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Cold War

1947–1991 tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies

34 dated entries naming Cold War, drawn from 18 separate years between 1947 CE and 2025 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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20th century

  • 1947April 16 – American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch describes the post–World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "Cold War".source
  • 1947February 17 – Cold War: The Voice of America begins to transmit radio broadcasts into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Unionsource
  • 1947July 26 – Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into law to create the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.source
  • 1947March 12 – The Cold War begins: The Truman Doctrine is proclaimed, to help stem the spread of Communism.source
  • 1948June 24 – Cold War: The Berlin Blockade begins.source
  • 1949May 12 – Cold War: The Soviet Union lifts the Berlin Blockade.source
  • 1950January 24 – Cold War: Klaus Fuchs, German émigré physicist, confesses to a British MI5 interrogator that he is a Soviet spy: for seven years, he passed top secret data on U.S. and British nuclear weapons research to the Soviet Union. Fuchs is formally charged on February 2.source
  • 1953August 15–19 – Cold War: 1953 Iranian coup d'état – Overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, by Iranian military in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with the support of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (as "Operation Ajax") and the United Kingdom.source
  • 1958April 14 – Van Cliburn wins the International Tchaikovsky Competition for pianists in Moscow, easing Cold War tensions.source
  • 1959December 1 – Cold War: Antarctic Treaty – 12 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign a landmark treaty that sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent (the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War).source
  • 1960Cold War: American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced in Moscow to 10 years in prison for espionage.source
  • 1960July 1 – Cold War: A Soviet Air Force MiG-19 fighter plane flying north of Murmansk, Russia, over the Barents Sea, shoots down a six-man RB-47 Stratojet reconnaissance plane of the U.S. Air Force. Four of the U.S. Air Force officers are killed, and the two survivors are held prisoner in the Soviet Union.source
  • 1960October 12 – Cold War: Shoe-banging incident – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, his way of protesting the discussion of the Soviet Union's policies toward Eastern Europe.source
  • 1961December 2 – Cold War: In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro announces he is a Marxist–Leninist, and that Cuba will adopt socialism.source
  • 1961October 27 – Berlin Crisis: Confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie – A standoff between Soviet and American tanks in Berlin, Germany, heightens Cold War tensions.source
  • 1969August 2 – U.S. President Richard Nixon visits Romania, becoming the first incumbent U.S. president to visit a communist state since the start of the Cold War.source
  • 1969November 15 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.source
  • 1969November 17 – Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki, to begin the SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.source
  • 1976September 6 – Cold War: Soviet Air Force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate, on the island of Hokkaidō in Japan, and requests political asylum in the United States.source
  • 1983November 7 – Able Archer 83: Many Soviet officials misinterpret this NATO exercise as a nuclear first strike, causing the last nuclear scare of the Cold War.source
  • 1983September 1 – Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by Soviet Union Air Force Su-15 Flagon pilot Major Gennadi Osipovich near Moneron Island when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board are killed, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald.source
  • 1985November 19 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.source
  • 1986October 11–12 – Cold War: Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe, which end in failure.source
  • 1989December 1 – Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist-dominated Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) its monopoly on power. Egon Krenz, the Politburo and the Central Committee resign two days later.source
  • 1989May 3 – Cold War: Perestroika – The first McDonald's restaurant in the USSR begins construction in Moscow. It will open on January 31, 1990.source
  • 1989November 17 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution – A peaceful student demonstration in Prague, Czechoslovakia, is severely beaten back by riot police. This sparks a revolution aimed at overthrowing the Communist government (it succeeds on December 29).source
  • 1989November 20 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution – The number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia, swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.source
  • 1989November 28 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution – The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces they will give up their monopoly on political power (elections held in December bring the first non-Communist government to Czechoslovakia in more than forty years).source
  • 1989November 7 – Cold War: The Communist government of East Germany under prime minister Willi Stoph resigns, although SED leader Egon Krenz remains as head of state.source
  • 1989November 9 – Cold War and Fall of the Berlin Wall: East German official Günter Schabowski accidentally states in a live broadcast press conference that new rules for traveling from East Germany to West Germany will be put in effect "immediately". Late this evening, East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel freely to West Germany for the first time in decades. In the first week, travel visas will be issued to around 25% of the East German population. One of several significant events on 9 November in German history.source
  • 1989October – Cold War: Perestroika – Nathan's Famous opens a hot dog stand in Moscow.source
  • 1990October 24 – Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti reveals the existence of Operation Gladio, a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy during the Cold War.source

21st century

  • 2024August 1 – 2024 American–Russian prisoner exchange: 26 individuals are released from Ankara Esenboğa Airport in the largest prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia since the Cold War.source
  • 2025June 25 – The Axiom Mission 4 is launched. The mission involves four astronauts, including the first astronauts from Poland (Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski) and India (Shubhanshu Shukla) since the end of the Cold War.source

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