Between 1948 and 1949, the United States and Great Britain agreed to airlift millions of tons of supplies into West Berlin, after the Soviets cut off all land and sea access to the city

The Hostage Crisis in 1979, when revolutionary Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days of forced captivity.

Between October and November of 1956, the Hungarian uprising faced military opposition and the Soviet Union crushed Hungary’s desire for independence.

In 1986, the catastrophic nuclear meltdown in a soviet reactor led to the Chernobyl disaster. Thousands were exposed to cancerous radiation levels and forced to relocate.

President Ronald Reagan’s landmark speech at the Berlin Wall, urging Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

The nearly four-month-long attack on Britain by the German Luftwaffe cost the lives of more than 20,000 people and wounded a nearly equal amount.

A writer and revolutionary whose works strongly influenced both the American and French Revolutions. His Common Sense pamphlet was the best-selling and most praised in the colonies.