1961
Gagarin orbits the Earth
In a Soviet capsule the size of a small bathroom, twenty-seven-year-old fighter pilot Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. A hundred and eight minutes around the earth; a parachute ejection over a Russian field; a peasant woman asking if he was a spy. The Cold War's race had entered orbit, and the West was losing.
Berlin Wall goes up
In the small hours of a Sunday morning, East German soldiers unrolled barbed wire along the border streets of Berlin. Within days they had begun laying concrete. Families woke to find themselves divided. For twenty-eight years the Wall would stand as the century's most visible scar, and then come down in a night.
Bay of Pigs fails
Fourteen hundred CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs expecting a popular uprising. What they got was Castro's militia waiting for them. In three days it was over. A humiliated Kennedy took the blame. Castro emerged stronger, Moscow's confidence grew, and the road toward the missile crisis opened.
Construction of the Berlin Wall
In the early hours of a Sunday morning, East German soldiers and police unrolled barbed wire along the Berlin border, cutting off all movement between East and West. Families woke up to find themselves separated. Concrete walls followed. For twenty-eight years the Wall would stand as the most visible scar of the Cold War across Europe.
Eisenhower warns of military-industrial complex
In his farewell address, outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about the growing influence of what he called the military-industrial complex, the alliance of defense contractors and the Pentagon that risked distorting national priorities. Coming from a former five-star general and Supreme Allied Commander, the warning carried unusual weight. It would enter the American political vocabulary for good.
Catch-22 published
Joseph Heller's novel about American bomber crews in Italy invented a phrase for the absurdity of bureaucratic logic: you could only avoid flying dangerous missions by being crazy, but asking to be grounded proved you were sane enough to keep flying. A generation about to be drafted for Vietnam read it as prophecy.