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Student Information Sheet: Chronology of Significant Events 1939-1958
1939 World War II begins
1940 Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain
Battle of Britain
1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour
1942 Battle for Stalingrad
German defeat at El Alamein
1944 Allied invasion of Normandy
1945 Use of atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
End of World War II
Yalta and Potsdam Conferences
Formation of the United Nations
1946 Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech
1947 Greek Civil War
1948 Truman Doctrine
Berlin airlift
Marshall Plan inaugurated
1949 NATO formed
Chinese Revolution
Soviet A-bomb tested
1950 Korean War begins
Senator McCarthy starts the "Red Scare"
1952 Eisenhower becomes US President
1953 Armistice in Korea
Death of Stalin
Rosenberg execution
1954 Khrushchev announces "peaceful co-existence"
Diem regime takes power in South Vietnam
1955 Warsaw Pact
1956 Hungarian uprising
Anglo-French intervention in Suez
1957 Sputnik - start of the "space race"
1958 NORAD