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Timeline Eight
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HISTORY,
POLITICS,
RELIGION
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1945 United Nations founded as an international advisory and
peacekeeping council; Yalta Conference: British prime minister
Winston Churchill, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and
Marshal Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union plan division of
Germany into zones of occupation and Europe into spheres of
influence
1947 Marshall Plan, proposed to aid recovery of European states
devastated by World War II, enacted by the United States.
Division of Germany into East and West states
1948 Israel achieves nationhood with recognition by the United
Nations; India gains independence from Britain
1949 Communist People's Republic of China founded, under Mao Tse-tung
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1954 American civil-rights movement begins: United States
Supreme Court outlaws racial segregation in public schools;
1955, Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott by African-Americans, led
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
с. 1955-е. 1989 Cold War among Soviet Union, China, and United
States: a period of mutual hostilities, espionage, arms
escalation, and political maneuvering for influence in other
countries by the three world powers; most other nations align
themselves with one of the three. Conflicts center upon the
opposition between communism and democracy; 1961, Berlin Wall
built, isolating West Berlin within East Germany; 1962, Cuban
Missile Crisis, Soviet Union attempts to install missiles in
Cuba, threatening United States
1959 Fidel Castro establishes communist government in Cuba
1950s In some Protestant and Jewish denominations, women become
ministers. Chinese invade Tibet and destroy over 6,000 ancient
temples and monasteries; 1959, Dalai Lama, head of state and of
Tibetan Buddhism, forced into exile in India
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1963 Assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy
1965 America enters Vietnam War
1965-76 Cultural Revolution in
China: hardline Maoist Red Guards formed; educators, local
governments, and other elements seen as "enemies of the
Revolution" attacked; thousands are killed, millions sent to
reeducation camps; many artworks and religious sites are
destroyed
1967 Egypt and Israel at war; Egypt is defeated, Israel controls
Sinai peninsula
1968 Prague Spring, an attempt by Czechoslovakia to win freedom
from Soviet control, crushed by Soviet troops; in United States,
presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and civil-rights leader
Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated; mass protests in United
States against Vietnam War
1962-65 Pope John XXlll's Second Vatican Council institutes use
of vernacular in church ritual and other reforms
1964 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras attempt to resolve
differences between Eastern and Western Christian churches
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1973 Egypt and Syria attack Israel and are defeated. United
States withdraws from Vietnam War, having failed militarily and
in response to increasing public criticism. In Chile, Salvador Allende, a socialist, becomes president; he is murdered and a
military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet takes power, until
1989. In Washington, D.C., Watergate scandal: President Richard
Nixon is implicated in illegal activities; 1974, he resigns
1975 South Vietnam falls, ending the war; nation is unified
under a communist regime
1978 Iranian revolution: Islamic fundamentalists rebel against
the shah; the Ayatollah Khomeini takes power
1979 Afghan War: Soviet troops invade Afghanistan; they are
forced to withdraw ten years later. Camp David Accords brokered
by United States: Egypt formally recognizes Israel and regains
Sinai territory
1979-81 Iran holds 52 Americans hostage
1977 End of Catholicism as state religion of Italy
1978 Pope John Paul II of Poland elected, first non-Italian pope
in 455 years
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1981 Assassination of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt,
advocate for peace in the Middle East; 1982, Israel invades
Lebanon, whose government falls, causing war among Lebanese and
Palestinian factions
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev is premier of Soviet Union: policies of
glasnost and perestroika permit economic, political, and cultural
liberalization
1986 In United States, Iran-contra scandal: secret, illegal
sale of arms to Iran and diversion of funds to Nicaraguan rebels
implicates high government officials
1989 Berlin Wall torn down; 1989-90, Soviet Union breaks up into
independent states, with mostly noncommunist governments, along
old ethnic and political boundaries; Yugoslavia and
Czechoslovakia divide; student demonstrations (estimated over 1
million) in favor of democracy, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing,
China, suppressed violently by Chinese military
1980s Rise of religious fundamentalism, especially among Moslems
in the Middle East and Central Asia, Hindus in India and some
Christian sects in the United States
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1990-91 Gulf War: Iraq invades Kuwait, is repulsed by
combined United Nations and United States armies
1990 Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress and
South African anti-apartheid movement, is freed from jail after
27 years; Germany reunifies
1991 Boris Yeltsin elected premier of Russia
1992 Civil war in states of the former Yugoslavia: ethnic and
territorial disputes, some of ancient origin, in Bosnia,
Croatia, and Serbia
1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accord ratified; threatened by
extremist terrorist activity
1994 South Africa holds first multiracial elections: Nelson
Mandela is president; apartheid laws are abandoned; civil war in
Rwanda kills over 500,000 civilians in a few months;
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Timeline Eight
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ART, MUSIC,
LITERATURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY
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1949
GEORGE ORWELL's novel
"Nineteen
Eighty-Four" creates a
futuristic totalitarian world

1949-50
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
(1908-1986)

authors
the key
feminist text The Second Sex
The Atomic Age:
1942, in United States, first nuclear chain
reaction; 1943, first nuclear fission bomb; 1945, United States
drops atomic bombs on Japanese
cities, killing over 100,000
instantly. 1949, first Soviet nuclear bomb; 1956, first nuclear
electrical generators built in England; by 1970s, nuclear power
in widespread commercial use 1946 Radio-carbon dating
1947 Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Israel 1948 Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk, poet, and
philosopher,
writes The Seven Starr Mountain
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1950s Beat Generation: artists influenced by jazz whose works
criticize
American postwar materialism and complacency:
1952 John Cage composes 4'11";
1956 Allen Ginsberg writes the
narrative poem Howl;
1957 Tack Kerouac writes On the Road
1955 Lolita, by
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
(1899-1977),

humorously explores the erotic
relationship between an older man
and a young girl
с. 1950 Nuclear-powered submarines and ships in United States and
Soviet Union
1953 In England, James Watson and Francis Crick publish a model
of the structure of DNA and hypothesize the transmission of
genetic codes
1954 Jonas Salk invents polio vaccine Space Age begins: 1957,
Sputnik, first satellite, launched by Soviet Union; 1961, first
human orbit of the earth by Yuri Gagarin
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1960 Richard Wright writes
Native Son, on the
African-American experience
с. 1965 British Invasion in popular music: the Beatles, the
Rolling Stones,
and other rock-and-roll groups sell millions of
albums
1967 In Colombia, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
writes One Hundred
Years of Solitude
1969 Woodstock Festival in Vermont draws 500,000 fans of rock
and roll
1960 Laser technology developed
1963 Research in genetic engineering begins
in United States; 1976, synthesis achieved 1967 First human
heart transplant,
by Dr. Christiaan Barnard, in South Africa
1969 United States' Apollo
XI mission: Neil
Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin
walk on the
moon; 1976, solar probe launched
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1974
ALEKSANDR
SOLZHENITSYN
(1918-2008),

Russian writer whose
novels
describe life in a Soviet prison camp and
criticize the
government,
is exiled to the United States
1973 Three babies born in England through
in-vitro fertilization
c. 1978 Personal computers widely available 1979 Near-meltdown
of nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island electrical-power plant,
in Pennsylvania; 1986, explosion of Chernobyl nuclear-power
plant in Ukraine devastates the area and causes severe radiation
poisoning, as well as contamination of atmosphere over much of
Europe
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1981 MTV (music television), introduced on cable television,
brings the new medium of video music to a mass audience
1989 Anglo-Indian novelist Salman Rushdies Satanic Verses
outrages
Islamic fundamentalists, who place him under a death
threat and force
him into hiding
1981 First Space Shuttle, a reusable manned rocket, launched by
United States
1982 First artificial heart implanted
с. 1985 AIDS, identified as a new, incurable disease, spreads
throughout the world and begins to claim thousands of lives: by
1995, HIV infection levels
reach epidemic proportions
1989 Voyager IT space probe passes Neptune and discovers a new
moon
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1990s New office technology: fax for transmission of
documents; modem for electronic transmission of information;
rapid development of computer programs with many applications;
fiber-optic technology in widespread use
1990 Hubble space telescope launched
Abstract Expressionism
- 1943

Optical Art - 1965

Pop Art
- 1965

Happening
& Performance Art

Body Art - 1965

Minimalism
- 1965

Arte Povera
- 1967

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