is shut down as it travels over Russia.
April 1961: The Bay of Pigs Invasion happens in Cuba.
April 12, 1961: The United States sends an astronaut up to orbit the Earth.
August 13, 1961: The border in Berlin is closed down.
August 17, 1961: The construction of the Berlin Wall begins at full speed ahead.
1962: The United States starts to become more involved in Vietnam.
October 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis happens.
July 1963: The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was ratified.
August 1964: The Gulf of Tonkin incident sets off the Vietnam War.
January 1968: The North Koreans seize the USS Pueblo.
July 20, 1969: The first man lands on the moon, courtesy of the United States of America.
1970s
April 1970: President Nixon extends the Vietnam War into Cambodia.
January 1973: A ceasefire in Vietnam between North Vietnam and the United States is put into play.
March 1973: The last large military group from the United States leaves South Vietnam.
April 30, 1975: South Vietnam falls to North Vietnam.
November 1979: The Iranian Hostage Crisis occurs.
1980s
1983: President Reagan revels his "Star Wars" plan.
1985: Mikhail Gorbachev gains the power in the USSR.
October 1986: Reagan and Gorbachev state that they will remove intermediate nuclear missiles from Europe.
October 1987: Reagan and Gorbachev sign a treaty removing all medium and short range nuclear missiles from Europe.
January 1989: Soviet troops depart from Afghanistan.
June 1989: Poland becomes independent.
September 1989: Hungary becomes independent.
November 1989: The Berlin Wall is finally destroyed.
December 1989: The communist governments in Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia cease to be.
1990s
May 29, 1990: Boris Yeltsin is elected to be the President of Russia.
October 3, 1990: East and West Germany are reunited.
February 1991: 3AD is in Operation Desert Storm.
April 1991: The Warsaw Pact formally ends.
August 1991: The Cold War ends.
The Cold War lasted for an astonishingly long time, and people will remember it for a long time to come, since so many generations lived to see the effects of it. Although it was a sad part of history, it is also very interesting.
Any one of these bullet points on the Cold War timeline could serve as a start for some very involved research and discoveries.