Finished JFK (notes on last Monday's blog). Started song project videos.
Notes on Cold War:
- The Space Race- it was a race between the USSR and USA to who could get to the moon first; we were behind in the space race because the Soviets sent up Sputnik (the unmanned satellite) and we feared we were falling behind the Soviets; they also got the first man in space (Yuri Gagarin); since we thought we were falling behind, it caused a big push in education (mainly science and math) because we wanted engineers; moon landing happened in 1969, Lance Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin; JFK promised that by the end of the decade, the US would have a man on the moon; used the Space Shuttle instead of rockets; NASA was created to deal with space in the 1958; Mir-International Space Station which was a rendezvous point for a bunch of countries; Sally Ride was the first female in space; the Challenger explosion, where they tried to take the first civilian to space (the school teacher), was disastrous
- Bay of Pigs Invasion- 1961; America wanted to invade Cuba but it would have looked bad for such a big country invading a little country, so a bunch of Cuban exiles were going to invade and hope the rest of the Cubans would rise up and revolt with them but they didn't; all of them were captured and a few killed; Cubans were mad that US backed out (promised air support but backed out and Cuban exiles were very very upset especially since they were caught) so they spoke up about who was behind the invasion (huge embarrassment for JFK)
- Cuban Missile Crisis
- Red Scare/McCarthyism: 1939-1945; Reds were communists; everyone was very paranoid about anyone being communist (president, neighbors, friends, family, movie stars, etc.); people were put on trial for being communist and the best way to get out of it was to claim that someone else was communist (a lot like the); Joseph McCarthy was a senator from Wisconsin who started it all by accusing people and getting people scared, and he also said he's got a list in his briefcase of about a hundred people who he knew were communist; big liar (used lies and intimidation to get very powerful) even when he was in the war, he lied about big battles to get more decorated (which would help his career); people in Hollywood would be blacklisted and when that happened, they couldn't get a job anywhere so they moved to different countries to make movies; McCarthy ruined tons of people's lives and careers by his lies; HUAC went after the Hollywood stars
- Berlin Wall: Germany was split into 4 zones and Berlin, the capital, was essentially split in half between Eastern Communists and Western Democratics and what was happening was the people in the East we fleeing (people in the thousands) to the west so the wall was built by the Soviets to hold them back; didn't like this because it actually split the country and created more tension and looked bad for the Soviets because they were practically imprisoning the Germans; showed that people were picking democracy over communism and that was the exact opposite of what Soviet Union and other communist countries thought; after the wall was built, people who tried to flee were shot while they were fleeing (not to injure but to kill); November 1989 the wall came down because communism was pretty much done many because Soviets were too preoccupied in other areas and people just started to break down the wall by themselves and the soldiers didn't stop them or anything
- Berlin Airlift and Blockade: ?
- Korean Conflict (the "forgotten war"): 3 year war between the North (China, N. Korea) and South (United Nations, S. Korea); first example of the United Nations showing what they could do; the North invaded the South first and pushed the forces way down to a very small area (invasion was due mainly to most our troops being taken out of Korea); after WWII, China and the Soviet Union had control over Korea; once our troops came back after the invasion, United Nations forces pushed the forces way up to almost China. After this, China got involved and thought that we were invading them; UN Security Council (5 permanent members: US, USSR, GB, France, China- actually Taiwan); General Douglas MacArthur was fired by Truman because MacArthur wanted to invade China; USSR would have voted against war had they gotten involved; China/Taiwan voted to go to war; North and South never signed a peace treaty so they are technically still at war; DMZ (demilitarized zone) is the splitting line between North and South Korea; ended because??
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