Historical Background: Perspective
The 1950s. The United States of America has a population of approximately 151 million. About 3 million people are unemployed. The average annual salary is $3,000. There are 5 male workers for every 2 female workers. Bomb shelters. Harry Truman. The Hydrogen Bomb. Transcontinental television. Troops in Korea. Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Rosenberg Trial. Troops out of Korea. Senator Joseph McCarthy. Rosa Parks. African American Civil Rights Movement. AFL-CIO. Salk and the Polio vaccine. Interstate Highway. Explorer I orbits Earth. Domestic flights. Alaska. Hawaii.
The 1950s. North Korea invades South Korea. The "Korean" conflict. The Soviet Union boycotts the UN. The Chinese. General Douglas MacArthur. Chiang Kai-shek. Taiwan. Soviet nuclear missiles on submarines. McCarthy and the State Department. Witch hunts. Israel offers any Jews citizenship. The Arab League boycotts Israel. Palestinian refugees. Post-war baby boom. TV. CBS. Color. Credit cards. Truman fires MacArthur. 22nd Amendment (only two terms). UNIVAC is the first commercial computer. Atomic power reactor. "Rock-and-roll". Queen Elizabeth II. Japanese independence. Germany pays damages to Israel. Mother Teresa. Korean War ends. Boundaries. Stalin dies. Khrushrev rises. Soviet hydrogen bomb detonates. Cambodian independence. Flooding in Holland. Iranian shah returns to power, with the help of the U.S. Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. DNA is a double-helix. The peak of Everest is reached. Domino theory and escalation. Separate but equal. Algeria fights for independence. Vietnamese independence. North and South Vietnam. SEATO. Yangtze floods. Birth control pills. NBC. Nuclear-powered submarines. Churchill resigns. Warsaw Pact. Iron Curtain. Pocket radios. De-Stalinization. 2nd Arab Israeli War. Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Sudanese, Tunisian, Morrocan Independence. Elvis Presley. Grace Kelly. Sputnik. ICBM. North Vietnam attacks South Vietnam. No integration. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ghanaian independence. US baby boom peaks. Women in Britain's House of Lords. NORAD. Cuba and Fidel Castro. EEC. Iraqi Republic. Iraq-Soviet alliance. Madagascarian, French West African and French Equatorial African independence. NASA. The Mercury Project. Charles de Gaulle in France. Cuban communism. US breaks off diplomatic relations. Yasser Arafat and the "destruction of Israel." XEROX machine. Transcontinental flights. Monkeys in space.
