Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on the 4th of October 1957, which ignited global panic and led to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958. This event marked the true beginning of the Space Race and shattered American confidence regarding technological and military superiority.
Winston Churchill delivered the Iron Curtain speech on the 5th of March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, which warned of an iron curtain descending across the continent. This speech set the stage for a geopolitical struggle that lasted for forty-five years and solidified the division between the free nations of the West and the Soviet-dominated East.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 ended through a secret deal in which the United States agreed to remove its missiles from Turkey and Italy while the Soviet Union removed its missiles from Cuba. This compromise prevented a catastrophic war and brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.
The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the United States, thanks to information delivered by atomic spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project. The Venona project, a secret decryption effort by the United States, revealed the activities of Soviet spy networks in America and was kept secret from policymakers until the Moynihan Commission in 1995.
The Soviet Union launched the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin, on the 12th of April 1961, while the United States landed a man on the moon on the 20th of July 1969. The Space Race began with the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and ended with the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, ending the Cold War and leaving the United States as the sole superpower. Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and implemented policies of glasnost and perestroika, which allowed for greater transparency and economic reform.