1. Great Leap Forward
   Super Communist Party Time
2. Cultural Revolution
   Long March

The Cultural Revolution was when communist leader Chairman Mao decided to purge a great many potential rivals and "renew" the spirit of the Chinese revolution. At least three million people died violently and up to a hundred million were displaced from their homes, subjected to starvation or otherwise brutalized.

1. Mars landing
   Moon landing
2. Moon orbiting
   Asteroid hit the mooon

The moon landing was a huge turning point as it represented mankind's first step onto a foreign body. It was also a key point in the space race and helped develop a lot of technology that turned out to have all sorts of useful applications. Indeed, the device on which you are reading this almost certainly had an ancestor built in part by NASA!

1. "The Feminine Mystique"
   "The Second Sex"
2. "Yes Means Yes"
   "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

Betty Friedan's book finally helped put a name to a problem that millions of women were experiencing. While most women outside the upper classes always worked, the 1950s had seen such prosperity that for the first time, many wives in (white) working and middle-class families were expected to be absent from the workplace en masse. Many of them found solace when Friedan's book told them they were not the only ones who were unhappy with this arrangement.

1. They found oil.
   They found diamonds.
2. They all ended a war.
   They all got independence from empires.

Fourteen of the countries to gain independence that year were French colonies, alongside Italian and German colonies. The newly freed nations have had varied experiences since then, with some achieving democratic governance, peace and rapidly rising growth, while others have had a much rockier road.

1. Radar
   C++ programming language
2. Quantum mechanics
   Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology hasn't done as much yet as people initially hoped or feared. The planet has not been reduced to "gray goo" and we don't all have tiny doctor nanobots running through our veins. However, it's clear that we may soon risk the former and enjoy the latter! Feynman is the father of this field, starting in 1960.

1. The computer mouse
   The light emitting diode
2. The contraceptive pill
   The pacemaker

The contraceptive pill was the first truly reliable way for a woman to decide when and if she would become a mother. This was very important in enabling women to get out of abusive situations and maintain economic independence. Early pills gave way to much lower-dose varieties with fewer side effects.

1. Assassination of RFK
   Launch of Apollo 13
2. Assassination of JFK
   Disco was invented

There are plenty of conspiracies around the death of JFK, and they will probably never be put to rest. What we do know is that LBJ became president as a result of it, and this was transformative in US history, especially in the areas of Civil Rights and the Vietnam War.

1. Sputnik
   Berlin Wall
2. Hoover Dam
   Apollo 11

The Berlin Wall was designed to separate democratic and free West Berlin from the communist East Berlin. Families were separated and the east began to get more and more impoverished. The wall came down in 1989, and has now been down longer than it was up.

1. Cuban Missile Crisis
   Bay of Pigs
2. Three Mile Island
   Vela Incident

The Cuban Missile Crisis almost resulted in World War III when the Russians decided to point nuclear missiles at the US from Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida. After 13 tense days, things ended without violence thanks to backchannel communication and the threat of mutually assured destruction.

1. Voting Rights Act
   Environmental Protection Agency
2. Black Lives Matter
   Civil Rights Act

The Civil Rights Act was a key law that began to undo the legal segregation practiced in many states, part of the legacy of slavery. The law ended legal discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, and thus required integration of schools and other public spaces.

1. Iranian hostage crisis
   Tet Offensive
2. Suez crisis
   Fall of Saigon

The Vietnam War was considered winnable until the Tet Offensive, when the Vietcong attacked simultaneously all over South Vietnam. The Vietnam War resulted in 50,000 American dead and an estimated 2.25 million Vietnamese dead, all without achieving its intended goal.

1. Watergate break-in
   President Nixon's terrible stubble
2. The Nixon tapes
   VP Spiro Agnew quit

Watergate was seen as a very minor event without a connection to the presidency, but it escalated hugely in due course, as the criminal coverup did involve the president. By the end, Nixon had to leave office. Former Nixon aide Roger Ailes made it his life's work to try to prevent such an investigation from ever occurring again.

1. Rolling Stones
   Kinks
2. Sex Pistols
   Beatles

The Beatles began in 1960 and continued working together until 1970, after which they each went on to tremendous solo success. Their music changed cultural history, and their message of pacificism was widely adopted by their fans.

1. Black Lives Matter
   Campaign Zero
2. Project Drawdown
   Black Panthers

While Dr. Martin Luther King was considered to be a great man in part because of his message of peaceful protest (among many other reasons), not everyone agreed. The Black Panther movement, led by Malcolm X, took a more muscular approach to protest and civil disobedience. Both approaches had a great influence on how the Civil Rights battle was fought.

1. HIV epidemic
   Raid on the Stonewall Inn
2. Obergefell ruling
   Society for Human Rights founded

The Stonewall riots were sparked by police brutality toward gay men who met at the Stonewall Inn, which they considered a safe haven. The LGBTQ+ community fought back and many were arrested. It was a turning point in the struggle for gay rights.

1. Indira Gandhi
   Benazir Bhutto
2. Mother Theresa
   Golda Meir

Indira Gandhi won several elections, though it's not clear how many more she could have won as her own bodyguards murdered her in 1984. Gandhi served a total of 15 years as India's Prime Minister, in two separate terms of 11 and four years respectively.

1. Good Friday Agreement
   Black and Tans
2. Irish war of independence
   The Troubles

The massacre that came to be known as "Bloody Sunday" was an act of police brutality by authorities against Irish civilians that resulted in 13 dead. The next 30 years were marred by sectarian violence and terrorist attacks against civilians in Britain and Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement put an end to this in 1998.

1. Ho Chi Minh visited China.
   China invaded Tibet.
2. Nixon visited China.
   China accepted Taiwanese independence.

Nixon's criminality is the part of his presidency with which people tend to be familiar, but his legacy is more complex. By opening up trade with China, he changed the course of world history and helped to break the stranglehold of the Soviet Union on the eastern hemisphere.

1. Iranian hostage crisis
   Second Intifada
2. Six Day War
   Black September hostage crisis

The secular nationalist Black September group took Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Games, killing them along with a German police officer. Israeli security forces later tracked down the responsible parties and killed them in revenge.

1. Iranian Revolution against the Shah
   Installation of the Shah
2. White Revolution land reforms
   Iran-Iraq War

The Iranian Revolution ushered in the current theocratic dictatorship under the Ayatollah, deposing the Shahs who headed Iran's monarchy from 1953 to 1979. However, before this period it was a democracy whose elected leader was ousted by British and American security services in favor of a more amenable ruler. Thus, the current situation is considered by many to have a certain irony to it.

1. United Nations building
   Mall of America
2. DisneyWorld
   World Trade Center

The World Trade Center was built to symbolize international trade and cooperation (and, depending on who you ask, capitalism). Its most iconic buildings, the Twin Towers, only stood for a few decades before terrorists destroyed them in 2001, murdering nearly 3,000 people.

1. Boris Becker
   John McEnroe
2. Bobby Riggs
   Elvis Presley

In 1973, female player Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in the game known as "the Battle of the Sexes". Riggs was 20 years past his physical prime but still maintained that no woman could defeat him, even a current champion. King won in straight sets, taking home a substantial prize.

1. OAPEC embargo
   New York 1977 blackout
2. Yom Kippur War
   Suez crisis

The energy crisis occurred when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries put an embargo on oil to try to pressure Israel's allies over the Yom Kippur War. It resulted in higher energy prices but did not get the result OAPEC sought. The group is now called OPEC, having added several non-Arab members.

1. Khmer Rouge
   Pol Pot
2. Killing Fields
   Vietnamese invasion

The communist movement in Cambodia was known as the Khmer Rouge, and their rule under leader Pol Pot was a particularly bloody period. From 1975 to 1979, they left 1.7m dead in the "Killing Fields," a time marked by horrifying images of thousands of skulls piled up on top of each other.

1. The Rocket
   Apollo 11
2. Soyuz 2
   Concorde

This exciting airplane flew at 50,000 feet and could cross the Atlantic in three hours. However, it was inefficient, expensive and annoyed everyone who had to listen to it roaring by overhead. It was taken out of service on Oct. 24, 2003, after a horrific crash. Fortunately, technology developed for Concorde is now being redeveloped into similar "scramjets" that throw their sonic boom upward and use far less fuel, meaning that a UK-Australia flight in three hours may be in the cards soon!

1. "Star Wars: Episode IV"
   "The Godfather"
2. "The Graduate"
   "Jaws"

"Star Wars" is absolutely ubiquitous now, but it had many studio executives nervous before it launched. It was an instant smash hit, breaking plenty of records and going on to become the biggest movie franchise of all time. It employed a number of practical, camera and special effects that transformed cinema for good.

1. Microsoft
   Apple
2. IBM
   Dell

Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975 and rapidly came to dominate the home computer market. IBM, the previous Goliath of computing, was caught asleep at the switch, though it recovered later. Microsoft continues to be a giant of the industry, and it can be hard to remember that it was once a scrappy (albeit well-funded) start-up.

1. Vacuum cleaner
   Dishwasher
2. Air conditioner
   Atari game console

While PC gaming took a long time to take off, the Atari was an affordable and fun alternative that took games out of the arcade and brought them into the home. It was initially only seen in more affluent homes, but now just about everyone has a Playstation or similar heir to this very first domestic gaming console.

1. Dolly the Sheep
   Louise Brown
2. Robert Edwards
   Patrick Steptoe

Louise Brown was born in 1978, the first baby to result from IVF, or in vitro fertilization. Brown is now in her 40s and a mother herself. Since her birth, five million babies have been born by this amazing scientific method!

1. Yemen and Saudi Arabia
   Israel and Egypt
2. Syria and Jordan
   Kuwait and Iraq

In 1978, the leaders Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shook hands in a meeting brokered by US president Jimmy Carter. Since then, Egypt and Israel have not always been very friendly, but they haven't had a war or shot at each other (officially).

1. An out gay man winning public office
   An out trans man winning public office
2. A Muslim winning public office
   A man in a wheelchair winning public office

Harvey Milk ran multiple times for office but lost largely because of prejudice against his sexuality. He refused to live in the closet, however, and continued to fight for gay rights and acceptance, winning election eventually.

1. Sony Discman
   Sony Walkman
2. Playman
   Cable TV

The Walkman was the first alternative to lugging a boom box around if you wanted portable music, and it took the world by storm. Now, everyone's phone contains a music library, but it all began with humble cassettes.

1. Three Mile Island accident
   Chernobyl meltdown
2. Pan Am flight
   TWA flight hijacking

The Three Mile Island disaster not only resulted in 140,000 Americans having to flee their homes, it also set back support for nuclear energy by decades. Indeed, this form of energy is still highly controversial, as some fear further accidents and the issue of waste, while others support it as a carbon-free alternative to oil, natural gas and coal.

1. Operation Condor
   Operation Anteater
2. Operation Rumba
   Operation Aztec

This sad series of events involved these South American dicators rounding up and killing their enemies en masse. It was a time of cooperation between rival leaders who wanted to get rid of dissidents who stood up to them. Since then, some of these nations have successfully kicked out the juntas and become free democracies.

1. Tony Blair
   Gordon Brown
2. Margaret Thatcher
   Golda Meir

A controversial figure, Thatcher made some great and some terrible calls. She is thus loved and loathed in equal measure by British people, such that on one hand, there are quite a few statues of her, and on the other, the musical "Billy Elliot" contains an entire song looking forward to her death.

1. Invasion of Cambodia
   Invasion of Ukraine
2. Invasion of Afghanistan
   Invasion of the Baltic states

As the US and Britain have learned, the famous saying is correct, "Never get into a land war in Central Asia." However, the USSR also learned this when it tried to pacify Afghanistan, which is famously intractable. The US helped local mujahideen push back, offering funding throughout the 1980s. This went very wrong later when one of these groups became al-Qaeda, in a case of something that sounds so absurd it has to be a conspiracy theory, but isn't.

1. First presidential fireside chat
   First popular vote victory that didn't win the Electoral College
2. First televised presidential debate
   First president without a hat

If you saw this debate on TV, Kennedy crushed Nixon, but if you heard it on radio, it was the other way around—or so said the polls. This debate was the first time that being very handsome became a debate tactic. Since then, other candidates have been obliged to overcome any opposing good looks through diverse tactics such as being more entertaining, pandering to the lowest common denominator or being a far superior debater.

1. First failed assassination of Fidel Castro
   Second failed assassination of Fidel Castro
2. Bay of Pigs invasion
   Cuban Missile Crisis

The CIA sponsored a rebel group trying to depose Fidel Castro in 1961. It was a disaster that resulted in a number of lives lost and Castro more entrenched than ever. Multiple failed attempts to kill him had a similar effect, and he lived to a ripe old age.

1. Laser
   Halogen lamp
2. Fiber optic cable
   Modem

Professor Theodore Maiman stunned the world in 1960 when he debuted something called Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, or "laser." It is now a very popular technology in civilian and military use, and shows up in many science fiction movies as well.